The Runaways: Five Girls Who Loved Rock'n'Roll

This past weekend, I dragged my two daughters and my wife with me to see The Runaways, the new film about the groundbreaking all-female rock band of the 1970s. Hopefully they learned that "Girl Power" was not a concept that started with the Spice Girls.

Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Jackie Fox were all teenagers when their eponymous debut album was released in 1976. The leadoff single, "Cherry Bomb", certainly grabbed the attention of those of us fortunate enough to hear it on the radio, although most critics dismissed the band as a novelty act offering more titillation than talent. The critics were wrong; band members wrote most of the songs, making an exception to cover Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll" from his Velvet Underground days, and the girls played their instruments better than most of their garage band peers.

The film is based on a book by Currie, and Jett is an executive producer, which probably explains why it focuses mostly on these two characters, played by Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, respectively. When Stewart, as Jett, is told by a guitar teacher that "girls don't play electric guitar", that patronizing brushoff, combined with Jett's defiance, establishes the film's theme - don't tell girls they can't do something just because they're girls. But Ford's lead guitar playing and West's drumming also proved the point that girls could rock just as hard as boys, and their part of the story deserves more screentime. Fox's name isn't even uttered in the movie, partly for plot simplification (the band went through several bassists in their short lifetime) and partly due to legal disputes.

While Ford's musical style leaned towards heavy metal, Jett was more drawn to glam rock and the emerging punk rock movement, two sounds she combined and parlayed into a successful post-Runaways solo career with songs like "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock'n'Roll". Jett's attitude as well as her songwriting talent are still very much in evidence today. Her most recent album, 2006's "Sinner", encourages listeners to "Change The World", and bashes the then-reigning Bush administration in "Riddles" by sneering at the Newspeak names of Bush policies such as "Healthy Forests" and "No Child Left Behind", screaming "wake up, people!", and finally ending with non sequitur soundbites from Bush and Rumsfeld.

Joan Jett was also one of the first women in rock to start her own independent label, Blackheart Records, when she couldn't get a record deal after the Runaways' breakup (folk rocker Holly Near may have been the first with her Redwood Records). In addition to putting out Jett's new releases as well as CD reissues of her back catalog, Blackheart has a stable of new bands like Girl In A Coma and The Dollyrots.

The Runaways played an important part in rock history, paving the way for The Go-Go's, The Bangles, The Donnas, Hole, Veruca Salt, and The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde. The Runaways film captures the essence of their sound and attitude, and shows the difficulties this all-female band faced in a male-dominated industry. If this movie inspires a new generation of teenage girls to pick up guitars and drumsticks and start a band, or in fact express themselves in whatever way they feel inspired, it will have succeeded in its goal.