Search - Lita Ford :: Time Capsule

Lita Ford is ripping open the vault and sharing music no one has heard
yet. Ford, a Grammy-nominated artist who recently accepted Guitar
Player's Lifetime Achievement Award and is one of the youngest living
legends in rock 'n' roll, is celebrating four decades of music. She is releasing Living Like a Runaway: Lita Ford, A Memoir, documenting her
journey from all-girl band The Runaways to major solo successes. Ford
is also offering an audio complement in the form of Time Capsule. .

This "throwback" record boasts identifiable voices and brilliant
players jamming without any planning or pressure. Some of the album's
highlights: Billy Sheehan playing bass and Rodger Carter on drums;
Dave Navarro playing a mandolin; Jeff Scott Soto singing a duet with
Ford; Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander of Cheap Trick actually singing
backing vocals; and KISS' Gene Simmons ripping the bass.

The album is a time capsule of the fertile and whisky-soaked
pre-grunge period that so many rock fans have continued affection for.
Time Capsule is Ford's gift to fans who love the '80s, when thrilling
vocal performances, raunchy riffs, and loud, growling guitars were as
essential as oxygen.

In these "lost" recordings, you hear what happens when insanely
talented musicians get drunk, hang out, end up in a room together with
a "Screw it, let's play" mentality, minus the click tracks or label
execs breathing down their necks, looking for the single or the
"hook."

"There was a shitload of these 24-track analog tapes in the closet in
my house [in the islands]," Ford recalls. "This is some of the best
work I've ever done and it was sitting there. I grabbed two suitcases
and took them back to the United States."

Imagine Ford dragging a pair of suitcases full of analog tapes through
the Caribbean dirt back to Los Angeles, so, as she recalls, "we could
bake these fuckers," due to their age. "If you just put them on the
reel, they would flake. I was chewing my fingernails, thinking,
'Please work!' And they did!"

Time Capsule was made organically among the most badass and gifted
musicians from the '80s. There was no back and forth emailing of parts
this was done in real time, drinks in hand.

As for exactly how the songs came to be, she muses, "We had a break
between recordings and it seemed so many us were always in the same
place, at the same time. George Tutko was one hell of an engineer,
coming off the platinum-selling Lita album. He asked me, 'Who will
produce?' I will, because I knew George had my back and I wasn't alone
on this."

Participation happened spontaneously. She remembers how one
recruitment went down, saying, "Dave Navarro walks by. We grab him and
tell him, 'Play something on this song. Here, play this mandolin!' And
boom! He does it."

She furthers, "These recordings have attitude. All of these rock stars
were recording in the local studios. There's also Cheap Trick the
identifiable voices of Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander singing backing
vocals. Gene Simmons played on and co-wrote 'Rotten to the Core.'
W.A.S.P. Chris Holmes is in the introduction to the album and is the
first thing you hear, stomping around looking for the keys to his
'Ford.' Billy Sheehan was one of my best friends, and I asked him what
he was doing. I said, 'Want to play bass?' We didn't know how long it
would take; we were simply having fun."