Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways

A bio of the ground-breaking all girl teenage rock band of the 70's. The Runaways were controversial in every way, from their formation by the Svengali weirdo Kim Fowley, to the way they dressed, to having to repeatedly prove that they did play their instruments, to the lawsuits over money more than a decade after breaking up. This is the band that spawned Joan Jett and Lita Ford, and made Fowley, a Hollywood fixture of decadence, into a world renown villain.
The book is written by a music critic who is also teaches journalism at Loyola, with interviews by nearly everyone involved who is still alive. Her researching is thorough. She even got the unpublished memoirs of drummer Sandy West, who died in 2006. I think McDonnell focuses too show more much on the sexuality of a couple of the girls, turning it into a platform for her personal feelings at times. The band had no political statements, and the members fought hard to be seen as musicians rather than being sexualized (they hated Cherie Currie's lingerie stage costumes). The Runaways did face a whole lot of 70's misogyny and battled through it, due to the fact that women weren't suppose to play hard rock, especially high school girls, so getting on stage made them targets. But this book does a really good job at untangling the mess and the rumors. It's a good choice if you want to read about a rock band. show less

Writing an unbiased and 100% accurate account of The Runaways would be an impossible task; the band was divided and fraught from its inception, and all subsequent mythology reflects that. McDonnell takes on the difficult task of telling "the real story" and does an admirable job.

Other available Runaways accounts (book and film) suffer from being from being told from a particular viewpoint of a band member(s). McDonnell was never enmeshed with the band, and that is to her benefit. She collects as much source material as possible, quotations from band members from the 70s and from the present (including material from founding member Sandy West, who was no longer living when this book was published). The result is a more even-handed show more treatment than memoirs and biopics can give, and McDonnell has really done her research. The more famous and more disputed stories are presented with multiple perspectives and memories in an attempt to arrive at what is closest to the truth. McDonnell is not afraid to admit that the truth of so much about The Runaways will never be known. She does not insist on a definitive version of events where none can be found.

McDonnell also avoids the pitfall of writing this story as tabloid journalism. It is entertaining but also analytic. She discusses what it meant to form a "girl band" in the 70s, the expectations and challenges The Runaways faced in the music industry, and presents a substantial number of reviews of albums and concerts that, overall, situate the band in its historical context. She discusses sexuality and gender politics without ever turning the book into an academic platform; again, it's educational while being entertaining. The book is thus also even-handed in balancing storytelling with discussions of the music industry. There's something here for anyone who is interested. show less