The Runaways: Jerry Springer's best contestants

Belinda Carlisle gives a damn about her bad reputation. The former Go-Go’s singer has released a memoir in the US, titled Lips Unsealed, with much of the promotional material for the book focusing on her cocaine abuse and constant partying. But it was one sentence in an interview published in a news piece by Reuters last week that gave away what’s also on her mind as she tries to mine her own past lack of self-confidence for a bit of cash. When talking about the ‘legacy’ of The Go-Go’s, formed in 1978, Carlisle names them “the first female band (formed by women) to write our own songs and play our own instruments”.

Though it’s unclear in context whether the words in the brackets are her own or the journalist’s, it is clear that Carlisle is responding to the Hollywood-pushed legacy promotion of the band often given the title of the first to be all-female, The Runaways. With the feature film The Runaways to be released on 15 July in Australia and starring two of America’s most successful teenaged actresses, Kristin Stewart and Dakota Fanning, there’s little doubt The Runaways are about to have their ‘story’ cemented into the wider consciousness.

The band were essentially pieced together in 1975 by producer Kim Fowley, hence Carlisle’s firm claim to ownership of something she goes on to also claim as “revolutionary”. It might be a lewd precursory grab at the title, but there are obvious expectations that the film will make modern-day ‘stars’ out of The Runaways, if they’re not already. One is the Australian release through Shock of the documentary filmed by one of the band’s many bass players, Victory Tischler-Blue, titled Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways, the week before the film is out. The doco was originally released in 2005 on the US cable network Showtime and has been reported to be part of the source material for The Runaways.

The formation of the band by Fowley and his subsequent management of the five teen girls are at the centre of Edgeways. Many times throughout the roughly shot but well constructed film do the former members, including singer Cherie Currie and guitarist Lita Ford, call his treatment of them “abuse”, though it’s never settled on whether there was any physical abuse involved. Joan Jett has stated in interviews she didn’t participate in the doco because it wasn’t the way she wanted the story of the band portrayed. (In Montreal’s Mirror magazine, a 2006 story quoted her as saying, “I’m not gonna participate in a Jerry Springer fest, bottom line.”)

Fowley certainly comes off as self-serving and uninterested in the mental health of the teenagers he took charge of. In fact, in interviews in the doco, he speaks of the girls being messed up more as a successful marketing point – an ideal of the ‘rock’n’roll dream’ – than anything to be regretful of handling poorly. However, he also doesn’t come across as a significantly interesting managerial figure in pop cultural history. He ran a “bootcamp” for five girls who couldn’t play their instruments well but wanted ‘fame’, based on a marketing plan for a band that was then run like a business with little regard for its underage employees. Sounds like many acts of all ‘genres’ who came before and have come since.

The women Tischler-Blue interviews – with the exception of Currie, who has a penchant for the dramatic – speak plainly of their desire for fame with the kind of perspective of people who haven’t been permanently ruined by it but have seen what it can do. How they were treated and how they interacted with each other led to their demise as a group, but it also played a large role in the fame they acquired in the four years they were together.

Whether The Runaways will show this relationship of market force and immature desire is to be seen. Knowing Hollywood, it will likely bolster the claim on the band’s legacy as the first something; a claim to a fame that didn’t do them much good at the time. No doubt (amongst other, better things) it will also inspire some teenage girl who’s willing to let herself be abused in exchange for fame. But then, there’s plenty of inspiration out there. And maybe it’s worth it. Belinda Carlisle obviously thinks so.