Lita Ford spoke to SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about the progress of the recording sessions for her long-awaited new solo album. The follow-up to 2012’s “Living Like A Runaway” is once again being helmed by guitarist/producer Gary Hoey, who contributes some guitar playing to the disc, alongside the rest of Ford‘s backing band, which continues to consist of guitarist Patrick Kennison, drummer Bobby Rock and bassist Marty O’Brien.
“[Gary] and I have been working back and forth on this new record for quite a few years now,” Lita said. “It’s been a process. But what I do is when I have an idea, I call Gary, I call his wife Nicole, and I’m, like, ‘Nicole, does Gary have a break in his schedule? When can I come over?’ And she’s, like, ‘You can come in April. We can get you in for 10 days.’ And so [I go], ‘Okay. Book me in.’ So I get on the plane, and I fly to Gary‘s house, which is on the East Coast. And Gary and I lock ourselves in his awesome studio, which has this great vibe, and we come out of there with the best stuff. And he’s such a great guitar player, and he has so many great ideas, and I take my ideas to Gary. You need somebody to bounce your ideas off of. It doesn’t matter what you do; you’ve gotta have somebody to bounce your ideas off of. Gary‘s the guy.”
Asked if her new album is now completely done, Lita said: “Gary and I, we’ve been working together for quite a long time on this record. And we’ve encountered all kinds of experiences through this record, like death and drug addiction and hardcore illnesses — just different people involved in the project. It’s just been, like, ‘Woah.’ And then traveling back and forth, and touring, and just trying to put together the right album with the right lyrics. And Gary and I, at the end of it all, we sat back and listened to the record and just said, ‘You know, this is some of the best guitar playing I think I’ve heard in decades.’ And I’m not blowing smoke up my own ass, but Gary and I just nailed it with the guitar playing on this record.
“I’m a huge fan of people like Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper‘s ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’. I mean, there’s some really great duo guitar players — [JUDAS PRIEST‘s] Glenn Tipton, K.K. Downing… Those guitar players don’t exist anymore — they just don’t exist. If you wanna hear them, you have to go back in time a little bit and dig them up into your favorite library, favorite music catalog. But I think Gary and I really nailed it on this next record. It’s, like, oh my God. I’m crying — I’m just, like, crying listening to this stuff. It’s so badass.”
As for whether she is planning to wait until the pandemic is over before releasing her new album, Ford said: “Like I said, it’s been an ordeal — we’ve had a lot of major hurdles to jump — and the pandemic has been one of those major hurdles. Just trying to get the drum tracks recorded, because originally we were doing digital drums. And Bobby Rock, he was, like, ‘Dude, we’ve been playing together for so long. You’ve gotta get that Bobby Rock vibe in there.’ I’m, like, ‘Yeah, we do. We need that thunderhouse, powerhouse, balls-to-the-wall drums — real drums; not the digital stuff.’ And people don’t do that anymore either. Just trying to find a studio to record the drums in; with the pandemic, everybody was shut down. So we finally got into a studio. Our booking agent and his son, who let us into a studio in Minneapolis. And we flew up there in September and we recorded the drums. And there’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ [protests] everywhere that are just roaming the streets, and the studio is boarded down with plywood over the windows, and they’ve got shotguns and Rottweilers. And Bobby goes in there and records his drum tracks. And it’s just, like, ‘Yup. I like this. This is badass.’ [Laughs]”
According to Lita, all the recordings for her new LP have been completed, and “my awesome engineer George Marshall has turned everything over to Max Norman, and Max Norman is mixing the record now… We’re really happy to have him involved,” she said. “We’ve just got a really great team of people working on this record. It’s taken longer than we anticipated, because of the pandemic and just all kinds of bullshit involved. But we’ve got a great team of people. Everything feels right, everything is the right way to go with this record. And I’m just really excited for everyone to hear it.”
In 2019, Lita told The Metal Voice that her new album will include a song called “Monsters”, which was inspired by infamous cult leaders like Charles Manson and David Koresh. “It’s just really dark and nasty stuff — brainwashing people and all the stuff [Koresh] did, and got all those people to drink Kool-Aid,” she said. “But then again, it could be someone like your attorney, or it could be someone like your mom who is the monster in your life. It could be your manager. You never know who the monster in your life is gonna turn out to be.”
Ford‘s last release was 2016’s “Time Capsule”, a collection of songs that were recorded by Lita in the past, but never before made available.
Five years ago, Lita released an autobiography, “Living Like A Runaway: A Memoir”, via Dey Street Books (formerly It Books), an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
