Arts & Entertainment
Lita Ford says she left The Runaways because her bandmates were lesbians
guitarist left band after noticing Joan Jett and Cherie Curry were involved
Guitarist Lita Ford says she left teen girl rock band The Runaways after discovering her fellow bandmates, such as Joan Jett and Cherie Curry, liked girls.
In her new memoir “Living Like a Runaway” Ford says she noticed the girls in her band always talked about girls and never boys. Of all her band members, Jett, Currie, Jackie Fox, Cherie and Sandy West, Ford discovered only Fox wasn’t interested in girls.
“First I found out that Sandy, the one I had bonded with the most, was a lesbian,” Ford recounted in her memoir. “Then I found out that Cherie was messing around with Joan. I was so freaked out that I quit the band.”
In an interview with Huffington Post, Ford says as a teenager in the mid ’70s she wasn’t familiar with homosexuality and that affected her reactions towards the band.
“I didn’t know anything about [homosexuality], and it was still in the closet. Nobody [back then] came out and said, ‘I’m gay,'” Ford told Huffington Post. “When I found out that the girls were all gay in the band, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I didn’t know what it was.”
Ford says that she told her parents the reason for her departure from the band was because The Runaways’s manager Kim Fowley was “too weird.” Eventually the band called her back and Ford decided to rejoin the band. She doesn’t believe her bandmates knew the real reason she quit.
“We just carried on, you know, because it was no big deal,” Ford says. “But to me it was, back then, and it just really threw me for a loop. I didn’t know that people do that.”
Denali (@denalifoxx) of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” performed at Pitchers DC on April 9 for the Thirst Trap Thursday drag show. Other performers included Cake Pop!, Brooke N Hymen, Stacy Monique-Max and Silver Ware Sidora.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)














Arts & Entertainment
In an act of artistic defiance, Baltimore Center Stage stays focused on DEI
‘Maybe it’s a triple-down’
By LESLIE GRAY STREETER | I’m always tickled when people complain about artists “going political.” The inherent nature of art, of creation and free expression, is political. This becomes obvious when entire governments try to threaten it out of existence, like in 2025, when the brand-new presidential administration demanded organizations halt so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming or risk federal funding.
Baltimore Center Stage’s response? A resounding and hearty “Nah.” A year later, they’re still doubling down on diversity.
“Maybe it’s a triple-down,” said Ken-Matt Martin, the theater’s producing director, chuckling.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
‘La Lucci’
By Susan Lucci with Laura Morton
c.2026, Blackstone Publishing
$29.99/196 pages
They’re among the world’s greatest love stories.
You know them well: Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Phoebe and Langley. Cliff and Nina. Jesse and Angie, Opal and Palmer, Palmer and Daisy, Tad and Dixie. Now read “La Lucci” by Susan Lucci, with Laura Morton, and you might also think of Susan and Helmut.

When she was a very small girl, Susan Lucci loved to perform. Also when she was young, she learned that words have power. She vowed to use them for good for the rest of her life.
Her parents, she says, were supportive and her family, loving. Because of her Italian heritage, she was “ethnic looking” but Lucci’s mother was careful to point out dark-haired beauties on TV and elsewhere, giving Lucci a foundation of confidence.
That’s just one of the things for which Lucci says she’s grateful. In fact, she says, “Prayers of gratitude are how I begin and end each day.”
She is particularly grateful for becoming a mother to her two adult children, and to the doctors who saved her son’s life when he was a newborn.
Lucci writes about gratitude for her long career. She was a keystone character on TV’s “All My Children,” and she learned a lot from older actors on the show, and from Agnes Nixon, the creator of it. She says she still keeps in touch with many of her former costars.
She is thankful for her mother’s caretakers, who stepped in when dementia struck. Grateful for more doctors, who did heart-saving work when Lucci had a clogged artery. Grateful for friends, opportunities, life, grandchildren, and a career that continues.
And she’s grateful for the love she shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, who died nearly four years ago. Grateful for the chance to grieve, to heal, and to continue.
And yet, she says of her husband: “He was never timid, but I know he was afraid at the end, and that kills me down to my soul.”
“It’s been 15 years since Erica Kane and I parted ways,” says author Susan Lucci (with Laura Morton), and she says that people still approach her to confirm or deny rumors of the show’s resurrection. There’s still no answer to that here (sorry, fans), but what you’ll find inside “La Lucci” is still exceptionally generous.
If this book were just filled with stories, you’d like it just fine. If it was only about Lucci’s faith and her gratitude – words that happen to appear very frequently here – you’d still like reading it. But Lucci tells her stories of family, children and “All My Children,” while also offering help to couples who’ve endured miscarriage, women who’ve had heart problems, and widow(ers) who are spinning and need the kindness of someone who’s lived loss, too.
These are the other things you’ll find in “La Lucci,” in a voice you’ll hear in your head, if you spent your lunch hours glued to the TV back in the day. It’s a comfortable, fun read for fans. It’s a story you’ll love.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
-
2026 Midterm Elections5 days agoHRC endorses Va. ballot initiative to redraw congressional districts
-
Rehoboth Beach5 days agoBLUF leather social set for April 10 in Rehoboth
-
Eswatini5 days agoThe emperor has no clothes: how rhetoric fuels repression in Eswatini
-
National5 days agoLGBTQ community explores arming up during heated political times

