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Sandy West, baterista das The Runaways, morreu há dezoito anos...

  

Sandy West (Long Beach, California, July 10, 1959 – San Dimas, California, October 21, 2006) was an American singer, drummer and songwriter. She was one of the founding members of the Runaways, the first teenage all-girl hard rock band to record and achieve widespread commercial success in the 1970s.

 

Early life

Sandy (born Sandy Pesavento) was born in Long Beach, California. When she was 9 years old, her grandfather bought her a drum kit, and being an avid fan of rock and roll acts of the 1960s and 1970s, she began practicing rock music immediately and regularly. In 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, she was the drummer in the Prisk Elementary School orchestra. She proved to have a natural talent and quickly became a proficient drummer.

By the age of 13, she was the only girl in local bands who played at teenage parties. West attended Edison High school in Huntington Beach California with actor Willie Aames, playing drums in school bands as Sandy Pesavento, one of those bands was Witchcraft that featured Jimmy "Trash" Decker that later went on to form the punk band The Crowd in 1977.

At 15, she met Joan Jett and producer Kim Fowley co-created and formed The Runaways.

 

The Runaways

Driven by her ambition to play professionally, she sought out fellow musicians and other industry contacts in southern California with the idea of forming an all-woman rock band. In 1975, she met producer Kim Fowley, who gave her the phone number of another young musician in the area, guitarist Joan Jett. Joan and Sandy met shortly thereafter. The women subsequently played for Fowley, who agreed to help them find other female musicians to round out the band, most notably Lita Ford and Cherie Currie. 

 

Post-Runaways years

After four years of recording and touring the world, the Runaways disbanded in April 1979. West made varied attempts to continue her career as a professional musician, playing with other acts in southern California, releasing a solo EP, The Beat is Back, and forming the Sandy West Band. None of these ventures produced significant income, so West was forced to spend most of her post-Runaways years working outside music. West later claimed that ex-Runaways' manager/producer Kim Fowley had not paid the members of the band what they were entitled to. "I owe him my introduction to the music business but he's also the reason I'm broke now," West said.

West appeared in Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways, a documentary about the Runaways produced and directed by the band's former bassist Victory Tischler-Blue, providing some of the more poignant interview segments, describing the things she had to do post-Runaways for money. She worked mostly in construction, and spent a small amount of time as a bartender and a veterinary assistant. In other parts of the Edgeplay interviews, she alludes to having engaged in criminal activity in order to make ends meet (e.g., she describes how she had to break someone's arm for money they owed). West spent time in jail on multiple occasions following her career in the Runaways, which she alluded to in Edgeplay. 

 

Personal life and death

According to her bandmate Lita Ford, West was lesbian. West died on October 21, 2006, at the age of 47, from lung cancer diagnosed a year before. West was never married and had no children.

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Lita Ford, guitarrista da banda The Runaways, faz hoje 66 anos

    

Lita Rossanna Ford (Londres, 19 de setembro de 1958) é uma música, compositora e atriz norte-americana, nascida na Inglaterra, que alcançou popularidade na década de 80.

Lita nasceu em Londres mas tem ascendência italiana. Ela mudou-se, com a família, para os Estados Unidos, ainda em criança. Lita juntou-se à banda feminina The Runaways aos 16 anos de idade e, após o término do grupo em 1979, iniciou a sua carreira a solo. Os seus dois primeiros álbuns tiveram um sucesso bastante discreto.

Em 1985 Lita foi indicada para o Grammy de "melhor performance feminina de rock" em Gotta Let Go, junto com Wendy O. Williams e Pia Zadora. Em 1988, com Sharon Osbourne como empresária, Lita alcançou seus maiores sucessos, Close My Eyes Forever (dueto com Ozzy Osbourne, marido de Sharon) e Kiss Me Deadly.

Lita foi casada com Chris Holmes (da banda W.A.S.P.) de 1986 a 1992 e esteve envolvida com Nikki Sixx (dos Mötley Crüe) e Tony Iommi. Atualmente, ela está separada de Jim Gillette (da banda Nitro). 

 

 

   

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