Lita Ford
Lita Rossana Ford (born September 19, 1958)[7][8] is an American guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the lead guitarist for the all-female rock band the Runaways in the late 1970s, and then embarked on a successful glam metal solo career that hit its peak in the late 1980s. The 1989 single "Close My Eyes Forever", a duet with Ozzy Osbourne, remains Ford's most successful song, reaching No. 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100.[9]
Lita Ford
Lita Rossana Ford
September 19, 1958
London, England[1]
Long Beach, California, U.S.
- Musician
- singer
- songwriter
- Guitar
- vocals
- 1975–1995
- 2008–present
- Mercury
- RCA
- JLRG Entertainment
- SPV/Steamhammer
Early life[edit]
Ford was born to Harry Lenard Ford and Isabella Benvenuto in London, England; her father was British and her mother was Italian.[10] When she was in second grade, she moved with her family to the United States, eventually settling in Long Beach, California.[11][12]
Inspired by Ritchie Blackmore's work with Deep Purple, she began playing the guitar at the age of 11. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano.[13]
Personal life[edit]
In the mid-1980s, Ford was briefly engaged to guitarist Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath.[26] Iommi co-produced her album The Bride Wore Black, which was never released. Ford said in a 1989 interview with Kerrang! that "there's a certain amount of bad blood between Tony and I". She claimed in her autobiography that Iommi was very physically abusive towards her during the relationship on multiple occasions.[27]
Ford was married to W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes in the early 1990s for a short time. After the couple divorced, Ford met former Nitro vocalist Jim Gillette in 1994; the couple were married after knowing each other for only two weeks. They have two sons, James and Rocco. The family moved to Turks and Caicos, where Gillette operated a small construction and real estate development business.[28]
The marriage to Gillette began to crumble after he entered into negotiations with TLC for a reality TV show, tentatively titled The Gillettes: An Extreme American Family. In a March 2011 interview on the Classic Rock Revisited website, Ford claimed that she had taken a business trip to Los Angeles to discuss the show with TLC executives, and returned home to find her husband and sons not speaking to her.[29] Ford also claimed that Gillette turned the couple's children against her by insinuating that she was going to do harm to them, after she had assumed a greater level of control in the proposed series.[30] She subsequently claimed that Gillette began encouraging her sons to physically attack her, a situation which prompted her to seek a divorce.[31] In a February 2011 radio interview, Ford acknowledged that her marriage to Gillette was indeed over,[32] ending any plans for a television series. Following the end of her relationship with Gillette, Ford became an advocate for the awareness of parental alienation.
In 2016, Ford published her autobiography, Living Like a Runaway: A Memoir, through Dey Street Books. In the book, Ford claimed that she left The Runaways temporarily in 1976, after coming to the conclusion that her bandmates "were all gay", a situation she didn't feel comfortable with. She wrote that she found it "strange" that they never spoke about boys with her and were "always giggling about other girls".[33]
