Runaways’ Lita Ford was asked to replace John Paul Jones in Led Zeppelin, Quit Runaways Because They Were All Gay
In an alternate history, Led Zeppelin would have fired John Paul Jones in 1975 and replaced him with Runaways guitarist Lita Ford.
In her new memoir Living Like a Runaway, Ford reveals that Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant offered her the gig after attending a Runaways concert in Los Angeles.
“[He] asked me if I could play bass,” she recounts. “‘For who?’ I asked. ‘Led Zep.’ He might have been drinking or pulling my leg, but he seemed to be dead serious in the moment.”
Ford never heard back from Plant, but as the New York Post notes, Jones briefly left Zeppelin around that time.
Ford also discussed Plant’s offered in a 2013 interview with Bravewords, “I shook it off like it was a joke, but I don’t think he was joking. I said, ‘Yeah sure, right,’ and left it at that. I didn’t even try to pursue that one. I love John Paul Jones — he’s one of my favorite bass players. I just couldn’t imagine me replacing him. But the fact that they thought about a female in their band I thought was pretty cool.”
Below, hear Ford’s cover Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” for a 1997 tribute album.
Speaking about her brief exit from THE RUNAWAYS forty years ago after learning that her bandmates were gay, Lita said: “This was in the early ’70s, mid-’70s, so I was not aware of homosexuality; I didn’t know anything about it. And it was still in the closet; nobody came out and said, ‘I’m gay’ — nobody came out at that time. And when I found out that the girls were all gay in the band, I wasn’t sure how to take it, and I didn’t know what it was. I was only sixteen at the time. And I quit the band. I went home and I told my parents that it was the manager’s fault; I blamed it all on him and said that he was too weird and I couldn’t handle him — he was just too freaky. But that wasn’t the case.”
She continued: “So I had given it a couple of weeks and thought about it, and I thought, ‘You know, it’s really no big deal. I shouldn’t worry about that. And I hope to God that they call me back and get me back in the band.’ Because I was thinking that they would go on to achieve superstar status and that I would just be sitting at home and doing nothing. And thank God they called me back and they said, ‘Lita, we can’t find anybody that can play guitar like you. Please come back.'”
Asked if there were was any tension between her and her bandmates after her return to THE RUNAWAYS, Lita said: “No, there wasn’t. And they knew I was straight. They didn’t bother me about it, we didn’t bag on each other about it. We just carried on, because it was no big deal. But, to me, it was back then, and it just really threw me for a loop. I didn’t know that people do that.”
Lita Ford launched a solo career after the breakup of THE RUNAWAYS, which also featured Joan Jett and Cherie Currie.
A movie about THE RUNAWAYS‘ brief history, starring Dakota Fanning as Currie and Kristin Stewart as Jett, came out in 2010.
“The Runaways” was directed by Floria Sigismondi, who was best known for directing music videos by such artists as DAVID BOWIE, MARILYN MANSON, and SHERYL CROW.
Lita Ford‘s memoir “Living Like A Runaway”, was released on February 23 via Dey Street Books (formerly It Books), an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
