The late Sandy West, former drummer for The Runaways and possibly the hardest rockin’ female drummer of all times, here on a guest performance at The Coconut Teaszer, LA, in 1993, as captured by Jerry Venemann.
Her parents wanted her to be a violinist, so she could form a string quartet along with her sisters but Sandy, a real tomboy and a roughhouser, made it clear right from the start that she was not going to follow in the classical path. Her thing was to live up to any challenge to do whatever the guys did -which proved to be both Sandy's lifelong drive and part of her downfall. She played tennis and basketball, swam competitively, ran track, surfed, waterskied and rode horses, being incredibly energetic, hysterical, very funny and athletic.
Having strong arms like Tina Turner has legs, she was born to rock and was acknowledged as a true powerhouse and a force of nature behind the drums during her time with the Queens of noise. Sadly, West was one of the only of her bandmates who never went onto the post-band life she deserved, thanks partly to addiction and partly to Kim Fowley’s financial manipulations. The Runaways officially dissolved in 1979 and though Sandy continued to pursue music with the Sandy West Band or reunited with Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox playing small gigs, the bad combination of wild success, partying hard with drugs, an unfair record deal and the fall from fame led to desperate measures.
Unfortunately Sandy struggled hard and eventually resorted to a life of crime and drugs to pay her bills, arrested and jailed repeatedly. She freebased coke, took crystal meth and became a drug runner and dealer's muscle, breaking people’s arms and shoving guns down their throat.
“Because Sandy's life didn't move forward as well as the others', it was easier for her to fall back on drinking and drugs,” says Alcock [John Alcock, producer of The Runawys final album]. “She started doing some fairly heavy partying with fans and hangers-on, people I didn't know, somewhere down in the beach communities. Those were not great people.”
She would disappear with these people, into black holes of drug-fueled behavior. Family and friends staged interventions; West went into rehab a few times. But she always fell off the wagon.
At one point, says Currie, “she came over to the house and she was freebasing cocaine, which I tried desperately to get her to stop. It was extremely difficult to watch her do it. Having been in her position, I knew all the begging in the world wouldn't stop her.”
Sometimes, when West disappeared from friends' and families' lives, it turned out she was in jail. Her stateside arrest record starts in 1988, when she was picked up in Orange County for driving under the influence. There were at least six arrests after that, in multiple counties: more DUIs, possession of controlled substances, possession of illegal substances, driving with a suspended license. She was able to serve some of her sentences concurrently.
In fact, West was lucky to get put away for minor charges when she was doing much worse things. “Sandy got involved with mob-type figures,” says Tischler-Blue: “Because she had this all-American-girl look, people wouldn't red-flag her. She started running drugs into the recording studios. Sandy loved coke. That was this turn that took her down a very different road. That road led to the underbelly of the Hollywood music scene. At that time, there were some really bad characters moving around. Heavy-duty drug people. Gunrunning people.”
Looking tough but emotional, West talks about “the dangerous adventures of me” in Tischler-Blue's 2004 documentary about the band, Edgeplay. “Maybe that was the self-destructive side of me. Maybe I was out to push it. I was fearless. You go down and break somebody's door down. They've got guns all over you, you've got guns all over them. You don't know who's going to get killed. … I had to break somebody's arm once. I had to shove a gun down somebody's throat once and watch them shit their pants. And then you look around and say, 'I just wanted to be a drummer in a rock band.'”
Near the end of her life, West lived in circumstances demeaning to a former rock star: in a trailer in San Dimas. She appeared to be getting her life together. She released a four-song EP that shows her multiple talents: singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, drummer. But then she was arrested again, for possession of drugs and paraphernalia. In the era of three strikes, this was one offense too many. This time, West was sent not to the relatively tame county jail for a short stint, but to state prison in Chowchilla for 18 months. She found herself surrounded by hard-core criminals.
Not long after arriving at Chowchilla, she developed a bad cough. It was lung cancer — the deadly, aggressive kind. West underwent chemotherapy while still in prison. When finally released, West's family was back in her life, helping to take care of her. Currie, Blue and other friends were there often. Jett visited her. She and Ford talked on the phone.
West's last months of life were full of pain, as the cancer, which moved to her brain, ate away at her. She lost some of the things that defined her: her golden hair and the strength to drum.
laweekly.com/the-runaways-wild-thing/
She died on October 21, 2006 at the age of 47.
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