Time Capsule

Time Capsule

• Shrink-wrapped

Lita Ford is ripping open the vault and sharing music no one has heard<br>yet. Ford, a Grammy-nominated artist who recently accepted Guitar<br>Player's Lifetime Achievement Award and is one of the youngest living<br>legends in rock 'n' roll, is celebrating four decades of music. She is releasing Living Like a Runaway: Lita Ford, A Memoir, documenting her<br>journey from all-girl band The Runaways to major solo successes. Ford<br>is also offering an audio complement in the form of Time Capsule. .<br><br>This "throwback" record boasts identifiable voices and brilliant<br>players jamming without any planning or pressure. Some of the album's<br>highlights: Billy Sheehan playing bass and Rodger Carter on drums;<br>Dave Navarro playing a mandolin; Jeff Scott Soto singing a duet with<br>Ford; Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander of Cheap Trick actually singing<br>backing vocals; and KISS' Gene Simmons ripping the bass.<br><br>The album is a time capsule of the fertile and whisky-soaked<br>pre-grunge period that so many rock fans have continued affection for.<br>Time Capsule is Ford's gift to fans who love the '80s, when thrilling<br>vocal performances, raunchy riffs, and loud, growling guitars were as<br>essential as oxygen.<br><br>In these "lost" recordings, you hear what happens when insanely<br>talented musicians get drunk, hang out, end up in a room together with<br>a "Screw it, let's play" mentality, minus the click tracks or label<br>execs breathing down their necks, looking for the single or the<br>"hook."<br><br>"There was a shitload of these 24-track analog tapes in the closet in<br>my house [in the islands]," Ford recalls. "This is some of the best<br>work I've ever done and it was sitting there. I grabbed two suitcases<br>and took them back to the United States."<br><br>Imagine Ford dragging a pair of suitcases full of analog tapes through<br>the Caribbean dirt back to Los Angeles, so, as she recalls, "we could<br>bake these fuckers," due to their age. "If you just put them on the<br>reel, they would flake. I was chewing my fingernails, thinking,<br>'Please work!' And they did!"<br><br>Time Capsule was made organically among the most badass and gifted<br>musicians from the '80s. There was no back and forth emailing of parts<br> this was done in real time, drinks in hand.<br><br>As for exactly how the songs came to be, she muses, "We had a break<br>between recordings and it seemed so many us were always in the same<br>place, at the same time. George Tutko was one hell of an engineer,<br>coming off the platinum-selling Lita album. He asked me, 'Who will<br>produce?' I will, because I knew George had my back and I wasn't alone<br>on this."<br><br>Participation happened spontaneously. She remembers how one<br>recruitment went down, saying, "Dave Navarro walks by. We grab him and<br>tell him, 'Play something on this song. Here, play this mandolin!' And<br>boom! He does it."<br><br>She furthers, "These recordings have attitude. All of these rock stars<br>were recording in the local studios. There's also Cheap Trick the<br>identifiable voices of Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander singing backing<br>vocals. Gene Simmons played on and co-wrote 'Rotten to the Core.'<br>W.A.S.P. Chris Holmes is in the introduction to the album and is the<br>first thing you hear, stomping around looking for the keys to his<br>'Ford.' Billy Sheehan was one of my best friends, and I asked him what<br>he was doing. I said, 'Want to play bass?' We didn't know how long it<br>would take; we were simply having fun."