In a recent interview with The Horror Nerd, 1980s hard rock queen Lita Ford was asked if she ever thought, as a young, up-and-coming rock and roll star that decades later she would be “literally a rock and roll legend”. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I never wanted to do anything else and I never saw myself doing anything else, so I kind of did. I kind of saw a little bit of the future. Not to say that I can predict the future or anything, but I just felt like I see me. I know who I am. I get it. I’m going there. I’m doing it. This is who I am. And this is really the best part of my life, is getting to play music for everybody.”
Asked if she felt at any point in her life that the rock and roll lifestyle maybe wasn’t for her, Lita said: “Oh, yeah. Well, the rock and roll lifestyle will, and always does, try to get the best of you. And sometimes you’ve just gotta reel yourself back in and just say, ‘No, I’m not having it. Not going there. I’m not doing it.’ It’s hard to stay healthy on the road. And it’s hard to keep yourself physically fit and feeling good enough to perform these shows. But I have a great team and a great band, and they help me and I help them, and together we help each other stay fit and rocking.”
Regarding what one piece of advice she would give to a young up-and-coming musician who is looking to break into the business and has the same dreams of making it big, Lita said: “Well, it’s a hard piece of advice, because it’s really more than just a piece. Things are so different now in 2025, and the digital world has kind of taken over everything. And I didn’t come from that world. So it’s good to be a little bit of a street gutter rat and get out there and jam with people and go to some nightclubs and listen to your favorite musicians and learn as much as you can from them instead of Googling it or watching it on YouTube or whatever: ‘Oh, I can Google the guitar chords to my favorite song.’ But that doesn’t mean you know how to play it. It comes from the heart and soul, and those kind of things don’t teach you a lot of that. So it’s good to just be a street rat and a gutter rat and get out there and get down and dirty and sweat and play guitar and play drums and sing your ass off. It helps.”
She added: “There’s a lot of things that have changed over the world, through the decades, but that’s how I learned. And if I had to give anybody a piece of advice — and it’s a hard way, it’s not the easy way, but it is the way, when you learn how to feel and everything, the music in your heart and soul. That’s what does it for me.”
Ford recently completed work on her long-awaited new studio album, tentatively due before the end of the year. Ford‘s upcoming follow-up to 2012’s “Living Like A Runaway” was once again helmed by guitarist/producer Gary Hoey, who contributes some guitar playing to the disc.
In May 2022, bassist Marten Andersson (STEELHEART, LIZZY BORDEN, LYNCH MOB) officially joined Lita‘s touring band. Andersson replaced Marty O’Brien who became the touring bassist for DAUGHTRY.
In January 2021, Lita told SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” that her new album contains “some of the best guitar playing” she has heard “in decades.” She added: “And I’m not blowing smoke up my own ass, but Gary and I just nailed it with the guitar playing on this record.
“I’m a huge fan of people like Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper‘s ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’. I mean, there’s some really great duo guitar players — [JUDAS PRIEST‘s] Glenn Tipton, K.K. Downing… Those guitar players don’t exist anymore — they just don’t exist. If you wanna hear them, you have to go back in time a little bit and dig them up into your favorite library, favorite music catalog. But I think Gary and I really nailed it on this next record. It’s, like, oh my God. I’m crying — I’m just, like, crying listening to this stuff. It’s so badass.”
Ford‘s last release was 2016’s “Time Capsule”, a collection of songs that were recorded by Lita in the past, but never before made available.
Nine years ago, Lita released an autobiography, “Living Like A Runaway: A Memoir”, via Dey Street Books (formerly It Books),an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
