Updated 21h 33m ago

By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY

The Runaways detonated just a few hits in their brief '70s run, chief among them the provocative Cherry Bomb. But the crater they left behind still smolders.

Those unfamiliar with this posse of girl rockers get a crash course Friday with the release of The Runaways, in which Kristen Stewart vamps as tough- as-nails Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning channels her inner David Bowie as lead singer Cherie Currie.

"As a teenager in the music business, I was expecting roses," says guitarist Lita Ford, 51, who went on to gig with a range of heavy-metal acts before settling down with ex-Nitro lead shrieker Jim Gillette. "Instead, what we got was a bunch of freaks."

The band came together in 1975 in L.A. under the eerie gaze of producer Kim Fowley, who envisioned a girl group with testosterone. He got that in spades with Jett, Currie, Ford, drummer Sandy West (who died of lung cancer in 2006) and a variety of bass
players, including Micki Steele, later of The Bangles.

Though The Runaways' output was spotty and their fame confined mainly to Japan, they created a template used by everyone from The Go-Go's to Hole.

"The pioneers in anything usually get scalped, (but) they definitely had a punk energy that led to today," says Rolling Stone assistant editor Andy Greene They also had the bad luck of predating MTV. "That (channel) was made for a band of young girls rocking out in skimpy outfits."

Attitude more than musicianship is The Runaways' enduring calling card, says Nicole Emmenegger, who writes the blog Jenny Woolworth's Women in Punk. "The notion of teenage girls making this raw music is very inspirational."

That's not lost on Stewart.

"We've grown up being told that, as girls, we can do whatever we want, and that just wasn't the case for them," Stewart said after a screening at the Sundance
Film Festival in January.

Jett is alone among her Runaways peers for having never strayed from music, fueled by her 1982 hit, I Love Rock 'n' Roll. Currie's book Neon Angel is the foundation of The Runaways. Today, she's a chain-saw artist.

Ford set her guitar licks aside and home-schools her two sons in the British West Indies. She'll perform with Twisted Sister's Dee Snider in Las Vegas March 26-27, a dry run for a planned fall engagement called I Wanna Rock: The '80s Come Alive.

"My sons have never seen me play," Ford says. "So there's this new movie, which I'm sure we'll see. Or better yet, they can see the real me on stage. Yeah."