LITA FORD – The Bitch Is Back… Live (2013)

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LITA FORD will release her new live album “The Bitch Is Back… Live” tomorrow via Steamhammer/SPV.
On the strength of her comeback album, last year’s Living Like A Runaway, Lita Ford hit the road running to tour in support of it. “The Bitch Is Back… Live” recorded in October 2012 at Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California, only will be released as single CD audio.

On her last studio record, Ford wrote of coming to the realization that she’d been living like a runaway her whole life. And, of course, the title, Living Like A Runaway, had a lot to do with the hard-luck story of the teenage punk rock girl group The Runaways she was a part of in the ’70s, but there’s more to it than that.
Away from the stage, Ford has endured great tumult in her personal life, especially in recent years. Getting through it requires the kind of resilience one gets from being as independent or brave enough to escape a troubled home. In other words, being a bitch is sometimes necessary for one’s survival.

Making 2012’s intensely personal Living Like A Runaway was not only therapeutic for Ford, as she opened up about a lot of stuff, but it also served notice that those who’d written her off as a relic of the ‘80s were dead wrong.
The bitch was back, having penned and recorded some of the most affecting and edgy rock ‘n’ roll of her career, and the crowd who welcomed her to the Canyon Club in early October of 2012 was glad she hadn’t burned out or faded away just yet.

How appropriate then that she should kick off “The Bitch Is Back… Live” with the defiant Elton John song of the same name. A ballsy rocker dripping with attitude, Ford’s version is unrepentant and has a thick skin, not veering far from the raucous spirit of the original.
What follows are hits from past to present like “Hungry”, “Out For Blood”, “Can’t Catch Me” or “Dancing On The Edge”.
“Hungry” sounds even more lewd and lascivious than it did back then, as Ford and her band, featuring Mitch Perry on guitar, Bobby Rock on drums and Marty O’Brien on bass, make its hot grooves perspire and its sinful melody slither and slide in the most seductive manner possible.

Sex is not the only thing on Ford’s mind, however.
She delivers some of the best from Living Like A Runaway including the autobiographical title track, “Relentless”, the heavy artillery of “Devil in My Head, and the always creepy “Hate” about a teen killer. Lita and company couch darker, more disturbing lyrical themes of temptation and violence on these tracks, with meaty, mauling riff grinds that plow these evils under as if they were sites of some horrific tragedy.
Still, this is a party, with an undeniably communal vibe, and Ford expresses her love for the roaring guitars of “Hungry” and the dueling guitar dive-bombs of the sinister and melodic “Back to the Cave”. And when Lita gets to “Can’t Catch Me” – the little ball of hard rockin’ fury she wrote with Motorhead hellion Lemmy Kilmister – the thunderous riffage should have shaken the Canyon Club’s foundations.

She saves her most popular songs for last, the Ozzy duet hit “Close My Eyes Forever” and “Kiss Me Deadly” where Lita raises hell hitting all of its confetti-strewn, melodic rock notes to close out the night.

With plenty of audience reaction captured in pristine clarity, “The Bitch Is Back… Live” sees Lita Ford playing with the reckless swagger and raw energy of a teenager who doesn’t know what life’s about yet.
Trading well-executed licks with Perry, Ford causes her guitar to scream its orgasms, but when she sings, she’s part little girl lost in the world and part worldly madame who’s seen it all and then some.
Her voice can be soft and alluring when it has to be, but when she wants it to scratch and claw like a wildcat, it’s certainly capable of turning feral or moody, as it does in the hit “Close My Eyes Forever” which loses some of its original ‘creepy romance’ here while gaining more emotional heft.
Lita Ford is a metal queen, and as such, she demands a sound that’s thick and crushing, but also tuneful. That’s what you will find in “The Bitch Is Back… Live”.
Recommended.

01 – The Bitch is Back
02 – Hungry
03 – Relentless
04 – Living Like a Runaway
05 – Devil in My Head
06 – Back to the Cave
07 – Can’t Catch Me
08 – Out for Blood
09 – Dancing on the Edge
10 – Hate
11 – Close My Eyes Forever
12 – Kiss Me Deadly

Lita Ford – Guitar, Vocals
Mitch Perry (MSG, Asia) – Guitar
Marty O’Brien (Tommy Lee) – Bass
Bobby Rock (Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Nelson) – Drums

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