Lita Ford says she nearly walked away from music for good after The Runaways broke up in 1979 - until Eddie Van Halen refused to let her.
After the band parted ways and years of not being taken as seriously as their male peers, Ford went through a period of seclusion, trading her guitar for a job at a department store cosmetics counter. She packed away her amps and guitars and quit playing entirely for a year.
It was Van Halen who pulled her out of it. "He had come over and yelled at me for not doing anything," Ford recalled, crediting a friend, Ray Marzano, with getting her back into nightly rehearsals soon after. Ford has said Van Halen never treated her differently for being a woman in a male-dominated genre, simply telling her, "Lita, what are you doing?" before pushing her forward: "Just do it! You're already doin' it! What are you waiting for, permission?"
The intervention worked. Ford went on to release her most successful solo album, "Lita," in 1988, powered by the hits "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Close My Eyes Forever."
Ford, who has spoken openly about her Christian faith throughout her career, has credited that same conviction with carrying her through some of her hardest professional chapters. "My faith means more to me than you can ever imagine - the faith of God has guided me through this album in the most unbelievable shape and form," she said while promoting her memoir-era record "Living Like a Runaway." She's echoed the sentiment elsewhere, calling moments of unexpected grace in her career "a gift from God."
Van Halen died in 2020 after a battle with cancer, but Ford continues to credit him as one of the few people whose belief in her changed the course of her life.
