Lita Ford, Vixen and Bobbie Dazzle at Indigo 02 London, words and photos by Dawn Osborne

Tonight is billed as ‘Girls’ Night Out’, and while there are men in all the bands, all the main artists are female, Lita Ford, Vixen and Bobbie Dazzle.

Bobbie Dazzle has a great voice and some very good songs. Her influences go back to English Glam Rock in the 70s and those influences are on display, not only in the music, but also in her striking purple flared all-in-one skin tight spandex body suit.

Her band are all men and camp it up with their instruments, bass guitar and keytar for an entertaining watch.

She plays the flute, which is pretty unusual for a Rock band (although Ann Wilson of Heart also does). The quality of their voice has got her quite a bit of attention and, as she mentions, they have just supported Alice Cooper, not bad for a pretty new band. Her last track ‘Lightning Fantasy’ was written by her using a song written by her father that she found after he died tucked into a vinyl record. It is noticeably a bit heavier and the action on stage ramped up with her leaning into her mike stand thrusting at the audience for a big finish.

Vixen bring a happy vibe to the stage. This is the new line up with a new vocalist Rosa Laricchiuta who replaced Lorraine Lewis recently and still features Richie Kotzen’s wife Julia Lage (who replaced Share Pedersen when she stepped back a couple of years ago). Britt Lightning is still the guitarist and the supercool and charismatic drummer Roxy Petrucci is the remaining original member. They do sound different with a new vocalist, as they did after original singer Janet Gardner left, but if you can get over that and want to hear the old Vixen songs excellently delivered with a smile, this is for you.

Lightning is a cracking guitarist and Laricchiuta has a great voice. Lage and Lightning also contribute great harmonies on backing vocals. It is something of a surprise that out of a set list of ten songs, half of them were from follow up album ‘Rev It Up’ including ‘Love Is A Killer’ and ‘How Much Love’ together with lesser played tracks such as ‘Hard 16’ and ‘Not A Minute Too Soon’.

From the first album ‘Edge of a Broken Heart’ was, of course, the encore, which produced a sea of hands in the air, looking like pretty much everyone downstairs where I was standing. The much loved ‘I Want You To Rock Me’ is featured only as part of a medley with ‘Running With the Devil’, ‘Still Of The Night’ and, by way of a tribute to Ozzy ‘War Pigs’. Nevertheless, even the most ardent Janet and first album fans would no doubt have their heart melted by the obvious talent and enthusiasm of all on stage and the super cute pink fox tails and fox toys adorning Roxy’s drum kit (every time I see her she has something new hanging from her gear). As main support their job was to melt the ice of a London audience to overcome their inhibitions and get them to buy in to having a good time. Job done!

Lita Ford took to the stage like the superstar she is in a red leather all in one skintight leather catsuit with black widow motifs with long leather tassels and a Union Jack scarf swinging behind her (she was born in Britain). Lita, while known for her incredible guitar, also has a great voice, but it usually takes a track or two for her to warm up vocally in my experience. The first two tracks follow an into of Accept’s ‘Balls To The Wall’ and are hard driving rockers. ‘Gotta Let Go’ and ‘Larger Than Life’ with a chance for extended guitar solo, too fast to really showcase vocals in any event. By third track ‘Relentless’ her lovely breathy tone vocals start to come through and there’s a chance for harmonised guitar playing with Patrick Kennison, by now, along with Bobby Rock (drummer), her trusty bandmates for some years. By ‘Hungry’ we are well and truly cookin’!

Lita has an easy stage manner with the crowd, after all she had a baptism of fire with The Runaways and tonight’s crowd are already paid up fans. After asking if there are any bitches in the house “Excuse me sir, are you a bitch?” we get the Elton John cover ‘Bitch Is Back’ rocked up to suit.

It is when Lita sings the intro to ‘Playin’ With Fire’ that we first get a chance to truly savour her lovely breathy vocals, really unlike anyone else’s. In fact she started to sing for her band when she couldn’t find anyone to deliver the vocals the way she wanted. And knowing she smashed it she smiles broadly at the audience. Patrick Kennison also gets to sing a verse showing he has some impressive pipes too!

‘Back To The Cave’ is a chance to hear its super distinctive solo expertly played by Lita. It’s a sexy song and Lita takes the opportunity in the middle to shimmy her hips, talk to the audience, get a little cowbell and bass guitar going before Patrick Kennison gets to do a freestyle whammy solo on his explorer. When Lita joins in for some harmonised guitar they get back to the beautiful main melody.

After some band intros, the breathlessly fast ‘Can’t Catch Me’ is punctuated with a few riffs from the self titled track ‘Black Sabbath’ as her first tribute to Ozzy. Bobby Rock then gets to show off a little in a drum solo including taking a drink while playing, drumming really fast with a towel on his head and finally headbutting his snare drums three times (which sounded like some kind of large Imperial gong) to finish.

Lita invited Vixen and Bobby Dazzle on stage for ‘Cherry Bomb’ including Roxy on drums. Rosa and Bobby both took the chance to shine with some vocal gymnastics, especially Rosa who did some incredible Joplinesque improvisation to answer the question ”what do you say if someone says “girls don’t play guitar, girls don’t rock”.  Visually it was just a really great thing to see them playing together and gang vocalling  on such an iconic song.

Next up was ‘Black Leather’ a song written by Steve Jones of ‘The Sex Pistols’ also done by The Runaways and another chance for Patrick to get some whammy going.

Lita then comes on with ‘The Twins’ her double necked white BC Rich. In a very pared back, almost acapella version of the Alice Cooper cover ‘Only Women Bleed’ she and Patrick did some beautiful harmonised vocals. Then “in the name of Mr Ozzy Osbourne” they did a cracking incendiary version of ‘Close My Eyes Forever’. No one could have predicted how much this song would mean after Ozzy died and Lita has been in Birmingham when he did, an incredible coincidence. Well, they did Ozzy proud.  It was very emotional and, as she said “Great rock stars never die and neither does their music”.

The encore was of course “Kiss Me Deadly” the one song that was guaranteed to get me up on the dance floor in my leather miniskirt and corset singing my heart out .. which I did again tonight.

Lovely to see Lita back again looking and sounding so great. Let’s hope she doesn’t leave it so long again before she returns. The bitch is back, so now we just need to keep her here!

Dawn Osborne