Runaway Jeopardy!

Lovely wife Brenda and I continue to root for current Jeopardy! champion Jackie Fuchs as we approach Ms. Fuchs' third day of successfully answering clues in the form of a question. On each episode, Fuchs is introduced as a lawyer and writer; a little over 40 years ago, we knew her by a different credit: Jackie Fox, bassist for The Runaways.

I've been a fan of The Runaways since 1977, when I was 17. Fox and lead singer Cherie Currie had left The Runaways by the time I saw the group in '78 on a bill with The Ramones and The Flashcubes--the best four dollars I ever spent--but I had the Queens Of Noise and Live In Japan LPs, both of which featured Fox's four-string boom. I wrote recently about how I discovered the band:

No one would believe me if I claimed my initial and immediate interest in The Runaways wasn't at least partially prurient. I don't blame you. I was something like 16 when I stumbled across a copy of The Runaways' eponymous debut LP at either The Record Exchange or Record Revolution in Cleveland Heights in 1976 or very early '77. I was visiting my sister over Christmas break, and also spending as much time as schedule and budget would allow me to burrow through the used record bins at those two stores. And there they were: five cute girls about my age or a bit older, pouting and/or sneering at me from the cover and gatefold of this unfamiliar LP. Whether love or lust, I was smitten. Just not sufficiently smitten to buy the album. I'd never even heard of The Runaways, had no idea what they sounded like, and reluctantly passed on this retail opportunity to initiate myself into the arms of The Runaways. I regretted that decision after returning home to Syracuse, but I'd lost my chance in the moment. I probably read about The Runaways in Phonograph Record  Magazine shortly thereafter, and cursed my foolishness in not making the purchase I knew I wanted to make.

When I got to college in August of 1977, my most pressing concern was my classes. NO! I KID! I'm a kidder. Aside from the ongoing goal of securing distaff companionship, my primary aim was to hear some of this punk rock and new music I'd been reading about. That included The Runaways, so I badgered the Brockport campus radio station WBSU to play "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways, and it was--at long last!--love at first spin. I annoyed my new girlfriend Sharon by singing "Cherry Bomb" while we walked together on campus. I never did pick up that first Runaways album until a CD reissue decades after the fact, but I bought the rest of them over time, and I saw the group live over Easter break in 1978, on a bill with The Ramones and The Flashcubes. It was a love deferred, but ultimately a true love nonetheless.



So yeah, Brenda and I are rooting for Jackie. We watch Jeopardy! regularly anyway, courtesy of our DVR; by the time we watched Friday's show, I already knew that JACKIE FOX OF THE RUNAWAYS!!! was a contestant, and that she'd won the game that day. I didn't identify her to Brenda until the game was over, and Fuchs had been crowned as champion; I did make an unintentional joke when, at the end of Double Jeopardy!, Fuchs was so far ahead of her competitors that she couldn't be caught, and I told Brenda that Fuchs was a...runaway. Lower case "r." Heh.

Our daughter Meghan also has a passing interest in The Runaways and Joan Jett--Meghan and I have an informal agreement that when she gets married, our father-daughter dance will be Jett's "Bad Reputation"--and Meghan joined us to see Jackie rack up her second Jeopardy! win Monday night. I'm looking forward to (we hope) seeing that win streak continue tonight.

During Fuchs' two appearances thus far, there has been no reference to her former life as a rock 'n' roll star, nor even to the fact that she graduated from Harvard Law in a class that included one Barack Obama; Brenda, Meghan, and I are fans of that guy, too. But host Alex Trebek's on-screen chats with Fuchs have only discussed her tenure getting people to walk across hot coals when she was working for motivatin' muthah Tony Robbins (who was not identified by name on the show) and how she once earned the nickname "Malibu Barbie." Brenda wonders if Fuchs herself ruled out discussing The Runaways, and that's very possible given the horrible things she was subjected to in that experience. Fuchs has been publicly frank about her ordeal as a Runaway, but she may not wish to touch upon such a serious subject in the frothy forum of a TV game show.

Meanwhile, we as fans cheer for her current success. Prior to a successful career as a lawyer and a writer, she was the bass player for pioneering all-female rock group The Runaways. Who is Jackie Fuchs? We'll find out more on Jeopardy! tonight.

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