The Runaways Live

The second national tour promoting the newly released album - Queens Of Noise. During this tour, the band's stage presence changed a bit - new outfits were made for the tour, and also set lists were compiled from different songs - mostly focusing on material from the new album.

Concerts usually started with Queens Of Noise and California Paradise. Encores were different from night to night, but typically songs like C'mon, I Love Playin' With Fire, or Cherry Bomb were played. This time, contrary to the previous tours, Cherie sang Johnny Guitar instead of Lita as there was no need to change her outfit for the encore. Dead End Justice was not played anymore...

Guest appearances:

Each night from April 20th to April 23rd, Joan played with Blondie, Deaf School, and some other musicians like Rodney Bingenheimer or Tony and Hunt Sales from the Iggy Pop's band at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles, California. Joan played guitar in the songs Anarchy In The UK and I Wanna Be Your Dog.

The Japan tour was the band's most famous one, although it was quite short - only six concerts were booked, but all of them were sold out quickly. The Runaways were the fourth most popular imported artist in Japan at that time, next to ABBA, Kiss, and Led Zeppelin, so the tour promotion was huge.

Shortly before the end of the tour, Jackie decided to leave the band because of the incident with her broken bass guitar, and Cherie left the band shortly after they returned to the USA. These concerts were the last ones with the famous five-piece lineup.

Live In Japan:

Several concerts were professionally recorded for the upcoming live album titled Live In Japan. More details about individual concerts and songs used for the album can be found in the Live In Japan analysis.

Supporting Alice Cooper:

Shortly after returning from Japan, The Runaways were scheduled to support Alice Cooper on three concerts on the Canadian leg of the King Of The Silver Screen tour. However, the band's participation was cancelled because Lita got injured after the last performance in Japan at The 6th Tokyo Music Festival as she fell down the stairs at the Budokan Hall and had to be hospitalized.

In July, many changes happened for the band. Joan replaced Cherie on lead vocals, and Vicki Blue became a new bass player. The band started preparing new material, and after four weeks of rehearsals, a small tour of California was organized. Their new upcoming album Waitin' For The Night was recorded shortly before the tour, and the band didn't listen to it yet, but several songs from it were already played live on stage.

Although the band played concerts only in California, the tour was officially presented as a “world tour”, and it could be heard during the band's introduction before every show. Concerts usually started with Queens Of Noise as an opening song, and then California Paradise or Take It Or Leave It were played. Only two or three songs from the newly recorded album were included in the set list, and the rest of the songs still came from the previous two studio albums. For the encores, mainly the songs from the debut album were typically played along with C'mon.

On October 1st, the Waitin' For The Night album was finally released in the US.

After the US release of the album, a huge European tour nicknamed after their successful European single began. The album was not released in Europe yet, but the group has been very popular there since 1976, so local fans couldn't wait to see The Runaways live once again, and this time with the new lineup.

Contrary to the US concerts, the set lists were changed completely, and more songs from the new album were played. Concerts usually started with Wasted, Take It Or Leave It, and Blackmail. The encores remained the same as for the US shows - mainly the songs from the debut album like Cherry Bomb or American Nights along with C'mon were played.

In December, several concerts in California were organized to fill in the last few days of the year and prepare for an upcoming national tour, which was scheduled to begin in January next year. The Runaways played in well-known local clubs to promote their latest studio album - Waitin' For The Night.