Jackie Fox - Bassist

Early Life

Jackie Fox was born Jackie Fuchs. A merit scholar, Fox was set for an early entry to UCLA to study mathematics when the opportunity to join the fledgling rock band The Runaways presented itself. Fox was "discovered" dancing at the Starwood Club by Rodney Bingenheimer, the self-proclaimed "mayor of the Sunset Strip", who introduced her to producer/impresario Kim Fowley. She had initially auditioned for the lead guitar position but the band hired Lita Ford instead. Some time later, she was called back and offered the bassist position in the band, which she accepted. Fox joined The Runaways in 1975, shortly before her sixteenth birthday.

The Runaways

Fox played on The Runaways' second studio album Queens of Noise but was not permitted to play on the band's 1976 debut album. According to multiple sources, including Cherie Currie's memoir Neon Angel and the liner notes of the Raven Records release of The Runaways, Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison was hired to play bass on the first album due to manager Fowley's refusal to let Fox play on the record. Fox herself acknowledges this.

In the documentary film Edgeplay: A Film about The Runaways, Fox recounts walking into rehearsal and having Kim Fowley the manager yell at her, asking her if she'd slept with Scott Anderson, the band's road manager. When she said no, he replied "Well, you're the only one who didn't."

Fox's final appearance with The Runaways' was on their 1977 Live in Japan album. It was during the Japanese Tour on which that album was recorded that Fox decided to leave the band, after attempting suicide in her hotel room. According to Fox herself in the 2005 documentary film Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways, she was distraught over the band members' inability to get along with each other and called her close friend Randy Rhoads of the L.A. band Quiet Riot, who encouraged her to come home. Vicki Blue was quickly hired as her replacement.

Life after The Runaways

Though she had quit the band three years earlier, Fox appears on Flaming Schoolgirls (1980), an outtakes compilation featuring songs recorded during the Queens of Noise recording sessions in 1976. She would later appear on the compilation albums, Neon Angel and The Best of the Runaways.

Fox refused to give permission for her name to be used in the 2010 Hollywood feature film The Runaways. Instead, the producers created a fictional character named Robin (portrayed by actress Alia Shawkat) as the band's bassist in the film.

In the years following her tenure with The Runaways, Fox has worked in a variety of fields, most notably as a record promotions executive, as a modeling agent, as the promoter of Tony Robbins' Firewalking seminars, and most recently as an entertainment attorney in the motion picture and television arenas, representing actors, writers, directors, authors and producers. She uses her birth name now.

Education

Fox received her B.A., summa cum laude, from UCLA in Linguistics and Italian, with a specialization in computing, and her J.D. from Harvard, where Barack Obama was one of her classmates. Fox speaks Italian and French, as well as conversational Greek and Spanish. She has written a script called "Delilah's Scissors" with Victory Tischler-Blue and appeared in Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways, Tischler-Blue's 2005 documentary about the Runaways. Fuchs has also written for the Huffington Post blog, although she has had no entries on that site since May 2009.

Other appearances

She appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game circa 1980. In 2013, she appeared as a contestant in the fourth episode of The Chase, and on September 6, 2013, she was a contestant on the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, now hosted by Cedric the Entertainer. She had banked up to $16,100, but ended up with only $1,000 after missing a question.