Growing up Sandy West had been your typical California surfer girl- pretty, blonde, athletic.. Sandy remembers, “When I first heard The Monkees- that’s when I really wanted to learn how to play drums”. Sandy grew up in a houseful of musicians and was introduced to The Beatles and The Stones at a young age. She fought for the right (and won) to be the 1st girl in the Long Beach Unified School Distr
ict allowed to learn play drums. She eventually made first chair in the school band. By 13, she was already playing along to Deep Purple and Black Sabbath records and by 14 she was a veteran on the local music scene playing local keg parties and Battle of the Bands contests. She was the only girl in a band with older boys. Sandy said, “I was always the only girl in a band surrounded by guys. I always felt like the guys I was playing with thought they were s**t hot, so I had to prove myself to them. I played harder and louder than any one and then they thought that I was s**t hot”. It was at age 15 that Sandy would meet Kim Fowley in the parking lot of the Rainbow Bar & Grill. That fateful night, she told him about her idea to form an all girl band and it just so happened that Kim had recently met a girl with the same idea and gave Sandy her phone number. He said to let him know how it went if they ever got together and the rest is history. During The Runaways, Sandy co-penned some of the group’s best-known songs such as, “Born To Be Bad”, “California Paradise”. The track “Right Now” was Sandy’s first self-written song and the debut single off the last album. By the early eighties she formed her own group, The Sandy West Band and was active on the music scene in California as well as doing session work with musicians like John Enwistle. Not unlike Lita Ford, Sandy had never fronted her own band, and had to start from scratch to learn how to lead her own group. She eventually became an accomplished songwriter, learned to play guitar and developed her vocal abilities and stage presence to that of a bonified rock n’ roll front woman. In the mid-eighties Sandy released her solo single, “F-13” which featured a new wave remake of her trademark song, “Wild Thing”. She enjoyed moderate success on the East & West Coast club scene throughout the late-eighties and nineties, playing with her band as well as jamming with other groups like the Love Toyz, Fabulous Disasters and members of the Lunachicks. She also reunited several times over the years with some of her Runaways band mates where they played to sell out crowds. By 2000, Sandy joined Rocket City Records and released an EP called “The Beat Is Back”. The project was close to Sandy’s heart as she not only played the drums and guitar, but she produced all the tracks. She also appeared onscreen in former bandmate Vicki Blue’s 2004 documentary, Edgeplay. Her last project was playing with another all-girl band, Blue Fox, where she switched off on guitar and drumming duties. In 2005, while writing her autobiography Sandy was diagnosed with lung cancer. After a long battle, she left us on October 21, 2006. A great celebration of her life took place in the form of a memorial concert in Hollywood that December. Various bands and performers such as The Donnas, The Bangles, Carmine and Vinny Appice, Michael Des Barres as well as members of The Adolescents, Nashville P***y, Die Hunns, and bandmate Cherie Currie, all came to pay tribute. In 2010, a Runaways movie was released starring Kristin Stewart and Dakota Fanning. In 2011, a tribute album called "Take It Or Leave It: A Tribute to The Queens of Noise The Runaways" was released featuring performances by The Donnas, Kittie, Kathleen Hanna, Peaches, Cherie Currie among others. It featured Sandy's last ever recording, "Dirty Magazines" with Blue Fox. The Los Angeles Times gave the album 4 stars out of 4. "Sandy West was by far, the greatest female drummer in the history of rock and roll. No one could compete or even come close to her, but the most important was her heart. Sandy West loved her fans, her friends and family almost to a fault. She would do absolutely anything for the people she loved. It will never be the same for me again to step on a stage, because Sandy West was the best and I will miss her forever." – Cherie Currie
“We shared the dream of girls playing rock and roll. Sandy was an exuberant and powerful drummer,” adding, “I am overcome from the loss of my friend. I always told her we changed the world.” – Joan Jett
12/27/2025
