Lita Ford Keeps Her Family Close, Especially on the Road

Now that she's spending most of her time in the Caribbean, Lita Ford wasn't ready to leave home to promote an album until her two sons -- Rocco, 8, and James, 12 -- were ready to rock with her. Now that they're older, she's unleashing the album 'Wicked Wonderland' on Oct. 6.

"I have two kids," Ford told Noisecreep. "I'm Italian. I'm the kind of person where blood is thicker than water. I just didn't want to put them on a tour bus with a babysitter. I didn't want to leave them at home with a babysitter. I wanted them to come with me and rock out.

"I said, 'When they were ready, I would be ready.' Now my youngest son, Rocco, who's 8, is totally ready. He's the rockingest one out of all of us. He's ready, I'm ready. My husband is 100 percent behind the project. For us, it's family. It's time to get out there and kick some ass. So we're excited about that too."

Ford said she is anxiously awaiting the release of 'Wicked Wonderland,' her first full-length offering since 1995's 'Black.'

"I wish it would come out sooner," said Ford, who will open for Queensryche starting in mid-October. "[The public] having heard the five-song EP, the response has been huge. So I'm like s---, I wish this God damn album would hurry up and get the f--- out."

The 12-song disc was co-written and produced by Ford's husband Jim Gillette, whose own musical history is highlighted by his work with acclaimed metallurgists Nitro.

"We've work together a lot on a lot of different stuff for years," Ford said. "Since we first got married, we've worked on a lot of things just for fun. While I was pregnant with James, who's now 12, we started working together on stuff. We've been working together for a long, long time.

"He's amazing in the studio," she continued."He knows how to work the knobs, you know. He comes up with all these wild ideas. He really gets into listening to other bands and how they produce their stuff, s--- that I wouldn't do. For me to sit there with all that, I don't have the patience for that. He's good at it, we make a really good team both of us."

Vocally, she said, the duo makes a good team. "Live, he'll perform with me, which is great," Ford explained. "Honestly it's really great to find a good singer. It's like trying to find a good housekeeper or something stupid like that. You just can't find one. Jim just blows everybody out of the water. He's awesome vocally. To have him on stage with me is huge."

'Wicked Wonderland' is the perfect fit in her catalog, Ford explained. The key to the consistency among her music are the lyrics in the new album.

"You have to listen to the lyrics," she said. "It completely fits in with the older stuff. It actually picks up where it left off and takes it to one extreme higher. Someplace I've never gone before. It's heavier. It's honest. Before, I would write songs and they're just imaginations in your head. You write about stuff, 'Imagine if that did that.' The thing about this album is it's real. There's nothing that is made up in any shape or form. This is our life. This is what we really do on a daily basis. It's a little chaotic. It's a little overly sexual. That's OK. That's what we like. That's what we are."

But 'Wicked Wonderland' isn't her only production this year. She contributed her vocals to the video game 'Brutal Legend.' Ford plays the role of Queen Rima, while Jack Black plays the main male role of Eddie Riggs, a roadie who is transported to a heavy metal fantasy world in which he needs to save the human race from supernatural powers by using such weapons as a Flying V guitar with magical powers.

"Oh my God, how cool is that?" Ford said rhetorically. "They contacted us through MySpace and asked if we would be interested in doing this Xbox game. We were over the moon. Oh s---, Xbox is awesome. My kids play all the time. We've got every fricking game on the planet. I play it. Jim plays it, especially living in the islands. We look for entertainment like that.

"We wrote a song specifically for 'Brutal Legend' and they loved it," she continued. "It was a really huge score to be a part of that. I get to lead my troops into battle. I'm the queen, the voice of Queen Rima, and I lead my troops into battle. I get electrocuted. I get axed. I get stomped on, pushed off of buildings. I get the s--- kicked out of me. I live through it all. Me and my troops continue on kicking ass. It's like you get to be a super hero and that's the cool thing about it. You can kick the s--- out of people and you get the s--- kicked out of you. I actually did it over the phone. Being in the Caribbean, we do a lot of stuff over the phone. I had to act like I was being electrocuted, kicked and axed, and trying to put the sounds over the phone was quite difficult but I had a really good time doing it."