Lita Ford Returns with First New Album in 18 Years

Guitarist Lita Ford is making her comeback this fall when she releases Wicked Wonderland, her first new U.S. studio album in 18 years, on her own JLRG Entertainment label. After a 15-year break from music living on an island in the Caribbean raising her two sons, Lita also hits the road this summer playing select festivals and motorcycle rallies in America and Europe.

"It's harder and sexier than anything I've ever done," says Lita of the record, which was co-produced by Ford, her husband and former Nitro singer Jim Gillette, and Greg Hampton, the songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer known for his work with Alice Cooper, his band Science Faxtion (with Bootsy Collins and Buckethead and Brain from Guns N'Roses) and other rock notables. Lita is backed on the record by drummer Stet Howland, formerly of W.A.S.P., Hampton on bass, rhythm guitar and keyboards, Gillette on background vocals, and its vivid cover art is by Rob Zombie bassist and solo artist Piggy D.

The songs brim with a passionate adult eroticism and über-hard rock sound highlighted by Lita's trademark searing guitar riffs. The album includes a keen and timely slice of social commentary on "Patriotic SOB," sexy rave-ups like "Piece (Hell Yeah)," duets with Gillette on numbers like the aptly titled "Indulge," and "Betrayal," which will be featured in the upcoming video game Brütal Legend, in which Lita also voices one of the characters alongside Jack Black, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead and Rob Halford of Judas Priest. The recordings find her rocking, playing and singing with an amped-up fury and power like never before that's also informed by her personal growth as a wife and mother as well as legendary rocker.

Lita leapt back into action last summer with a triumphant performance in the middle of a tornado at the Rocklahoma festival followed by an appearance at the Rock The Bayou festival in Texas in the wake of a hurricane. She began her career at age 17 as lead guitarist in the groundbreaking all-female band the Runaways. Her own career includes such best-selling albums as Out for Blood, Dancin' on the Edge, Stiletto, Dangerous Curves and 1988's million-selling Lita, as well as such signature songs as "Kiss Me Deadly" (a #12 hit single), "Shot of Poison," "Hungry" and her Top 10 hit duet with Ozzy Osbourne "Close My Eyes Forever." Her dynamic concert performances were known for not just holding their own among the boy's club of hard rock but giving them a run for their heavy metal money.

• After Lita and Gillette married, she left her stiletto heels on the stage and moved to a large home on a deserted Caribbean island and devoted her life to raising the couple's two sons, who she has also home schooled. At the urging of her friends like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, devoted fans and even her sons, both of them budding musicians, Lita now reclaims her place as the First Lady of Heavy Metal with an album sure to thrill her many followers and win her new listeners with music that's more fiery and assured than ever before. A first single from the album will be released this summer, and Lita's tour schedule includes an appearance at the 69th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on August 3 sharing the bill with superstar Toby
• Keith.

Although Lita spent the last decade-and-a-half in the Caribbean, she has anything but mellowed out, and is ready to show the world that a woman and a mom can rock with the best of them. "I missed playing rock and roll," she concludes.