Remembering Kim Fowley, Runaways producer and "the best salesman on earth"

Kim Fowley was a huckster, a shameless self-promoter, the rock and roll Svengali best known for producing the 1970s teenage femme-rock band The Runaways who got his start in the business working as Doris Day's publicity assistant on the 1960 movie Please Don't Eat The Daisies,and who claimed to have invented the practice of holding lighters in the air at rock shows during John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1970 Live Peace In Toronto concert.

Fowley, who died on Thursday in Los Angeles at 75 after a battle with bladder cancer, had a career in music that dated back to the 1960 #1 hit he produced for the Hollywood Argyles, "Alley Oop," and was still going this month as he he continued to record his radio on Little Steven Van Zandt's Underground Garage channel on Sirius XM satellite radio from his hospital bed.

In between, he carried on a classic behind-the-scenes and sometimes in-front-of-the-camera career, writing songs for Kiss and Alice Cooper, working with The Modern Lovers, Gene Vincent, Paul Revere & the Raiders, and Helen Reddy, among others. In 2014, he had a cameo in Beyonce's "Haunted" video.

Of all the characters I've ever ecountered in the music business, Fowley ranked near the very top in terms of outrageous showmanship. In 2010, when The Runaways movie starrting Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning at Cherie Currie (and, most importantly, Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley) came out, I scheduled an interview with Fowley at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

He had no affilation with the film, which was based on Currie's memoir Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story and showed Fowley, who once referred to himself as "a necessary evil," telling Currie, "Sing, because you're a singer, and that's what you do. You sing, and you crawl around in your underwear."

But Fowley wasn't about to let a promotional opportunity pass him by, and so he had arranged to meet the press in style to talk about his relationship with the fabled band. Standing a towering 6 foot 5 with slicked back hair, he wore a black pinstripe suit suit and green polka dot tie. He was accompanied by Muck and the Mires, a Boston garage band he was then producing.

After introductions were handled, he cued the band, and immediately got my undivided attention by singing. ""Hello, Dan DeLuca, City of Brotherly Love God," with Muck and the Mires doing doo-wop oohs on cue. "We're here to plug the movie / It's The Runaways, we hope that you applaud / It's gonna be No. 1 . . . And I'm Kim Fowley, the best salesman on Earth."

"I was their Malcolm McLaren, I was there George Martin,," he said of The Runaways. In one scene in the movie, Fowley hires teenage boys ot throw bottles at the band in their rehearsal space to prepare them for the rigors of the road.

Of discovering Jett in the early 1970s when she was 15, he said: "on a Darwinian level, men were getting more and more feminine, so you'd figure that there'd be a girl standing there eventually. And there was: Joan Jett."

"Cherie's diary was adapted to the screen in a very entertaining way," he said in the interview. "And the new Christopher Walken, Michael Shannon, did a wonderful job of playing me. I cried at the end."

"Tears of rock-and-roll," he sang, with exaggerated pathos, " Are rolling down my face."

Fowley's death inspired tributes from several associates and former proteges.

Jett tweeted: "Kim was a friend. He taught me so much. I am very sad."

Currie, who fought with Fowley over royalties and many other things ovr the years but helped care for him in the end, wrote on Facebook: "You were instrumental in so many getting started in this crazy world of music. You are a genius... you are loved. You will be so missed."

And Little Steven said in a statement: "One of a kind. He'd been everywhere, done everything, knew everybody. He was working in the Underground Garage until last week. We should all have as full a life. I wanted DJs that could tell stories first person. He was the ultimate realization of that concept. Rock Gypsy DNA. Reinventing himself whenever he felt restless. Which was always. One of the great characters of all time. Irreplaceable."

David Fricke of Rolling Stone put together the Fowley Spotify playlist below in tribute to the "vigorously transgressivei instigator." It features Fowley-connected songs from The Seeds, The Byrds, The Renegades, The Modern Lovers, Bumble & the Stingers and, yes, Kim Fowley. Thanks to John Diliberto for the heads up.

Previously: Belle and Sebastian coming to the Tower Follow In The Mix on Twitter