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Results of a Misspent Youth:
JOAN JETT's performance of female masculinity
from: Women's History Review
by Kathleen Kennedy
ABSTRACT The article maps JOAN JETT's performances from her days with The RUNAWAYS in the mid-1970s through her successful solo career in the 1980s to her recent affiliations with the riot grrrls in the 1990s. Unlike some critics, who, while acknowledging Jett's influence on generations of female rock performers, dismiss Jett as an inferior copy of male rock musicians, the author argues that Jett's various performances of female masculinity challenged conventional understandings of masculinity and femininity. The article explores how Jett's interest in punk enabled her to carve a space for herself in a male-dominated genre. It is further contended that as more spaces opened for women in the early 1990s, Jett's performances took a more aggressive stance on traditionally feminist issues and enabled her to use her sexuality as an offensive weapon.
I don't give a damn about my reputation
You're living in the past, it's a new generation
And a girl can do what she wants to do
And that's what I'm gonna do (JOAN JETT, 1980)[1]
Rejected by at least twenty-three record companies and maligned by former managers in the years following the break-up of her first band, The RUNAWAYS, JOAN JETT penned these lyrics as a defiant reply to what she understood as the different codes of conduct applied to male and female rock performers. Significantly, Jett did not suggest that her critics had misjudged her, nor did she promise to be more discreet or ladylike. Instead, she brazenly asserted her right to do what the boys did, a decision she justified by rejecting middle-class economic values - 'I never said I wanted to improve my station / I want to feel good when I'm having fun / And I don't
have to feed no one' - and middle-class moral concerns - 'I've never been afraid of any deviation.'[2] Such sentiments led the popular press to label Jett an 'inadvertent feminist,' but to fans, colleagues and eventually music insiders, Jett epitomized, embodied and set the standards for 'the rock 'n' roll girl.'
Like her male colleagues, the rock 'n' roll girl lived for rock music. Emerging in the mid-1970s, as epitomized by Jett, Suzi Quatro and Chrissie Hynde, she brazenly demanded equal access to the tools of rock music and its culture of excess. Rejecting the sentimental and confidential lyrics of women's rock in the 1960s, the rock 'n' roll girl of the 1970s played her own instrument and seized control of her career and the music she played. But the rock 'n' roll girl was not proposing feminism - at least not initially. In fact, she was often downright hostile to feminism, claiming that her success stemmed from her individual refusal to accept social convention; in
Jett's words, 'I don't need a movement like [feminism] to make me a worthwhile person.'[3] The rock 'n' roll girl forged a successful career in the usually male-dominated world of rock music by refusing to engage with, rather than challenging, that industry's images of women in rock music.
Joan Marie Larkin was born in either 1958 or 1960 into a lower middle-class family. In 1975, she began her career in The RUNAWAYS, the first all-girl band to perform hard rock. After The RUNAWAYS broke up in 1979, Jett embarked on a solo career with a new band, The BLACKHEARTS. Along with her newly hired manager, KENNY LAGUNA, Jett sold copies of her self-titled album out of the trunk of their cars until she was able to secure a recording deal with Boardwalk Records. In 1981, she released I Love Rock 'n' Roll on Boardwalk Records. The single, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," sold over two and a half million copies and spent seven weeks on the top of the Billboard Chart. Jett followed "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" with several top forty singles and albums. In 1988, she recorded her last top forty album, Up Your Alley, but she has continued to release albums and singles on both her own record label and with record industry heavyweights like Epic, Mercury and Warner Brothers. In all, Jett has released twelve solo albums and continues to tour all over the world. In the fall of 2000, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of the cult classic, The Rocky Horror Show. Her savvy business decisions, specifically, her creation of her own record label - BLACKHEART RECORDS - her stock portfolio, and her ownership of her master tapes, have allowed her to continue to perform and record even when her albums have not reached the top forty.[4] Famous for both her music, which consists of a clever mixing of punk, classic and hard rock, and for her look - black leather, black shag and heavy eye make-up - Jett has carefully crafted an image as the last of the authentic rockers. Her endurance, as well as her refusal to compromise her
commitment to three chord rock, has earned Jett a hard-won respect among rock's elite.
All Right with the Boys?
JOAN JETT made me look like Marie Osmond. She was such a hard-ass. (Pat Benatar, 1999)
This article maps Jett's shifting gender performances from her days with The RUNAWAYS in the late 1970s through Fetish, released in the spring of 1999.
It argues that, especially after The RUNAWAYS, Jett's performances oscillated between the new rock 'n' roll girl who seeks access to rock music and its cultural excesses and a transgressive sexual subject who challenges the sexual and gender binaries of middle-class culture. It further contends that this oscillation makes Jett's music accessible not only to traditional rock audiences, specifically those adolescent and frustrated suburban males to whom rock is generally marketed, but also to queers and adolescent suburban heterosexual women.
For the first fifteen years of her career (1975-90), Jett generally displayed indifference to traditional male power structures. Some critics have dismissed her because of this indifference, characterizing her contribution to rock music as 'pure macha: a feisty, defiant espousal of the "bad girl" role' that fails to bring anything new to the male rock posture.[5] In contrast, my work suggests that Jett's performance of female masculinity is not an imitation of male masculinity but rather, a distinct gender identity that exists in between middle-class definitions of appropriate masculinity and femininity. Along with critic Judith Halberstam, I argue that indifference to
traditional male power structures is a plausible model for resistance against patriarchal structures, especially when there is limited space for a critique of those structures. As Halberstam notes, female masculinity has a history of its own that dovetails with but does not replicate the history of male masculinity. According to Halberstam, female masculinity is neither essentialist, progressive, nor regressive; it can, under certain circumstances, coincide 'with the excesses of male supremacy' and/or 'codif[y] a unique social rebellion.' It most often signifies 'sexual alterity but occasionally it marks heterosexual variation.'[6] Jett began her rebellion against the rock 'n' roll boys' exclusive privileges not by 'subverting masculine power or taking up a position against masculine power but by turning a blind eye to conventional masculinities and refusing to engage.'[7] This strategy was in part necessitated by the limited space available for the rock 'n' roll girl within the rock music of the late 1970s and 1980s. Informed by the sensibilities of punk rock, Jett constructed female masculinity not as an imitation of rock machismo but rather, as a gender and sexual identity that moved outside the binaries that defined twentieth-century white middle-class sex/gender systems. As feminist critiques of sexuality entered into rock
music, spaces opened for a more direct engagement with the patriarchal underpinnings of rock; consequently, over the past ten years, Jett has become more critical of sexual inequality as she has teamed with members of the so-called riot grrrl bands that brought a new feminist sensibility to rock music in the early 1990s. Within this new space, Jett was able not only to directly critique patriarchal structures but also to create a transgressive female sexual subject that used sex as an offensive weapon.
Throughout her career, punk has influenced Jett's performance of masculinity, and this influence is critical to how Jett constructs an image of female masculinity that operates in between conventional definitions of masculinity and femininity. For a brief period, punk created opportunities for women that had previously not existed in rock music. As punk resisted traditional musical forms, it opened the door to musicians who did not have access to classical training and experience. North American punk began with the Detroit underground bands of the late 1960s, art house rock and crossdressing bands like The New York Dolls and Jayne/Wayne Country. Dissatisfied with stadium rock, the early punk bands developed a 'Do It forYourself' ethics that encouraged women like Debbie Harry, Mo Tucker, and
Patti Smith to join bands. Punks rejected traditional musical traditions, including those that dictated that women could not play instruments and were wedded to sentimental, gentle and confidential lyrics.[8] In Chrissie Hynde's words:
"The best thing about [punk] for me was that I didn't have to rely on being a female guitarist as a gimmick. Punk was very liberating like that. For the first time I could do what I wanted to do and being a girl wasn't an issue. It would have been uncool for that to be a problem. Punk allowed anyone in - you could be a dwarf, short whatever - but that was only true for about six months".[9]
Whereas rock depended on more traditional gender images, the punk ascetic encouraged men and women to play with gender conventions and gave women the freedom to be 'ugly' as well as to parody sexual conventions. Jett was a fan of punk and quickly integrated its sensibility into her music and performances. Specifically, punk provided Jett with the symbols from which she could explore gender and sexual inversion. These symbols were available to Jett because at least in its beginning, punk enabled women to reimagine their roles in rock music; they could portray themselves as sexualized, desexualized or anti-sexual subjects. This variety led to a number of different punk images for women that ranged from Debbie Harry's ironic parodying of the pin-up, to Siouxsie Sioux's theatrical gothic to Jett's performance of
masculinity.[10]
As some punk bands attained mainstream success, however, they played down punk's critique of class and gender. Even punk bands like Blondie that attempted to maintain punk's parody of middle-class gender roles discovered that it was difficult to translate punk ideals to a broader audience. Mainstream marketing techniques often converted irony and parody into conventional statements that offered women as sexual objects for male consumption.[11] As significantly, internal changes within punk began to re-emphasize masculinity and its central place within rock music. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, all-male bands such as The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Fear were experimenting with 'hard core' punk which stressed accelerated rhythms and angry lyrics. At the same time, thrashing, a form of punk 'dance' that involved flailing one's arms and lifting one's knees, took over the mosh pits of many punk shows. The mosh pit, that area directly in front of the performer where fans would 'mosh' or dance, would later become an important arena for negotiating sexual politics as women's punk bands reclaimed it for women and girls. Both physically and musically, hard core rejected the gender ambiguity of the early punk era, replacing it with a unisex masculine musical style and emphasis. In the
words of critic Lorraine Leblanc, hard core 'edged women out of the scene.'[12] While some women, like Lydia Lunch and Wendy O. Williams, briefly thrived in punk during the early 1980s, other women's bands like The Go Go's turned to more conventional musical styles like pop and new wave. In part, Jett's significance lies in her ability to use and invert rock and punk's masculinity to create a space for herself at the precise moment in which that space closed for most women.
'Cherry Bomb' (1975-80)
The RUNAWAYS are the quintessence of everything that's great about teenage girls - not the demure saps, but the aggro ones who never came to school because they were out too late at Rodney's the night before. (Lisa Fancher, 1976)
These bitches suck. (Creem magazine, 1978)
JOAN JETT's career began in 1975 when she met rock manager Kim Fowley, and they formed The RUNAWAYS. There are various stories as to the origins of The RUNAWAYS. Both Jett and Fowley claim to have developed the concept of an all-girl rock band. Apparently, the genesis of The Runways was in Fowley's relationship with thirteen year-old Kari Krome, whose lyrics he liked but who lacked singing skills. Consequently, he decided to produce an all-girl band that would record some of Krome's lyrics. Fowley expected that The RUNAWAYS would capitalize on the novelty of being all-girl rock. Krome and Fowley held auditions and temporarily settled on Micki Steele on bass and vocals. Krome then introduced Fowley to Jett, who coincidently also wanted to form an all-girl band, but unlike Fowley, envisioned a serious rock band judged by its music rather than its novelty. With Jett on guitar and vocals, Fowley completed the band's first incarnation with drummer Sandy West whom he met in a club parking lot.[13] The RUNAWAYS' first performance was at a keg party at West's house in Huntington Beach, California. Soon after that first performance, Fowley replaced Steele with vocalist Cherie Currie and added Jackie Fox on bass and Lita Ford on lead guitar. From there, The RUNAWAYS began performing in various Southern California clubs and in May 1976, signed with Mercury records. Over the next three years, The RUNAWAYS released four albums and toured the USA, Europe and Japan.[14]
The RUNAWAYS' signature songs, such as "Cherry Bomb" (1976), and "Queens of Noise" (1977), introduced bad girls as subjects equally as capable as the guys of making rock music, controlling heterosexual encounters, and partying. "Cherry Bomb" was the rock 'n' roll girl's statement of her right to experience rock's culture of excess. The cherry bomb aggressively pursued sexual encounters with 'street boys' without parental consent or interference. Like many rock songs, it explored the inability of the suburban youth - in this case the rock 'n' roll girl - to conform to social convention:
Can't stay at home, can't stay in school / Old folks say, ya poor little fool /
Down the street, I'm the girl next door / I'm the fox you've been waiting
for.' Rather than accept the 'old folks' classification of her as a fool, the
cherry bomb defiantly asserts her new heterosexual identity: 'Hello Daddy,
Hello Mom / We're your cherry bomb / Hello World I'm Your Wild Girl /
Your Cherry Bomb.
The RUNAWAYS' cherry bomb was a product of the predominately white middle-class suburbs and the families that live there; however, she is also the new girl next door who promises the rock 'n' roll boy sexual pleasure rather than maternal competence: 'Hey street boy, ya want some style / Your dead end dreams don't make you smile / I'll give you something to live for / Have ya, grab ya, Till you're sore.'[15] The cherry bomb initiates and controls this sexual encounter rather than waiting patiently for the rock 'n' roll boy to discover her.
While the rock 'n' roll girl may have originally taken her cue from the rock 'n' roll boy, she quickly asserted her independence from him. In "Queens of Noise," the rock 'n' roll girl acknowledges her debt to the rock 'n' roll boy, but she also makes it clear that his time had passed. 'I can smash your heads all over this town / You gave me the answer, now I've got the answer / We're the queens of noise / Come and get it boys / we're the queens of noise / not just one of your toys.'[16] Accordingly, the rock 'n' roll girl overtook the rock 'n' roll boy as she promised to revive rock music and jolt it out of its present boredom.
Jett never intended for this new rock 'n' roll girl to make a political statement. For her, The RUNAWAYS used rock music to escape the world around them. She frequently related the moment she decided to be a rock performer and embraced rock's escapism. After seeing a dead body outside Rodney's, a music club on Hollywood's Sunset Strip and after witnessing the young people's apathy to the body, she concluded that if one stopped to think about the world, 'you would go crazy.'[17] As rock critic Lisa Fancher wrote after hearing this story from Jett, 'JOAN JETT knew that was pure rock 'n' roll, and simply nothing else would do but for her to be the one they were listening to while not paying attention to the world.'[18] In the 1970s and early 1980s, rock provided Jett with an alternative world from which she could shed the conditions of everyday life as a lower white middle-class youth. It would be another fifteen years before she began to see rock as a
tool to change the world. The RUNAWAYS could not escape traditional stereotypes of women in rock music, in part because of Kim Fowley's marketing of them as 'bad girls.' Critics typically referred to the band as 'Kim Fowley's quintet of teen teasers' and 'jailbait rock.'[19] For her part, Jett never claimed to be victimized or exploited by Fowley's marketing decision:
"I could say we were manipulated but I was aware of what was going on for the most part ... I knew people were playing up the sexuality. In a way, I liked that because women weren't allowed to be sexual. I liked sticking it in people's faces, but it was misread as us being toys and not being in control. Me, I felt in control."[20]
At the same time, Jett acknowledged the potential problems associated with Fowley's marketing techniques, especially that the band's purpose was often
misunderstood. As she noted to her fans in 1987:
"It was so hard to get taken seriously, and the sexuality, it seemed was the whole focus with that audience ... and most certainly with the press. That was truly frustrating. I mean we wanted to be sexual and that was definitely part of our identity. But nobody paid attention to the fact that we could actually play; that was very annoying."[21]
Equal participation by the rock 'n' roll girl in rock's culture of excess was easier to perform than to attain in life. Jett, Lita Ford, and Sandy West quickly gained a reputation for various forms of excess, allegedly scaring off potential producers after they fired Fowley in 1977. These failures frustrated Jackie Fox, who quit the band in 1977 after a successful tour of Japan in part because of their manager's failure to properly insure her instrument.[22] While Jett and Ford developed successful solo careers, West battled alcohol problems, as she spent time in prison in 1999 for driving under the influence.
Cherie Currie, especially, struggled to escape her image as the cherry bomb. According to her autobiography, Fowley and Jett wrote "Cherry Bomb" specifically for her, and Fowley and Currie carefully constructed her as the prototype 'cherry bomb' by dressing her in stockings, suspenders, spiked heels, corsets and other forms of lingerie. It was Currie alone who appeared on The RUNAWAYS' first album cover and who initially captured much of the media attention. While briefly embracing this image of herself as a cherry bomb - she tattooed a cherry just above her left breast and purchased the corset as part of her costume - Currie quickly grew wary of it. The pressures of touring and family problems led her to drug addiction, a result of doctors prescribing Qualude (barbiturates) to relieve the stress of touring. Tired of the demands of travel and increasing in-fighting within the band over their management and the disproportionate amount of attention
the press gave her, Currie left.[23] After a brief film career, including costarring with Jodie Foster in Foxes, she entered drug rehabilitation and
subsequently worked as a drug counselor.[24]
Although The RUNAWAYS were popular in Japan, they were trashed by most US critics and did not sell many records outside of Japan. Creem magazine's 1978 review of the album Queens of Noise began with the sentence, 'these bitches suck.'[25] The RUNAWAYS did, however, develop a
reputation within the Los Angeles and New York music scenes, packing CBGB, the seedy Bowery bar that became the epicenter of New York's punk scene, and performing with Blondie and other punk bands. The band's reputation was made as much by their antics as by their music. Once kicked out of Disneyland for 'lesbian' behavior, The RUNAWAYS gained a reputation for hard partying. Jett herself was known to supply alcohol to teenagers too young to legally purchase it. In the end, she blamed the band's bad reputation on its response to reporters' baiting them about their sexual habits and drug use, tactics that Jett attributed to reporters' unwillingness to discuss their music, only their behavior. She would respond to such tactics by living up to the reporters' expectations, by launching into a profanity
laced tirade at the reporters' line of questioning.[26] While sometimes 'brought to tears' by the negative and sometimes violent response The RUNAWAYS engendered, Jett still maintains that she was 'more proud of The RUNAWAYS than anybody and I'll defend them straight down to an actual fistfight.'[27]
At least one of Jett's contemporaries attributed critics' response to The RUNAWAYS to sexism. 'It was just like The RUNAWAYS. People see a chick and
... Really!' wrote Deborah Harry, lead singer of Blondie, 'we thought The RUNAWAYS were great and there were numerous bands who were worse. The
reason they were put down and others weren't was that they were cute "vulnerable" girls who weren't managed right. The press stomped them mercilessly. If they had been boys it definitely wouldn't have happened to them.'[28] While Jett would not have appreciated Harry's reference to the band as 'cute,' like Harry, she acknowledged that critics and audiences might not have been ready for girls to storm into rock music:
"Everybody thought we were going to be naked and strippers and when they found out that ... we would be playing our instruments people either reacted ... cool ... as they realized that we were capable of playing our instruments ... but other people, I think, were offended by it and said oh girls can't play instruments."[29]
Jett has always been evasive about the two years following the break-up of The RUNAWAYS in 1979. In 1982, she acknowledged that she was 'scared' and
'depressed' during those years and consequently allowed her career to drift.[30] She produced an album for the punk band, The Germs, and secured studio time lent by the Who to record demos of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," "Crimson and Clover," and "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yea)" as well as her self-titled album, which included musicians from The Sex Pistols and Blondie. Jett also completed an unreleased film called We're All Crazy No based on the story of The RUNAWAYS. While filming in the desert, she became ill and was hospitalized for six weeks, a situation which only facilitated rumors of her drug use and unreliability that apparently kept her from securing reliable management and a record deal.
Jett's fortunes changed, however, when Meryl Laguna convinced her husband, Kenny, to manage Jett. In 1980, Jett founded her new band, The BLACKHEARTS, and her own record company, BLACKHEART RECORDS. The Lagunas invested their daughter's college fund to print five thousand copies of Jett's self-titled album, released in 1981 as Bad Reputation. Jett moved in with the Lagunas and began to temper her behavior.[31] Her big break came when Neil Bogart signed her to his newly created Boardwalk Records and her album, I Love Rock' n' Roll (1981), produced two top ten hits and the single, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," became the best-selling song of her career.
'Crimson and Clover' (1981-88)
I don't need a movement like [feminism] to make me feel like a person. (JOAN JETT, 1981)
We were far too young to understand what women's lib is all about. (RUNAWAYS, 1975)
The songs and videos from the albums I Love Rock 'n' Roll (1981) and BadReputation (1981) solidified Jett's image as an outsider whose refusal to
acknowledge traditional powers or ways of doing business in the record industry gave her music an unusual authenticity. According to one reviewer, 'That never-say-die persona has made her success seem hard-earned and her failures somehow noble.'[32] Jett's image in the early 1980s continued to gesture to the rebellious rock of female adolescents, but it also included the gender bending and tongue-in-cheek humor of punk.
"I Love Rock 'n' Roll," Jett's first top ten single, reproduced the central theme of The RUNAWAYS' music: the sexual subjectivity and rebellion of the
rock 'n' roll girl. Jett (the rock 'n' roll girl) sees 'him standing there by the record machine' and proceeds to 'take him home / where [they] can be
alone.'[33] Throughout the video, Jett 'appropriates male movements' as she calmly controls and initiates the seduction.[34] The video indicates that Jett
carefully plans her seduction as she deliberately removes her black leather gloves while observing the boy at the record machine. She sings the verses
that describe the seduction to the camera, only singing directly to the boy once. These actions mark her as a calculating and proud seducer of a
younger man.[35] Tellingly, Jett's seduction lacks romance. The boy could be any boy who loves rock music; when Jett asks his name, he replies, 'that
don't matter it's all the same.'[36] After they leave the club together, they do not touch but, rather, walk down the street as if indifferent to each other. It
is not romance but a common participation in rock culture that binds the couple together. In this respect, the rock 'n' roll girl of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll"
is similar to the one constructed by The RUNAWAYS. Both initiated sexual relationships, bragged about them, and cemented those relationships through a common love of rock music and excessive living.
But even as Jett performed "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," the rock 'n' roll girl she was constructing was becoming more sexually ambiguous. Jett's version
of Gary Glitter's "Do You Want to Touch Me (Oh Yeah)," released as Jett's third single in 1982 but recorded at the same time as "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Crimson and Clover," was her most brazen performance of female masculinity. The song itself is a straightforward request for sex as Jett sings to a potential lover, 'Do you wanna touch me, Do you wanna touch me here, yea, there, yea?'[37] Art critic Ellen Handy argues
"Few blunter songs than this exist, and Jett's rendition is direct to the point of being an intriguing exercise in macho posturing - it is precisely this that is ambiguous. The song, initially an outcry of sexual frustration, explodes into overwrought provocations. In 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll,' the performer's role was a sexually aggressive one, having an extra excitement because she seemed to be acting 'like a man.' But in 'Do You Wanna Touch Me,' she is a man. 'We've been here so long / trying to get along / pretending that you're oh so shy / I'm a natural man, doing all I can / My temperature is running high / ... Every girl and boy needs a little joy / But all you do is sit and stare.'"[38]
Handy's interpretation relies on her reading of the line, 'I'm a natural man,' but Jett neither sang nor transcribed the line this way. Instead, Jett sings 'I'm a natural ma'am.'[39] Jett's substitution allows for the possibility that the ma'am is either Jett or her potential partner, lending ambiguity to Jett's gender and sexual performance. Ultimately, what the line does indicate is that Jett's desire in this song is not, as Handy suggests, to present herself as a man.
Jett's performance of this line, especially when placed within the context of the video, is a part of a joke that she plays on patriarchal expectations of women's bodies and identities.[40] The video for "Do You Wanna Touch Me" begins with Jett performing with her band. Interspliced within this performance are quick shots of various activities at a beach. As Jett sings the line, 'I'm a natural ma'am,' the video cuts to Jett, who opens a leather trench coat to reveal a bikini clad body. The video returns to this scene several times, usually as Jett sings, 'Do you wanna touch me.'[41] Clearly, Jett does not perform this gesture as a conventionally gendered female; she thrusts open her coat with a look of feigned surprise. The body she presents to the viewer is athletic, firmly muscled, small breasted and
thin. Her gesture mocks the pin-up and hence patriarchal expectations of women's sexuality. Jett does not offer her body to the viewer as the conventional pin-up would; instead, she dares the viewer to touch her.
The body Jett offers to the viewer is not a body for male consumption, nor is it the body of a man. To convey this point that Jett's body is not that of a man, it is juxtaposed to that of a muscle-bound male weightlifter. Her body is neither exclusively masculine nor feminine. Rather, her body is an oxymoronic construction. The video mocks both the traditionally female subject position in rock videos - that of inviting a male to touch her - and the traditionally masculine position in those videos - overpowering women with physical prowess. The body Jett reveals is a mixture of contradictory masculine and feminine signs. It is a position in between the conventionally gendered body. Rather than mimic male masculinity, Jett's performance of female masculinity interrupted the clear binaries within middle-class society
that linked biological sex with appropriate gender and sexual identities. With The RUNAWAYS and in some of her solo work such as "I Love Rock 'n' Roll,"
Jett's performance of female masculinity suggested heterosexual variation. However, "Do You Wanna Touch Me" indicated that Jett's performance of
female masculinity could also suggest gender and sexual alterity.
Jett's play with gender and sexual identity hit the top forty in 1982 with "Crimson and Clover" her follow-up single to "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." As
Handy suggests, Jett's cover of "Crimson and Clover" is 'intriguing' not only because of her choice of pronouns, 'Now I don't hardly know her / but I
think I could love her,' but also because of her performance. In a marked departure from her usual style, Jett sings "Crimson and Clover" in a 'breathy,
one might say feminine voice.'[42] As in the video, "Do You Wanna Touch Me," Jett performs a masculine gesture using feminine codes. On one level,
Jett's performance transforms the song into a lesbian love song in which she seeks to seduce or initiate another woman into a dangerous affair - 'My, my such a sweet thing / I wanna do everything / What a beautiful feeling.'[43] But her performance also disengages gender from sexual subjectivity, signifying that female masculinity does not imply 'macho posturing' but rather, a contradictory construction - a male subject position performed in a feminine voice.
The video for "Crimson and Clover" changes the song's focus from a seduction of another to a confession of identity. It begins with shots of Jett
performing with her band while cutting to images of her dressed in tight leather pants and a gym shirt, playing the role of the bad girl. For example, in one scene, Jett sits on a tiger-skin lounger ripping a rose apart with her teeth and spitting it towards the viewer. The video concludes with the bad girl breaking through a barrier, with a crowbar, that separates her from her band members; she takes one of their guitars and uses the guitar to destroy the remainder of the screen. After shredding the screen, Jett tries to break the guitar by slamming it on the floor 'over and over.'[44]
This act of destroying one's instruments was a fundamental part of the punk performance that symbolized punk's disregard for the traditional trappings of commercial culture, including the sacred symbols of rock. The video's structure, including this resolution, suggested that the 'her' in the song is not a potential lover but, rather, an exiled part of Jett's self - her punk self - that she wants to reassert at this moment of her commercial success. Yet, Jett's coming out as a punk or as the bad girl of rock music was, at best, transparent and banal. It is the telling of a secret that is already known. The very transparency of Jett's coming out as a bad girl indicated
that the confession concealed a far more dangerous secret. Jett hinted of this concealment throughout the video as she averted eye contact with the camera and occasionally smirked as she confessed to her bad side. As significantly, the now out-of-the closet bad girl did not break her own guitar but, rather, that of a male band member, leaving open the possibility that the story behind the story is the rock girl's seizure of the rock boy's prerogatives, including, if you listen carefully to the lyrics, his girlfriend.[45]
In order to maintain mainstream success, Jett had to become the ultimate trickster - she had to code that sexual alterity within 'the epistemology of the closet.'[46]
Jett continued her assault on gender and sexual binaries in her later albums. In 1983, she followed up I Love Rock 'n' Roll with Album, from which she released the single, "The French Song." As in "Crimson and Clover," Jett changed her normal delivery and sang the verses in "The French Song" in a feminine voice, moving into her abrasive, aggressive style only in the song's chorus. This change was significant because in the verses she was
speaking directly to her lover whom she was trying to convince to engage in an unconventional relationship - in this case, a ménage à trois: 'Don't you feel guilty baby / It won't take long to understand / Don't waste time arguing / We'll make the most of what's at hand / I have to laugh out loud / When you say three's a crowd.'[47] Jett returns to her 'normal' voice to sing the chorus, 'J'aime faire l'amour sur tout à trois' (I love to make love, especially with three), and the song's final stanza, which repeats the words, 'I am what I am.'[48] In this case, Jett uses her 'feminine, breathy voice' to reassure her lover and her masculine voice to declare her sexual preferences and identity.
Unlike the video to "Crimson and Clover," which is a transparent attempt to disengage Jett from the gender and sexual ambiguity of her lyrics, the video to "The French Song" emphasizes the gender and sexual disruption of a ménage à trois. Like its counterpart for "Do You Want To Touch Me," the video pokes fun at patriarchal sexual fantasies, this time by mimicking pornographic fantasies. Throughout the video, Jett orchestrates a number of
fantasy scenes around the concept of group participation in sex. Throughout these scenes, she is surrounded by transvestites and men and women dressed in fantasy costumes.[49] The first part of the video consists principally of shots of Jett's mouth singing to her lover or of Jett looking down on her lover followed by implied sex between Jett and that lover.
When brief musical rifts replace Jett's singing, the video then cuts to shots of Jett's band performing. In this part of the video, the audience is invited to be the voyeur, a point that is reinforced by several shots of bored looking audience members snapping their fingers to the music. The boredom of the audience anticipates the joke that Jett will play on patriarchal pornographic images. As the video cuts to the chorus, Jett leads a parade of transvestites, prostitutes and one older white male - dressed in a white suit - who awkwardly attempts to match Jett's steps. The parade walks right into the camera and ends as Jett plants a kiss on the camera (viewer).[50]
The second half of the video begins with Jett's appearance on stage with her band; she bursts onto the stage singing 'I am what I am,' a line that she eventually repeats nine times. The video then cuts to a scene in which Jett holds the chains of two women in sexual costume and a Doberman pinscher. This scene mimics a classic male pornographic image in which (potential) lesbian sex or sex with animals is performed for the male viewer.
However, Jett's rendition makes fun of that fantasy. Throughout the scene, the dog either howls or playfully nudges the camera (the viewer) and Jett laughs as she holds the women behind her as if to underscore the ludicrousness of such depictions of female sexuality. Additionally, the women Jett restrains are prostitutes; they participate in the scene because they get paid. Once again, the very transparency of the scene underscores its ideological underpinnings: in this case, the financial exchange behind the pornographic fantasy.[51] In truth, the video exposed the artificiality of gender and sexual identities as the presence of transvestites and men and women in a variety of sexual costumes underscored that both gender and sexuality are essentially drag. Within the context of the video, Jett's essentialist justification - 'I am what I am' - for her participation in a decadent sexual fantasy plays ironically.
It is not uncommon for Jett's fans and detractors to debate her sexuality in an effort to discover a meaning for her sexual ambiguity. Jett, who is a very private person, refuses to clarify her own sexual preferences. Instead, she explains her musical choices as follows:
"I say I sing for everybody but there's a few songs where I do use 'him' or 'her' references. In my mind, it can still be for everybody because I mess with genders so a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy. I'm still singing for everybody but I try to sing for you. Why alienate people?"[52]
On one level, Jett's songs enabled her to skirt the issue of her own sexual preferences. But they also reflect her growing consciousness of how her image and music participates in a project that could disrupt patriarchal gender and sexual binaries. In the 1990s, this increased consciousness led Jett to first politicize her music and then to literally embody a liminal sexual identity.
'Go Home' (1992-98)
"Women can watch other women, and it doesn't even have to be in any sexual way. You can get off on watching women on stage taking the music and using it to their advantage - instead of being used by the music, which has always been the case. Now women can get out those feelings that they have had for so long. And I think that's a real good shift in mental attitude." (JOAN JETT, 1993)[53]
Emerging from Olympia and Seattle, Washington and Washington, DC in the early 1990s, 'the riot grrrls' blended a punk rock ascetic with a political commitment to feminism.[54] Forming a number of all-women or mixedgender rock groups and producing fanzines - inexpensively produced newsletters that offered political commentary - the riot grrrls gave musical expression to previously ignored topics like violence against women. The riot grrrls sought first and foremost to directly challenge the misogyny in the traditional rock formula, consciously seeking to make women subjects rather than objects in punk and rock music. Some groups, such as L7, formed specifically political organizations like Rock for Choice and gained marketability through summer tours like Lallapolooza.[55] The ideal of the
riot grrrls was to voice the experiences of girls and to develop a less competitive and more supportive atmosphere for musical experimentation.
The explosion of women rock bands provided a space for girls to experiment musically and receive some support from major record labels.[56] For many riot grrrls, Jett was an important role model who developed into a strong advocate. While Jett acknowledged some differences between herself and the riot grrrls, she defended them against their critics, a defense which reflected both old and new themes in her outlook. On the one hand, Jett expressed appreciation for the way the riot grrrls expressed themselves. On the other hand, she also credited the riot grrrls for giving voice to girls' varied experiences. The riot grrrls 'are trying to voice their own feelings,' Jett explained to a reporter, 'and people shouldn't immediately throw up a wall and say "oh my God, they want to cut my dick off, so I can't listen!" A lot of people have had experiences in life that maybe you and I haven't had and it can't hurt to listen. You don't have to agree but you could say, "I hear what she's saying and I understand how she could feel that way." I think Riot Grrrl is really healthy. Too many women are afraid to express their opinions in a strong way.'[57]
While Jett influenced the riot grrrls to sing and play rock music, they, in turn, helped jolt Jett out of a politics of indifference. After attending a Bikini Kill concert, Jett wrote "Activity Grrrl" to reflect on how the riot grrrls changed her approach to music and politics. 'She works real hard to try to make things right / To see if she can find a reason for what's wrong / In life - she puts her thought into magazine form / An' passes them all around her dorm / Showin' me another way, another way to fight.'[58] In particular, Jett developed a desire, in her words, to 'mend my ways to feminism,' and to use her music to 'empower women.'[59] Consequently, she became more involved with women's issues, publicly advocating for the prochoice movement and joining the National Organization for Women,
performing at their march on Washington where she apparently led its participants in a chorus of 'fuck you' to the anti-abortion members of Congress.[60] It was the death of Mia Zapata, the lead singer of the Seattlebased group The Gits, however, that integrated Jett into the Seattle music scene and led her to make her strongest feminist statements.
In July 1993, Zapata was raped and murdered after leaving the Comet, a bar at which she frequently performed. Her death had a strong effect on the female-led bands of the Seattle area, leading Valerie Agnew of the group Seven-Year Bitch and other members of the Seattle music and art community to found the collective, Home Alive. Its purpose was to provide affordable self-defense training for women. In its first year, about seventy-five per cent of its clients had incomes below $10,000 and/or were living on the streets. Home Alive offered them courses ranging from anger management to the use of weapons. According to the collective members, Zapata's death awakened them to the fact that 'we just weren't taking care of each other,' or in Agnew's words, 'If Mia had known how to really throw a punch, would she be alive? Could she have survived?'[61]
Zapata's murder forced Jett to consider her own vulnerability to the omnipresent threat of violence against women. 'I didn't know Mia at all,' Jett explained, 'but I felt a strong connection. Too many women are ending up dead, and too many people aren't caring about it.'[62] While discussing Zapata's death, Jett and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill decided to write "Go Home," a song about men stalking women and the psychological effects that violence has on women. Like much of the riot grrrls' music, the song uses anger and screaming as a catharsis both to make women aware of the violence done to their bodies and souls and to purge patriarchal thinking from their psyche. The song begins with the lines, 'Walking down the street at night / I am so aware of you / Give me a reason to fight / when there's no one to protect you.' The 'you' in the song represents both the possible male stalker and the voice inside the woman's head, both sending her the same message - to 'go home.' Like Home Alive, the song encourages every woman to resist the voice inside her head that tells her to go home by learning how to protect herself from violence and its accompanying patriarchal ideology which instructs women to hide from the violence by either staying home or covering-up their sexuality. Surviving male violence against women, the song suggests, requires women to get angry so that they can destroy this ideology as well as their attackers - 'Now take that voice outside a' my head / I hear that voice insid' a my head / Get that voice outta my head / I will choke it dead, dead / I will stab it dead, dead / I will kill it dead, dead.'[63] Taking its cue from feminist self-defense programs, "Go Home" encouraged women to turn the violence and anger outward against the attacker rather than inward against themselves.[64]
Jett dedicated the video for "Go Home" to Mia Zapata. It opens with a woman, played by Jett, leaving a group of friends at a bar, as did Zapata. As
she leaves, a man dressed in a suit watches her and begins to follow her. While the woman notices him in a reflection in a store front, she is unsure
as to whether she is being stalked or is herself paranoid. As he continues to follow her, she becomes increasingly afraid and tries to lose him. Finally
reaching the subway and believing that he has stopped following her, and with obvious relief, she begins to read a newspaper. At the next stop,
however, the man enters her train and with a smirk begins to loosen his tie.
Terrified, the woman first tries unsuccessfully to wake a drunk passenger and then escape into another car. With 'no one to defend her,' she must turn her fear into anger and attack her attacker. The two struggle, the woman using the techniques taught by such organizations as Home Alive. As the man lies prone on the ground and the woman stomps his chest, Jett screams the words 'no! no! no!' As she runs away from the train, the words, 'On July 7, 1993 Mia Zapata was raped and murdered. Her killer has not been found' flash on the screen.[65] In making the video, Jett claimed that she wanted to highlight the indecision that women being stalked felt
because she wanted to emphasize that women's fear of being embarrassed or of being impolite prevents them from taking the necessary actions to protect themselves.[66] The song and video "Go Home," advocated taking control of and possession of violence rather than rejecting violence out of hand. But even more significantly, "Go Home," like Home Alive, encouraged women to reject their status as victims and their expectations that men could protect them from sexual violence. In the words of Agnew, 'But in reality, women need to learn self-defense tactics ... The concept of selfdefense comes down to believing that your life is worth defending. It's amazing how many people won't take that stance: "Fuck you - I will kill you before you kill me, because my life is worth more than yours."'[67]
'Fetish' (1998-2000)
"She's the hottest whore in town the dominatrix of my dreams I know you think its cheezy but she's so in luv with me ... She's the Joanest Jett around like to get her in my bed so I'll lasso her instead Her name is Panik she made me panic. (Bratmobile, 1991)[68]
According to JOAN JETT, one of the most important changes during the 1990s was that women were turning the dangers that sexuality potentially posed to them into positive statements of liberation. Referring to her days with The RUNAWAYS, Jett noted that 'back then everybody was waiting for us to take our clothes off. Today women are making sexual statements all over the place: Women bands are taking their tops off and writing slogans on themselves, whatever. When we were playing there was no support.'[69]
Unlike in the late 1970s when critics could bring Jett to tears with accusations about her sexuality, in 1999 Jett used those accusations to empower herself. 'You know what?' Jett explained, 'Twenty years ago it bothered me if someone called me a slut or dyke. If someone calls me a slut or dyke now, I don't care. I like being dirty and sexual, I like making them squirm.'[70] Most recently, Jett has embodied the sexually ambiguous sadomasochist subject to turn sex into an offensive weapon.
Doing so involved marking her body as a sexual zone to horrify and shock. Jett's classic look, which included black leather, punk, lesbian, and s/m jewelry, black hair and heavy eye make-up, has always suggested sexual decadence and an association with the rebellion of rock music, but by the mid-1990s, that look no longer seemed to convey the sexual danger it once had. In 1997, Jett changed what had become one of the most enduring, and according to Jett, copied looks in rock music by cutting her hair short and dying it blonde. To celebrate the new millennium, she shaved her head entirely. She further accentuated her sexuality by performing in tight leather
pants, latex tube tops, with whips, keys and chains hanging from her left hip.
Her guitar has become a billboard for lesbian, feminist, and leather images and slogans, including a purple Teletubby, while her body sports several tattoos and various piercings.[71] Jett's fashion has always been influenced by the punk aesthetic which transforms gender conventions.[72] But Jett does not describe her most recent incarnation as reflecting a punk aesthetic, as she might have in the past, but rather, as an exploration of defiant sexuality - sex as an offensive weapon.
Jett's recent work, "Fetish" (1999), the single from her CD of the same name, emphasizes this point.[73] The song describes an s/m encounter in which Jett is 'topping'; that is, performing the role of a sadist, a lover. She describes the song as 'pure sex, extreme sexuality. The lyrics say it all. This is really out there. This is more in people's faces and conjures up images - it's not hard to imagine what I'm talking about.'[74] 'Fetish' begins as a hard, driving song that emphasizes drums and bass, and the song's lyrics describe most of the key ingredients of s/m sex: bondage, power and submission, surprise, and pain and pleasure.[75] But more than a
description of the basics of an s/m encounter, the song contains a subtle interpretation of that encounter that provides a clue as to how Jett understands the s/m scene.
The top promises her lover that the scene will enable him/her to 'grow' and that she will push hard to get 'you in that fog.' According to theorist Lynda Hart, that fog is the 'real' or that element that 'eludes symbolization yet is nonetheless integral to the texture or meaning and ideology.'[76] It is that place where the 'haunting secret' of the established order is revealed. According to Hart, this place that is at the 'very limits of representation' is a place for productive feminist work.[77] In the s/m scene,
the 'fog' is that place where the bottom, the one playing the role of the masochist, loses herself and her connection to the sexual binaries of Western civilization. This ability to go beyond oneself is not a sign of weakness but, rather, of strength; in Hart's words, it is 'not the courage to withstand pain but the ability to give up, temporarily under ritualized conditions, her notion of her "self" as an autonomous ego.'[78] While this project appears counter to the feminist project of reclaiming subjectivity for women, within the s/m love story it is the acting out of 'hope that a different structure of value could emerge ... a different kind of knowledge/experience that escapes the closure of representation.'[79]
It is precisely this type of experience that the character "Baby Blue" searches for in Jett's other attempt to imagine an s/m aesthetic from the CD Fetish. Jett describes "Baby Blue" as 'about a woman who pushes her limits, sexually, seeking various sensations.'[80] The song is sung from the point of
view of a third person who is describing a woman 'they call baby blue.' Baby Blue defies categories. She is described as both a 'switch hitter' who 'plays the field' and a top or bottom who's 'always in control.'[81] For Baby Blue, neither the gender of her partner nor her partner's preferred role in the s/m scene is important as long as 'it's real.' Unafraid of conventional sexual morals ('she reads the magazines she's not meant to read') or of 'what's meant to burn her,' Baby Blue unabashedly searches for the perfect sexual encounter.[82] Baby Blue is not an unproblematic model for the rock 'n' roll girl as her search can turn her 'black and blue,' but her search leads her to
experiences that violate the limits of conventional sexual and gender identities.
The cover of Fetish provides a second important hint of the meaning of s/m sex to Jett. The cover pictures Jett from the back, her arms outstretched and a tattoo on her neck. She wears a collar with a chain suspended from the middle of it. The CD jacket opens to a definition of the word 'fetish' and a close-up of Jett's neck. According to this definition, 'This is Fetish. 1. An object believed to have spiritual powers. 2. An object of excessive attention or reverence. 3. Fixation.'[83] The back of the CD jacket is another close-up of Jett's back showing the CD's tracks and a tattoo of a flaming heart on Jett's lower back. The CD is printed in blue and black. On Jett's web page, the surfer gains access to the definition of fetish by clicking onto the performer's neck tattoo. Throughout the song 'Fetish,' Jett sings to
her lover that 'you are my fetish.' Her lover's body functions as an object of reverence as well as desire. The s/m scene is thus transformed into a spiritual as well as sexual experience. I am not arguing that Jett would necessarily endorse Hart's psychoanalytical understanding of the s/m scene, although the evidence suggests that she would agree that it represents a form of sex as an offensive weapon. When contextualized within Jett's career, it is plausible that she understands s/m as operating within that space that Hart identifies as the real. As such, the violence in the s/m scene is not to restrain bodies but, rather, to violate systems of representation. If placed within the context of Jett's gender and sexual performances of the 1980s and 1990s, the system of representation threatened by Baby Blue's sexual explorations is the
sexual and gender binaries of compulsory heterosexuality.[84]
Throughout this article, I have argued that JOAN JETT's performances of female masculinity are not mere imitations of the rock 'n' roll boy's machismo, although Jett is certainly influenced by his posturing. Instead, I have suggested that Jett's performance of female masculinity enabled her to poke fun at rock music's traditional images of female sexuality, even as she struggled to define for herself a place in rock music. Jett's play with gender signifiers demonstrated that even in the early 1980s, before she took an explicitly feminist stance, she defined that struggle as a battle over the terms of female sexuality and appropriate gender behavior. She explicitly politicized that struggle in the early 1990s as her collaboration with the riot grrrls led her to ambivalently embrace feminism and directly engage with such feminist issues as abortion rights and violence against women. Both "Fetish" and "Baby Blue" celebrate the search for sexual perfection and suggest that that search will lead inevitably to what Jett describes as 'extreme' sexual situations. Both songs imply that it is on the edge of sexual deviancy that transcendence will occur. It is possible to read JOAN JETT's latest incarnation as a retreat into the most hedonistic and individualistic aspects of rock 'n' roll culture. However, influenced by the riot grrrls and their reinterpretations of women's sexuality, she is able to make explicit sexual personas that could only exist in bits and pieces behind the ironic play of gender signifiers in previous works. Jett's s/m aesthetic is influenced by punk and the riot grrrls' efforts to make sex and the body an offensive weapon that could expose the symbolic order of patriarchal violence.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Marc Richards for his comments on an earlier version of this article and students at Western Washington University who were willing to engage in intellectual discussions about JOAN JETT, rock music and the 'riot grrrls,' especially Stephanie O'Dell, Bailey Ki, Megan Gibbard, and Jennifer Fletcher, all of whom actually read this article.
Notes
[1] JOAN JETT, KENNY LAGUNA, Ritchie Cordell and Marty Kupersmith (1980) "Bad Reputation" (Jett Pack Music-BMI), recorded on Bad Reputation (Boardwalk
Records, 1980).
[2] Ibid.
[3] JOAN JETT, quoted in Gillian G. Garr (1992) She's A Rebel: the history of women in rock & roll, p. 221 (Seattle: Seal Press). Throughout her career, Jett has rejected feminism as too exclusive. Likewise, Chrissie Hynde has expressed hostility to feminism. See Chrissie Hynde (1996), interviewed by Andrea Juno in Angry Women in Rock: volume one, pp. 190-203 (New York: Juno Books).
[4] Jett's portfolio was recently featured in Money Magazine (July 2000) and BLACKHEART RECORDS was recently featured on CNN Business News.
[5] Simon Reynolds & Joy Press (1995) The Sex Revolts: gender rebellion and rock 'n' roll, p. 244 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). See also, Garr (1992) She's a Rebel, pp. 220-221 and 336-337; and Lucy O'Brien (1995) She Bop: the definitive history of women in rock, pop, and soul, pp. 120-122 (New York: Penguin).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Judith Halberstam (1998) Female Masculinity, p. 9 (Durham: Duke University Press).
[8] Joanne Gottlieb & Gayle Wald (1993) Smells Like Teen Spirit: riot grrrls, revolution, and women in independent rock, Critical Matrix, 7(2), pp. 11-43; and Lauraine Leblanc (1999) Pretty in Punk: girls' resistance in a boys' subculture, pp. 33-64 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).
[9] Chrissie Hynde, quoted in Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, p. 40.
[10] Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, pp. 33-64.
[11] Perhaps the most obvious example of this problem was the infamous poster used to advertise Blondie's first tour. The poster showed a picture of Debbie Harry with the words, 'Wouldn't You Like To Rip Her To Shreds' printed across her body. 'I was furious when I saw that fuckin' ad!' Harry explained, 'I told them not to fuckin' put it out anymore - and they didn't.' See Amy Raphael (1994) Grrrls: viva rock divas, p. XX (New York: St Martins Press).
[12] Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, p. 50.
[13] I have pieced together the story of The RUNAWAYS' origin from a number of sources. See Len Epand (1987) jacket notes, The Best of the RUNAWAYS (PolyGram Records); Lisa Fancher (1976) Are You Young and Rebellious Enough to Love the RUNAWAYS? in Evelyn McDonnell & Ann Powers (Eds) (1995) Rock She Wrote: women write about rock, pop and rap, pp. 284-290 (New York: Delta Books); JOAN JETT (1996), interviewed by Andrea Juno in Angry Women in Rock: volume one, pp. 68-81; and Lerry Lee Williams (1998) Introduction, in Cool Jett, JOAN JETT interviewed by Tamara Conniff, Seconds Magazine, 46, pp. 14-15.
[14] Ibid.
[15] JOAN JETT & Kim Fowley (1976) "Cherry Bomb" (Pera Music/Jett Pack Music-BMI, recorded on The RUNAWAYS (PolyGram Records, 1976).
[16] B. Bizeau (1977) "Queens of Noise," recorded on Live From Japan (Polydor KK, 1977).
[17] Cherie Currie (1986) The Cherie Currie Story, p. 61 (Los Angeles: Price,Stein, Sloan); and Fancher, 'Are You Young and Rebellious Enough to
Love the RUNAWAYS?' p. 287.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Christopher Connelly (1982) JOAN JETT Has the Last Laugh, Rolling Stone,29 April, p. 47.
[20] JOAN JETT (1998) Cool Jett, interviewed by Tamara Conniff, Seconds Magazine, 46, p. 15.
[21] JOAN JETT (1997) Interview with Joan, interviewed by Tom DiNardo, The Blackheart Fan Club Newsletter, Fall, p. 5.
[22] Both Fox and Currie left the band after the Japan tour. Apparently unhappy with Fowley's handling of the band, the remaining members fired him soon after. After Currie's departure, Jett took over most of the vocals and much of the song writing. The band replaced Fox with Vickie Blue and later Laurie McCallister. On their final album, Little Lost Girls, Ford played most of the bass tracks. For Fox's reasons for leaving the band, see Jackie Fox (1998), interviewed by Traci Sirotti, Queens of Noise Website: http://members.tripod.com/~Cherry_B/Jackie.html
[23] JOAN JETT (1992) The Jett Age, directed by Nick Kop (Blackheart Home Video). Once Currie left The RUNAWAYS, Jett was unwilling to perform "Cherry Bomb" and was rumored to have once shouted to a crowd who chanted for the song that 'the blond in the corset is gone.' Yet, she revived the song for her 1984 album, Glorious Years of a Misspent Youth, and she now includes the song in her sets. Recent history has reinscribed "Cherry Bomb" as Jett's signature song and as an important part of the history of women in rock. In the 1990s, all-female punk bands like Bratmobile have covered the song and Jett performed the song with L7 to benefit Rock for Choice. "Cherry Bomb" has come to signify a historical continuity between the Jett-led RUNAWAYS of the 1970s and the musical resurgence of femaledominated rock and punk bands of the early 1990s. In part because of "Cherry Bomb's" endurance, The RUNAWAYS are now credited by the rock
press as the precursor to the all-woman punk bands of the 1990s. The video that eventually accompanied Jett's version of "Cherry Bomb" pre-dates but ultimately reinforces this historical reading of the song. The video is a compilation of images of Jett performing in a black bodysuit and leopardskin gloves and of Jett signing copies of her album, Glorious Years of a Misspent Youth. At the signing, young women, many of whom have borrowed Jett's look, wait in long lines for Jett's signature. The subtle point made by the video is that Jett has become a role model for young women.
[24] Currie, Neon Angel, pp. 29-107; and Cherie Currie interview, Queens of Noise Website: http://members.tripod.com/~Cherry_B/cherie.html
[25] Queens of Noise Website: http://members.tripod.com/~kensternation/runaib/Queens.html
[26] Jett interviewed by Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' pp. 15-18; and JOAN JETT interviewed by Ingrid Sischy (1994) 'Cool Jett: the women-in-rock revolution,' Interview, October, p. 161.
[27] Connelly, 'JOAN JETT Has the Last Laugh,' p. 47; For a discussion of the violence that sometimes accompanied her efforts to play rock music, see Mim Udovitch (1994) Mothers of Invention, Rolling Stone, 692, p. 49.
[28] Debbie Harry, Chris Stein & Victor Bockris (1981) Making Tracks: the rise of Blondie, p. 75 (New York: Da Capo Press).
[29] Jett, The Jett Age.
[30] Rock's Latest Leading Lady Earns Her Stripes with a Hard Look and a Hit Song, People Weekly, 27 December-3 January 1982, p. 32.
[31] Connelly, 'JOAN JETT Has the Last Laugh,' p. 47.
[32] Michael Hill (1984) JOAN JETT: no sweat, High Fidelity, 34, p. 91.
[33] J. Hooker & A. Merrill, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," recorded on I Love Rock 'n' Roll (Boardwalk Records, 1981).
[34] This line is Robin Roberts's; see Robin Roberts (1996) Ladies First: women in rock videos, p. 65 (Jackson: University of Mississippi).
[35] JOAN JETT (1981) "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," directed by Arnold Levine in Nick Kop, director, The Jett Age.
[36] Hooker & Merrill, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."
[37] Gary Glitter & Mike Leander (1971) "'Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" (Duchess Music Corporation/MCA-BMI), recorded on Bad Reputation
(Boardwalk Records, 1980).
[38] Ellen Handy (1986) Notes on Criticism: art and transactionalism, Arts Magazine, 61, p. 51.
[39] See computer generated jacket notes, JOAN JETT (1992) Bad Reputation (BLACKHEART RECORDS).
[40] Robin Roberts argues that this type of self-reflexivity is the 'key to feminism in music videos.' The most common devices that women use to critique patriarchal institutions in their videos are humor and irony. Roberts, Ladies First, pp. 3-31.
[41] JOAN JETT (1995) "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)," The Jett Age: part II, (Blackheart Home Video).
[42] Handy, 'Notes on Criticism,' p. 51; and T. James & P. Lucia (1968) "Crimson and Clover" (Longitude Music, BMI), recorded on I Love Rock 'n' Roll.
[43] James & Lucia, "Crimson and Clover."
[44] JOAN JETT (1982) "Crimson and Clover," directed by David Mallet in Nick Kop, director, The Jett Age.
[45] The most likely explanation for the video ambiguity is that Jett's concerns over media censorship and marketing dictated the video's direction. Rock videos are, in essence, marketing tools that sell records. It is not unreasonable to assume that Jett and her handlers would keep the song's lesbian content undercover, so to speak. "Crimson and Clover" is not her only song that suggests a lesbian relationship, as Jett's cover of "Too Bad on Your Birthday" retains the original lyrics. The song is thus transformed into a lesbian seduction song in which Jett, the jilted lover, attempts to win back a former lover who has just been jilted by her most recent male lover. See Artie Resnick, Karp (1980) "Too Bad on Your Birthday" (Medulla Music/-ASCAP/Benji Music Co-BMI), recorded on Bad Reputation (Boardwalk Records, 1980).
[46] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991) Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press).
[47] J. Jett, K. Laguna, R. Byrd, & M. Winter Jr (1982) "The French Song" (Jett Pack Music-BMI), recorded on Album (Blackheart/MCA, 1983).
[48] Ibid.
[49] JOAN JETT (1983) "The French Song," directed by David Mallet in Nick Kop, director The Jett Age.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid. By exposing the hidden financial exchange behind the pornographic fantasy, Jett is reminding the viewer that the women perform for themselves, in this case for their financial gain, not for the viewer. When placed within the context of how lesbian fantasies function in mainstream pornography, the video also underscores the transparency of the male fantasy that lesbian sex is for their prurient interest.
[52] Jett, interviewed in Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' p. 17.
[53] Jett, interviewed by Juno, Angry Women in Rock: volume one, p. 72.
[54] Many of the bands categorized as riot grrrls have also objected to constructing a gendered form of music. See Kathleen Hanna (1996) Kathleen Hanna: Bikini Kill. Interviewed by Andrea Juno in Angry Women in Rock: volume one, pp. 82-103.
[55] Gottlieb & Wald, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' n. 13, p. 41; and Jacket notes, 'Rock for Choice,' Spirit of '73 (Sony Music Entertainment, 1995). Lallapolooza was a large summer tour featuring many of the 'grunge' bands of the early 1990s. The tour integrated liberal political issues and rock music. Rock for Choice, a pro-choice organization, was an organization founded by members of L7 and Sue Cummings. It has since become part of the Feminist Majority. Throughout the early 1990s, Jett, Kathleen Hanna
and 'grunge' and riot grrrl bands held concerts to raise money for prochoice groups. They also put out a CD, Spirit of '73, of remade songs from the 1970s to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
[56] Gottlieb & Wald, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," pp. 12-43; also Gayle Wald (1998) Just a Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female
Youth, Signs, 23, pp. 585-610; Emily White (1992) Revolution Girl Style, LA Weekly, July, pp. 10-16.
[57] Jett, interviewed by Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' p. 17.
[58] JOAN JETT (1985) "Activity Grrrl" (Jett Pack Music, BMI), recorded on Pure and Simple (Warner Brothers, 1994).
[59] Jett interviewed by Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' p. 161; and JOAN JETT (1997) I Think I'm Gonna Be a Really Energetic Older Woman, interviewed by Ute Beginn, JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS: Official JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS Fan Club Newsletter, Winter, p. 7.
[60] The Original Riot Grrrl, Rolling Stone, 678 (1998), p. 44.
[61] Cynthia Rose (1996) The Art of Self-defense - driven by the killing of singer Mia Zapata, Home Alive fights back with a star-studded CD, Seattle Times, 1 March. See also, Valerie Agnew (1996) Valerie Agnew: 7 year bitch, interviewed by Andrea Juno in Angry Women in Rock: volume one, pp. 111-116.
[62] Jett, interviewed by Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' p. 181.
[63] JOAN JETT & Kathleen Hanna (1994) "Go Home" (Lagunatic Music & Filmworks/House of Odin Music BMI), recorded on Pure and Simple.
[64] For Jett's interpretation of the song, see Jett, interviewed by Juno, Angry Women in Rock: volume one, p. 75. Jett argues that the song is about 'taking responsibility for yourself.'
[65] JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS (1995) "Go Home," The Jett Age: part II.
[66] Jett, 'JOAN JETT,' interviewed by Juno, Angry Women in Rock: volume one, p. 75.
[67] Agnew, interviewed by Juno, Angry Women in Rock: volume one, p. 113.
[68] Bratmobile (1992) "Panik," recorded on pottymouth (Kill the Rock Stars, 1992).
[69] 'The Original Riot Grrrl,' p. 44.
[70] Jett, interviewed by Conniff, 'Cool Jett,' pp. 17-18.
[71] S.S. Fair (1999) The Prima Leatherina: that would be JOAN JETT of course, New York Times Magazine, 9 September, pp. 91-98.
[72] Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, p. 37. Leblanc argues that fashion was the key mechanism by which punks expressed their dissatisfaction with contemporary culture. According to Leblanc, punks used fashion to turn cultural symbols against themselves. Punks glorified whatever was low status (dog collars), sexually perverse (bondage gear), banal (fake leopard
skin) or degenerate (rubber clothes). Punks also subverted tradition (tartan kilt), conformity (school uniform) or authority (police or military uniforms) in their choice of clothing. By focusing on clothing and body art, such as piercing and tattoos, punks reconstructed their bodies as the antithesis of middle-class commercial culture.
[73] Fetish is not really a 'new' CD. Instead, it contains rereleases of some of Jett's most sexually explicit songs. Besides "Fetish," the only other previously unreleased song is "Baby Blue." Jett has a new album allegedly 'in the can' but legal wrangling with Warner Brothers has apparently kept the album from being released.
[74] JOAN JETT (1997) Track by Track, JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS: Official JOAN JETT and BLACKHEARTS Fan Club Newsletter, Fall, p. 9.
[75] JOAN JETT (1997) "Fetish," (Jett Pack Music), recorded on Fetish (BLACKHEART RECORDS, 1999).
[76] Lynda Hart (1994) Fatal Women: lesbian sexuality and the mark of aggression, p. ix (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
[77] Lynda Hart (1998) Between the Body and the Flesh: performing sadomasochism, pp. 68-70 (New York: Columbia University Press).
[78] Ibid., p. 150.
[79] Ibid., p. 151.
[80] Jett, 'Track by Track,' p. 9.
[81] JOAN JETT & Kathleen Hanna (1997) "Baby Blue" (Lagunatic Music and Filmworks, BMI/House of Odin Music), recorded on Fetish.
[82] Ibid.
[83] JOAN JETT (1999) Fetish.
[84] Hart, Between the Body and the Flesh, p. 68.
KATHLEEN KENNEDY is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA (kkennedy@cc.wwu.edu). She has published several articles on US women's history and feminist theory. Her book, Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: women and subversion during World War I (1999), was published by Indiana University Press (1999). She is currently co-editing an anthology on the just woman warrior to be published by Syracuse University Press.
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