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NO SIGNS OF JETT LAG:
JOAN JETT plays Taste of the Quad-Cities
from: Sean Moeller
JOAN JETT has always carried with her a reputation of being wild and nasty. She falls in line somewhere between the girl next door and the girl interrupted.
Her jagged spikes of punk black hair and the tattoos wrapping around her left bicep are outwardly visual signs of her inner coiling. She's dangerous, they warn you. Approach cautiously, but only if necessary. But then she has the forbidden allure of the woman who can't be bothered with her beauty. She's a zesty, rock 'n' roll knockout at an age (politely undisclosed) when the rock and the look have, for most women, been subdued or unkindly disrupted by everything else that happens when college life backs into the real thing.
She has never had any misgivings about being jawbreaker-tough and still being a woman for everything it's worth. She speaks her mind politically, has been a member of the unofficial "boy's club" since she released "Bad Reputation" on her own BLACKHEART RECORDS in 1977 and has never felt the need to cater to the predestined order of things.
"She can let it all hang out," longtime musical collaborator and friend KENNY LAGUNA said. "When Joan started, there weren't that many women who weren't taught to be dainty. They were taught to be clean and that the boys were able to play in the mud."
Jett's parents made sure she never felt there was a path reserved for her. Instead, they let her tinker with her own desires, ones that led her to making music that has backbone and is held together with conviction, not cleavage.
"I think it's like that in all walks of life," Laguna says of the way girls are forced into roles. "Her parents were supportive of everything she did. They always told her that she shouldn't be caught in stereotypes. They were very clear about not giving her limitations.
"In my life, I've seen this dramatic change. But I still find myself thinking like that at times. My daughter wants to play drums and I told her, 'You shouldn't be a drummer. Why don't you play the guitar … folk guitar?'"
Jett, along with Pat Benatar and Blondie's Debbie Harry, allowed women the choice of rebellion over content role-playing. Without her snarly songs that got all but ignored by every label in the world when the two were actively seeking a deal in the late '70s, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs might not be such a showwoman today. She might still have to be sipping her cocktails petitely from a glass rather than letting them dribble down the front of her shirt as she squirms on stage.
Her albums have been self-released throughout and, in 1982, Jett earned a No. 1 hit single with "I Love Rock 'n Roll." She's had three Top 10 records listed on the Billboard charts in her career and seven other songs have made the list, the last being "I Hate Myself For Loving You" in 1989.
"It was impossible to get a record deal," Laguna said. "Thank God though, because now we own the rights to 'I Love Rock 'n Roll.'"
That song was recently covered by Britney Spears on her second-to-last record and used in the movie "Crossroads," to Jett and Laguna's chagrin. Spears, at the time, when asked why she chose the song for her album said, "I love Pat Benatar."
"I don't think Joan's ever heard it," Laguna said. "We don't understand how she (Spears) could sing that lyric. It's always depressing to us. We would like the song to stand for more than Rolexes and Rolls Royces."
Although involved with punkvoter.com, an organization founded by Fat Mike of punk icons NOFX and owner of Fat Wreck Chords to encourage youth voting, Jett has kept her political leanings quiet and never discusses her warzone concerts or visits. She was the first non-military person into East Germany after the Berlin Wall was knocked down. She was also the first into Afghanistan to perform for the troops.
Laguna has been with her on each visit and said that he initially wanted her to keep her affiliations secretive.
"We really kept it quiet for a long time. I was always against Joan being public with her political views," Laguna said. "My parents were very left wing and when Frank Sinatra came out that he was a Republican, they didn't want his records in the house anymore. I thought that if they could do that with somebody they really loved … We want to be liked by Republicans and Democrats."
Laguna has a longer history of visiting soldiers than Jett does, having been performing in battlefield situations since the Vietnam War.
"I was drafted, but I had a hit record and in those days you could make a deal," he said about serving his time in Vietnam as an entertainer. "The real reason we go over there so much is because she has a love affair with the troops. When we first started going, we got friendly with the kids and now some of them are in the Pentagon.
The trips haven't all been quiet.
"We've been under fire many times. In Afghanistan a couple years ago, they were firing at us as we were coming in. It's pretty intense. But we always felt that those guys covered our asses over there."
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