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Sex, Leather, Rock 'n' Roll It's a Matter of Reputation - Los Angeles Times
JOAN JETT still gets down and dirty. That seems to suit her.
from: latimes.com
by Susan Carpenter, Times Staff Writer, photos by Richard Hartog, LAT
At 47, JOAN JETT looks shockingly good. The heart-patterned string bikini top she is wearing hides nothing, but there isn't anything to be ashamed of anyway. She is enviably slim, with toned arms, a flat stomach and skin that is pale and unmarred except for a smattering of ink.
It's three hours until show time, and Jett is pacing her tour bus, fielding the last of the day's phone interviews. She's talking about her new album, "SINNER," and her current stint with the Warped Tour while she walks a narrow path of carpet between two heavily populated banquettes.
It's a wonder she can even concentrate. Her spiky-haired bandmates, the BLACKHEARTS, are breezing in and out, letting the dry Pomona heat into the overly air-conditioned bus. And her publicist, tour manager and label manager are also in the immediate vicinity, talking and tapping away on their laptops.
Outside, the echoes of competing metal-goth-punk bands waft through the air. A steady stream of young women stroll by toting parasols to protect their pale, tattooed body parts from the unforgiving sun, and rocker boys pedal past on miniature chopper-style bicycles, somehow managing to keep their skinny black pants in place halfway down their boxers.
Jett is unfazed by the flurry of activity. She finishes up her call and, without skipping a beat, takes a look at the day's concert schedule. The Warped lineup is, as it's always been in its 12-year history, heavily male. The handful of female-fronted bands are, for the most part, relegated to their own stage. Except for Jett, who was offered a spot as part of the tour's effort to show younger music fans where some of their current faves came from.
Keeping it vital
FEW female artists are fortunate to be in as much demand as Jett, more than 30 years into a rock 'n' roll career.
"Maybe if I looked older, people would be a lot nastier," says Jett, who attributes her age-defying appearance to good genes and sunscreen.
If there's a double standard when it comes to aging male rockers and female rockers, "We'll see," she says. "I'll probably be the template because I'm first."
In 1981, when she first came on the scene as a solo artist with the tramp anthem "Bad Reputation," Jett was an oddity. A sneering badass who proved estrogen wasn't an impediment to guitar virtuosity, she was a much-needed kick in the pants to Hall & Oates, Air Supply, Olivia Newton-John and the other soft-core acts dominating Top 40 radio at the time. She could just as easily have followed them to the scrap heap, but her tough girl, three-chord rockers resonated, scoring Jett a string of hits that not only remain a staple of stadium sporting events and nightclubs to this day but have also made her an inadvertent feminist icon.
"I'm a fan too," she says, downplaying her own status and citing newer acts such as Against Me and Anti-Flag, and older artists, including NOFX, Less Than Jake and the Germs, whose album "GI" she produced in 1979.
"To a degree, I guess my influence is there, but I guess that doesn't feel important to me," says Jett, who in person is far more gentle-spirited than her tattooed, leather-clad exterior would suggest. "It's more about the connection. It's not really about the influence. If you influence people to follow their dreams, that's great, whether it's in music or to be a nuclear physicist."
The timing of this year's Warped Tour has been fortuitous, syncing up, as it does, with a number of JOAN JETT milestones. It's been 30 years since her jailbait all-girl rock band the RUNAWAYS released their first hit single, "Cherry Bomb," and 25 years since her first solo release on BLACKHEART RECORDS, the label she co-founded after a demo tape with the tracks "I Love Rock 'n Roll," "Do You Want to Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)" and "Crimson and Clover," was rejected by 28 record companies.
In commemoration of the label's anniversary, BLACKHEART RECORDS is reissuing all of her albums this summer. Last month, the label also released "SINNER," Jett's first album in seven years, which has garnered mostly positive reviews. Entertainment Weekly suggested Jett be canonized, calling her new work "a winner, full of tracks brimming with sass, grit and totally ambrosial power-pop harmonies," while the Chicago Sun-Times gushed, "Jett has never sounded more vital."
Half of the songs on "SINNER" date back to the '90s, including the sludgy S&M headbanger "Fetish" and the call-and-response Riot Grrrl-meets-rocker "Five," which she penned with Bikini Kill and Le Tigre singer Kathleen Hanna. Others, such as the politically double-talking "Riddles" and her cover of the Sweet's sexual switch-hitter "A.C.D.C.," are new.
Jett's vocals haven't lost any of their sneer, and songs such as "Riddles" and "Five" are just as catchy as any of her previous chart toppers, but a girl with a guitar in her hands is no longer groundbreaking. Since June, when "SINNER" was released, the record hasn't been able to crack commercial radio, though it's getting good airplay on college radio and the video for the single "A.C.D.C.," starring Carmen Electra as a tease who's got "girls all over the world" and "men every now and then," is getting plenty of air time on VH1, Fuse and MTV2.
Jett may have been the first girl rocker, but she's got a triple bias working against her — from the music industry (which still doesn't sign a lot of female rock acts to major label record deals), commercial radio (which is showing a predilection for boys who rock and girls who sing cheesy ballads) and American culture (which favors the young and new over the experienced).
While decades older than the handful of females getting radio airplay, Jett is far from being a female Keith Richards. She doesn't drink or smoke. She is a vegetarian. She stays fit, she says, with sit-ups and other core strength exercises — a routine she maintains while on the road. Just how much of her unusually high energy level is due to the two quadruple-espresso soy lattes she drinks each day is unclear. More likely it is because Jett is a woman who still loves what she does for a living.
Willkommen
JETT lives in southern Long Island, where she spends her time playing with her four cats, reading Eastern philosophy books and riding her bike along the boardwalk. But she was a young teenager when she first got it in her head to perform. That's when she saw Liza Minnelli playing a sexually adventurous nightclub singer in the film "Cabaret." Jett's trademark shaggy hair, a version of which she wears today, was originally inspired by Minnelli.
Jett was a teenager and living in L.A when she got her first guitar and amp. The Sears Silvertone was a Christmas present from her parents. Music lessons followed, but Jett gave them up after her teacher tried to make her play "On Top of Old Smoky." The campfire tune just didn't cut it for a girl who was already listening to Black Sabbath, T. Rex, David Bowie and the Sweet, so she bought a guitar book and taught herself.
At 16, she was introduced to drummer Sandy West and co-founded the RUNAWAYS, where she was cast as the "tough girl" because she wore leather. The band got a lot of attention if not a lot of respect. After just three years, the group broke up.
It was around then that Jett was introduced to KENNY LAGUNA, a producer and songwriter who had also been one of the backup singers in Tommy James and the Shondells. Initially brought together to pen the soundtrack for a movie that never materialized, the two hit it off creatively.
"Bad Reputation" was one of the first songs they wrote together — the title track of her debut solo release, it was also her first hit. To listen to the reissue of "Bad Reputation," the record, is to hear the collision of two musical eras. It's the sound of Laguna's bubblegum meeting Jett's glitter rock and glam and getting a hard-rock makeover. The sound was honed on the JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS' follow-up, "I Love Rock-N-Roll," which spawned two more hits and started Jett on a career that would eventually make her a household name and an inspiration.
Playing to the fans
"I can't wait to see you rock!" Carmen Electra said, stepping her spiky-heeled boot onto Jett's tour bus. Since meeting at the girl-centric Dinah Shore Weekend back in April and filming the "A.C.D.C." video together, the two have stayed in touch. During the Warped Tour's Pomona stop, Electra was more or less omnipresent from the moment she got on the bus, took a seat at its small built-in table and dug into a plate of fried rice.
"I've been a fan forever," said the former Playboy centerfold, who recently separated from her husband of three years, guitarist Dave Navarro. "I'm so excited. I just think she's the coolest. I've always idolized her."
As do many women. Jett is credited as the inspiration for the Riot Grrrl movement of the early '90s, which had legions of third-wave feminists picking up guitars and making their own music. She is also something of a sex symbol among lesbians. Jett has never gone on the record about her sexuality. She lets her music do the talking, which, on "SINNER," seems especially female-focused.
"If I'm open about it musically, that's all you need to know," she says. "I like to have boundaries. It's my personal life. I just think that we almost live in a reality-mentality kind of world now and everybody likes to show everything they do. I like to sing to everybody. If I declare anything, then it kind of takes that away. I want everyone to think I'm singing to them."
An hour before show time, Jett disappears to the back of the bus, emerging 10 minutes later in a black-leather bustier and leather pants. She nibbles through a small peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then piles into the SUV that will take her to the Pomona Fairplex stage where she's performing.
Dropped at the edge of the concert site, Jett doesn't just walk, she swaggers past the legions of bug-eyed concert-goers, over the trampled grass littered with flattened water bottles and cans, finally arriving at her gear tent.
On the other side of the fence, a couple of dozen police officers are clustering in front of the stage, making the security guards nervous. But the cops aren't there to cause trouble. According to the security guard who approached them, they said, "We're just here to see JOAN JETT."
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