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At 47, rock icon Jett still 'proving myself'
from: azcentral
by Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer
RALEIGH, N.C. - The sun has come out on a rainy Warped Tour afternoon, and JOAN JETT has things to do.
First of all, the ripped, ageless rocker needs her vegan pre-show meal. That'll be a Taco Bell rice-and-bean burrito, please, and there'd better not be any cheese on that.
Then she has to make her way from her backstage tour bus to the main stage - one of 10 stages - where she and her band, the BLACKHEARTS, will be headlining the traveling carnival.
"I've got to check my gear," shouts Jett, hopping off the tour bus in camouflage pants and the stringiest of string-bikini tops. "The Buzzcocks are going to be on in 10 minutes!"
Getting there may be a little tricky. Neither she nor KENNY LAGUNA, her manager, songwriting partner and self-described "valet to the queen of rock and punk," knows exactly where the stage is, only that it lies somewhere across a rain-soaked field of pierced teenagers.
"How will you get there, how do you know where to go?" he asks, worried. This question proves unworthy of an answer. Jett puts on shades, pulls on a pair of leather gloves, and hops on a BMX bike borrowed from her Warped cohorts, the Bouncing Souls, and she's gone, the black heart tattoo on her back disappearing in the distance.
There's a third thing on Jett's agenda, something the singer, born 47 years ago, calls "my life's work," something that has come naturally ever since she fronted the RUNAWAYS' all-female teenage band in the 1970s, but that still, after 30 years, she needs to do each time she straps on a guitar.
"I have to prove myself," she says. "Every time. Because I'm a girl that plays rock and roll."
This summer, Jett, who's best known for raw, rugged '80s hits such as Crimson and Clover and I Hate Myself for Loving You, has ample opportunity.
The femme-rock icon has a new, startlingly vital album called SINNER, released on her own Blackheart label. It reveals that, in addition to looking and sounding as good as she did a generation ago, Jett has gotten better at writing and choosing crunchy rock songs that fool around with issues of sexual identity, such as her glam-rock cover of the Sweet's AC/DC, whose video features Carmen Electra as Jett's lover.
As Jett's stature as a mainstream rock star faded, her standing as a heroine to young female rockers grew.
Kathleen Hanna, formerly of riot-grrl pioneers Bikini Kill and current leader of electro-pop feminists Le Tigre, co-wrote four songs with Jett on SINNER. Before she was a collaborator, she was a fan.
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"I remember being in the car the first time I heard Crimson and Clover," Hanna says. "Her vocal was so good, it was just dripping. And the other thing is, she didn't change the pronoun. In terms of gender, I was really excited, and confused."
That's Jett's intention. She has never made a public statement about her sexual orientation. But when she performs in Raleigh - decked out now in a studded, black-leather bikini top - she draws a large lesbian contingent among her demographically diverse crowd.
"I like to sing to everybody," she says. "I think it's important to keep the fantasy alive. Every guy could think I'm singing to them, and every girl could think I'm singing to them."
Hanna's enthusiasm for Jett's primal rock and roll knows no bounds.
"She's like a little Sex Pistols, a little Clash and a little Jonathan Richman mixed with Liza Minnelli and Suzi Quatro, and poured into a skintight leather jumpsuit," Hanna says.vv
On SINNER, Jett covers Paul Westerberg's Androgynous and plays around with such songs as Everyone Knows, which turns out to be about having a preference for bondage gear.
"I was a huge Bowie fan, and I always respected that he embraced both sides of himself," she says. "I'm a girl, but I'm not a frilly girl, and I've never been one. So I tend to walk that line, just down the middle.
"I embrace my male side, and it doesn't make me feel any less woman at all."
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