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I Love Rock and Roll
from: curvemag.com
by Margaret Coble
Photographer: Cory Smith
Since starting her own independent label in order to self-release her debut solo album in 1981, which went on to make her an international star with the 1982 hit "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll," JOAN JETT has sold millions of records worldwide and has toured relentlessly, all the while helming BLACKHEART RECORDS, now celebrating its 25th anniversary. She’s produced scores of bands, from 80s-era punk rockers the Germs to 90s riot grrls Bikini Kill to recent garage-punk discoveries the Eyeliners and the Vacancies. She’s collaborated with everyone from the Sex Pistols to Peaches; starred in numerous films and television shows; appeared on Broadway in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and just recently became a radio DJ on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Little Steven’s Underground Garage Network. There’s not really much Jett hasn’t done.
Except, of course, talk openly about her sexuality. Even though she allegedly — or at least subtly — came out in a magazine article in the 1990s and is often referred to as "openly lesbian" in the press, Jett has as recently as this spring stated that she has never publicly issued a statement about her sexuality. She openly flirts with her lesbian fans at concerts, sports a "Dykes Rule" sticker on her guitar and even played an intimate gig at this year’s Dinah Shore Weekend, but she still refuses to field questions on the topic. On the day I called for our phone interview, her only interest was in talking about her new 15-track album, SINNER.
Jett does, however, have a history of speaking her mind via her lyrics, both subtly and overtly, and SINNER’s no different. Like her earliest hit "Bad Reputation" and many after it, several songs on SINNER reveal Jett’s thoughts on topics political, sexual and of the heart. And though much of SINNER is not technically "new" — the bulk of the album appeared on the 2004 Japanese-only CD Naked, which has since been remastered or re-recorded for this release — the vast majority of its material has never been widely released to her U.S. audience, making it new to the ears of all but the most diehard fans. As a body of work, it paints an intriguing picture of the notorious badass who’s still rocking just as steady and hard as she has for the last 25 years, but is also perhaps maturing a bit, taking some time to reflect on where and who she’s been and turning an eye to the future.
Jett is in the studio finalizing the last tracks on SINNER when I get her on the phone. Her writing and producing partner of 25 years, KENNY LAGUNA, can be heard cracking jokes in the background.
"It is great," she says, laughing, referring to her relationship with Laguna. "It’s like any close relationship; you go through arguments and stuff. But I’m also trying to grow up past that stuff. You gotta remember, we’ve both been doing this since we were teenagers. We’re both arrested adolescents."
It’s hard to imagine what the course of rock ’n’ roll history might have been had Jett not decided as a teenager to pick up a guitar, drop out of school and form the RUNAWAYS. Jett, too, has no idea what she would have done.
"I can’t really even imagine," she says, thinking back. "After the RUNAWAYS broke up, I briefly entertained the thought of joining the military, because I was so lost. I was out of it, depressed because my world just ended. The RUNAWAYS meant so much to me. People were just laughing at it, and saying, ’We told you it wouldn’t work.’ And I just thought, I need to get my shit together. At least here I’ll get my butt kicked and maybe it’ll give me time to think, and I’ll learn a little bit of something. But then I met Kenny and we started writing songs and my life took a different turn."
I know you all join me in saying, thank goodness it did.
It hasn’t been as easy ride, though. Despite all her success, Jett’s had to battle sexism every step of the way. "I don’t think a lot has changed in a long time," she says, reflecting on the state of the music industry today. Especially for females starting out, Jett notes, the industry is still a tough world. "Except a lot of the technology has changed, which I think may be to the girls’ advantage. They can actually get things out there to a wide audience without a record company now."
Still, she knows how hard it is. "Girls take a lot of shit. A girl who is a serious musician who wants to succeed is a threat. I’ve been spit on and had shit thrown at me, just for being a girl. And you can respond in two ways. Some girls say, ’Fuck this shit, I’m outta here. I don’t want to have to deal with this. It’s not worth my self-esteem.’ And I think that’s 100 percent valid, because it’s hard. You just have to make your own decision on what it is that you want to do. For me, I had to say, ’I’m not getting off this stage. I have just as much right to be on this stage as you do, and I’m not getting off.’"
That right there is the answer to the infamous question emblazoned on so many T-shirts: "What Would JOAN JETT Do?"
"I don’t really know what to think," Jett says about the shirt. "I’m flattered. I don’t really try to hold myself up as saying, ’Do what I do.’ What I do is OK for me, but you have to decide for yourself what’s right for you."
The topic turns to her new album, SINNER, which Jett is excited to talk about. As we go through the songs track by track, she says something that surprises me, even though I know she’s joking. I think.
"Wow, this is like a self-help album!" she laughs.
It’s not exactly what I expected the reigning queen of rock ’n’ roll to say about an album called SINNER — though, to be fair, she’s talking specifically about the song "Turn It Around," explaining that it’s about one’s tendency to lose oneself in others, especially during relationships. "It’s about getting your shit together, getting back to your own self." Jett sounds just as surprised as I am to hear herself talking like a new-age guru.
"I’m in this real sort of process now," she continues, moving on to "Naked," the title track to her recent Japanese CD, also included on SINNER. "I don’t know if you want to call it a spiritual thing or whatever, but I’m just trying to figure out what it means to be, to exist. Who am I? What does it mean?"
Aren’t we all. And yet, it’s strange to hear this from the same person who wrote — and who still sings, with just as much conviction as ever — "I don’t give a damn about my reputation," but this is clearly where Jett, now in her early 40s, is at in her life.
"’Naked,’ to me, is really about introspection. And looking at your own self. You keep peeling back the layers. It’s about when the denial for your own self doesn’t work anymore. When you can’t fool yourself anymore, and you know when you’re bullshitting people, when it’s just too real. You can apply that to any issue that you’re talking about on a personal level. It’s each person’s journey, I guess."
Wow.
Don’t, however, interpret these remarks to mean that SINNER is some woo-woo, navel-gazing, repenting-for-past-bad-behavior kind of confession. Far from it. Though Jett does get a little Zen-like on some songs, the same brash, outspoken Joan is there, too.
Take, for example, "Riddles," a new, politically bent collaboration with lesbian, superstar producer Linda Perry. "The state of our country and the way that we’re talked to, by our government … everything is very 1984," she says, getting audibly riled. "’Clean air’ means that you put shit in the air. ’Healthy forest’ means you cut it down and put roads in there. Everything is such a riddle. What the hell are they talking about?" The song ends cheekily with "riddle"-like samples of Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. It’s quite a bold statement.
Meanwhile, "Everyone Knows" is this album’s "fuck you" song. "This was pretty specifically kinda taking the piss outta the way people are always looking at ya," Jett explains. "I wear leather a lot, and I get a lot of weird looks. People just look at me. Even when I’m not wearing leather, when I don’t have makeup on, when I’m just regular. It’s just really weird sometimes."
It’s hard to consider what being "just regular" means for Jett, but I think that’s exactly what she wants us to realize — that she is.
"Five," one of four songs on SINNER co-written with Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna, deals with issues surrounding her sexuality. The lyrics "I’m falling over something/That I just can’t explain … You want me to/But I can’t define desire" seem pretty obvious to me. She goes on to ask, "Do you want me to come out/Ready or not/Do you want big proof/Is that what you need/Do you wanna watch me squirm/Do you wanna watch me bleed?"
"It’s about tabloidy sort of press, or just press that parade as real press but are always just looking for the sensationalism kind of things," she explains, stopping short of saying that the song refers to her sexuality. As usual, listeners will have to draw their own conclusions.
Jett’s inclusion of the Paul Westerberg classic "Androgynous," which has long been a staple of her live sets, offers perhaps the best summary of her relationship to both gender and sexuality. "I like what it says," she explains. "We all have these qualities — and we’re not even talking necessarily about gender. I don’t like to be pinned down."
There you have it.
There’s plenty more sexually provocative material on this album — from "Fetish," an explicit S/M song from the 1999 album of the same name which talks of latex, getting off, and having rough sex within the first verse, to the similarly S/M-vibed "Kiss on the Lips" and the retro bisexual romp "ACDC," a cover of Jett’s favorite glitter rock band, the Sweet. But it’s the new, softer, more contemplative side of Jett that I find most compelling. Maybe I’m showing my age, but if the two newest compositions, the aforementioned "Riddles" and her latest collaboration with the Vacancies, "Change the World," are any indication, I’d love to see what an album of all-new JOAN JETT material would sound like.
"By radiating as much light as you can, hopefully, you do your bit to change the world," Jett says, describing "Change the World." I can tell she’s not just talking about the song. "We’re all in this place together. We gotta deal with it. We don’t own this earth. Can we learn to not live hating each other? If you can change your own little world in your head, then maybe you can change the world. That’s really what it’s about."
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