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Sex, leather and rock 'n' roll
from: thejournalnews.com
by Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
The heart-patterned string bikini top JOAN JETT is wearing hides nothing, but there isn't anything to be ashamed of anyway. At 47, she is enviably slim, with 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, talking about her new album, "SINNER." She brings her spiky-haired bandmates, the BLACKHEARTS, to Irving Plaza for a sold-out show Sunday.
Coming off a headlining gig on the summer's Warped Tour, Jett knows few female artists are fortunate to be in as much demand.
"Maybe if I looked older, people would be a lot nastier," says Jett, who attributes her age-defying appearance to good genes and sunscreen.
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 toughneck 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, bringing Jett a string of hits that not only remain a staple of stadium sporting events and nightclubs but have also made her an inadvertent feminist icon.
"I'm a fan too," she says, 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. "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."
It has 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.
"SINNER," Jett's first album in seven years, which has received mostly positive reviews. Half of the songs date back to the '90s, including the sludgy S&M headbanger "Fetish" and the call-and-response Riot Grrrl-meets-rocker "Five," which she wrote 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.
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.
Jett lives in Long Beach, 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 in "Cabaret." Jett's trademark shaggy hair, a version of which she wears today, was originally inspired by Minnelli.
At 19, after the RUNAWAYS broke up, she met KENNY LAGUNA, a producer and songwriter who had 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," her first hit, was one of the first songs they wrote together. 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."
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."
Jett fuel
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