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Rock ’n’ roll model
from: projo.com
by RICK MASSIMO, Journal Pop Music Writer
When JOAN JETT’s version of "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll" first assaulted the top 40, it was a breath of fresh air throughout the sodden pop world of 1982. But it was also a signal to women and girls that they could pick up guitars and blast away as loudly as any of the boys.
She wasn’t the first woman rocker of the era — Chrissie Hynde had been changing minds with The Pretenders, and the American New Wave scene was relatively equal-opportunity. And it wasn’t Jett’s recorded debut — she’d founded the all-female RUNAWAYS while still a teenager. But Jett’s pop visibility (the song was number one for eight weeks), uncompromising rock sound and attitude forced the discussion forward a few steps.
At 47, Jett’s an elder stateswoman of rock ’n’ roll, whose influence can be heard and felt throughout the music business. Not only has the road of every woman who’s picked up a guitar been made a little easier, but since the major record labels of the time wouldn’t put out her music, her hit singles ("I Love Rock ’n’ Roll," "Crimson and Clover," "Do You Wanna Touch Me") were all on her own BLACKHEART RECORDS label.
She was the first woman performer to start her own record label, and her success undoubtedly helped pave the way for record companies run out of the basements and garages of women and men for decades since.
Some things have changed since then, but it’s funny to see, and hear, how many have stayed the same for Jett, who will play in Newport Friday for the Snapple Sunset Music Festival (Thursday through July 8).
Last year, Jett put out SINNER, her first new record in 10 years, and the elements of the Jett sound — her brash bray of a voice, the crunch of her guitar — are still in place. She gets help from Kathleen Hanna, of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, on five songs, and it’s probably her most engaged record so far.
The opening cut, "Riddles," is her first openly political song, with mocking sound bites from Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.
"I’D BEEN WANTING to write about other subjects besides love and sex and relationships," Jett says about "Riddles," "and looking for the subjects for years. But it was never what I wrote about; to broach those subjects seemed very scary. I didn’t want to come off preachy and corny, so I didn’t know how to approach it. It had to come from a real gut-level place, so I guess I had to wait for it to ferment in there for a while."
Songs such as "Naked" and the sexually ambiguous "Everybody Knows" and "A.C.D.C." (Jett’s known to be unwilling to talk about her personal life, but there’s not a lot of mystery over what these songs are about), while perhaps not explicitly political, take on the world in a larger sense than much of Jett’s earlier work. "Sometimes I think just being a woman playing rock ’n’ roll is political," Jett says, "so everything I do is political in a way."
She saw the resistance she got for picking up a guitar at age 13 as hypocritical. "Number one, it’s rock ’n’ roll. Number two, it’s America, the land of the free. Give me a break. It’s so hypocritical, and that kind of drives you, and it puts some meaning into the music."
SINNER’s got something else in common with I Love Rock ’n’ Roll — Jett and the BLACKHEARTS released it themselves.
In a separate conversation, KENNY LAGUNA, Jett’s manager, producer and bandmate from the beginning, explains that for 10 years, he, Jett and the rest of the band recorded songs for Warner Bros., and for 10 years they got caught up in record-company shuffles, with new presidents coming in and out of the label and suggesting new producers, some of whom worked out better than others, Laguna says. But for various reasons, for a decade Jett couldn’t get a record out.
According to Laguna, they didn’t need the money. Hits such as "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll" and "Bad Reputation" are still getting played around the world, and their iconic place in ’80s-rock history has led to their placement in many movies, including Shrek and Charlie’s Angels. But "emotionally, it was really hard. We kept making these records that, in a different situation, would’ve been hits."
JETT SAYS THERE WAS another reason to keep on.
"What else would you do? I guess it depends. If you’ve got these other things, and you say, ‘Oh man, this music is really keeping me from doing these other things,’ then yeah. And a lot of people I’ve worked with tend to slow down because they might start families, and they can’t really manage the things at the same time. Which I totally understand, and would probably want to do the same thing. But I’ve never had that, and I’ve always been on the road every year. It’s never been a situation where I’ve wanted to do anything else."
Finally, they decided to release the record themselves, just as they had done in 1982. But given that they’d had so much success going their own way the first time around, and seeing how the Internet has made the way even easier for independent record labels, what took them so long to go their own way?
"I wanted Joan to finish with the Yankees," Laguna says, apologizing to Red Sox fans for his baseball analogy. "We wanted to finish with this awesome organization – the organization that let Neil Young make all those nudnik records that weren’t going to sell, waiting for the ones that would. We kind of courted it, and maybe we lost our confidence a little."
But eventually they put out SINNER on their own BLACKHEART RECORDS label, struck a distribution deal to get the album in stores, cut out the middleman and began to control their own art and finances.
SINNER came out last year, and in many contexts that means it’s time to wrap up the tour and start working on the new record. For Jett and Laguna, it’s a little different.
"We worked three years to break ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me?’ and ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’," Laguna says, "and ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ took a year. So we’ve had that situation before. For us, it’s a brand-new record."
LAGUNA HAS STUCK with Jett through some lean times, playing on all her records, producing, managing and co-writing throughout the years. He says the secret is a lack of ego-driven battles.
"Let’s say I had an idea, and someone said ‘Oh, Joan had this great idea.’ That would never bother me," says Laguna, who says the end goal for Jett is classic-rock, Who-size status. "And some of my other friends who are in really big bands, the lead singer and the guitar player, they get into a thing over little things like that. And I’m always happy to see the light shine on her. And she is that way in reverse," he says, remembering times she’s fought his own ideas about bringing in other producers. "There’s no desire to prove that one of us could do better without the other one."
Jett says it’s satisfying to have disciples such as Hanna, and the affirmation that she got from young people of both genders at such youth-oriented events as last year’s Warped Tour is gratifying.
"That was one of the main things I wanted to do in my life with music. Beyond just wanting to have success and have hit records … I also really wanted to make it OK for girls to play.
"Girls can pose and stuff, but when you’re serious about picking up an instrument you start getting all these strange comments and nasty things being said. And I just didn’t get it when they said ‘Girls can’t play rock ’n’ roll.’ I said, ‘What do you mean? Girls can’t play the instruments? Girls play in symphony orchestras. Girls play Bach and Beethoven. What do you mean?’ You mean they’re not allowed to; it’s a social thing.
"Girls can’t play rock ’n’ roll because rock ’n’ roll is sexual. And you own your sexuality. And for girls to do that is a threatening thing. Pop music says, ‘You can do what you want with me.’ Rock ’n’ roll says, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do to you.’ And that’s scary to a lot of people, and they don’t know how to handle it."
SHE SAYS THE situation has gotten a little better, but not much.
"You still don’t see a lot of girls getting above club-level success. And there are girls playing rock ’n’ roll. Every city you go to has girls in bands, or all-girl bands. And they’re really good. So it’s just a matter of time for girls to figure out a way to break through." She hopes that judicious use of the Internet as a marketing tool, so helpful to small labels worldwide, will help women break out of the record-company model and find audiences for their own voices.
Jett credits her parents, who gave her her first guitar, with giving her the notion that she could do anything she set her mind to, regardless of gender roles. "I wanted to be an astronaut, an archaeologist — I wanted to be an actress before I started to play guitar. So I just believed I could do all those things.
"Now I see it was sort of unrealistic expectations to not get any resistance. But I had to have that sort of resistance, because when I see it from a distance now, I can see that I needed that to fuel me."
And even though she’s a rock role model, she says it’s important to keep an edge. "I guess you always want to feel like the underdog. And that’s kind of always been my position. I don’t really know any other way. … To be able to inspire people is the main thing, and have people have a good time at the same time. If you’re doing those two things, you’re doing your job. And it’s a great job to have."
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS play Friday night at the Snapple Sunset Music Festival, at the Newport Yachting Center, on America’s Cup Avenue, in Newport. Beyond Blonde opens the show at 7. Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 the day of the show. They can be had at the Newport Yachting Center box office, by calling (401) 846-1600, ext. 2, at www.newportfestivals.com and at all f.y.e. locations.
"Pop music says, ‘You can do what you want with me.’
Rock ’n’ roll says, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do to you.’ "
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