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Her Life Is a Punk-Rock Workout,
and That’s the Way She Likes It
from: nytimes.com
by MARCELLE S. FISCHLER
WEARING a skimpy bikini top, low-slung black capri pants and high-top sneakers, JOAN JETT could have passed for a teenager as she swaggered along the boardwalk near her oceanfront condominium here. On the cusp of 49, Ms. Jett, the gravelly-voiced singer and guitarist who blazed a path for female rockers with her 1982 chart-topper "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll," wears bold eyeliner and has inky black hair, several tattoos, a creamy complexion and a taut physique.
A vegetarian who neither smokes nor drinks, she says, "most days I feel 25."
Though she bicycles on the boardwalk and whips off 50 sit-ups during television commercials, she says her toned, sinewy arms and washboard abs are mostly a result of her grueling performance schedule — about 200 concerts in the past year and a half.
"It’s so physical," Ms. Jett said, of her raucously exuberant act. She hasn’t let up on the punk-rock workouts since she was 15, when she teamed up with the brash all-girl group the RUNAWAYS, and changed the face of rock ’n’ roll.
"It was a lot about making it O.K. for other girls to do this," Ms. Jett recalled. "Girls play cello in symphonies, in orchestras, what do you mean they can’t play?"
The insinuation was that girls weren’t allowed to play rock ’n’ roll, "because it has a sexual nature," she said. "There is something dirty in it. There is some implication there that girls can’t handle it."
She has never stopped proving that she can.
At 9 p.m. on Friday, Ms. Jett and the BLACKHEARTS will headline the Metro NY Balloon & Music Festival at Brookhaven Calabro Airport in Shirley.
"If it’s a family situation, the only thing I do is I don’t swear," she said.
With the BLACKHEARTS, the band she formed in 1980 with the help of her longtime producer and song-writing partner, KENNY LAGUNA, her signature song, "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll" — originally recorded by an English group, the Arrows — soared to the top of the charts. She has had eight other Top-40 singles and eight platinum and gold LPs.
Ms. Jett’s latest album, "SINNER," was released last year, and she is the host of a show on Sirius Satellite Radio.
The age-defying rocker has been able to cross generational lines and, perhaps unexpectedly, bring families together. On last year’s Warped Tour, Ms. Jett said that "some kids were already fans," and parents and children who came together to see her "were grooving."
Ms. Jett, who was born in Philadelphia, later moved with her family to Rockville, Md., where she saw her first rock concerts, Black Sabbath and the New York Dolls. At 13, shortly after her family relocated to Southern California, she got a guitar for Christmas, taught herself to play and started hanging out at a Hollywood disco listening to the British glitter-rock sounds of David Bowie, the Sweet and T-Rex. She approached the rock producer Kim Fowley about forming an all-girl rock band. The RUNAWAYS lasted for three years, though they were more successful overseas than in America.
Ms. Jett, who had met Mr. Laguna on a song-writing project, moved to Long Beach along with him and his wife, Meryl, living for a while in the couple’s apartment. She recorded "I Love Rock ’n’ Roll" at a studio behind a strip mall in Syosset.
When she couldn’t get signed to a label, she and Mr. Laguna, who now lives in Rockville Centre, pressed the albums themselves and sold her music out of the trunk of her Cadillac.
Ms. Jett still gyrates with her guitar on stage, but a broader focus has crept into her lyrics. On her new album, the song "Naked" is about figuring out who she is "behind the name, behind what I do."
She wanted to write about more than "falling in love and sex," she said. "Riddles," a song she wrote with Mr. Laguna, is about politics. "Change the World" has a spiritual focus.
Still, the album includes a song called "Fetish," and for her version of the Sweet’s "A.C.D.C," Ms. Jett made a provocative music video with Carmen Electra. Ms. Jett said she could relate to "Androgynous," the Paul Westerberg tune she recorded on the album and in a separate music video, about being tolerant of people who are different.
"I obviously don’t fit into that girlie-girl kind of mold," Ms. Jett said. She was planning to indulge in a facial on one of her few days off, though. "I like being a woman and I like wearing makeup, but I sort of have my own style."
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