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Rebel with a cause: JOAN JETT champions women in music industry
from: gotorenotahoe.com
In some ways, JOAN JETT has lived three rock and roll lifetimes. In the '70s, she was a guitarist in the RUNAWAYS, one of the first all-women hard rock bands in the world. Then in the '80s, she was a pop music star with nine Top 40 hits and eight gold or platinum albums. Now she's both a live attraction, label owner and a legit DJ, on the other side of the "turntables" for a show on Sirius Radio.
Jett and her longtime backing band, the BLACKHEARTS, play a show Feb. 23 at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. Her last CD was "SINNER," released in 2006, and since its release sheÕs been headlining both her own tours as well as playing on the popular punk-oriented Warped Tour and sharing a bill with Alice Cooper and Motorhead in England.
That latest gig on satellite radio is for "JOAN JETTÕs Radio Revolution," one of the shows on Little Steven's Underground Garage channel on Sirius which was created by Bruce Springsteen guitarist "Little Steven" Van Zandt.
"That's been interesting, and different," Jett said in her official biography of the radio show. "I never aspired to it. I'm really kind of shy, so for me to get on the radio and talk, I had to build up to it. But I'm having a good time, and I get to turn people on to different things."
Jett's championing of other bands has been a career-long trait. She produced the first album from pioneering Los Angeles hardcore punk band the Germs in 1979, co-wrote songs with the Replacements' Paul Westerberg in the 1980s, and co-wrote and recorded songs with younger punk artists in the 1990s, including members of the bands Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland.
Currently, two woman-fronted bands on her BLACKHEART RECORDS label - the Dollyrots and Girl in a Coma - also were featured on Van Zandt's show, and the Dollyrots even earned an unlikely hit on Radio Disney with their song "Because I'm Awesome."
Jett told Billboard magazine in 2006 that giving support to women artists in rock and roll is something she aspires to, even if the rest of the industry still is playing catch-up.
"For some reason, women playing rock and roll seems threatening," Jett said. "I guess it implies owning your own sexuality and you're in control of it, so I don't know why thatÕs threatening."
Loving rock and roll
Jett's own musical journey started in Los Angeles when her parents bought her a Sears electric guitar in the early 1970s, according to an interview with Jett in the U.K. newspaper the Guardian.
"Initially I tried to take guitar lessons," Jett told the Guardian. "I went to a guitar teacher and said, 'I wanna play rock and roll.' When you're a kid, you think everything can happen right away, and you don't realize you have to go through a process of actually learning it.
"So he tried to teach me 'On Top of Old Smokey,' and I said, 'Screw this,' and went and got one of those 'Teach Yourself To Play Guitar' books. I just sat in my room and taught myself basic barre chords and played along with my Led Zeppelin and T. Rex records."
Around the same time, Jett said she began frequenting RodneyÕs English Disco, an infamous Sunset Strip hangout. It was there that she met Kim Fowley, a rock manager who put her in touch with another teen named Sandy West. The two of them found other like-minded women and formed the RUNAWAYS in 1975. The band released three albums but didn't find great commercial success, although songs such as "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise" eventually became touchstones for both hard rock and punk bands.
Jett told the Guardian that having the RUNAWAYS be all-women was a must right from the start.
"I had grown up being told by my parents that I could be whatever I wanted, so I believed that was a reality," she said. "So when people would say to me, 'Well, girls donÕt play rock and roll, why are you doing this?' I would say, 'Well, what are you implying? Are you saying that girls canÕt play the guitar because girls play cello and violin in symphony orchestras and play Bach and Schubert? You're saying they're not capable of mastering guitar? No, what you are saying is that really itÕs not socially acceptable for a girl to play rock and roll.'"
Good reputation
After the band splintered in 1979, Jett met still-current manager and producer KENNY LAGUNA, who convinced her to launch a solo career.
"He figured it would be kind of easy with his connections to get me a record deal," Jett told the Guardian. "ItÕs hard to imagine now, the resistance, but my image was so much harder than other girls in rock and roll with the black hair and the leather jacket."
It was a hard slog until she earned a solo recording deal. "We still have all the rejection letters; 23 of them," Jett told the Guardian.
As it happens, her first demo tape had a version of her first four hits in America: "Bad Reputation," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," "Crimson and Clover" and "Do You Wanna Touch Me?"
Once she launched the career, though, Jett took off. "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" was her biggest hit, spending eight weeks at No. 1. She continued to have both MTV and radio hits throughout the '80s and early '90s, and sheÕs always been a strong live act and able to tour even when she was not on the charts. She told the London Times in 2007 she's proud she hasnÕt compromised her hard-driving sound.
"ItÕs never really a case of having to debate, 'Well, do I sell out or donÕt I?'" she said. "ThereÕs no question. ItÕs not me."
She also talked to the Times briefly about her own sexuality. On "SINNER," the first single was "A.C.D.C.," a cover of the glam-rock band Sweet's song about bisexuality. The Times pointed out that she refused to discuss the issue of her own sexual preferences, and has for years.
"I won't define it like that: this is what I do, and this is what I don't," she explained to the Times. "I demand to be able to sing to everybody. When I want to sing a song about sex or love - what, all of a sudden, half the audience is cut out? Or I go, 'I'm going to sing about President Bush now, so anyone here who's on the right can't listen, because you won't understand'?"
Whether millions understand, like they did in the '80s, or it's a more modest group of loyal followers, Jett still continues to define her own path, something she said always was in the cards.
"I went to a school reunion not long ago, and some people reminded me I had said I was going to become a rock and roll star," Jett said in her official biography.
"I hadn't remembered that I had focused on it that early. To say that as a kid and actually do it is pretty cool. It just goes to show you that if you can believe in yourself, if youÕre lucky and have the right timing, you have a shot. IÕm an example of what can be, if you don't give up," she said.
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