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Intrepid Rock Journalism JOAN JETT
from: fredericksburg.com
by crosstownrival.blogspot.com
Author's Note: This piece, in a somewhat edited form, is slated to appear in the Thursday, May 1st edition of the Frederickburg's appropriately lauded news destination, The Free-Lance Star, most likely on the cover of the Weekender section. Now, enjoy:
Some people take the road less traveled. JOAN JETT had to build her own.
With a career going on more than three decades, rock icon and pioneer JOAN JETT has singularly made her own success like none other in rock music, pushing boundaries and shattering perceptions of what one artist, man or woman, can do. Jett, with her back-up band The BLACKHEARTS, will headline the 12th Annual Cinco De Mayo Fiesta at Richmond's Brown's Island on Saturday, May 3.
Best known for fist-in-the-air rock hits "I Love Rock and Roll," "Bad Reputation" and "I Hate Myself for Loving You," JOAN JETT has blazed a wide trail through music, kicking out punchy, straight ahead rock and roll that is as classic as it is rebellious. She will release a greatest hits album, "Fit to be Tied," in June.
As a teenager, Jett helped found the groundbreaking punk band The RUNAWAYS, the first major all-girl band to hit the mainstream.
"We saw the world around us--saw the music scene around us--and none of that included girls playing rock and roll," said Jett, during a recent phone interview. "We knew that it was going to be something that people would respond to."
Although treated as somewhat of a gimmick group in the U.S. (teenage girls playing their own instruments? The circus must be in town!), the group found massive, riot-sparking success elsewhere.
"In some places like Japan, The RUNAWAYS are hugeÑreally huge. I don't want to say The Beatles huge, but--The Beatles huge," said Jett. "Thousands and thousands of girls screaming and chasing us down the street. It was just crazy."
After the breakup of The RUNAWAYS, Jett struck out on her own, recording the songs that would make her an icon. Her body of work, both with The RUNAWAYS and as JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS, has been highly influential, showing an entire generation that girls can play just as brash and hard as the boys can.
After so many years in the music business, however, Jett is still disheartened at the lack of progress by female rock musicians.
"It gets very frustrating to me--this many years after The RUNAWAYS--to think that that girls have not really come anywhere," said Jett. "There aren't girls being played on the radio. They're not in the press. ItÕs not a standard thing. It's still sort of looked at as a novelty."
In many ways, though, Jett remains a bit of a novelty herself, as it's challenging to find an artist with both her great success and her unwavering determination in going her own way. Finding no labels willing to release her music, she stuck to her guns and started BLACKHEART RECORDS in the early 1980's. In doing so, she became the first major female artist to own her own record label.
Beyond music, Jett has performed extensively for the U.S. Armed Forces, but in bucking the trend set by most famous musicians, she has staunchly avoided most media attention about her work with the troops. As she describes it, playing for the men and women in uniform is a personal thing, something she does for no one but them. Likewise, she keeps tight wraps on her work and only reluctantly talks about her experiences.
"I don't think it's something you do for publicity. I think you do it because you care about the people who put their life on the line for American ideals," said Jett.
Jett, who for a time seriously considered joining a branch of the military, has played throughout the world with the USO. She traveled deep into Pakistan and Uzbekistan after 9/11 and was the first artist to play for the troops during the Kosovo conflict.
"I like going to the [expletive] places." Jett said, expressing that she values the opportunity to go downrange and interact with the troops in the field. "You want to go to the places where the soldiers go 'What are you doing here?"Ó
It's not that JOAN JETT defies labels or definition; it's that JOAN JETT has so many appropriate labels that it's difficult to keep track of them all. Pioneer. Activist. Punk. Entrepreneur. She really is all these seemingly disparate things in one, creating an artist who has stayed true to what she believed despite what the world around her said. When asked to define herself, it couldn't be simpler.
"Everybody always calls me JOAN JETT. They don't call me Joan. I am Joan the musician. I guess that's what I am."
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