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Real Runaway JOAN JETT is still rockin' like it's 1975
from: nypost.com
by SARA CARDACE
At an impressionable 18 (inset at LA's Starwood Club in 1976), Jett couldn't have possibly predicted the staying power she'd have more than 30 years later. "I've been lucky that people still want to come to our shows," she says.
Given the fact that she's one of mainstream music's most infamous bad girls, veteran rocker JOAN JETT is surprisingly, well, sweet. When asked about the quiet life she splits between the West Village and a waterfront home in Long Beach, Long Island, she pauses for a moment before responding: "I don't know if I get recognized necessarily, though I do get looked at a lot -- but I don't know if it's because of who I am, or if people just think I look weird."
Recent weeks have found her coming to the defense of tween phenom Kristen Stewart (who plays and covers songs by Jett in the new musical biopic "The RUNAWAYS") and washing dogs for charity. She ends conversations with a gruff, but gentle, "Have a nice day, man."
The movie's producers must be relieved -- the spiky-haired, tat-sporting singer isn't the kind of person you'd want to cross when making a movie based on her life story: Jett's career, and almost eerily unchanging persona, could well be a model for what's known in the popular vernacular as sticking to one's guns. There's the perennially slick bad-girl style (think Betty Rubble by way of David Bowie); the unwaveringly outspoken feminist views and, most importantly, a three-decades-strong fixation on rock 'n' roll despite the financial drubbing the genre's suffered at the hands of mainstream pop.
Still, while you can probably recite most of the lyrics to Jett's biggest songs by heart -- her cover of the Arrows' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and her own "Bad Reputation," for starters -- that may well be where your knowledge of the performer begins and ends. So where does that leave Jett? Well, somewhere on the fringes of the classic-rock mainstream, and it turns out that suits her just fine.
"I'm not looking for a huge profit; that's not the motive," explains the longtime New Yorker, who sounds as if she's just made her way through a carton of menthols when she calls from a hotel room in Los Angeles, where she's preparing for the movie's big premiere. "The profit is when kids come up to me and say, ÔYou inspired me to pick up a guitar.' Or ÔI was having a really tough time and your music helped me through it'...That's currency to me. Obviously you can't pay your rent with it, but that's why I'm always out on the road . . . I've toured every year since 1975, and I've been lucky enough that people still want to come to our shows."
A spate of pop cultural offerings due out this week is likely to give Jett's bottom line a boost, whether or not she ever decides to take a break from the constant touring. The first -- the biggie -- is "The RUNAWAYS," a modestly budgeted movie from director Floria Sigismondi about the pioneering all-girl punk band Jett formed in 1975 when she was just a teen. Jett executive-produced the movie, which stars Stewart -- who told reporters, "Whenever I wasn't coming from the right place, [Joan] was always like, ÔKristen! P - - - y to the wood! F - - - the guitar!'" -- and an almost-all-grown-up Fanning as Jett's bandmate, Cherie Currie. "What drew me to the story," says Sigismondi, "is the fact that Cherie and Joan were doing things that girls weren't allowed to do, and the rebel in me was attracted to that. What makes it a good story for the big screen? Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."
Jett's early years certainly contained a hefty dose of all three. After convincing her parents to buy her a guitar at age 13, the gangly brunette became a fixture at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in LA, where she worshipped at the wild altar of glam-rockers like Gary Glitter, T.Rex and Suzi Quatro. Within a few years, Jett, drummer Sandy West and producer Kim Fowley formed the spunky, all-girl teen punk band the RUNAWAYS, who became West Coast fixtures before expanding their reach to New York and beyond. (A 1977 tour of Japan, where the group found massive success, inspired a well-documented tide of fan hysteria.)
Lead singer Cherie Currie was the baby-doll sexpot who showed up onstage in lingerie. Joan was the spiky-haired foil -- all skin-tight black leather and heavy mascara -- who supplied the muscular, macho guitar.
"Joan is so focused," says Currie. "She was my rock in the RUNAWAYS...We had a purpose, but where at times I felt it was too much of an uphill battle, Joan never faltered. That's why she is the icon she is today."
True to form, while Currie fell prey to drugs and alcohol and left the band -- which officially dissolved in 1979 -- Jett forged ahead, crafting a hard-fought-for solo career (her debut, "JOAN JETT," was reportedly turned down by 23 different record labels before she decided to put it out herself) and doing it on her own terms. That first album generated enough word-of-mouth buzz to pique the interest of Boardwalk Records, which re-released it the following year. Jett's next album, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," recorded with her new band the BLACKHEARTS, went platinum and instantly posited her as one of the most formidable artists of the '80s.
That iconic status gets its due this month thanks to the release of a career-retrospective album (a double-disc titled "JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS Greatest Hits") and an art book from designer Todd Oldham, a self-professed lifelong fan of the singer. It chronicles Jett's life with a fascinating collection of personal photos interspersed with quotes from interviews that span her career.
"Sometimes I can tell when I'm talking from 1981," Jett says. "But most of it kind of fits seamlessly together, and it all seems to go back to that sort of determination I had about being told the things you can't do because you're a girl. That never made sense to me because these girls are playing violin and cello, playing Beethoven and Bach -- so what do you mean they can't play rock 'n' roll? To me, what you're saying is it's a social thing. You're not allowed to play rock 'n' roll because of what rock 'n' roll implies, and that's sexuality, and women aren't allowed to own their sexuality. Well, I don't like being told what to do."
It may not seem like a convention-bucking stance these days, but in 1975 rock terms, it was downright revolutionary. What's more, Jett's refusal to use her sexuality to realize her dreams (or even to discuss her sexuality at all, for that matter) inspired countless acts such as Kathleen Hanna's Bikini Kill and the other bands that populated the Riot Grrrl movement of the '90s.
"I always kept it about the music," Jett explains. "As a kid, in the RUNAWAYS, I would see the interviewers start to ask about our personal lives and what we did -- and I could see the look in their eyes. They were practically frothing at the mouth. So if I answered these questions, I knew they were never gonna talk about the music. It was like that instinct -- don't go there, man. Have boundaries. Have mystery. You don't have to let everybody in! I want to be singing to everybody, and I want everybody to think that I'm singing to them. Guys, girls and everyone in between."
Naturally, it was important to Jett that the band's story be told the right way. "When I met [Stewart] and she had that long, long hair, I said, ÔAre you gonna cut your hair for this?'" she recalls. "And she was like, ÔYeah, you BET!' She really committed herself to it. If it was some actress who couldn't give two sh---s about the movie, I wouldn't have been supportive at that point."
Not every executive producer is so hands-on. "Yeah, I don't tend to do things half-way," laughs Jett. And that's not just with regard to this project: A lifelong sports fanatic and self-described "roughhouser," Joan attended fantasy training camp with the Baltimore Orioles in the early '90s, a fact that may surprise her fans. "I played like 150 percent," she exclaims, with a refreshing dose of fangirl awe. "I learned how to throw a screwball from Mike Playard, the famous screwball pitcher for the Orioles. I mean, I was iced up every night -- my leg, both shoulders. And I think I ripped my rotator cuff. It was awesome."
She's also an admitted television junkie. A love of cop shows like "Burn Notice" and "CSI" led to a guest gig on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" in 2008: "I really enjoyed it. I got to be dead! I even tried to keep my autopsy scars, the staples or whatever they're called? It was so great."
Recent years have found Jett expanding her reach in other realms as well, hosting a four-hour show on Steven Van Zandt's Underground Garage Sirius radio show called "JOAN JETT's Radio Revolution," and a weekly showcase of video shorts for Maryland Public Television for three years each -- all the while busily signing emerging bands such as the Dollyrots and Girl in a Coma to her label BLACKHEART RECORDS along with continuing the nonstop touring that she relies on to "stay connected."
And despite recently crossing the 50-year mark, she's showing no signs of slowing down -- though she refuses to conjecture about what the coming years might bring.
"You know, I try not to project down the line too much," she admits. "I don't like to say where I'll be in 10 years. I don't think I ever did that as a kid, like -- ÔWow, am I going to be doing this forever? Is this what I want to do for life?' I don't think I ever had those thoughts. I just put one foot in front of the other."
What was it that her younger self said about not caring about one's reputation? Sounds about right.
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