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JOAN JETT: After nearly four decades, the original Riot Grrrl, and leader of the RUNAWAYS, gets her due
from: nydailynews.com
by NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | Photo by Tim Mosenfelder
JOAN JETT has no trouble expressing all that it means for her to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"It's satisfying, humbling, incredible," she says. But "mostly it's vindication."
"My whole career, I had been dismiss ed," says the 56-year-old star. "It wasn't just a case of, 'We don't like her.' It was, 'You shouldn't exist.' "
Imagine Jett's reaction, then, when the entire music industry rose to its feet as she took the stage for her HOF induction in April. The show airs May 30 on HBO.
"It wasn't just a brief, gratuitous ovation," Jett says. "It was elongated."
Miley Cyrus ushered the rocker in. "Her life is proof hat we can't stop evolving," Cyrus said of Jett.
Around the same time, Jett and her BLACKHEARTS band were invited to open for the Who during its 50th anniversary arena tour, which hits the New York area for five shows starting May 20 at Nassau Coliseum.
The belated honors help correct a history of ridicule that ran back to the mid-1970s, when Jett worked with the all-teen-girl rock band, the RUNAWAYS. At the time, they were seen as a gimmick Ñ a jail-bait lure for horny male rock fans.
The rejection continued into Jett's post-RUNAWAYS career. In 1980, 23 record labels rejected her first solo album, "Bad Reputation," so her manager, KENNY LAGUNA, raided his daughter's college fund to create his own label, BLACKHEART RECORDS, which released the disc.
Jett's second album, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," hit No. 1 and was followed by another hit, "Album."
But her high-charting pop career waned by the late-'80s, Touring, a loyal audience and the escalating respect of her peers has buoyed her since.
By the '90s, the emerging riot grrrl movement began to recognize Jett as a pioneer. Finally, the RUNAWAYS was seen for what it was: a finely honed band, as well as the inspiration for every female rock act that came after.
Jett became so known as a role model that, in 2009, Mattel created a Barbie in her image.
"Isn't that crazy?," she laughs. "I never had a Barbie. If I had one, I would have taken the heads off."
A 2010 movie about the RUNAWAYS, staring Kristen Stewart as Jett, also upgraded the band's history.
These days, the New York-based star spends eight months of the year on the road with the BLACKHEARTS, who were also inducted into the Hall, along with Laguna.
The group's reputation at a diamond-hard live act helped earn them the coveted spot on the Who tour.
JOAN JETT at the 2008 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction held in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel
But Jett's history with that band goes back to the start of her solo career. Laguna had worked at The Who's Ramport Studio in London, producing acts on their label, like the Steve Gibbons Band. Laguna asked Who manager Bill Curbishley about using their studio for Jett. He told them to "just pay us what you can."
"We went in, finished 'Bad Repuation,' and paid them back soon after," Jett says.
The sound they created, and the attitude they honed, viewed rock as more than a sound. It was an ethic, something to believe in.
In that way, Jett became a rock ambassador and a genre essentialist. "I play rock straight up," she says. "A Chuck Berry, blues-based thing, that's what feels really good to me."
The result gave Jett a leg up on the Rock HOF induction.Not only does she have the arch-typical sound, she has the hair (a Keith Richards-style shag) and the affect (her androgynous stance).
Jett began her association with the Hall in 2008, when the BLACKHEARTS helped induct the Dave Clark Five by performing their hit "Bits and Pieces." (She had covered the song on her "I Love Rock 'N Roll" album). Last year, Jett was one of four women invited to sing Nirvana songs for that band's induction.
Like the Hall itself, rock is now seen by many as a sound that honors the past. Guitar bands rarely make the charts these days, And, when they do, they aren't young. "In a sense, rock is kinda dead," Jett allows.
At the same time, she says, "there are several rock bands - and girls bands - in clubs in every city. They're still out there."
In that way, rock has once again become underground music for underdogs. That's the way Jett perfers to view both the music and herself..
"It's great to be accepted, but it doesn't make me feel any less of an underdog," she says. "I feel like I've always got to keep pushing. That's the way I've seen it. And I probably always will." |
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