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JOAN JETT Sounds Off on Feminism-And the Shag Haircut That Defined the '70s
from: vogue.com
By LAURA REGENSDORF | Photo: Courtesy of BMG
JOAN JETT, her voice smooth like broken-in leather, is spelling out a name for me on the phone: ". . . R, as in right on, G, as in"-she reaches for a word-"G-spot." I let out a laugh. Of course, the woman who defined female-fronted punk rock doesn't default to Robert and George, but she isn't cracking wise. "I don't know, it's the first thing that came to my mind!" says the 59-year-old, still the lit match she was at 16, when she came out shredding as the guitarist for the RUNAWAYS.
That provocative all-girl band, fronted by the platinum blonde, corset-clad Cherie Currie, was as much an underground sensation as it was a magnet for moral double standards. "Lissome Lolitas or Teenage Trash?" asked a 1977 headline in the music magazine Creem; never mind that the sexual revolution was supposedly underway. But for Jett-forever fierce in her thick kohl liner and jagged black shag-the lobbed words (and occasional beer bottles) only fanned the flames. As she blared in her 1981 anthem "Bad Reputation," performed with JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS, "A girl can do what she wants to do, and that's what I'm gonna do." The rest is rock 'n' roll history-and the subject of a spirited new documentary, premiering today at Sundance.
Bad Reputation, directed by Kevin Kerslake, arrives at a ripe moment. On Saturday night, when Jett brought the soundtrack to life with a hit-heavy performance in Salt Lake City, Utah, she stampeded the stage as the reprised Women's March unfolded across the country. "All these years later after starting in the RUNAWAYS, those barriers are still up, not just with the industries-every industry-but within society as well," Jett says, assessing the present moment. Still, things have come a long way from the early '70s, when her buzzkill guitar teacher dismissively said, "Girls don't play rock 'n' roll"-not for lack of ability but for a burden of propriety.
But if "rock 'n' roll is from the waist down, if you're doing it right," as a line in the documentary goes, Jett also hit a waist-up groove, with a style that fused bondage gear from Los Angeles's the Pleasure Chest with jet-black hair seared into the collective memory. (The effect of that "ferocious tomboy, wide-eyed and fine-boned, with a snarl on her face"-how Vogue described her in 1985-remains indelible.) Here, the musician talks about the impetus for that signature cut, why the "lip service to women's lib was bull" in the '70s, and how lipstick gets in the way when you "attack the microphone," she says. "But that's okay!"
The headlines from early magazine stories were pretty brutal, calling the RUNAWAYS "savaged" and "trash." As teenagers, how did you all rally through that?
I can't really speak to the other girls because we all took it differently, but I took it as a real challenge, as a How dare you tell me what I can do. It was the same thing with the women's lib movement: Hard-core women were giving us shit for doing what we wanted to do-and wasn't that the point of feminism, that women should be able to be who they want to be and follow their dreams? All of a sudden, we were getting shot down for using our sexuality, but we were dictating the script. It wasn't the other way around, like, "Hey, you can do what you want to me." It was more like, "Hey, I'm going to do what I want to you." For some reason, we were threatening to everyone: men, women.
In Bad Reputation, we see family photos of you with medium-brown hair. When did you do that definitive dye job?
Well, I was in L.A.; it was early RUNAWAYS, probably December of '75, so the five of us were together. My hair was sort of brown with some highlights in it, and I was wearing black leather at the time. Cherie [Currie, the lead singer] was platinum blonde, and I just thought it would be fun to be the opposite. So I went black.
Who was your hair inspiration in those days? Did you have pictures pinned to your wall or rockers you wanted to emulate?
Definitely. I'll tell you, a big influence on my style was the movie Cabaret-that sort of decadent, heavy-makeup, '20s flapper-girl vibe. Also, I was a big British glitter-music fan, so that means Bowie and T. Rex and Suzi Quatro, who was having hits at the time. She was wearing black leather, and she had a shag haircut. Keith [Richards] had that haircut. Bowie had a wacky shag there for a minute, and a lot of the band the Sweet had shag haircuts. Those were all bands I was listening to, so I sort of went with that. I was looking for a way to have my own look. In high school, I was getting howled at-very lightweight bullying, maybe because they were afraid [laughs]-but stuff like "Diamond Dog," "David Bowie." My first trip to England with the RUNAWAYS really changed a lot of things for me because I saw all the kids totally dress in that early '75â€"'76 punk stuff, with Malcolm McLaren's Sex shop. And I saw a Clash concert, so it was the first time I experienced what was called pogoing-2,000 people all jumping up and down at the same time. It was definitely a transformational trip.
What did your parents make of all this?
I was still living in my mother's house in the Valley in the early RUNAWAYS [days]. My mother was one of the people who drove me to Hollywood to go to Rodney's English Disco, and she would pick me up later, you know? She wanted me to have that sort of experience and not just be stuck at home. What I was rebelling against wasn't my parents, it wasn't school, it wasn't the government-all the things people normally rebel against. I was very against American society telling me what I could be as a woman. "Rock 'n' roll is sexual, and girls aren't allowed to do that"-that just burned me to no end. So I was willing to totally sacrifice everything to prove that was not true.
Did you cut and dye your hair yourself on tour in those early years?
Oh yeah. I dyed my hair myself most of the time, mainly just for convenience's sake. And I'm sure I had a person cut my hair from time to time, but a lot of times, I did it myself-you can tell because it's not a great haircut! Throughout the years, my hair was shorter; I shaved my head around the millennium, which people hated. They said, "Bald women-ugly!" It was so threatening, man. I went down to the skin, so my head was shiny and everything, and I realized, Okay, here's another one about women's value: their hair. A woman with no hair has no value [in society]. All these superficial things about what makes a woman a woman, or important or valued, are so skewed and so dangerously unbalanced. It wasn't just guys; it was women, too. That whole women-supporting-women thing sometimes is a lot of lip service, you know? We've got to be real about it.
The film talks about guitars and microphones as weapons. Have you also felt that makeup has a way of projecting strength, whether heavy black liner or a graphic stripe of blush?
I think, on the surface, I just like it. That's my style. But deep down, if you analyzed me and put me on a couch, I would probably say it's my armor because I never want people to think I'm mean-I'm not mean, but I think that's the sort of vibe that my image sometimes evokes. [People think] toughness and meanness are connected, but they're not.
What are your go-to makeup products for onstage?
Lately, I've been using Tarte eyeliner, and I also use a Stila waterproof liner sometimes. I've got a Tarte black crayon if I want to do smudgy under-eyes: I do the waterproof [formula] top and bottom, and it stays well. I use MAC eyeshadows and a variety of waterproof mascaras, usually some kind of Maybelline. When I go onstage, I have some makeup on my lips, but I've found that when I attack the microphone, I wind up coming offstage with this crazy ring around my mouth, like I've been drinking old beet juice or something [laughs]. But that's okay! |
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