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Behind the great JOAN JETT was the support of KENNY LAGUNA
from: economist.com
By Gary Graff
"BAD REPUTATION", a new documentary about JOAN JETT, covers the expected ground. It demonstrates, through archival footage and interviews, how the American musician prefigured punk with her teenage girl band the RUNAWAYS in the late 1970s. It explores her solo career, in which she dared anyone to say that women did not rock as hard as men. But at its heart, "Bad Reputation" is an unusual love story. It reveals the close platonic relationship between Ms Jett and KENNY LAGUNA, notionally her producer, but also a kind of surrogate for any other role she might seem to need: parent, best friend, brother big or little, confidant, factotum.
Mr Laguna enters the film around a third of the way through. Ms Jett is lost after the RUNAWAYS have burned out; Mr Laguna is casting around for some means of resurrecting himself a decade after his heyday as a teenage hitmaking prodigy, writing bubblegum songs for the manufactured groups of the late 1960s. It wasn't just that two people in need of something or someone to revive them found each other. It was also that their particular tastes and skills were perfectly complementary.
Ms Jett, who became a musician because she couldn't understand why women who loved aggressive, loud guitars should only be allowed to express that love by becoming a groupie, favoured gravel and grit. Mr Laguna loved melodies and hooks so obvious that even the most stupid fish might look twice before biting. His ear for a tune and for what made a hit record combined with Ms Jett's desire for toughness. A string of records, often cover versions, followed--"Bad Reputation", "I Love Rock'n'Roll", "Do You Wanna Touch Me?", "I Hate Myself For Loving You"--that sounded so complete you couldn't understand why no one had made them before. In the film, Ms Jett considers her appeal to both men and women in blunt terms: "Oh my God, she's going to take me home and fuck the shit out of me."
The documentary suggests that Ms Jett would not have sustained a career for more than 40 years without Mr Laguna. She would still be an important paragraph in rock music history, but chances are the endless vicissitudes she has faced--the terrible mistreatment of the RUNAWAYS by almost everyone they encountered, the difficulties with record labels in her solo career, the flitting in and out of fashion--would have worn her down. It is not that Mr Laguna is the shrewdest businessman or record maker to have walked the corridors of the labels; more that he plainly would do anything for her (earlier this year, when phoning Ms Jett for an interview about one of her favourite bands, this writer was greeted by Mr Laguna, who asked: "Are you ready to speak to the goddess that is JOAN JETT?").
One of the rarely told truths of rock music is that the artists who tend to thrive over long periods are blessed not just with talent, or with a manager with the tenacity of a fighting dog, but with someone in their corner who loves them and sticks up for them long after they have earned their 10%. For Bruce Springsteen, it is Jon Landau, a man whose role in Mr Springsteen's life extends far beyond signing contracts and has done for more than 40 years. For REM, it was Bertis Downs, a manager and extra member of the group. Coldplay have Phil Harvey, no longer officially their manager, but very much the fifth spoke in their wheel. And Ms Jett has Mr Laguna--arguing with her, adoring her and devoting his life to serving her needs.
None of this negates Ms Jett's achievements. If "Bad Reputation" sometimes overstates them (she and Mr Laguna did not single-handedly jumpstart American independent music by self-releasing her first solo album in 1980), it also brings to light other, less noted instances of her importance in American rock. In the first wave of Californian punk at the end of the 1970s, she produced the Germs, a notorious LA band who were in thrall to the RUNAWAYS. A generation on, she helped to inspire the riot grrrl movement--the American feminist rock scene of the early 1990s--in both theoretical and practical terms. Not only was her presence an inspiration, but she produced music for Bikini Kill, a prominent group.
"Bad Reputation" focuses as much on the symbolism of Ms Jett carving out her legend in the male-dominated world of rock as on any especial genius in her music. But the scenes that linger are not those in which her appeal is earnestly explained. They are the ones in which Ms Jett and Mr Laguna amiably rile each other up, or Mr Laguna fusses around his charge. At one point, as Ms Jett sits waiting to be interviewed, Mr Laguna walks into the room with a joint. He sparks it up, takes a drag, and hands it to Ms Jett before leaving the room. She, after all, is the goddess--he is just the temple's caretaker. |
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