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'Bad Reputation" a superb documentary about JOAN JETT: On the Beat
from: journalstar.com
By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT | Photo: Associated Press
I'll never forget the first time I saw JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS live - March 26, 1981 - when their full-on rock 'n' roll assault nearly blew the roof off The Drumstick. That was also the first time I talked to Jett, who was out pushing her solo debut "Bad Reputation."
Nor will I ever forget the first time I stood on the side of the stage during a Jett show at Westfair Amphitheatre outside of Council Bluffs about two decades later. There she, like an athlete, was tight as a spring before, then after slaying another audience, was almost unbelievably hospitable in the dressing room after.
Over the years, I've seen Jett well over a dozen times - too many times to recall every one - chatted with her and her musical partner KENNY LAGUNA on the phone and before and after shows and read, I think, every book about Jett and her teenage band The RUNAWAYS.
In shorter form, I know Jett and Laguna - and original BLACKHEARTS guitarist Eric "Roscoe" Ambel - and thought I knew a lot about them.
That is until I watched "Bad Reputation," the superb rock 'n' roll doc that's now streaming on multiple services, including iTunes, Amazon Video, YouTube, DirectTV, Spectrum Charter, XBox and Google Play, after a short theatrical run that didn't hit Lincoln.
Directed by Kevin Kerslake, the picture opens at the start of Jett's musical career, when the teenager hit Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, met Frankenstein-looking manager Kim Fowley (who always scared me when I'd encounter him) and put together The RUNAWAYS, her '70s all-girl rock 'n' roll band.
While that story has been told in books, other documentaries and a feature film with Kristen Stewart playing Jett, it's illuminatingly revisited here - with Jett, now 60, providing her view on the events, as she does throughout the film.
Among those insights, her shift from glitter-and-glam to punk after touring England in the mid-70s and meeting, among others, the Sex Pistols and the true reason for The RUNAWAYS breakup.
Then comes her solo career, in which she teamed with Laguna. Together they combined the bubblegum music he made in the early '70s with her punk edge and created the rock 'n' roll that with some serious effort made Jett a star.
Again, the story of her first album being rejected by 23 labels has been often told, but the details of the rejections are astounding, as is the first version of "I Love Rock & Roll," the cover song that became her breakthrough hit. It was recorded with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and appears in part in the documentary and in full on the soundtrack album, which is well worth a listen.
The rest of the story, so to speak, is a tale of repeatedly running up against record company resistance, wandering in the state fair show wilderness, championing new music, especially the feminist riot grrrl movement and, at long last, getting the recognition she's long deserved and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Along the way, Kerslake gets commentary from Jett's bandmates, musical admirers and those she has influenced, including Iggy Pop, Blondie's Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna and Pete Townshend of The Who - not unexpected in a rock doc.
But the likes of Gen. Kevin Byrnes weigh in (Jett and Laguna regularly perform for U.S. troops around the globe), and even just-resigned U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley makes an appearance talking about being a Jett fan and using some of Jett's quotes in her discussions.
Near the end, "Bad Reputation" focuses on Jett's activism - for feminism and in support of animal rights.
While she's not a don't-eat-meat crusader, Jett's sincere and passionate about animal rights.
â€"
To that point, I remember sitting with her in the fairgrounds Coliseum (aka the Ice Box), in a dressing room for the Nebraska State Fair's Open Air Auditorium, where she and the band were to play an hour or two later. Behind us, a horse show of some sort was going on, and she was concerned that the horses were being hurt as they were put through their paces.
It took me awhile to convince her - and I'm not sure I ever did - that the girls who were riding took loving care of their horses and that the animals weren't being subjected to any sort of pain.
Then, as I recall, the greatest female rock 'n' roller ever (and one of the greatest period) walked across the street, a coiled spring again, and tore up the packed auditorium. |
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