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Sixty Seconds with JOAN JETT
from: metro.news
By Anna Smith
The American star and Cherry Bomb singer, 60, talks about sex, rock 'n' roll and new film Bad Reputation
How does it feel being in a documentary about your own life?
It's a pretty surreal experience. It's a little uncomfortable discussing where you fit in music history, analysing that aspect of you instead of just playing the rock 'n' roll. But it's been a really informative way for me to look at my career and what's going on. And hopefully the message people will get from it is: perseverance.
Where do you get that perseverance from? The film, Bad Reputation, shows you carrying on in the face of rejection and sexism...
My parents told me when I was a little kid I could be anything in life I wanted to be and I believed them. I went through a bunch of things: I wanted to be an astronaut, an archaeologist. It just so happens that at 13 I asked my parents for an electric guitar for Christmas. They actually got it for me so they were supporting my dream. Even if they weren't saying, 'Oh yeah, go play in a rock band', they weren't saying, 'Girls don't do that'.
Saw the vision: KENNY LAGUNA
The documentary also shows that the challenges didn't end when your band The RUNAWAYS broke up...
As I got into my career, my songwriting partner, KENNY LAGUNA, got stuck managing me because he thought he could get me a deal really easily and pass it on but then he saw the walls [coming down] and that gave him a fire. The two of us started fighting it. That was really important, having someone else who believed in me who saw the vision.
Was there anything you didn't want to talk about on camera?
There's curiosity seeking - I got good at dealing with that with The RUNAWAYS. If you started talking about those angles, you'd never talk about the music. Rock 'n' roll by its very nature is sexual, so a lot of that conversation isn't really necessary. That's why girls take a lot of s*** when they do things that are considered a man's pursuit. In my brain, I figured rock 'n' roll was probably a looser world and there wouldn't be those restrictions in gender - and I was very wrong.
Girls are just as fascinated by sex as boys are, right?
You can't cut that out of a girl's life. Guys talk about sex but you can't say, 'We're uncomfortable about this, we're going to pretend a girl's sex life doesn't exist' - then you make it taboo and start an unhealthy cycle. With The RUNAWAYS, we were just writing what we were living.
What are your pet peeves?
A lot of things. This is all day long but just the fact there's a lot of phoniness. It's hard to tell where the brand ends and the person begins. Now everybody is a brand. You don't have to be famous at all. Little kids have their brands - that's kinda scary to me.
You must have seen a lot more phoniness as you got more famous...
Yes, oh, absolutely. How about within the same half hour? Oh yeah. Like someone realising that you're somebody but they don't quite know who, then once they've talked to their friends and figured it out, the whole attitude changes dramatically, sickeningly, so it's not normal. It's a whole energy shift, like, now you're somebody worthy of my time.
The music industry is starting to have #MeToo revelations. Do you think it's going to explode like it has in Hollywood?
I know that like any sector, the stories are out there. I'm sure it's the same on Wall Street and the restaurant business, everywhere you look. I can only guess that, yes, at some point there will be some kind of reckoning.
Kristen Stewart appears in your documentary and she played you in the RUNAWAYS film. Are you two close?
Yes, we are. She was great to me. She was very busy, she was in the middle of two Twilight films when we made The RUNAWAYS. We had two weeks of rehearsals where I got to work with Kristen on the script, with her trying to embody me. I appreciated that she cut her hair and didn't wear a wig and got into the character, into me or whatever. She did a great job.
Any final message for Metro readers?
Yes. I know exactly what it is: I can't wait to get back to your country and play for everybody. The UK has been a big part of my music. I love the music that inspired me, the bands, a lot of it's English, so I have an indebtedness beyond just thinking it's a great country to play live. The music has been a huge part of my life, the punk-rock stuff. And the people are a lot more accepting, certainly of The RUNAWAYS. Even though we still took s***, they let us do our thing. So I can't wait to get back.
Bad Reputation is out in cinemas tomorrow |
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