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Have Joan Jett news to report? Email us at jettfc@aol.com, and please include the source of the information so it can be validated. Rock & Roll Hall of Famer JOAN JETT brings her hot guitar and 'Bad Reputation' to Rocksino from: cleveland.com By Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio - JOAN JETT doesn't give a, ahem, hoot about her so-called "Bad Reputation." The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer embraces it.
Not because the singer who brings her band to the Hard Rock Rocksino on Sunday, Dec. 16, is mean-spirited, not by a long shot. She's a longtime animal rights activist (her famous leather look is fake, she noted in a New York Times interview about a new documentary called "Bad Reputation," and it's the only thing about her that IS fake).
It's just that Jett has been a take-no-prisoners kind of woman from her teenage days as a co-founder of the RUNAWAYS, and she's spent her life for both her music and her gender.
"You can't never take anything for granted,'' she said in an interview for The Plain Dealer's profile on her prior to her 2015 induction into the Hall. "You just have to put your head down and work.
"It's kind of hard for me because I'm in the middle of it, knowing this female thing has affected it,'' she said in a telephone interview in which she was joined by her friend and longtime manager, KENNY LAGUNA. "Girls are out there playing rock 'n' roll.''
Problem is, even today, they're not getting the respect and attention they deserve and have earned. As Jett said, "It's a struggle or any rock band to get attention,'' but it's doubly hard for women.
"We've seen statistics about women,'' interjected Laguna. "In alternative radio, it's 92 percent men. In rock radio, this classic rock oldies format that used to be cutting edge, [men] are in the 90 percentile, too.
"They don't play two women in a row,'' he said. "They'll play Janis Joplin once a month and Pat Benatar twice a month. That's we're dealing with as a start.''
But in a way, that all falls into Jett's strength.
"I think my lot in life is to battle,'' she said in the recent New York Times story. "I don't mean it like you're always tense and fighting. It's the long battle, something you don't win with muscular strength. You win it with mental fortitude, with being able to do what you say you can do. If you're a musician and you claim you can play, I can play. Like Laura Jane [Grace, the transgender frontwoman of Against Me! and a longtime Jett friend] is out there saying, This is me.' I love it. I guess I just do mine in my own way.''
Where'd that come from? Dad and mom - James Larkin and Dorothy Jett Larkin, of course.
"Tenacity . . . is a family trait,'' he said in the interview with The Plain Dealer. "I always saw my parents work hard and not let on as to how tough it was.''
But she goes back to her theme:
"Also, it might be in my nature not to be told what I can do,'' she said, laughing. So, if you want Jett to do something, tell her she can't.
The biopic is full of Jett's tunes, both with the BLACKHEARTS, who will join her onstage at the Rocksino, and the RUNAWAYS. But maybe the most important song in it is a new one, called "Fresh Start." It voices everything she said in that pre-Rock Hall induction video, and everything she's said since:
To make a fresh start and go back to the top
Rewind the tape and reset the clock
This time, we're not gonna stop
Just want a fresh start and go back to the top
Rewind the tape and reset the clock
And this time, there's no turning back
There's never any turning back for JOAN JETT. Never has been, never will be. She stakes her reputation on it.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS
When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 16.
Where: Hard Rock Rocksino, 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield.
Tickets: $59.50 to $89.50, plus fees, at the box office, at ticketmaster.com and livenation.com and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.
