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'Music speaks to people in different ways': lunch with JOAN JETT
from: smh.com.au
By Martin Boulton
Inside St Kilda's revamped Esplanade Hotel the venue's famous live music space, the Gershwin Room, is empty and quiet. JOAN JETT, in the midst of a summer tour, had a look around and briefly flashed that same dazzling, slightly mischievous smile her fans saw the previous night when she was playing a show across town.
"That's a great stage," she said, "nice and low, close to the audience."
Over more than four decades in the music industry the place Jett most likes to be is close to her audience, connected to rock'n'roll fans and like-minded musicians who put creativity and passion ahead of celebrity status and the lure of riches. It's far from an easy ride in the cut-throat world of business and entertainment but Jett, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three years ago, has never been particularly interested in strolling along life's easier paths.
Stepping into the bustling Espy Kitchen, which only recently opened after a near three-year refurbishment of the entire venue, we take our seats close to where multiple chefs are furiously working the grills, loading pizzas into wood-fired ovens and lining up dishes to be quickly whisked away to customers.
Dressed head-to-toe in black, her black hair loosely framing dramatically darkened eyes, Jett suggests a beer, perhaps Drake's Hop Vice to start lunch. Being a warm outside that seemed like a splendid idea so we each ordered a bottle.
A long-time vegetarian, Jett has spoken out about animal rights and been a voice of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It's not a subject she expands on as we're ordering, but she's quick to spot the wood-roasted cauliflower with curry butter, and the summer greens with lemon and tahini, choosing both before I've even seen past the snacks. I settle on grilled calamari but then Jett, who has called New York home for much of her life, points out the margherita pizza. "Could you eat some pizza too?" she asks.
With pizza, cauliflower, summer greens and calamari on the way, the founding member of 1970s rockers the RUNAWAYS leans back in her chair and, just slightly, flashes that cheeky smile. "That all sounds pretty good," she says. "I'm hungry too ... so what do you want to talk about?"
Taking her mother's cool middle name as her surname early in life, it was as much a show of respect to her mother Dorothy, who encouraged her to play guitar, as an inspired choice by the young, aspiring rock'n'roller.
Her first band the RUNAWAYS came together under the bright lights and less well-lit clubs around Hollywood's hedonistic music scene in the mid-'70s, as Blondie, Suzie Quatro, Iggy Pop and the Ramones were spilling out of the US underground scene and into public consciousness.
Jett, who was 14 when she formed the RUNAWAYS with 15-year-old drummer Sandy West and teenage bandmates Lita Ford, Jacki Fox and singer Cherie Currie, doesn't sugar-coat the experience, which lasted until 1979 when the band's internal issues and outside pressures had taken their toll.
"I wish I paid more attention when I was younger, focused more when things were happening instead of breezing through it, so I could remember the details better," she says. "Everything happened so fast, instead of just having fun and laughing, maybe instead I should have taken a moment and said 'wow, look at what I'm doing now' but you know, life is beautiful and special and short and you better pay attention."
Throughout the RUNAWAYS' turbulent four years, Jett focused on writing music, playing live and developing the creative side of the band. However, not everyone was equally intent on the band cutting through to mainstream success, let alone touring.
As she explains in the new documentary Bad Reputation, released last month, the now 60-year-old says: "I was so into this idea of girls playing rock'n'roll ... I thought everybody would love it. Some of the other girls got tired of it and I don't blame them."
The confronting, stark reality she says, as our pizza arrives, was that "while I loved it and I was thrilled, I don't think everybody else had the same mission in mind". The male-dominated music press also gave the RUNAWAYS little in the way of encouragement, often savaging the band.
"I was lost, I was in trouble [after the RUNAWAYS broke up], my dream had died and I walked around LA really depressed. I could feel the city laughing at me, like 'we told you it wouldn't work, we told you girls can't play rock and roll, we told you' ... it was terrible and I was thinking I've really got to figure out something to do. Maybe I should join the military, get my arse kicked around and learn some discipline. I seriously contemplated that for a couple of weeks."
In between their live shows in the US and releasing four albums, including their 1976 debut with Cherry Bomb (written by Jett and then RUNAWAYS manager Kim Fowley), the band toured Japan and England, where Jett later recorded an early version of the song I Love Rock'n'Roll (originally written by Alan Merrill of the Arrows) with Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook.
It was around this time that Jett was ditching the Glam rock look of mid '70s Los Angeles - a style prominent in club's such as Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on Sunset Strip, where she first met like-minded people in the Cabaret style she loved - in favour of the punk rock clothes and attitude that's been a defining part of her o-stage image. Soon afterwards she was also introduced to songwriter and record producer KENNY LAGUNA, who would help re-shape her career in her disillusioned post-RUNAWAYS days.
"Kenny was connected, so he thought getting me a record deal was going to be easy, you know 'no problem, I've got friends' and it just didn't work like that. There was a lot of rejection letters, a lot. There were people out there who I was never going to get a break from, they had this mental block. It was a different world, pre-internet ... even 10 years ago it was very different out there, we've seen a lot of change."
In close to 40 years since forming their creative and business partnership, Jett and Laguna have taken her band the BLACKHEARTS not only to fans around the world, but she focused herself fully again on those earliest creative dreams that seemed dashed by 1980.
"Believe in yourself, don't let other people tell you what your life is going to be," she says, leaning forward. "You've got to take a shot at being who you are, if you don't get where you thought you might, at least you gave it a shot."
As we finished the last of the tasty summer greens and I found room for one more refreshing beer, Joan says she feels lucky "because I've got an audience out there that still comes to see me. If that wasn't the case, I don't know if I'd still be able to do this, so yeah, I do feel lucky."
One of her biggest fans is Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, who along with the remaining members of the band invited her to play Smells Like Teen Spirit at their Hall of Fame induction, a year before she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
"That was petrifying," she says, shaking her head. "But what are you going to do? Dave calls you and says 'would you do this?' and as a musician and a big Nirvana fan, you can't say no. But as a human being, I was petrified. I credit them with helping get me into the Hall of Fame, and that was surreal. The first people I saw that night [of her induction] standing up were Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. I remember listening to Let It Be over and over in my bedroom, and there they are, Paul and Ringo starting a standing ovation ... what can you say about that?"
The packed Melbourne show that Jett played with the BLACKHEARTS prior to our lunch was a mix of older and newer fans, men and women, most singing along to I Love Rock'n'Roll, Crimson and Clover, Bad Reputation and of course Cherry Bomb among others. She recounts how after the show a young female fan told her "what your music did for me, you can't believe, your music got me through". "She was trembling and, I'm not sure, but you realise how important and frightening it can be, when you're on this precipice in life, feeling vulnerable, and she felt open and vulnerable telling me this and it just seemed like magic to me.
"Music speaks to people in different ways," Jett says, as she stands up to leave. Within seconds another fan appears, asking to snap a photo and Jett is quick to oblige. "You can't get too rapt up in yourself when you think of it like that."
Bad Reputation is showing on Max, through Foxtel. |
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