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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. "Put my head in my hands and cry": The tragic moments of JOAN JETT's rock and roll life from: faroutmagazine.co.uk
By Ben Forrest
Today, JOAN JETT is heralded as an elder stateswoman of hard rock and punk, with her successful music career spanning from the adolescent defiance of The RUNAWAYS to the mainstream rock success of the BLACKHEARTS. However, this reputation has not always been the norm. Since her very first steps into the music industry, Jett has been forced to battle deeply ingrained sexist attitudes and discrimination. Her journey to the top was certainly not an easy ride, and the further you dig into her career, the more tragic it becomes.
From her earliest flirtations with music, Jett's story has been one of continuous setbacks, often as a result of her gender. She received her very first guitar at the age of only 13, but her teachers and instructors repeatedly told her that she could not play rock and roll music, as that was still viewed as an exclusively male style. Spurred on by pioneering figures like Suzi Quatro, Jett continued her independent musical education, which eventually landed her a spot in the all-female group The RUNAWAYS.
Jett was only 16 years old when she joined the ranks of The RUNAWAYS, an all-female band manufactured by music industry mogul Kim Fowley to take advantage of the blossoming punk rock movement. Due to Fowley's previous experience in the industry and widespread setlist attitudes both within the musical mainstream and the punk subculture, The RUNAWAYS never achieved much success and were largely seen as a novelty act.
More than that, though, The RUNAWAYS appeared to be a means for Fowley to exploit and terrorise the teenage girls in the band. Allegedly, Fowley encouraged the band members to take drugs and drink heavily so that he could convince them to do whatever he asked. These demands ranged from wearing revealing stage outfits to - according to multiple allegations - performing sex acts. Multiple musicians, including Jackie Fuchs, Michael Steele, and Kari Krome of The RUNAWAYS, have accused Fowley of sexual misconduct, assault, and rape.
Jett herself has since said that she never felt threatened by Fowley and did not witness any of these heinous crimes. However, it does paint a particularly disgusting image of the treatment and attitudes that Jett and her bandmates were forced to endure while all still teenagers in the music industry.
On top of that institutionalised oppression, Jett also faced horrendous treatment from punk fans themselves. Spitting was depressingly commonplace during the early days of punk, and multiple prominent groups - The Clash, for instance - spoke out against it. In the case of JOAN JETT, however, the intensity of the gobbing seemed to increase as a result of her gender.
"It's difficult to get across to people what it's like to be spat at," she later told The Irish Times. "After the gig, I would be dripping in spit and just put my head in my hands and cry out of sheer frustration." Inevitably, this repeatedly harsh treatment, in addition to the breakup of The RUNAWAYS and the initial failure of The BLACKHEARTS, wreaked havoc on Jett's mental well-being.
Soon, Jett turned to alcohol to drown her sorrows. "I drank a lot, starting at eight in the morning," she once said, later to be printed in the biography Bad Reputation. "I was angry. I didn't know how to make sense of a world that gave girls shit for playing guitars." In many ways, the shit that Jett had to put up with for the apparent crime of wanting to play rock and roll music never went away.
Although, eventually, The BLACKHEARTS found mainstream success with tracks like 'Bad Reputation' and 'I Love Rock and Roll', making Jett a much more respected name in the process, that success only came with reluctant compromise. When forming The BLACKHEARTS, Jett sought out only male musicians, not wanting to repeat the disgusting treatment an all-female group like The RUNAWAYS might experience. In the eyes of many, this diluted Jett's impact, but many other music fans and industry figures still viewed a woman playing rock music as nothing more than a novelty.
Even when sexist attitudes towards women in music became slightly less commonplace, Jett was still not free from oppression. Her sexuality, for instance, suddenly became a common source of interest and debate for the tabloid press. Much like they had done with Dusty Springfield years prior, the ambiguity of Jett's sexual preference was used as a weapon to attack her. To an extent, it still is.
The fact that Jett continues to perform after all the horrendous treatment she has faced across the past five decades in the music industry is a testament to her drive and resilience. When she was a young girl, the only guiding light Jett could hold onto was the fact that Suzi Quatro had made a name for herself in rock, so she could too. In turn, Jett herself inspired countless young women and girls to pursue rock music. Perhaps that is the reason she chose to continue through all the setbacks, sexism, and discrimination: the blaze a trail that future women could follow.
