October 2021 News

By Monique Melendez



Twenty degrees and ice everywhere you look and JOAN JETT is sitting on the steps of her tour bus parked outside the stage entrance of the Palace Theater in Albany, New York; the bus door's wide open. "Okay, you guys," the road manager's saying. "Joanie'll talk to everybody, but you gotta get in line, right?" A hundred farm-fed faces in leather jackets, long-haired girls and longer-haired boys, huddled into a queue, and they wait. It's Tuesday night, and the only other action in this town is the tractor trailers careening down I-90. Twelve, 12:30, and the kids keep up their vigil while Joan signs notebooks, records, headbands, ticket stubs. She's sharp, compact, and she looks you in the eye like she's known you since eighth grade.

"Joan, I'm in a band, and we're trying to rock 'n' roll, but it's hard." This is a girl about 16, who stood in front of Jett all through her show and shouted along to every word of every song the BLACKHEARTS played.

"Yeah, I know it's hard." Joan says in her gravel rasp that lets you know just how hard. "But the most important thing is to keep playing. Even if ya gotta play for nothin', or almost nothin'."

"That's what you did?"

"Yeah. Plenty of times. Ya gotta keep playin'. 'Cause then, you can get a following. And once you get a following, you can get more gigs, and get a bigger following.

"And then," she smiles, her mouth sneaking up at the corners like a leprechaun-gone-wrong, "once you get a following, nobody can take that away from you. You can do anything."

Do you believe in rock 'n' roll? Do you believe in the magic that'll thrill your soul? Do you still wanna die before you get old?

"I never got over seeing Jailhouse Rock," is one of the first things KENNY LAGUNA, who's managed Joan for the last eight years with his wife Meryl, tells me. "Whoa! And then there was Chuck Berry! And then there was this whole thing. And it became more important to me than politics, more important to me than anything else in this society. Rock 'n' roll. It meant something. It changed my life. It changed a lotta things."

By EW Staff



Dave Grohl is a rock star in every sense of the word - his 16 Grammys and countless performances with the Foo Fighters attest to that - but his new memoir is rife with even more evidence. In The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Grohl recounts his early days as a budding musician in his hometown of Springfield, Va., his stint with Nirvana, his decades with the Foo Fighters, and the countless celebrity encounters his work has manifested, each more unbelievable than the last.

One such brush with (fellow) greatness is the time he worked with JOAN JETT, an encounter that led to her tucking in his young daughter. EW is debuting an exclusive excerpt of this chapter from The Storyteller's audiobook version, which means you can hear about what happened straight from Grohl himself. Listen to the excerpt here; Storyteller is on bookshelves now.

By David J. Criblez



JOAN JETT is very much a Long Islander. Although she grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland then moved to Los Angeles with her first band The RUNAWAYS, her heart is here in Long Beach where she presently resides.

"It's sort of a refuge," says Jett, 63. "The beach is calming and this business can be stressful. It's a nice place to come home to and if I want the city it's 20 miles away. I feel like I have the best of both worlds."

When she takes the stage with her band The BLACKHEARTS at The Paramount in Huntington on Sept. 28 for the venue's 10th anniversary celebration, Jett says she will feel a sense of comfort.

"I feel right at home here because the audience is really supportive," says Jett. "Being in New York is not as stressful as when I lived in L.A., which had a different vibe. I felt very uncomfortable and judged. People were like, 'Whatcha got for us now?' as opposed to just sitting back and relaxing into the music, which is how I feel New Yorkers receive me."

JETT MEETS LAGUNA
Jett made her way to LI from L.A. when she developed a musical partnership with KENNY LAGUNA of Long Beach, who became her manager/producer/keyboardist. At the time, The RUNAWAYS were breaking up but she still had commitments to fulfill.

"I was legally signed to a project for The RUNAWAYS about writing songs for a movie. We needed to write eight songs in six days," says Jett. "My manager talked to Kenny about coming to Los Angeles and writing these songs with me. We hit it off right away like best friends - really good vibes."

Laguna moved Jett to LI where their base of operations was. Together they formed the BLACKHEARTS band and launched a solo career for Jett.

"We are different in some ways and alike in other ways. But, we are a team working for the same thing," says Jett. "We just want to put out good music and be on the road for as long as we can. There's no formula for how it works but a lot of it has to do with trust. I don't trust anybody but Kenny."

HIT SONG AND ALBUM
Although she initially made some noise with her debut record, "Bad Reputation," it was Jett's sophomore album, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" that catapulted her into stardom. The title track topped the Billboard charts for seven weeks.

"It was a song by a band called the Arrows, which was their b-side. It sounded like a hit to me but it wasn't one. Originally, I thought it might be really cool for The RUNAWAYS to cover," recalls Jett. "But, we had actually recorded Lou Reed's 'Rock & Roll' on our first album so we didn't want to do another song immediately with 'rock & roll' in the title. They weren't into it so I held onto it and tried it one day."

By NICHOLAS GRASSO



What better artist is there to celebrate a decade of live music at the Paramount in Huntington than Long Island resident and queen of rock and roll, JOAN JETT?

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS performed a two-hour set for the Paramount's 10th anniversary show Tuesday evening before a jam-packed general admission section that turned into dance floor.

Jett is celebrating milestones this year herself. Her two most iconic albums, "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock 'n Roll," which feature some of her biggest hits, both turn 40 this year.

Tuesday's performance was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted band's final show of the year, as the group announced last week it will postpone all remaining tour dates to 2022 over regional surges in COVID-19 cases.

'The Hit List'
The night began with Jett pummeling her black Gibson Melody Maker for her classic set-starter "Victim of Circumstance," Runaway's hit "Cherry Bomb," "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)," her first of four WLIR Screamers of the Week and the anthemic "Bad Reputation."

The leather-clad frontwoman who lives in Long Beach sang several lesser-known, yet superfan favorites from her catalogue, including "Crimson and Clover" b-side "Oh Woe is Me" and "Go Home," penned and performed in dedication to Mia Zapata, the vocalist for The Gits who was murdered on her way home from a performance in Seattle in 1993.

Jett strummed most intensely during "Fragile," an emotionally raw track for which she has the sole writing credit, a rarity in her post-RUNAWAYS body of work. "Album," deep cut and low-down shuffle "Coney Island Whitefish" immediately followed and had Jett jumping up and down in her platform boots.