May 2022 News

by adam12




May 17, 1980. JOAN JETT fires the opening salvo of a solo career that will stretch out over four decades. And she does it with a hand from some well-known friends.

After The RUNAWAYS disbanded, Jett set off to record a solo album. With no band to back her-there were no BLACKHEARTS in the picture yet-she enlisted a few names to join her in the studio: Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols and Clem Burke and Frank Infante from Blondie. It speaks volumes to Jett's reputation and credibility that she was able to recruit such big guns for a solo debut with no label backing.

And that's the real story here: JOAN JETT was recorded independently, with producer KENNY LAGUNA using borrowed studio credits. And once the record was done and passed on by a number of major labels, it was pressed and released independently: Laguna would sell copies out of his trunk after Jett's live gigs.

It wouldn't be until 1981 that Boardwalk Records would re-release the album as the album you know and probably own: Bad Reputation. By that time, Jett had established her reputation as a rock-solid solo act, and the hits were yet to come. So props to you if you have a copy of JOAN JETT on vinyl: you have a piece of rock history.

by Liz Scarlett | Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images




JOAN JETT discusses her upcoming tour with Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Poison, and addresses the Crue's history of misogyny

JOAN JETT, legendary frontwoman and ex-guitarist of rock'n'roll's pioneering all-girl group The RUNAWAYS, has been questioned about her thoughts on touring with bands who have been accused of being historically misogynistic.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Jett discusses the upcoming stadium tour with Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Poison that she's undertaking with her band JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS. When questioned as to whether she is fazed by the LA band's alleged history of misogyny, she says, "It's very prevalent, all over rock and roll. Look, all I can do as the woman I am is go out there and show an alternative view and do it my way.

"If I had to weed out every band you thought was problematic, I mean, there wouldn't be very many left. And I think everyone's being a little ... Chill out, it's music."

When pushed further, Jett addresses whether she believes rock is less misogynistic now than it was in the '80s.

"That's a good question," she answers. "The bands I listened to weren't necessarily at all misogynistic, but I'm talking about guys like Fugazi. I would say [it's] probably not as misogynistic [now], just because of their openness to getting criticised about it, because you get creamed online and people seem to care about that.

"That doesn't mean that it changes who they are, so maybe that's dangerous. It goes underground. But I think things are changing."

Elsewhere, Jett names the young female performers she thinks are "carrying the torch" for rock music. She says, "I know a couple of bands that we work with that are women and are out on the road. Rock & roll punk bands.

"A band called Fea, who is actually on our label [BLACKHEART RECORDS]. They're from San Antonio. And Jackknife Stiletto. I don't see a lot of [solo] artists singing rock & roll, particularly.

by ANGIE MARTOCCIO | Illustration by Mark Summers for Rolling Stone




"When I speak to women and girls pursuing their dreams, there's that hard glass ceiling," JOAN JETT says. "It's still there."

The rock legend on her new album Changeup, aging gracefully, Taylor Hawkins, and Dolly Parton's place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

When Rolling Stone asks JOAN JETT about memorable advice she's received over the years, she cites a time when she was hanging out with Robert Plant. After mentioning the singer's name, she pauses. "Of the Led Zeppelin gang," she adds. "For the younger people that don't know Robert Plant."

Jett recalls being on tour in England with the RUNAWAYS in the Seventies, when the band asked Plant how they could commemorate their trek overseas. "He said [Zeppelin] would collect hotel room keys, and you could show people where you were," she says. "When it was an actual, ornate key, as opposed to a card." The RUNAWAYS promptly started their own key collection, but they hit a snag when they went through a metal detector at customs and were arrested for theft - an incident they recounted in the song "Dead End Justice."

"I would've paid for them," Jett says. "I don't want to steal stuff. I don't rebel against that kind of shit. I rebel against what people say girls can do."

Jett has been doing exactly that for nearly five decades, continuing with her new album Changeup, which features acoustic renditions of BLACKHEARTS classics like "Bad Reputation," "Crimson and Clover," the RUNAWAYS' "Cherry Bomb," and more.

In an interview for Rolling Stone's Last Word column, where iconic artists reflect on the scope of their careers and what they've learned along the way, Jett spoke to us about the new record, her upcoming tour with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, and Poison, how she's still reeling from the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, and more.

by Sam Moore




The guitarist said that the late Foo Fighter was a "kick-ass drummer"

JOAN JETT has shared her memories of the late Taylor Hawkins in a new interview with NME.

Foo Fighters drummer Hawkins passed away in March in Bogota, Colombia, where the band had been touring. He was 50.

Speaking to NME, Jett remembered Hawkins as "a fuckin' wonderful guy", adding: "[He] would light up a room. Kick-ass drummer."

Jett also recalled in the interview how she and her band, the BLACKHEARTS, first met the Foos "around 2010", where they "all really hit it off".

In 2011, Foo Fighters invited the band to perform Jett's 1980 hit 'Bad Reputation' on The Late Show With David Letterman.

by NME




The icon has released her first acoustic album, 'Changeup'. Yet, Jordan Bassett finds, she shows no sign of mellowing, savaging her critics while paying homage to Miley Cyrus and Taylor Hawkins

The beach is deserted, waves crashing hypnotically into the surf. It's a reassuring sight: steady, calming. The skyline melts into the sea.

"I'm right on the beach, so it's awesome. The ocean's there and planes are coming into JFK... It's beautiful," says JOAN JETT as she continues to show NME the view from her home somewhere in New York state, before heading back inside and turning the camera on herself, revealing that instantly recognisable jagged black bob-cut and those cat-like almond eyes.

The view is the calmest thing about our riotous, hour-long interview, which sees the 63-year-old rock'n'roll icon tear into her critics with reckless abandon, while also kicking through the rubble of the boundaries she's smashed since forming her taboo-busting punk band The RUNAWAYS in 1975. We're joined on the call by her manager, producer and best friend KENNY LAGUNA, who's currently in northern California and occasionally interjects to clarify details she can't quite remember. In doing so, he can be more outrageous than Jett herself.

For anyone who's seen her 2018 biopic Bad Reputation, which depicts their four-decade relationship as being - in the words of one interviewee - "a marriage without the sex", the duo's constant affectionate bickering will be instantly recognisable. Speaking to them is like being spliced into a deleted scene from the film. At one point, Jett chastises Laguna for keeping his camera on, lounging in his bed while his granddaughter crashes around the living room next door. "Kenny! We don't need to see the circus, OK? It's a fuckin' interview!" Jett barks. "OK! I'm outta here!" he bawls back, his screen turning black.

Laguna scooped Jett up after The RUNAWAYS imploded in 1979, helping her to go solo and form her backing band The BLACKHEARTS. Her 1980 solo debut, initially self-titled and later re-released as 'Bad Reputation', was infamously rejected by 23 labels, before she and Laguna put it out on their own imprint, BLACKHEART RECORDS, spawning her signature song in its no-bullshit title track.

To mark the anniversaries of that record and its monster follow-up, 1981's 10-million-selling 'I Love Rock 'n Roll', JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS have released 'Changeup', the radio-rock group's first-ever acoustic album. The 25-track collection features mellower takes on their timeless classics 'Victim of Circumstance' and 'Love Is Pain', as well as The RUNAWAYS' era-defining 'Cherry Bomb'.

"It wasn't planned", says Jett, who explains that the project emerged from their intimate acoustic show at the Bad Reputation movie premiere in Los Angeles' Nuart Theater in 2018. "It went really well. It felt good to us doin' it and the audience seemed to respond well. So it's just info you keep in the back of your mind when you're touring and stuff." When it came to doing "something special for the fans" in honour of those anniversaries, it seemed obvious to unplug the guitars. The initial plan was to record a few tracks, but "it went so well that we just kept goin' and recorded pretty much everything we play live... We thought, 'You know what? This might be really cool as an album. It's something that we've never done.'"