August 2023 News

By jlaur




Rocker and Baltimore Orioles superfan fan JOAN JETT was in Baltimore on Monday to watch her beloved O's take on the Chicago White Sox.

Jett has been calling into 98 Rock's Kirk and Marianne to talk about the Orioles for the past number of weeks and was able to hang out with the show, in person, to gush about how well her birds have been doing.

See the interview:




After the interview, Kirk, Marianne and Jett went to pose together for a picture and noticed that the team was posing for a team photo.

If you look closely at the team photo posted on the Baltimore Orioles' social media, you will see Jett in the background.

By Victoria Hernandez




In the past, Baltimore Orioles fans might have hated themselves for loving the team.

But this season, the birds are having a high-flying season. At 81-49, they lead the American League and their first playoff berth since 2016 is within grasp.

Rock royalty JOAN JETT is among the Orioles faithful and was in the building Monday night as Baltimore hosted the Chicago White Sox.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer spent some time saying hello to players ahead of the game and, during the matchup, took a trip to the broadcast booth.

In the bottom of the third inning, Jett helped call the play when Ryan O'Hearn hit a two-RBI single for the first points of the game, putting Baltimore up 2-0.

"Yeah, yeah!" The RUNAWAYS and BLACKHEARTS frontwoman shouted on the mic as the ball soared over the shortstop and landed in a clear patch of grass.

She also gave her fellow commentators a lesson in how to throw a screwball.

And that's not all!

Jett found her way into the Orioles' team photo, which was taken that day. She can be seen sitting on the terrace above the field to the right of where the players are posing. She laughed that she was "trying to photobomb them."

By MLB Baltimore Orioles




American rock singer and diehard Orioles fan JOAN JETT joins the booth to talk rebuilding, rookies and more.

Pictured here is Joan with Orioles stadium usher, Mark McCullough. Mark is a huge fan and was excited to meet her.

By Aimee Ferrier | Photo: Alamy




When JOAN JETT was just 16, she formed The RUNAWAYS, finding success in the mid-1970s after supporting bands from Talking Heads to Van Halen. Their debut album, The RUNAWAYS, was released in 1976 and featured the classic hit 'Cherry Bomb' alongside a cover of The Velvet Underground's 'Rock and Roll'.

Vocals were alternated between Jett and Cherie Currie, with Jett eventually taking over the role of lead vocalist in 1977 when Currie left the band. With Jett at the helm, she further established her powers as a frontwoman, setting herself up for a successful solo career. After producing the Germs' only record, GI, she travelled to England to work on new music, recording an early rendition of The Arrows' 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll'.

Jett soon re-recorded the song with her band The BLACKHEARTS, releasing it in 1981 as the lead single from the album I Love Rock 'n Roll. The album was a hit, selling over one million copies and reaching number two on the Billboard 200 charts. However, the track was even more successful, spending seven weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982.

It's hard to argue that Jett isn't a rock and roll icon. She paved the way for many budding female musicians by finding success in an overtly male-dominated musical landscape, suggesting that young women could become rockstars too. As a member of one of the earliest all-female rock bands, she significantly influenced the development of the feminist punk movement, riot grrrl, later collaborating with bands such as Bikini Kill and L7.

Jett has frequently spoken out against the misogyny at the heart of the industry, offering some advice during an interview with The Guardian. "For guitar-playing girls - this is important - don't listen to what people tell you," she said. "You may run into people asking you what you're doing, saying that girls don't play guitar. You'd think we'd be way past that now - it's been 30 years since I played in the RUNAWAYS - but that's not the case. [...] Just screw all that and keep at it."

Jett has released numerous brilliant songs over the years, but there are several that she considers a cut above the rest. She once revealed that her favourite LP she's recorded is the aptly-titled Album, which includes one of her favourite songs, 'Handyman'. The record was released in 1983 and featured fewer covers than usual, instead including almost exclusively original compositions. Album only peaked at number 20 on the US Billboard 200, making it much less successful than its predecessor, I Love Rock 'n Roll.

Many of Jett's favourite JOAN JETT songs can be found on I Love Rock 'n Roll, from 'Victim of Circumstance' to '(I'm Gonna) Run Away' and 'You're Too Possessive'. The album solidified Jett as a rock icon, with the musician citing the intense creation process, which she carried out while rigorously touring, as one of the reasons for its greatness. "It really kept us together, it kept us sharp," she told Creem.

The singer also cites her classic hit 'Bad Reputation' as one of her favourite songs she's ever recorded. The 1980 song appeared on Jett's album Bad Reputation and is now considered one of her signature songs. The track has been widely used in popular culture, even becoming the opening theme for the cult television series Freaks and Geeks.

By LAURA KELLY | Photo: Camera Press/Chris McAndrew




So many people were threatened by JOAN JETT's strength and talent. Misogynists tried to scare her off, but she was unbowed - and blazed a trail for all the rock'n'roll women who followed.

JOAN JETT was born in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, in September 1958. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 12 years old. Within three years, she had formed her first band and was performing around town. Her parents divorced not long after the move, at which point she began using her stage name.

At 16, Jett became a founding member of The RUNAWAYS, playing lead guitar, providing vocals and sharing songwriting with fellow members Cherie Currie, Lita Ford and Sandy West. They travelled the world and built up a devoted fanbase while releasing four studio albums, and are best known for the 1976 banger, Cherry Bomb.

After The RUNAWAYS broke up, Jett started working with songwriter and producer KENNY LAGUNA, who would go on to be her manager and best friend. Together they put together a new band, JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS. Lagunaand Jett have collaborated on all her releases since, including Bad Reputation, I Hate Myself for Loving You andthe 1981 US no 1 hit, I Love Rock'n'Roll.

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. She has been named as an influence by generations of artists including riot grrls Bikini Kill, The Distillers' Brody Dalle and Miley Cyrus.

Speaking to The Big Issue for her Letter to my Younger Self, Jett explains how she overcame the sexists who tried to scare her away from music, and what it felt like to be lauded by her heroes David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.

By LAURA KELLY




JOAN JETT was just a teenager when she had her first huge hit with the RUNAWAYS. She was unprepared for the levels of vitriol they'd face.

When Rock & Roll Hall of Famer JOAN JETT started the all-girl band The RUNAWAYS in the '70s she was convinced everyone "would love 16-year-old girls playing rock'n'roll". The band faced a rude awakening.

"Very quickly, once people realised we were serious about it, the name calling started. Not just little names, but really hurtful names: cunt, bitch, dyke. And that's meant to scare you to death. It did scare me to death," she said in a new interview with The Big Issue for the iconic Letter To My Younger Self feature.

"But what it also did was it hardened me. I just was incensed at the principle. How dare you tell me what I can and can't do?"

Jett was just 18 when the RUNAWAYS' huge hit Cherry Bomb raced up the charts. But at early shows, audiences would hurl insults and projectiles at the teenage girls onstage. Jett used to come backstage after playing and cry in the band's dressing room.

"There was something about it that was a spectator sport," she said. "I was starting to realise that maybe it was going back to the days when people used to be killed in the town square, hanged or stoned. And I started to feel like that's what this was, on a different level. It was a way for the certain people in society to voice their displeasure at what we are doing."

The journalists who wrote about the band were no better. They'd write horrible things "just to make their buddies laugh" and their interview questions were all about sex.

By Tyler Golsen | Photo: Alamy




Songs about rock and roll were all the rage in the 1980s. The genre itself was celebrating its fourth decade of existence, having come a long way from the Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley-led origins of the genre. From John Mellencamp's 'R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.' to Twisted Sister's 'I Wanna Rock', rock music was being sung about all over the place. Def Leppard just happened to be one of the many bands who took to it as well.

By 1983, Def Leppard had fully embraced their slight power rock sound on that year's Pyromania. Pairing up with producer Mutt Lange, the British pop-rockers set out to make a record full of anthems like 'Photograph' and 'Foolin'. But the album's ode to the power of rock, 'Rock of Ages', was initially inspired by another famous ode to rock music.

"We'd have never written 'Rock Of Ages' if we hadn't have heard 'I Love Rock And Roll' by JOAN JETT," lead singer Joe Elliott later told Koas 2000. "But we didn't steal her entire sound. We took that one song and thought, 'This is very anthemic. We could get away with writing songs of this standard and style.' And that's what we did. It doesn't particularly sound that much like her, the chorus a bit. The actual structure of the song is nothing alike."

Leading off with the nonsense countdown of "Gunter Glieben Glauten Globen", 'Rock of Ages' immediately set itself apart as a seismic entry point to rock music. It was actually the second song on Pyromania dedicated to the power of rock, after the album's leadoff track 'Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)'.

Eventually, 'Rock of Ages' became the name of a Broadway musical, and later a 2012 film featuring a number of hit singles from the 1980s. Def Leppard's music was obviously included in both, with guitarist Phil Collen later expressing appreciation that the band's music could be canonised by another form of media.