If you’re a musician and you claim you can play, I can play. You win it with mental fortitude, with being able to do what you say you can do. It’s the long battle, something you don’t win with muscular strength.
I don’t mean it like you’re always tense and fighting. Like your friend Laura Jane Grace, who came out as trans and continued to have success fronting the punk band Against Me! With all the battles you faced just to perform, do you ever feel a tinge jealous of artists now? Īudiences are somewhat more accepting of difference now. Well, sorry, but we are girls, maybe sometimes we want to. We were getting from the feminists, saying, you’re using your sexuality. Why can’t girls own sex the way boys do? It’s not fair. If Mick Jagger can go out there and ride a big penis on stage, and that’s fine, how come girls - girls want to have sex, girls are sexual. It was about doing what the Rolling Stones did. In Kim’s case, he championed you as a groundbreaking band but also didn’t shy away from sexing you up. I think we’re all going through a thorny cultural shift, reassessing illustrious artists who also may have demeaned or abused people. Like, I was taught young and learned from experience. It’s just, my gears are set to punch when that stuff happens. All of a sudden I felt somebody grab me from behind, sort of wrap their arms around me. Louis, playing a stadium, and I was walking to the stage, in the parking lot. Īn example: I was working with Chuck Berry once, doing some gigs together. But I can’t really speak to what they’re saying. Do I think differently about him? I don’t like the thought - if he hurt people, that’s not good. If I had felt uncomfortable, or like some guy was going to with me, sexually, I would have been out of there, man. Did you think differently about him and what he meant to your life after those allegations surfaced? After his death, in 2015, he was accused of rape by a former Runaways bassist. But it was her representing all of us - it wasn’t just necessarily about Cherie. I started jamming on the “Cherry Bomb” riff, and he started with the chorus - “hello Daddy, hello Mom.” I’d say 20, 25 minutes, we came back and said, “Sing this.” It was great to be in that creative process, happening right there for a specific person. Kim and I went in the other room, and he said, just start playing me something, play a riff. So Kim said we’re going to write you a song. Cherie Currie showed up to audition, and she had no song to sing. Was the Runaways’ “ Cherry Bomb ” one of those immediate songs? You have to sit down and go, this is so stupid, no one’s going to listen to this - that’s how it starts. But basically, I have to remind myself: It’s work.
You don’t sit down, because if you sit down, then you have to come up with something, and if you don’t, what then? Maybe five times in my whole life have I sat down and a song was pretty much there - idea, melody, riff. But I think I feel more fearful that you’re not going to come up with anything. Jett lives in Long Beach, New York, and has been a New York resident since the late 1970s.Do you still get the same joy from writing a song that you did early on? In 2015, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has been described as "the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll". She has three albums that have been certified platinum or gold. Jett's other notable songs include "Bad Reputation", "Crimson and Clover", "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)", "Light of Day", "I Hate Myself for Loving You" and "Dirty Deeds". With The Blackhearts, Jett is known for her rendition of the song "I Love Rock 'n Roll" which was number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1982.
Jett is best known for her work as the frontwoman of her band Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, and for earlier founding and performing with the Runaways, which recorded and released the hit song "Cherry Bomb". Joan Jett (born Joan Marie Larkin, September 22, 1958) is an American rock singer, songwriter, composer, musician, record producer, and actress.