If you study from any music history textbook, you will find that almost all of them focus on the various men throughout history and their many contributions to music. What a large majority of these textbooks leave out is how important women were in the development of music. Music has been a boys club for a very long time but there were some extraordinary women throughout history who have made huge impacts as well. Especially in the genre of Rock and Roll music, male artists have made up a majority of this category, while women at the time were mostly involved in pop music. However, there were some women who broke the mold and became popular in this male dominated genre and one of them is Joan Jett. Joan Jett was one of the few women with a major breakout career in Rock and Roll, as well as Punk, she basically invented the image of a female “rock star”, and inspired many young women throughout her career to follow in her footsteps. I chose to do a report on Joan Jett because besides the fact that I grew up listening to her music, I love her attitude about music and how she portrays herself through both her craft and stage presence. She is a woman who genuinely loves rock and roll with all her heart and she was never afraid to be herself, whether it was the way she dressed or acted, and I always admired that and was inspired by her to be true to myself, as well.
Joan Jett was born as Joan Marie Larkin on September 22, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When she was in grade school her family moved to Rockville, Maryland and then again to West Covina, California when she was 14. That Christmas of 1974, she got her first guitar for Christmas and taught herself how to play because she soon quit her guitar lessons after she decided that she didn’t like the songs her instructor taught her. She would play along in her bedroom to her favorite records records of British “glitter-pop” artists like David Bowie, T. Rex, Gary Glitter, Slade, and many others. (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts) She was inspired by this unique glam rock music that she would constantly hear at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, which was a Los Angeles nightclub she frequented quite often in her youth. (Rhodes) This music spoke to her in a way that nothing else had. She covered many of these artists songs and it even inspired her to write her own music because she didn’t want to be a groupie like a lot of girls were, but instead wanted to create her own music like the artists she looked up to. Joan Jett even said herself, “I wanted to be a rock star, not wait around a hotel for some rock star.” (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts”)
One night at Rodney’s when Joan was 15, she met Kim Fowley, a Hollywood music producer and she told him that she wanted to form all girls band. Fowley, who loved this idea, gave Joan the contact information of two other female musicians who had also reached out to him, singer Kari Kome and drummer Sandy West, and she took four different buses to travel to meet them. They quickly began auditioning other women to fill roles in the band and decided on hiring bassist Micki Steele, guitarist Lita Ford, and singer Cherie Currie. Together, they formed the all girl rock/punk music group, The Runaways. Their performances were described as “noisy and sexually provocative.” (Carson, pg. 86) They released their first album in 1975 and continued to release music together until they broke up on New Year's Eve in 1978. (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts”) This breakup, however, did not stop or discourage Joan because in 1979 she started pursuing her own solo career. She worked with her former co-manager of The Runaways, Toby Mantis, as well as Sex Pistols drummer, Paul Cook, and guitarist, Steve Jones, to produce a demo for a solo album. (“Joan Jett Biography”) Together they recorded three songs, one of which was a cover song of British glam pop group the Arrows called “I Love Rock’ n Roll,” which she heard once on British T.V. and never forgot and which later became one of Jett’s biggest hits. (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts”)
A little while after this, Joan Jett returned to L.A. to work on music for a movie about the Runaways that unfortunately never got released. However, while she was working on the film, she met producer, songwriter and musician, Kenny Laguna, while they were assigned to work together on the music for the movie. They quickly became good friends and Kenny Laguna eventually took over her management. Shortly after, Joan became very ill and spent six weeks in the hospital suffering from pneumonia and a heart valve infection. (“Joan Jett Biography”) After she recovered, she moved to London with Laguna and recorded her first solo album. The album, simply titled Joan Jett was self-released in 1980 and then re-released after much success by Boardwalk Records under the name Bad Reputation in 1981.
After some time as a solo artist, Jett realized that she wanted to form another band. She put out an ad in L.A Weekly which said, “Joan Jett wants three good men. Show-offs need not apply.” (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts”) After holding many auditions she officially formed The Blackhearts with bassist Gary Ryan, guitarist Eric Ambel (who was later replaced by Ricky Byrd) and drummer Lee Crystal. They toured relentlessly, with Joan exuding energy and confidence on stage, and they still tour together to this day. In more recent years, Joan Jett joined the Broadway cast of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in 2000 and was the executive producer of the 2010 movie The Runaways starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. She also is an advocate for animal rights and vegetarian/vegan living and has even worked closely with PETA to try and get as many people as she can to embrace the vegetarian lifestyle and lessen the damage of the environment caused by the meat industry and intensive animal farming.
Given that Joan Jett was a women in this mostly male music world, she was faced with a lot of challenges and discrimination due to her gender. During her time with the Runaways, the band had a hard time being taken seriously because they were a teenage all girl group. When talking about this struggle, Jett stated, “I mean there was anything that we got because we were girls in a positive sense. Everything was, ‘You’re weaker ‘cause you’re girls. You can’t take it because you’re girls. You can’t do it because your girls. But you’re cute to have around, so come in and get drunk.’” (Carson, pg. 5) In a reaction to why she believes the band received this criticism she said, “I think the Runaways were just too honest. Girls act like that- girls drink, girls smoke, and girls swear. If it would have been all guy band no one would have given a sh*t.” (Carson, pg. 86)
It wasn’t just this criticism and blatant sexism that she faced with a group of girls, but she also experienced the same, if not worse, misogynist treatment from male rock ‘n’ roll fans while she was performing as a solo act. Jett recounts a time while performing in Italy and Spain to an all- male audience and said, “I was covered in spit, and it was hanging off of me… I cried every night because I didn’t understand why they hated me so much.” When she finally asked them why, they responded, “Girls playing rock & roll- you shouldn’t be doing this.” (Carson, pg. 86) However, this didn’t stop her; she persisted as a female rock star and inspired many women rockers along the way. When Joan released her first solo album, it was rejected by every major label in the U.S. She explains in interviews that this was because people didn’t like her voice and didn’t like that she was a woman playing guitar who acted and dressed the way she did. So, she and Kenny Laguna formed their own record label, Blackheart Records, and Joan Jett became one of the first women to own her own label.
Despite these many struggles, Joan Jett had so much more successes. When she was with the Runaways, she released four albums, toured with the Ramones, and opened up for Tom Petty and Cheap Trick. When Bad Reputation was released, it received so much U.S. success that it got picked up by Boardwalk Records and the title track became her second most popular song. Also, after she formed the Blackhearts, their song I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll went to the top of the Billboard charts and stayed there for 7 weeks, which is a huge accomplishment and made the song an instant classic. (“Joan Jett & The Blackhearts) She even reached the Top 20 twice again in one year with two cover songs, Crimson and Clover and Do You Wanna Touch Me, as well as I Hate Myself for Loving You and Little Liar. (“Joan Jett Biography”) As a reward to all of her accomplishments over the years, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the remaining Blackhearts in 2015, where she gave a speech on stage to a room full of rock and roll legends, sporting her same iconic punk rock hairstyle and black leather jacket from her youth.
Of her many hits throughout the years, as part of both the Runaways and the Blackhearts, as well as her solo career, one song that I believe is very representative of her work is the title track from her album Bad Reputation. This song isn’t just one of her biggest hits, but it is a work of hers that truly represents who Joan Jett is and showcases her in a light that is most true to herself. With lyrics like, “A girl can do what she wants to do and that’s what I’m gonna do” and “If ya think I'm strange I ain't gonna change. An' I'm never gonna care 'bout my bad reputation,” the song truly shows how she never cared what anyone thought of her. Even when her solo album was rejected by so many labels, she never once adjusted her image to fit what the public wanted. She always stayed true to herself and never cared about the reputation she gave off. Also, any performance of this work showcases her guitar skills and powerful stage presence, as well as her love for the music and the music video shows the story of how she formed her own record label. It’s also off her own solo album and she was one of the few women rock stars at the time. “Bad Reputation” is a fast paced modern rock/punk song, written and performed by Joan Jett. The timbre of this song can be heard through Joan Jett’s female mezzo-soprano vocal range with male backup vocals, electric guitar, bass and drums. It sounds like it is in a fast 4/4 time, with lyrics in strophic ABABABAB form. The song consists of a harmony that sounds mostly consonant, with some dissonance, a fast tempo and dynamics that are mostly forte, and a homophonic texture.