DON’T TELL ME I CAN’T DO SOMETHING BECAUSE I’M A GIRL
JOAN JETT IS STILL IN REBELLIOUS MODE, AND THERE’S A NEW ALBUM OUT TO PROVE IT. SIMON GAGE GRABS A CHAT WITH THE GODMOTHER OF ROCK ‘N‘ ROLL
MY GUITAR teacher told me, “girls don’t play rock’n’roll”,’ says Joan Jett, who not only plays rock’n’roll, but had a song called I Love Rock’n’Roll that stayed at Number One in the United States for seven weeks (take that mister guitar teacher). Joan Jett IS rock’n’roll.
Everything about her – the spiked hair, the leather jackets, the catsuits, the snarl, the heavy eye make-up, the attitude, the songs, the everything – is rock’n’roll. So much so, that she’s known as the Godmother Of Rock’n’Roll. Mind you, she’s also known as the Godmother Of Punk so, you know, busy woman.
Sitting, looking out to sea, in her Long Beach home, wearing black sweats and a T-shirt, she has a chuckle to herself when you mention that she’s the perfect woman to be part of the Good Night Songs For Rebel Girls album (a music offshoot of the Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls series of books), where singers from Macy Gray to KT Tunstall have chosen songs to perform by their rebellious inspirations.
Joan has chosen one of her own tracks. There’s also an online event this Sunday, where you can rock out with Joan and join a host of other
inspirational rebel women, from artist Freida Pinto to skateboarder and surfer Sky Brown.
‘I can definitely relate with the rebel thing, sure,’ says Joan in a voice so deep it’s almost a honk. ‘I always want to help girls achieve their dreams, you know. As a younger kid, it didn’t feel like I was rebelling but at teendom, you realised the expectation for girls: how you had to walk, what you could be… all that stuff comes alive when you start High School. But I liked different things, I gravitated towards the misfits, I guess I could relate.’
Telling Joan she couldn’t do something was all she needed to roll up her sleeves and do it. ‘That would inspire me,’ says the woman who, as a teenager put together pioneering all-girl rock band The Runaways, who helped paved the way for The Ramones, without whom there would have been no punk movement.
‘What that guitar teacher was telling me back when I was 13 was not that you can’t master the instrument, he was saying that rock‘n’roll is steeped in sexuality and a woman singing about sex makes people uncomfortable. So it was at that point I became rebellious,’ she says. ‘Don’t tell me I can’t do something because I’m a girl.’
She was lucky in that her parents had always told her she could be anything she wanted to be, whether it was an astronaut or an archaeologist, and when the family ended up in California, she realised she was in the right place.
But it didn’t come easy. When The Runaways went out on the road, they would have things thrown at them and be told in no uncertain terms that girls didn’t play rock’n’roll.
‘I fortunately didn’t have social media when I was starting,’ says Joan, now that she’s lived through the abuse to become an inductee in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. ‘Social media are the black arts. It must be difficult to navigate those judgements coming at you from all over.’
The Runaways may have started 45 years ago, but Joan still has hardcore fans from that generation. Following the implosion of The Runaways, Joan set up her own band, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, and her own record label, and went on to blaze a brand new trail the heat of which is still being felt today: when Miley Cyrus inducted her into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 she almost lost it, she was so pumped with emotion.
‘That’s a wonderful thing to see your influence on other people,’ says Joan, still moved by that evening she calls ‘wonderful, surreal and humbling’.
‘I walked out and the first people I see are Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and they stand up and start the five-minute standing ovation. Overwhelming. And because of those people who didn’t think I’d get there, who said, “no, you have no songs, you have no talent…”, that felt really good.’ So says the Rebel Girl.
‘i always want to help girls achieve their dreams, you know’
Rebel Girls United Virtual Rally to celebrate International Day Of The Girl is this Sunday from 5pm, rebelgirls.com