BY BOBBY McMAHON

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Some people take the road less traveled. Joan Jett had to build her own road.

With a career going on more than three decades, the rock icon and pioneer has singularly made her own success like none other in rock music, pushing boundaries and shattering perceptions of what one artist--man or woman--can do. Jett, with her backup band, The Blackhearts, will headline the 12th annual Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at Richmond's Brown's Island on Saturday.

Best known for fist-in-the-air rock hits "I Love Rock and Roll," "Bad Reputation" and "I Hate Myself for Loving You," Jett has blazed a wide trail through music, kicking out punchy, straight-ahead rock 'n' roll that is as classic as it is rebellious.

She will release a greatest-hits album, "Fit to Be Tied," in June.

As a teenager, Jett helped found the groundbreaking punk band The Runaways, the first major all-girl band to hit the mainstream.

"We saw the world around us--saw the music scene around us--and none of that included girls playing rock 'n' roll," said Jett during a recent phone interview.

"We knew that it was going to be something that people would respond to."

Although treated as something of a gimmick group in the United States (teenage girls playing their own instruments? The circus must be in town!), the group found massive, riot-sparking success elsewhere.

"In some places like Japan, The Runaways are huge--really huge. I don't want to say 'The Beatles huge,' but--The Beatles huge," said Jett. "Thousands and thousands of girls screaming and chasing us down the street. It was just crazy."

After the breakup of The Runaways, Jett struck out on her own, recording the songs that would make her an icon. Her body of work, both with The Runaways and as Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, has been highly influential, showing an entire generation that girls can play just as brash and hard as the boys can.

After so many years in the music business, however, Jett is still disheartened at the lack of progress by female rock musicians.

"It gets very frustrating to me--this many years after The Runaways--to think that girls have not really come anywhere," said Jett.

"There aren't girls being played on the radio. They're not in the press. It's not a standard thing. It's still sort of looked at as a novelty."

In many ways, though, Jett remains a bit of a novelty herself. It's challenging to find an artist with both her great success and her unwavering determination in going her own way. Finding no labels willing to release her music, she stuck to her guns and started Blackheart Records in the early 1980s, becoming the first major female artist to own her own record label.

Beyond music, Jett has performed extensively for the U.S. armed forces. But bucking the trend set by most famous musicians, she has staunchly avoided most media attention about her work with the troops.

Jett keeps tight wraps on her work with the United Service Organizations, and only reluctantly talks about her experiences. As she describes it, playing for the men and women in uniform is a personal thing, something she does for no one but them.

"I don't think it's something you do for publicity. I think you do it because you care about the people who put their life on the line for American ideals," she said.

Jett, who for a time seriously considered joining a branch of the military, has played throughout the world with the USO. She traveled deep into Pakistan and Uzbekistan after Sept. 11, and was the first artist to play for the troops during the Kosovo conflict.

Jett values the opportunity to go downrange and interact with the troops in the field.

"I like going to the [expletive] places," she said. "You want to go to the places where the soldiers go 'What are you doing here?'"

It's not that Joan Jett defies labels or definition; it's that she has so many appropriate labels that it's difficult to keep track of them all. Pioneer. Activist. Punk. Entrepreneur. She really is all these seemingly disparate things in one, creating an artist who has stayed true to what she believed, despite what the world around her said.

When asked to define herself, it couldn't be simpler: "Everybody always calls me Joan Jett. They don't call me Joan. I am Joan the musician. I guess that's what I am."