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Kenny
Laguana Interview Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Warped Tour Live Photos The phrase ‘behind every good man, there’s good woman’ should be rephrased to best describe the relationship between Joan Jett & Kenny Laguna. In this case, the pioneering punk rock goddess, Joan Jett is the spotlight magnet. But in the wings, beside her more often than not, stands her long term business partner, producer, and friend, Kenny Laguna. Together, the Jett & Laguna team made rock & roll history by producing “I Love Rock 'N Roll,” one of the greatest rock & roll anthems of all time. The duo also formed Blackheart Records, the first record label to have ‘a girl on top’ out of necessity because 20+ labels had turned them down. But before Laguna hooked up with Jett, he was already considered a veteran in the business for blowing-up bubble gum hits with Bill Medley and later for his work with Tommy James & The Shondells. In the 70’s, he began producing new wave punk hits for Beserkley Records’ artist Greg Kihn and then went on to produce the hit, “I Want Candy” with Bow Wow Wow. But it was a talented, determined, and creative 17 year old punk rocker who caught Kenny’s eye & ears. From the onset of Joan Jett’s career, songwriter/producer Kenny Laguna has been beside her every step of the way. It’s 10 pm a couple of nights before the VMA’s and Kenny talked to Musicpix for almost an hour about his partnership with Joan, their new record “SINNER,” and a topic that Joan would prefer to not talk about. Listen in…
Musicpix: Well we admire her for that, but we certainly understand your perspective because, yeah, you can’t beat the exposure! Your day has been hectic, so we’ll just relax and chat… We’re honored to have the opportunity to speak with you about your life in the music business, and specifically about being Joan Jett’s producer, partner, and confidant from the onset of her career. Without question, Joan Jett was, and is, ahead of her time. She’s a strong, determined, creative, and sexual artist that has never succumbed to other’s opinions or beliefs. Joan continues to solidify her talent and musical intelligence once again with her latest release, “SINNER.” I understand that this record got stuck in a revolving door of executives among other things. Could you talk about the record and why in your opinion, it took so long to make? Kenny: For one thing, we’re at a point where we are very careful that the record we make is the right record and the best that we can do because the opportunities for women who have been around awhile in rock & roll are very slim. For starters, it was a lot of pressure. Once we put out a record, we thought that it was fantastic, but it didn’t get a lot of airplay… the record was “Pure and Simple.” So we started out really concentrating. Mo Austin was legendary at Warner Bros. The Who told us that he was amazing, so that was enough. He (Mo Austin) started a label for Frank Sinatra called Reprise, so we were really into that. So, his gang had a certain idea of where we were heading and we went in that direction and tried to work with a record company for the first time. Their whole A& R department was made up of producers who had had hits. Mo left the company in some kind of power struggle. The second in command, Lenny Waronker, took us in a slightly different direction…but everyone at Warner loved Joan Jett and wanted to be involved in her expected success on Warners. Then Lenny left and in came these two guys, Gold & Baker, who had their own ideas and we tried to conform to that. So now, time is going by, in our quest to make the exact-right record. We were trying to be less-assertive than normal because all of our other records were made in a vacuum… so there was no interaction at all and it worked out pretty good most of the time. But here we go…the next one (at Warner), Danny Goldberg, he’s a really close friend of ours…we love the guy…he’s a genius and we went in another direction. Then came Teddy Templeman and we didn’t know Teddy Templeman at all. The bands that he was most famous for weren’t really Joan’s favorites at all…But he was a successful guy and we respected him. We knew that he had done the follow-up to “Moondance” by Van Morrison so that was enough for me…maybe not enough for Joan. Anyway, he was the head of A & R there, and he said to Joan, “The stuff you did with Bob Brock (the previous administration)…was great. Bob Brock and Joan were a funny combination- even though he’s a good guy and very talented, he’s kind of slick rock & roll…when they do like… piece together drum bits and everything for Metallica…it’s a different mentality… Anyway, Bob Brock was great. So Templeman says to Joan... “Brock’s stuff is good but it’s too pristine.” Mind you, I made all these records with these guys because it’s a requirement with Joanie even more so than with myself. So, if you want to make a dirtier record? Of course, we’ll do that. So we went back in with Teddy and did 15 more sides…we did good work. And then, here come the final guys. After Teddy was kicked out, they called us and said, “We’ve had a meeting about Joan and we think that the records that you made all by yourselves, in a vacuum, are the best records. So we’re going to send you some money…and they sent us a bunch of money…. “Just do three or four more sides and come out here and we’ll decide what to do next…” So, I let the check clear….I wanted the money in the bank before I talked to them. And so I said, “this is becoming outrageous…I was honest with them. I said, ‘we could go and do something for you, but what happens when you leave because everybody is leaving every three months…or whatever every 8 months… Anyway, in the meantime, we’re recording and we’ve got a lot of distractions. We do an amazing amount of stuff with the American troops like we always do, but we really stepped it up in the 90’s. Well, they called upon us (so to speak) after many years…me starting in Vietnam during that war and Joan starting in the beginning of her career….and there was lot of charity and there was a huge hit in France…there was the Evil Stig project which was complicated and a time consuming process. Joanie went on the road and toured around the country and it took a lot of time. Add that all up, plus all the administrations, and that was the time it took. Oh yeah, once I got there, I said, “You’re hurting her career for a girl her age…you are taking critical years to take somebody in their 30’s and start messing around for 8 years…it’s tricky. So it ended up, they were good about it. We worked it out. We cherry picked- we picked what we liked and we started re-recording. Musicpix: Your patience has paid off. The press is giving Joan the respect she has earned by giving “SINNER” more than kind reviews. I understand that you wanted to achieve another mainstream hit, another “I Love Rock 'N Roll” from this release. Why is that important to you?
Musicpix: We covered a few Warped cities this year on the tour but not as many as you did. In addition to Joan headlining Warped this year, you also produced the 2006 Warped Compilation CD. When you walked through Warped, and you saw the plethora of kids, as well as the number of bands trying to make it, what do you say to yourself?
MusicPix: So what do you ears tell you about the music? What are you hearing? Kenny: It’s a pretty weird trip when you’re walking through it. I’m talking about “It’s a Small World”- the ride, when you’re moving and all these different bands are playing, but it’s the same song. Warped, it’s all different, it’s like noise pollution of just punk rock because you walk through….you hear this stage, and that stage, and every band I saw, I thought was better than me, not better than Joan…which is amazing because there is so much talent out there. I don’t know if I’d have the courage to go into the business today because there is so much talent. The Warped Tour is the most incredible thing…how they take that monstrosity and move it 400 miles a night and set up. I only missed three cities. Joanie was an animal. She was out there every day. We didn’t do it like the other bands that stayed in the busses and take showers at the gig, or didn’t take showers at all….We would get a hotel every day- check in about 5 in the morning and check out about 11. We’re a mature band. Musicpix: Joan is a member of your think tank. Talk about why her perspective is so valuable to you…
Kenny: I think that there’s a lot of that, but there are times when we are a lot alike. She discovered Rodney Bingenheimer’s disco on Sunset Blvd... she discovered the 70’s glitter rock. I lived in England at the time and I was living it. So we both love that music. That’s what “I Love Rock 'N Roll” is…that’s what “Hate Myself” is…and what “Do You Want To Touch Me” is. It’s a certain sound…it’s a version of it, but not exactly. It’s the spirit of it with big gang vocals, handclaps, and stuff like that. I spent ten years listening to it and loved it. I tried to bring it to Tommy James and it just didn’t come together. With Joanie, it did. We both love music. Like “Bad Reputation” or the Ramones…and stuff like that. We both have a real feeling for politics. We’re on the same side of that usually. The opposites are there… in certain areas…what an odd-couple in what we look like. I’m very poppy and she’s kind of hard-core. So if we’re left alone, she’s sounds like the Germs hard core and if I’m left alone, it sounds like bubble-gum. That way we balance each other. If the balance is off a little bit, we fail. “Good Music” is an example. That was a song that I had probably too much of a hand in. I think it fell a little bit more to my side. I thought it was a great sounding record and it’s probably one of my favorites, but it didn’t happen because of the balance wasn’t there. I brought the Beach Boys in and it sounded like it should have been a hit but to be a Joan Jett record, it missed. We’ve had records go the other way too…they’re cool records but a song like “Fetish” - it leans more to Joan. But you can imagine how hard it would be to have a hit single with a song like that.
Kenny: I have a different take on it actually. I think the thing with Madonna and Britney Spears was a stunt and salacious…they were boys toys where these two girls got together and what not. I think that the Lillith Fair was folksy enough to be dainty. But the Rage Against Machine with chicks? It’ll never happen. The Madonna’s got on the radio and sounded poppy and acceptable for women. Courtney Love’s radio successes were songs that were polished up. So the women are still not allowed to be hard like ACDC…you can’t even point to one…a girl band that’s hard like that. And you can’t point to too many hits. If you listen to rock or classic rock radio, there are very few women being played. You know the girls are out there. Like when Hip Hop was broken through…but I remember my friend, Eddie O’Loughlin, had Salt N-Pepa and he had a partner but his partner said he wasn’t going to do girls rapping and people thought he lost his mind and they broke up over it. Then he (Eddie) made his secretary his partner, and she’s a rich woman and he’s a rich man, so it worked out. But it’s funny…they are baby steps. People say to Joan all the time… “isn’t it wonderful that the women are breaking…” No they arn’t…there are no women on alternative radio…it’s Nirvana every other song, or Foo Fighters. Where are the women? A couple get on for a minute…but you go look at the play list, and I do it for a living, and there’s no women. So it makes it really hard for us. We not only have a woman, but a woman who’s a certain age. I had this one guy say, “I love this record but Joan’s too old” and he’s not playing (on the radio) any women anyway….Now wait a minute! You’re playing Mike Ness and Social Distortion but he’s older than Joan. They’re playing the Chili Peppers, and they’re older than Joan. You can’t penalize Joan for starting when she was 15. I look at the press and they all talk about her age doing this and that and yet, I never see that about Social Distortion or all these other bands. They’re the same age as Joan and age isn’t an issue. For girls, age is an issue. So yeah, women have come along, but we still haven’t beaten that stereotype. That age barrier. Joanie looks like a kid. She has that child mentality. She got frozen in time when she was 15 with The Runaways. She’s a very wise woman. She reads philosophy books all day…she’s self-educated but she’s way educated. But there’s a part of her that’s child-like but it’s not even about that. It’s about what you look like. We were up for a part once and they really mixed up her age with some of the other girls that she started with…they liked her for the role but one of their think tank people started bitchin’ that she was in her 50’s…and he was wrong! Anyway, what’s the difference? You’re looking at her….Perez Hilton…a real big guy did a big expose’ on how Joan Jett had to be lying about her age because he figured it out from her career, but he was wrong. Today, you can’t even lie about your age like Marilyn Monroe could…you can’t because people can just find you on the computer. Peaches could be getting away with something. Her age has become an issue too. We know her and we work with her, but I’ve never even thought about her age.
Kenny: Producing is a little bit more joyous to me but the satisfaction of writing is better. I feel like the maximum part of a legacy, is the songs that were written. So if you write a good song, it lasts forever. It’s magic. It’s the most satisfying, but it’s my least favorite thing to do because it’s like an exorcism. Musicpix: Earlier you talked about your efforts with American troops. You and Joan have not soap boxed your charity efforts as most artists would these days as a pr effort. It speaks volumes on why you’re involved in the first place. But, how do you use your involvement for the betterment of the cause? … i.e. getting more people on the bus without making yourselves vulnerable to backlash? Kenny: Joan really isn’t comfortable at all talking about it and the only time she ever did when she was invited by the military. General Franks asked CNN to do a little bit and the Army was really pleased with it but she was sick about it. She actually took off her burka and stomped on it and they were showing it on Wolf Blitzer. Which was of course, was pissing off Arabs and when we went to Pakistan, I remember the commander of the base there…it was Colonel Jimmy Carter…(Kenny’s whispering…that was amazing) who said “Did you see that on CNN? “Don’t do that here please.” (referring to Joan stomping on her burka) We don’t do it for another other reason than we love those kids. We did Oliver North’s War Stories, something Joan and I didn’t agree with, but I just had to force Joan….she didn’t want to do that kind of publicity. But it was Oliver North’s War Stories with Bob Hope’s son, Ann Margaret, General Franks…that who was on that show. How can you not do that? Here’s Oliver North but we were traveling with Howard Dean throughout that whole time. You know all the presidents had their acts. Clinton had Michael Bolton…we thought Clinton was hipper that that didn’t we? But he wasn’t. He played the sax and the clarinet and probably marched in the band when he was in second grade. So, we were with Howard Dean and Oliver North loves us and he wanted us to go into a war zone but he can’t get the Howard Dean thing. He can’t understand how such nice people could be so misguided… (laughs)…But anyway, the kids, they follow the tour. When we went to Madrid, the army base nearby and they’d be making a great deal of noise, we loved that and they made us feel at home. We’d go onto the bases and we made them feel like they were home. It just happened like that…kind of organically and there was a lot of years when there wasn’t wars and in the meantime, we were bonding with the people who were ascending in the military and General Jumper, our friend, who is the Chief of the Air Force and General Kevin Burns who is a Four-Star General who is in charge of 450,000 guys in charge of training and indocturating thing and it just kind of grew. When you see what these kids are…and you see what they are asked to do…you just love them. I hope the kids now don’t go through what my generation did. They don’t blame the idiot politicians, they blamed the soldiers for not winning. As far as publicity? It’s unseemly. There are people (I’ll leave their names out) that go over to the edge of a war zone, stay in a four-star hotel, and then go do Jay Leno…all the televisions show bragging about how brave they are and what they did. Unseemly. Musicpix: Well, thank you for what you do because I know it means a lot to those souls… for giving them a moment to rock & roll. Musicpix: We’ve talked with a lot of artists this year and main ingredient that always surfaces is HONESTY… successful artists realize that if it ain’t real, then why bother? And I gather by your partnership with Joan, you’re no different. From a songwriting perspective, could you talk about why real and honest lyrics are the glue? Kenny: The lyrics have to be natural. They have to be unforced, they have to be unpretentious. Anybody can craft a song, but to have a song that’s sincere and really touches people… the lyrics have to be very honest. Musicpix: Could you give us (3) of your greatest achievements?
Musicpix: How about (3) things you aspire to accomplish? Kenny: I hope to break “SINNER” and I guess I’d like to see Blackheart (Records) break one more new act…we have a couple that we find interesting like The Vacancies and The Eyeliners are on our label. It would be great to break another act. I’m going to make a film. Well, I hope to make a film, but it’s on its way and it’s going to be about the beginnings of punk rock and the time Joan I spent-we’ve got a producer, it’s going to happen because what we witnessed was pretty amazing. MusicPix: I was going to ask if you would write a book but it sounds like you’ll do the movie instead… Kenny: You know, I’d love to write a book but I just babble my stories, but I don’t know if I have it in me. I need someone like you who can do it… MusicPix: I’m available. Just call… I’ll write with you. I’d be honored. Kenny: Well, if I ever get to that point. I did my liner notes for “Laguna Tunes” and it was brutal. I found it really difficult. It takes a lot to be a ‘Writer-Writer.’ It took me two months to get that far…maybe a little less, but every night to sit down and go, I have to do this…it was tough, but you know that drill, right? Once it gets going, it’s a lot easier. But at first, before you sit down and do it, it’s brutal. Sometimes you write and it feels stupid and then if I bring it to someone and they say yeah, it’s stupid, I don’t want to do that. MusicPix: But you have such great stories! I especially enjoyed one about Darlene Love and how you helped her get her career back on track. You were involved during the Ronette’s hey day and part of the doo-wop era. At the time, that was a very difficult time for black artists. The Chantels and the El Dorados couldn’t even put their pictures on the covers of the albums. They had to put pictures of white kids on them because labels thought the albums wouldn’t sell. Could you describe what those times were like for you and where do you think we’re at now? Kenny: I remember when I went to Bermuda with Darlene…I don’t go quite that far back (to the doo-wop days) but my mentors did. Anyway, I went to Bermuda with Darlene one time when she was with The Blossoms. I started checking in and they were giving me the paperwork and when they saw Darlene they said, ‘oh sorry, we have no rooms’ and I was already checking in! I go, ‘what are you talking about…we just discussed it, you know?’ Then Dar said, ‘forget it Kenny, let’s get out of here.’ And that was in 1970, so I saw that and it was pretty intense. That ‘thing’ how the black acts were taken advantage of…for instance when Fats Domino and Little Richard would do these songs and Pat Boone would cover them right away and have the bigger hit, which would be on the white radio and they would be relegated to R& B radio…tough stuff. I’m not feeling that they aren’t getting a shot now though…there’s another race of people. Musicpix: [Laughing] Yeah, like women over 45 right? Kenny: [chuckling too] Yeah and also I think MTV could use some more ‘white music’…I’m really good friends with Eddie O'Loughlin, who does a lot of R & B music. He used to say, ‘man you’re so lucky…Joan’s on MTV. They won’t even play us, cause they aren’t playing black music on MTV” and I’d say yeah, that’s a bitch…I didn’t care because it was my music they were playing. But now all of a sudden, it all black and it’s like wow!
Kenny: Against Me…I wouldn’t call NOFX ‘up & coming’ but they are great, AFI, Anti-Flag, The Bouncing Souls…I like all of those. Musicpix: Any female artists? Kenny: We're working with a band named Shira Girl but they are in a state of flux right now. We like The Eyeliners because we signed them. There’s a band in Texas called Girl in a Coma- they are Latino and not glamorous at all. We just loved them. They are so not glamorous. Musicpix: What about undiscovered artist’s who are trying to reach out to you at the label…what sparks those ears of yours? Kenny: It’s hard to have the time to listen. Our office staff listens a lot and they get the stuff to me and Joan. We do try to do it. Musicpix: That leads into my next question. What about your gut response? Do you know it immediately, that magic moment, when that artist has it? The ‘package’ -you’ve got to have the look that transposes into video, you’ve got to have the performance, the charisma, and maybe a memorable tune… What’s that ‘has it’ moment for you? Kenny: I don’t know how to describe it. Some things just come to me and I just love it. It could be any kind of thing. Joan likes punk rock and that’s about it or some derivative of it. But I’m open to anything. I bought “The Nightshift” by the Commodores and I still love it.
1970 Montego Bay Bobby
Bloom Keyboards Alphabetical Track Listing (I'm Gonna) Run Away Joan
Jett & the Blackhearts I Love Rock N' Roll [Blackheart Records]
*Source: AMG By Gwyn Tyme |
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