Tuesday, July 18, 2006

interview I If, when you hear the name Joan Jett, you think black leather, perma-sneer and butt-kicking attitude, the voice on the phone lives up to the image.

Her speaking voice is as feminine as gravel in a blender. And although she initially sounds standoffish, it turns out that Jett is quite the opposite. Even the thought of Britney Spears famously citing Pat Benatar in response to a press conference
question about her decision to cover Jett's signature hit I Love Rock 'n' Roll doesn't ruffle the iconic singer-guitarist.

"Usually you cover songs that reflect something about you or something you feel, whatever you know," says Jett. "I didn't know that she loved rock 'n' roll. And then when she made that statement, it confirmed it for me. You can't take it seriously or be hurt by it at all," she adds.

And judging from the current buzz, Jett's career will outlast Spears' anyway. Not that I get a lot of time with the 47-year-old who dares to claim one of the headlining spots at this year's Vans Warped Tour today at Thunderbird Stadium

(If you want to see Jett, you'll have to see most of Warped -- concert times are determined by a draw, which isn't done till day of show).

Jett's phone time is severely limited by the management staffer who connects us and kindly comments, "I'm trying to conserve her voice . . . She's in great demand, you see."

Now that she's released a new record and is one of the headlining acts on Vans Warped Tour, she's in demand.

That's right, the sea of 15-year-old boys who've come for goth-inspired punk band AFI will get a lesson in old-school rock 'n' roll, Jett style. Jett doesn't appear to have aged much since she broke through with her punk band the Runaways at the age of 15. And
judging from new release Sinner -- her first studio album in 12 years -- the razor-sharp edge is still very much intact, along with a short hairdo (the shag is long gone) and well-toned biceps that are the result of a couple of half-hearted workouts a week.

"I knew I would enjoy this because it's the kind of music that I love and I grew up with, and I figured the vibe would be very relaxed, and it is," she says of her Warped Tour experience. "It's like a punk rock circus, a rolling block party. Some of the bands that
have done this for several years, like NOFX and Bouncing Souls, a lot of these guys are doing things to make the time pass easier. Barbecues every night. BMX bikes. Scooters. They've got hockey nets, weights, a blow-up pool. All the comforts of home. It really is like a block party. Then once in awhile they have a poker game and they play for big bucks too."

The boy's club is comfortable territory for Jett. Her defiance is two-pronged. She's long seemed impervious to both sex role stereotypes and musical fashions. Inspired by the New York Dolls as much as Led Zeppelin, Jett founded her all-girl hard rock band the
Runaways in the mid-'70s. With wild-girl teen anthems like Cherry Bomb she managed to generate the kind of reputation that all but blacklisted her from the industry.

(Around that time, she famously produced L.A. punk band the Germs, which has added to her punk rock cachet considerably).

Jett resurrected her career after writing a couple of tracks with Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook before joining forces with co-writer and long-time manager Kenny Laguna. On her own Blackhearts record label, she released the appropriately titled Bad Reputation, which went platinum after the release of the massive hit I Love Rock 'n' Roll.

Although Jett was a pioneer with authentic punk-rock connections, the classic rock cover (of an Arrows tune) was released at a time when radio hits were anathema to the punk rock scene, and Jett found herself the object of scorn at shows where punk rock
was on the menu.

She endured the backlash long enough that she found herself less ridiculed than admired by a generation of kids who'd only ever heard the tales about these tough
women of rock 'n' roll's past. She released a couple of independent classic albums before signing with major labels and releasing a string of hits like I Hate Myself for Loving You, and in the mid '90s, she collaborated with Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill
and the Gits.

It seemed the girl rockers were loud and proud back then. A decade later, it's a case of Where Are They Now? Jett can only offer theories, like anybody else.

"Well, some people just finally gave up, you know," says Jett. "It's a hard life

. . . I think girls also live in a different place in their hearts than boys, you know.

"They live more by their self-esteem and I think sometimes they just don't like being called a [nasty word for vagina], a whore, and a dike, for just trying to play music. And it gets to 'You know what? That's not the kind of life I want. I'm not willing to make
those sacrifices to my dignity to take that kind of shit.' "

The next question, of course, is how does Jett manage it? Instead of backing away, she continues to provoke with sexually ambiguous songs such as her new cover of
Sweet's A.C.D.C. (Carmen Electra is in the video) and Riddles, a song that disses President Bush. And then there's the fact that she's playing the Vans Warped Tour, where the majority of the girls work backstage.

"It only makes me madder," she says. "It makes me just not want to give up my place. But you know, maybe it's partly because I've done this since I was 15 and now
maybe I've figured out the reasons to some degree why people say those things. They are just afraid and they are threatened, you're trying to change what they know, what they think a woman's place is -- it's scary for a lot of people.

"But that doesn't mean I have to abdicate, and I'm not gonna. And it's all I know how to do, so you know, it's my cause in life to do this. I don't like to differentiate so much. I like to just be thought of as a musician who happens to be a woman -- that's what I always said in the Runaways -- but it is very frustrating to not see more of an open situation where it's fair, you know, that girls are given an equal shot, and if they fail it's because they don't have the songs and they're not talented. That's fair.

"But for them to not even get that shot, it sucks. And I don't know what it takes to change it, except more girls doin' it."