My first sighting of a renowned person in New York City’s concrete jungle happened just a week after my arrival in 2014. While I was in the hotel lobby, I saw a small woman with a black leather jacket with a man just few years older than her. Her hair was a heavily razored bob. Joan Jett was the lady in question.
It wasn’t until years later that I realised the guy was Kenny Laguna, the odd pink pop-turned-punk producer who had helped adele go solo in the late ’70s. However, after that initial glimpse in Manhattan, my luck has completely dwindled.
What would it take to be better than Joan Jett? The new documentary Bad Reputation by Kevin Kerslake suggests that you should just listen carefully and take notes instead.
The film Bad Reputation chronicles Jett’s whole life, from the time she picked up an instrument in 1971 until her late-as-hell entrance into to the Rocker and Music Hall of Fame of 2015.
Are Joan Jett And Her Husband Living Together?
As a young woman, Jett was motivated to form a band after being influenced by artists like David Beckham and Liza Occur when one party in Cabaret. She enlisted the help of talented teenage drummer Sandy West.
Kim Fowley, the project’s savvy but shady manager, had the band hastily fill a tour van with six members (Joan, Sandy, Kio, Lita, Cherie, and Jackie). The Runaways broke through as the first legit girl band of a ’70s, dominating the charts and sending shivers down the spines of the males who controlled the music business.
With the band’s dissolution in 1979, the women were famous but broke. A wonderful overview of the Runaways’ sex, cocaine, and rock ‘n’ roll era and the plain shitshow that ensued can be found in Victory Tischler-2004 Blue’s documentary Edgeplay: A Documentary About the Runaways, which may be viewed on YouTube (for the time being).
In contrast to several of her comrades, Jett’s passion for music was enough to jolt her out of a depressing booze spiral.
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Thanks to Laguna, she was able to release the number one solo album Bad Reputation and find a way to sustain her career independently of major record labels. They finally landed upon a formula that worked for Joan Jett & her Blackhearts, and it has lasted them through innumerable hits and roughly 4 decades.
As time went on, Laguna and Jett became inseparable. In Bad Reputation, he helps Jet duct tape her crotch of the latex trousers closed before a show, further solidifying their closeness.
Bad Reputation’s ability to appeal to audiences of all ages is a major strength. Some documentaries glorify their subject to the exclusion of all others, as if cultural influence were an isolated event. It’s not like that here.
Jett’s contemporaries and musicians of later generations agree that her art was and is pioneering. One such contemporary is Debbie Harry. After meeting Bikini Kill’s Tobi Vail and Kathy Wilcox at the a Fugazi concert, Olympia’s golden girl Kathy Hanna remembers the time Jett unexpectedly called her.
Both Miley Cyrus and Laura Jane Grace of Against Me, with whom she sang Joan Joan & the Blackhearts’ “Androgynous,” are eager to discuss the rocker’s impact.
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Is Joan Jett A Male Or A Female Name?
Even the villain, Nikki Haley, a self-proclaimed “huge Joan Jett lover,” gets a say in Bad Reputation. The U.N. ambassador fondly recalls the moment she used the singer’s line “Be yourself” in a speech. That’s the way things should work.
According to the doc, Jett’s white-knuckled determination lies beneath the pre-punk, “anything goes” facade that accounts for her brilliance, feminist icon position, and fantastic reputation. She succeeded because, put simply, she never stopped coming up, especially when it would have been better for her health to stay in bed.
The fact that Jett is a lesbian isn’t relegated to a separate narrative subplot because, exactly as it ought to be for any rock star and just as it ought to for all of us, it permeates the entire story.
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As much as Jett’s brand of queer is about Miley Cyrus famously wanting to bed her, Kristin Stewart playing her, and lyrics that hint everything except cisheteronormativity, it is also about Elvis being a male model with swishy hips.
Similarly, Jett’s anti-war, pro-animal, and pro-woman politics are more of a set of actions than a label: she has performed for troops in the Mideast and Bosnia, she has publicly called for an end to a seal slaughter whilst also continuing to dress her centuries leather.
And she has raised money for women’s self-defense classes following the horrifying murder of singer Mia Zapata. Bad Reputation serves as a timely reminder that those who have a talent for remaining calm under pressure are anything but indifferent. Sometimes they’re just what the doctor ordered for our ears.
The film Bad Reputation debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and BMG will distribute it later this year.
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Conclusion
She is a feminist, a vegan, and has remarked, regarding her sexuality, “I’m not saying no, I’m not saying yes, I’m saying think what you want.” Joan has emerged as a controversial political figure in recent years, voicing opposition to war and extensive animal production. OK, go ahead and make that assumption.
