SHREDDING THE MASTERS
Joan Jett is the Queen of Rock
“I Love Rock N’ Roll,” and you should, too.
By REO
Defining a genre isn’t easy, especially when it comes to rock ’n’ roll. The genre’s sound varies wildly, even when looking at a single decade of rock. That said, there is one figure that defines rock better than any convoluted explanation can: Joan Jett.
Jett is rock personified, both in her story and her music. And though she may not be a household name in the same vein as Prince or Michael Jackson, everyone knows Jett. Long before I had ever heard of Joan Jett, I was listening to Joan Jett. Long before I had even begun to enjoy rock as a genre, I was listening to Jett’s rock — from the riot-grrrl-sparking “Cherry Bomb” to the pop-rock-pinpointing “I Love Rock N’ Roll.”
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Jett consistently set the tone for a genre that couldn’t hold a note. I love chaotic playlists, but if you made a playlist of all rock ’n’ roll music, it would be garbage. You’d be jumping straight from Bob Dylan to Olivia Rodrigo to Beastie Boys. It’s torture.
Rock cannot be labeled, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Lester Bangs, one of rock’s most famous critics, said in an interview with Perfect Sound Forever, “Rock ’n’ roll is like an attitude, it’s not a musical form of a strict sort. It’s a way of doing things, of approaching things. Like anything can be rock ’n’ roll.”
Anything can be rock ’n’ roll, but Jett is rock ’n’ roll.
From a young age, rock pulled Jett in, and nothing was going to stop her from strumming — least of all a man. She told other women in rock to follow that same rule, according to an interview by Far Out Magazine.
“Don’t listen to what people tell you. You may run into people asking you what you’re doing, saying that girls don’t play guitar,” Jett said. “It’s easy for men to throw those snide comments at girls to make them question what they’re doing, and use it as a way to put girls in their place.”
Much of Jett’s early career served as a response to those types of comments. When Jett founded The Runaways, an all-girl rock band, Jett struck back with all the rebelliousness of a subculture that had yet to be created.
Though the riot grrrl subculture didn’t fully get its legs until 1990, when Bikini Kill tore up the scene, The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” set the foundation for what the subculture would eventually become nearly 15 years before it began. Bikini Kill’s lead vocalist, Kathleen Hanna, drew direct inspiration from Jett’s first band.
“She kinda was the cement that kept a lot of things going for some of the feminist bands in the ’90s, definitely for me,” Hanna said in an interview with Alternative Press. “She changed my whole career path and taught me how to record a record.”
“Cherry Bomb” was, much like The Runaways’ name itself, a shunning of repressive home life and gender roles.
When Cherie Currie, the band’s vocalist, belted out, “Can’t stay at home, can’t stay in school,” to start off the ballad, it tapped into an energy that was openly antagonistic to the same societal structures that kept men in power and women out of rock.
Bikini Kill would return to that well of energy in the ’90s to help pioneer the riot grrrl movement, but the Runaways were gone far before that happened. Within a year of The Runaways’ breakup, Jett released her debut self-titled album. A year later, it was reissued under the name of its hit single, “Bad Reputation.”
The single served as another statement of detachment from public expectation. In the aftermath of The Runaways breakup, Jett made a point not to turn on her old band, who didn’t have too great of a rapport with the general public. Instead, Jett continued standing for the women-led rock movement that she believed in.
The album was critically well-received but didn’t break any records at the time. There wasn’t that much of a demand for lady rockers, since rock’s audience was still predominantly men. Though it has since grown to be a cultural staple — much like “Cherry Bomb” — it didn’t make waves in its era.
Nevertheless, “Bad Reputation” proved Jett wasn’t just a lead guitarist; she had the potential to front a band of her own. And so she did — Joan Jett & The Blackhearts.
Their first album, “I Love Rock n’ Roll,” set the tone not only for women in rock but for rock as a whole.
“I Love Rock N’ Roll” quickly became rock’s anthem, courtesy of Jett, but the song was already over five years old at this point. “I Love Rock n’ Roll” was first performed by Arrows — a mid-’70s British boy band — in 1975. Jett heard it on TV, and, as any self-respecting rocker would, appropriated it from the British.
With a fresh, gender-swapped lyrical flourish and an ’80s flair, Jett turned one forgettable song into the quintessential representation of rock ’n’ roll.
Though I don’t remember listening to much AC/DC or Metallica as a child, I will always remember Jett’s “I Love Rock N’ Roll.” It played passively in the halls of my childhood home, and it just might’ve sowed a seed that would eventually grow into my love of rock.
For someone with such a plethora of contributions to the genre, Jett deserved much more recognition than she was given. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame waited until 2014 to induct her. She was inducted the same year as Green Day. Respectfully to Green Day, there are about 20 years of legend in between them and Jett.
Jett is the Queen of Rock. She earned that title by seniority and skill. She was an innovator ahead of her time. She was serving a demand that hadn’t yet been formed yet — so rather than wait for it, she created it.
Reo is a sophomore writing about the overrepresentation of white guys in rock in his column, “Shredding the Masters,” which runs every other Thursday. He is also an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan.
