![]() "But once they realized it was serious -that we planned to make an album, and go on tour, and do everything male bands were doing, the tables turned," she recalls in the documentary. Jett notes that when people involved with the Los Angeles rock scene - musicians, promoters, concert attendees - viewed The Runaways as a novelty act, their reception was positive, if pat-on-the-head condescending. They opened for the likes of Cheap Trick and Van Halen - but squaring the circle between being women and being rockers was difficult. (While her snarl has since become one of rock's most iconic voices, she felt too shy at first to handle lead-singer duties, which were handled by Cherie Currie until 1977.) The group, whose razor-wire guitars and unapologetic songs like "Queens of Noise" and "I Love Playin' With Fire," took cues from glam and punk as well as metal. The film is a tribute to a former shy girl who was too bashful to front a band who grew into the first lady of rock.Jett formed The Runaways, her first band, in California in 1975. What makes any film compelling is a good story and really, Bad Reputation is a good old-fashioned love story. Editor, Joel Marcus peppers Joan’s wack-a-do friendship with her producer Kenny Laguna (it is worth checking out his website, he is pop music history) as comedic relief in just the right moments. The vintage footage of The Runaways is hot. I would love to tell you that the best part about director, Kevin Kerslake’s Bad Reputation is the music or interviews with Deborah Harry and Chris Stein. Girls can’t put out a song in 1982 that is still popular in 2018 that will still be popular in 2029. Girls can’t be rock stars, Girls can’t be master guitar players. She was crashing down barriers that said girls can’t. Joan was never rebelling against her parents. Her parents said she could do anything she wanted to do, and they meant it and she believed them. Joan Jett proved that a girl with a thirty-dollar guitar and amp from Sears could become a rock n’ roll legend. ![]() They screamed out their pain, so I didn’t have to. We’ve all experienced pain, loss, sorrow, frustration, fear and anxiety. I disbelieve I’ve lived vicariously through others but I benefited. If I can combine the two, even better which is why I love Bad Reputation and why I am still a teetotaler. Now, I’m into other things like writing about music and movies. Being more than a bit risk adverse, instead of experimenting with alcohol and drugs, I got into music and I guess you could say, I never got out. Some teachers pitied me, others found me to be irritating. My classmates didn’t want to be around me. I brushed my teeth after meals so that nothing got stuck in my braces. I avoided dark colors (shocking I know to people who know me now) so that my flakey scalp didn’t cause me undue embarrassment. I showered on the regular, religiously wore deodorant and tried to get my hair to behave. I was neither too skinny nor too fat, too tall or too short. I sported all the right clothes (circa 1982 preppy). No one wanted to be my friend no matter how hard I tried to fit in. ![]() I just couldn’t seem to be part of a crowd, part of a group. Not for the usual reasons that eighth-grade girls are often ostracized. Too shy, too quiet, too bashful-my thoughts ping-ponged around my head.Īnd like Joan, I had a Bad Reputation. She sang for me when I couldn’t speak for myself. Joan Jett roared my frustration with the world. It wasn’t what she was singing, it was how she was singing it. ![]() Growing up in Southern California, listening to KROQ and being the emo equivalent of a goody-two-shoes and an angsty, lonely, compulsive reading, parent hating, friend envying, boy crazy, cosmetically challenged 14-year-old with hair that became frizzy with the slightest whiff of humidity and skin that I still can’t talk about, there was something about Joan. It was January, I was in the last half of 8 th grade in a school that I hated more than acne and the last thing I needed was one more thing to remind me about sex. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released the song in 1982 on the I Love Rock n’ Roll album. It made me embarrassed and the mofo got stuck in my head. Let me step that back, I didn’t like all of it. The first time I heard Crimson and Clover, I don’t think I liked it. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts documentary ![]()
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