Joan Jett

When Joan Jett finished recording her first solo album, she went out to offer it to the record companies, and they told her no. One after another. More than twenty labels turned her down. The reason, deep down, was always the same: a woman with an electric guitar, playing hard, raw rock, was not what the industry believed people wanted. A woman could sing prettily, she could be a diva, but pick up a Gibson and lead a rock band? That, according to them, did not sell.

Joan Jett did not change her mind or soften her music. She did something better: she founded her own label. And from that label of her own, not long after, she went straight to number one.

She had already opened a door before

Jett came out of the Runaways, a band made up entirely of teenage girls in the seventies — her, Lita Ford, Cherie Currie and the rest — which was among the first to prove that a group of girls could play genuinely heavy rock, without asking permission or apologising. In a scene dominated by men who looked at them with condescension or with prurience, the Runaways stood their ground with guitars and attitude. They were not taken seriously at the time; time turned them into revered pioneers.

When the group fell apart, Joan carried on alone, and that is where the real fight began: convincing an entire industry that a woman could be a rock star, plain and simple, not a pop singer with a backing band. The industry's answer was the door slammed shut. Joan's answer was Blackheart Records, one of the first labels founded and run by a woman in rock.

The number one of the woman they rejected

"I Love Rock 'n' Roll" — which was in fact a cover of a little-known song by a band called The Arrows, and which Joan made definitive — exploded in 1982 and stayed seven weeks at number one in the United States. The anthem was being belted out, at full volume, by the woman twenty labels had told did not sell.

It is one of the cleanest revenges in the history of rock. There was no speech and no public row: there was a song, at the very top, sung by the person the industry had discarded. And behind it came "Bad Reputation" — another title that is almost a manifesto: a bad reputation, so what — "Crimson and Clover" and a whole career of rock without concessions. Joan Jett elbowed the door open for every woman who afterwards picked up an electric guitar and planted herself out front. Without her, the road for a great many of them would have been far harder.

What to remember

Joan Jett was turned down by more than twenty record companies for being a woman who played hard rock. Instead of giving up or softening, she founded her own label, and from there she reached number one with "I Love Rock 'n' Roll". She had already broken ground with the Runaways, and she went on breaking it alone, becoming the godmother of every woman who afterwards made rock without asking permission.

Remember it like this: they told her a woman with an electric guitar did not sell. She answered by setting up her own label and going to number one. The best way to silence a "no" is to do the thing they said was impossible, and get paid for it.

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Sources

Joan Jett (Joan Marie Larkin), American rock singer and guitarist born on 22 September 1958 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania; still living. She was the guitarist and co-founder of The Runaways (1975-1979), a pioneering band made up entirely of teenage women. After the group split, and after being rejected by numerous record labels, she founded the label Blackheart Records together with Kenny Laguna. Her version of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (originally by the band The Arrows), with Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1982. Her other hits include "Bad Reputation", "Crimson and Clover" and "I Hate Myself for Loving You". Joan Jett and the Blackhearts were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia and other coverage.