Few rock stars have had to fight as relentlessly as Joan Jett. From the moment she picked up her first guitar, people told her women couldn’t play rock and roll, but she refused to believe it. Rejected by 23 record labels, dismissed by audiences, and facing tragedy after tragedy with her first band, The Runaways, Jett kept pushing forward.
Now, at 67, she’s revealing a secret she’s hidden for decades, something that could change the way we see one of rock’s most legendary figures. This is the untold story of Joan Jett, her struggles, her triumphs, and the truth she’s finally ready to share. Girls can’t play rock and roll? Joan Jett was born Joan Marie Larkin on September 22nd, 1958 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.
She received her first guitar for Christmas at age 13, but her very first lesson came with a harsh message. Girls can’t play rock and roll. As recounted in the 2018 documentary Bad Reputation. Thankfully, Joan didn’t listen. She kept rocking. Her family soon moved to West Covina, California, and she quickly immersed herself in the local music scene.
She frequented Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, an all-ages glam rock club on Sunset Boulevard, which Rolling Stone described as attracting crowds the equivalent of social media stars. Around this time, she changed her last name to Jett and crafted the iconic look that would define her career. Black leather, black eyeliner, and a shag haircut inspired by American rocker Suzi Quatro.
“What Suzi Quatro did for me was make me realize that girls could be successful playing rock and roll,” Joan later said. “I realized that if I wanted to do that, there were probably other girls like me who probably wanted to do it, too.” It was at Bingenheimer’s that she met drummer Sandy West through producer Kim Fowley.
Fowley helped connect them with other musicians with the idea of forming a teenage girl rock band. In Edgeplay, a film about The Runaways, he explained, “I didn’t put The Runaways together. I had an idea, they had ideas, we all met, there was combustion, and out of five different versions of that group came the five girls who were the ones that people liked.
” This meeting set the stage for the formation of one of rock’s most legendary all-female bands, The Runaways. Dirty, sweaty, sexy rock and roll. The official lineup of The Runaways included Joan Jett, drummer Sandy West, lead guitarist Lita Ford, bassist Jackie Fox, and lead singer Cherie Currie. Joan and producer Kim Fowley wrote most of the band’s songs, including their iconic hit “Cherry Bomb”.
In a 2010 interview with The Irish Times, Joan explained their vision. “We wanted to be The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. We wanted to play dirty, sweaty, sexy rock and roll. So, when people told us girls couldn’t play, that wasn’t what they meant. They meant girls couldn’t play rock and roll because it implied sex, which means they’re in charge and owning it.
” Despite their talent, the band faced constant sexism. Tabloid headlines like “Teenage Wild and Bra-less” and “Lissome Lolitas” or “Teenage Trash” focused on their age, gender, and appearance rather than their music. Fowley, according to Edgeplay, often encouraged this mistreatment, calling the members derogatory names, keeping them dependent on him financially, and pushing Cherie Currie to perform in her underwear and pose for provocative photos.
Even audiences were hostile. Reflecting on those early shows, Jett told The Irish Times, “It’s difficult to get across to people what it’s like to be spat at. After the gig, I would be dripping in spit and just put my head in my hands and cry out of sheer frustration. I just didn’t get what the problem was, but I just couldn’t back down, and being carried off was the only way you’d get me off the stage, not by scaring me off it.
” Despite the abuse, Joan and The Runaways refused to be intimidated, forging a path that would change rock history. “Everything was just splintering.” The Runaways released five albums in just four years and toured internationally, gradually earning more respect and success. They scored number one albums in both Australia and Japan, with Joan even comparing their reception in Japan to Beatlemania.
During the tour, bassist Jackie Fox fell ill and had to leave, replaced by Vicki Blue, while Cherie Currie departed shortly after the band returned to the United States, leaving Joan to step up as lead vocalist. Despite their growing fame, Kim Fowley’s mistreatment continued. According to interviews with band members and their parents in Edgeplay, he denied the girls access to schooling and health care, often pitting them against one another.
In 1978, Laurie McAllister replaced Vicki Blue on bass, and The Runaways played their final show on New Year’s Eve, 1978 in San Francisco. In her documentary Bad Reputation, Joan reflected on that period. “Everything was just splintering. I could feel a camaraderie between Sandy, Lita, and this producer John Alcott, and I was not part of it.
I’m not going to get fired from the band I started, so I should probably let you guys do your thing.” Rejection and the birth of Blackheart Records. Joan Jett took the breakup of The Runaways especially hard. In Bad Reputation, she recalled, “How did I personally deal with the crumbling of The Runaways? I drank a lot, starting at 8:00 in the morning. I was angry.
I didn’t know how to make sense of a world that gave girls for playing guitars.” Her hard-living lifestyle continued while she recorded music for a movie soundtrack tied to The Runaways, but it also led to a pivotal moment in her career, meeting producer and manager Kenny Laguna. Speaking to the Tahoe Daily Tribune in 2007, Laguna said, “I worked with her on a film based on The Runaways’ career called We’re All Crazy Now, and had a vision of what could be.
She was fantastic, but no label would take her on. I loved Joanie, but I never wanted to be her manager. But she became a cause. After a serious hospitalization for a heart infection, Joan traveled to Europe to record and release her self-titled debut album. Back in the United States, it was rejected by 23 record labels.
Undeterred, Joan and Laguna formed their own independent label, Blackheart Records, and released the album themselves. We couldn’t think of anything else to do but print up records ourselves, and that’s how Blackheart Records started,” Laguna said. “It was more or less Joan’s idea to do it ourselves.” According to the book Rock to Riches, Laguna even sold the album out of his trunk after shows, struggling to keep up with the overwhelming demand from fans.
“I ain’t going to change.” Joan Jett decided to form a new band with men, because as she told people in 1982, creating another all-female band would have felt sacrilegious. She also wanted to avoid the negative public perceptions that often came with all-women rock groups. An advertisement seeking a few good men led to the creation of The Blackhearts.
The band began performing around Los Angeles and eventually toured Europe before relocating to New York. Joan’s debut solo album, originally self-titled, was re-released as Bad Reputation by Laguna’s friend Neil Bogart on his new Boardwalk Records label. The album’s lead single, also called Bad Reputation, became an enduring anthem, later ranked by VH1 in 2009 as the 29th best hard rock song of all time.
The track served as a bold response to critics and naysayers. Kathleen Kennedy described it in Women’s History Review as a defiant reply to what she understood as different codes of conduct applied to male and female rock performers with lyrics like, “A girl can do what she wants to do, and that’s what I’m going to do,” and “I don’t really care if you think I’m strange, I ain’t going to change.
” The album received generally positive reviews and set the stage for Joan to record a new album for Boardwalk Records with her newly formed band, solidifying her move into a solo career and establishing The Blackhearts as her permanent backing group. Joan Jett loves rock and roll. Joan Jett’s first album with The Blackhearts, I Love Rock and Roll, was released in 1981 and quickly became, unexpectedly, a huge smash, climbing to number two on the Billboard charts.
The title track, a cover of an Arrows song that Joan had performed live for years, became one of the best-selling singles of all time. It topped the Billboard charts for seven weeks and was the third most popular song of 1982. The album remains her most successful, selling 10 million copies, while the song itself has been named Billboard’s 56th all-time top song and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The single’s success was fueled in part by its iconic video, which received endless play on the then-new MTV. The clip showed Joan and the Blackhearts swaggering through a dimly lit dive bar, sneering and performing with attitude. The band followed up with a clever, self-referential video for Bad Reputation, depicting the rise to fame sparked by I Love Rock and Roll.
Publications that had once dismissed The Runaways now ran headlines like “Joan Jett is a very nice girl” and “Selling records is the best revenge.” 1982 also brought two more top-20 hits. Her cover of Crimson and Clover stood out because she kept the original pronouns, singing about loving a woman, while “Do You Wanna Touch Me?” Oh yeah, a Gary Glitter cover from the Bad Reputation album, became another infamous video showing Joan teasingly opening a raincoat to reveal a tiny bikini.
These releases cemented Jett’s reputation as a bold, unapologetic force in rock music. Not a major talent? After the massive success of I Love Rock and Roll, the Blackhearts released two follow-up albums, Album 1983 and Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth 1984, that didn’t achieve the same level of commercial acclaim.
The first single from Album, “Fake Friends”, was a disappointment, while a cover of “Everyday People” performed slightly better, though it still fell far short of the impact of I Love Rock and Roll. None of the singles from Glorious Results charted, and the albums peaked at number 20 and number 67, respectively.
Rolling Stone’s review of Album even suggested that it “doesn’t make a very strong argument for Jett as a major talent.” Despite the lukewarm reception, the Blackhearts kept touring and producing visually striking music videos. “Fake Friends” featured the band being mobbed by fans who then transformed into cardboard cutouts, while the French song included what Women’s History Reviews Kathleen Kennedy described as Joan orchestrating a parade of transvestites, prostitutes, and one awkward older man in a white suit, culminating with Jett
planting a kiss on the camera. The provocative imagery echoed the backlash Jett had faced with The Runaways, as audiences struggled to accept a woman performing sexually charged material from a position of power and confidence, rather than submission for the male gaze. Through it all, Jett remained unapologetically herself, pushing boundaries and challenging expectations for women in rock.
Just Around the Corner to the Light of Day. Joan Jett’s 1986 album Good Music continued a streak of underperforming releases, peaking only at number 105 on Billboard and producing no charting singles. But her fortunes were about to turn. In 1987, she landed the role of Patty in the movie Light of Day, starring alongside Michael J.
Fox and Gena Rowlands. The film, a family melodrama, followed her character, a single mother leading a bar band, navigating conflicts with her religious mother. Critics gave her acting mixed reviews. Variety described her line readings as “childish and silly”, while Robert Ebert offered a more measured assessment.
Still, the movie’s title track, written by Bruce Springsteen and performed by Jett, became a minor hit, reaching number 37 on the Billboard charts. The song remained a highlight in her career, culminating in a performance with Springsteen at a post-9/11 benefit concert in 2001. In 1988, Jett made a major comeback with the album Up Your Alley, which went multi-platinum and produced two top-20 singles.
The album itself peaked at number 19 on Billboard and earned a Grammy nomination for best hard rock performance. That same year, a quasi-reunion with the Runaways members brought a competitive twist to the charts. Her former bandmate Lita Ford’s hit “Kiss Me Deadly” peaked at number 12 in June, while Jett’s Blackhearts single “I Hate Myself for Loving You” climbed to number eight, reigniting their musical rivalry in the public eye.
Joan Jett’s sexuality, all-inclusive and assume away. Joan Jett’s sexuality has long been a topic of discussion. While she has never officially come out, she has been an LGBTQIA+ icon throughout her career. In Edgeplay, Cherie Currie revealed that she and Joan had a romantic relationship during their time in The Runaways, a story dramatized in the 2010 film The Runaways, based on Cherie’s biography Neon Angel, and executive produced by Joan.
She has described her sexuality as “all-inclusive” in interviews with Rolling Stone and told Out in 1994 that fans and readers should simply assume away. Even with these candid remarks, questions persisted. In 2018, a New York Times interviewer asked why the documentary Bad Reputation was screening at Outfest when Joan had never officially come out.
Holding up her necklace, she fired back, “What the expletive is that? Two labryses or axes crossing each other inside of two women’s symbols crossing each other. It’s not been off since I got it, and I wear this one every day.” She then lifted her shirt to reveal a matching tattoo on her lower back. “I don’t know how much more you can declare,” she added, making her stance unmistakably clear.
Did Kim Fowley hurt people, and did Joan Jett know? Despite her pride in The Runaways, Joan Jett chose not to participate in Vicki Blue’s 2004 documentary Edgeplay, a film about The Runaways, and refused to allow the use of her songs, which made up a large part of the band’s catalog. In a 2006 interview with the Montreal Mirror, Joan explained, “If there’s going to be a Runaways movie, it should be about what we accomplished, the tours we did, the bands we played with, the people we inspired. I’m not going to
participate in a Jerry Springer fest, bottom line.” After Kim Fowley’s death in 2015, Jackie Fox alleged to the Huffington Post that he had groomed and raped her during her time in the band, and that other members, including Joan, were present. Joan responded that she was not aware of this incident and stated, “If I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened.
” In a 2018 New York Times interview, she said, “I never felt threatened by Kim. He never harassed me. I think he would have been afraid to.” When asked about the allegations, she added, “I don’t like the thought, if he hurt people, that’s not good. It’s hard for me to listen to that, but I can’t really speak to what they’re saying.
” The Last American Rock Star. There’s no doubt that Joan Jett has secured her place as a rock legend and icon. When Kenny Laguna’s daughter, Carianne Brinkman, joined Blackheart Records in 2002, she brought a fresh perspective and became a key supporter of Joan, from encouraging her to join the 2006 Warped Tour to producing the documentary Bad Reputation.
Today, Brinkman and Joan continue to shape the label together, mentoring and producing new talent, much like the close partnership Joan shared with Laguna when they founded Blackheart in 1980. As Brinkman told Forbes in 2014, “Joan and I are the barometer for our ethos,” noting that Joan’s early failures forced her to master the art of the hustle, a necessity for all artists today.
Entrepreneur, feminist, rocker, fashion icon, and mentor, Joan Jett has built a career defined by perseverance and staying true to her vision. In 2015, she, Laguna, and the Blackhearts were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In their Hall of Fame essay, writer John Newhouse described her as “the last American rock star, pursuing her considerable craft for the right reasons, a devotion to the true spirit of the music.”
