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In March 1991, The Monitor interviewed Joan Jett ahead of the iconic rock star’s return to the Rio Grande Valley for a performance at Andy Bowie Park in South Padre Island.
It would go on to be Jett’s second go-around speaking with The Monitor — except the entire interview would last an exact total of five minutes.
Rewind six years earlier, Jett was visiting the region to perform at the Villa Real Convention Center on June 25, 1985 to a crowd of nearly 2,000.
With The Runaways disbanding in 1979, Jett had since released her first solo work “Bad Reputation” (originally released independently in 1980 then released in 1981) and three albums with the Blackhearts: “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” (1981), “Album” (1983) and “Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth” (1984).
With hits such as “Bad Reputation,” “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Do You Wanna Touch Me,” the confident rock star was continuing to prove women were more than capable of rock ‘n rolling just as much as men.
“I don’t think gender has anything to do with it if you’re good on an instrument,” Jett told The Monitor in 1985 while discussing women in music. “Girls have been playing cellos in symphony orchestras for years and years. So that whole thing (“women rock”) may just be to hold the girls back and have something to say no, no, no you can’t do that.”
This time having over an hour with the legendary artist, here’s a more in-depth conversation with Joan Jett from The Monitor’s June 27, 1985 edition, where she discusses performing, women in music, the industry at the time and where her love for rock ‘n’ roll began:
Joan Jett, Blackhearts ♥♥♥, love rock ‘n’ roll!
By Vilma Maldonado | The Monitor (June 27, 1985)
“I love rock & roll!”
With Joan Marie Jett and The Blackhearts struttin’ their stuff in a powerful, energetic ambiance at the Villareal Convention Center Tuesday night (June 25, 1985), it was no wonder a crowd of about 1,800 young teens were singing, dancing, clapping and swaying to “I love Rock ‘n Roll.”
During an exclusive phone interview with Joan Jett last week, Jett described her band as one that plays pure rock ‘n’ roll music.
“We’re a partying band,” Jett said. “We’re the sort of band you want to go see if you want to have a good time, if you want to sing, dance or whatever.”
Jett said she enjoyed performing in the Valley and noticed she was well accepted.
“When you perform, you obsorb (sic, absorb) what’s going on and you watch and see what people like because you still want them to have a good time,” Jett said.
The crowd welcomed them almost instantly, lighting lighters and rocking nonstop to the music. In appreciation, Jett smiled and jammed to her music’s unique, hard rock beat. She gave us all that she had to give.
When Jett was asked what she thought teenagers might take home with them after her concerts, Jett said some people have told her they get a strong feeling of independence. They think, “look at this girl sweating her brains out, playing rock ‘n’ roll music and jumping around and moving around like anybody else,” she said.
“I think my concerts motivate not only girls, but alot of guys too. It motivates them, maybe, not just to play music, but to do what they want to do and not get peer pressured into this or that,” Jett explained.
“I don’t think there’s any particular image I’m trying to project,” Jett said. “When you get on stage, I suppose it’s just an extension of your personality. I’m pretty entranced when I’m on stage.
“You get on stage, you see the people in the audience and you rock, and that’s it. You’re gone and involved with the music and the audience, and sometimes nothing else matters.”
If you haven’t seen Jett with your very own eyes, you might swear the woman is six feet tall and big boned.
Wrong. She’s totally the opposite. She’s small framed, but firm and a little muscular, about five feet tall, with big eyes and “jett” black hair.
Over the phone, Joan Marie Jett has a sultry voice that manages to sound extremely strong.
[illegible words] When she shook my hand backstage, I knew this lady was everything her voice projected. Her small hand made my big one feel puny.
No doubt about it, Jett is hot, tough, powerful and confident. She proves that girls can rock ‘n’ roll as heavy as the guys can.
“In all honesty, I’m happy to see that there are girls getting out in music and not only in one aspect. There are girls playing rock, pop, and what some people consider heavy rock and I think that’s really good,” Jett noted.
“But what I think is really bad about all that is, from that, people try to put girls in a category and call it women rock. Which to me is absurd, because if you’re going to do that, you may as well say Italian Rock and Jewish Rock, and it has nothing to do with the gender.
“It’s all down to what kind of music you want to play, whether or not you’re talented, and the gender comes second, that is, like a fringe benefit for the people who are listening.
“I don’t think gender has anything to do with it if you’re good on an instrument. Girls have been playing cellos in symphony orchestras for years and years. So that whole thing (“women rock”) may just be to hold the girls back and have something to say no, no, no you can’t do that.”
Two young girls at the concert, obviously big fans, has plenty to say about their idol.
“I like the way she sings,” said Angie Chavez, 15, of Brownsville. “Her songs are about teenagers and things that happen to us.”
Her older sister Terry, 17, said, “Joan Jett is real inspirational with us hoppers because we’re getting more women into rock. Girls can rock too, not just guys,” she added. “We’re starting a band and I play the flute, piccollo (sic, piccolo) and am starting on drums.”
Jett, approximately 25, was born in Philadelphia, and has performed professionally for 10 years. She said she was about eight years old when the music hit her. She remembers hearing Crimson and Clover back then, but it wasn’t until she was 11 that she really started getting personally into music by playing an instrument. Once she decided to play electric guitar, she knew she wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll.
“I think it’s really smart to know all your scales. That’s something I never did. I took a couple of lessons but I was extremely impatient. You have to try and picture this guy’s face (her guitar teacher) with a 13-year-old girl walking in with an electric guitar saying, ‘Teach me how to play rock ‘n’ roll now!’ And he was teaching me how to play ‘On Top Of Old Smokey.’
“And I was, like, I want to learn how to play rock ‘n’ roll now, and I got real impatient. I took two lessons and learned the basic cords, and from there I quit and learned myself. I just played along to my favorite records, basically, and that’s how I developed my own style of rhythm guitar playing.”
Jett lived in Pittsburg and Erie, Pennsylvania, and in Rockford, Maryland (where she started playing guitar), then moved to California and formed The Runnaways (sic, Runaways) Band.
They broke up in ‘79, when she moved to New York, where she still lives, and hooked up with the Blackhearts.
Why the name, “Blackhearts”?
Bass player Gary Ryan used to play weekend gigs back then, and had come up with the name “The Hollywood Blackhearts” for his band, Jett liked the name because “it was a name nobody could pick on.”
In reggae music language, [illegible words] means a person who is a loner, but Jett stresses that doesn’t necessarily describe her or the band.
Jett said it’s hard to say where she wants her music to go, but she did say, “I think it’s going to stay basically the same. It’s basically rock ‘n’ roll music, but you never know when you’re going to experiment here and there with it. She maintains a modicum of control over her material because she writes eighty percent of what they perform.
“I think right now in music everything seems to be pretty much split up into two groups. It’s the little group in the middle that seems to keep hanging on and that’s the rock ‘n’ roll band. The other two are heavy metal and the pop music, which is very heavy right now.”
Music is definitely in Jett’s future. She and the Blackhearts are off to tour Japan.
All the lady wants now is to keep on drinking Dr. Pepper after her concerts, and “do concerts for as long as I can stand up on a stage and look half way decent.”
