QLS Classic : Joan Jett

In this classic episode of Questlove Supreme from 2022, Joan Jett spoke about growing up moving between Pennsylvania, Maryland and Los Angeles, and how songs like T. Rex's "Bang a Gong" made her want to chase her dreams, even after a guitar teacher told her "girls don't play Rock & Roll." She recalls forming The Runaways as a teenager, starting with four bus rides to jam with drummer Sandy West, and the low point after the band broke up, which ended when she met Kenny Laguna and later turned a little-known Arrows B-side into the hit "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." Jett also discusses her influence on Riot Grrrl, her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, her new acoustic album, and her plans to keep stepping outside her comfort zone—maybe even with an R&B record. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 02

  I turned off news altogether.

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  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

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  It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

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• 1:05Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  What's up, y'all? All right. So every weekend, as we prepare to give you a new episode of The Questlove Show, we are showcasing moments from Questlove Supreme catalog. From damn near a decade, it's Fonte, Baye, Shooka Steve, Vampay Bill, and Boss Bill and I use this platform to interview the greatest in music, comedy, film, books, and activism. The show evolved a lot over the years and really became a place of joy as Questlove Supreme went to Zoom over the pandemic. Please enjoy these episodes and get information in the description. QLS forever.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? This is Questlove Supreme. Wait, I believe, is this our first Questlove Supreme back together since?

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Since what?

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Like, last April? Since the Oscars? I feel like I've not spoken to you guys.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think this is the first one.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Maybe we did like one episode or something like that. But yeah, I was about to say, like, it's been a long time. We've been doing a bunch of 101s, but I'll start off our episode, people, by saying that because the ungodly amount of hours that I've spent at the Wynwood train station or taking the 105 and the 103 bus to my insurance job to pay for a demo, I feel just a little bit more connected to our guest today than any than any other guest that's been Philadelphia adjacent. I'll put it that way. No, I got excited. I get excited when any Philly adjacent guest comes onto.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme. And no matter how much New York tries to claim you, I know for a fact that you did hard time at Montgomery County.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  You know, once a Philadelphia, and always Philadelphia. Anywho.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Philly, and I lived in Pittsburgh, and I lived in Erie.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Oh, Yens.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Lots of different, yeah, Yens. You're the first person that's used Yens.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  My mother is from Pittsburgh. So, yeah, I have definitely a share, a fair share of family members that, you know, have have educated, edumicated me on just life in Pittsburgh in general. I'll say that our guest today, of course, is a legendary singer, legendary songwriter, producer. Let's not forget a kick-ass guitarist, a member of two legendary units. The first, of course, coming to us as a member of The Runaways, a band who pretty much defied all logic and stuck to their guns and pretty much had inspired a generation of musicians

• 4:06Speaker 00

  and creators around the world. And of course, the second band needs no introduction. Of course, I'm speaking of her namesake, Joan Jett, and the Black Hearts, class of 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What can I say without her? You know, I don't even want to limit it to just, there's no Riot Girl movement. There's just, there's, there's a whole portion of hard rock and punk and a lot of post late 80s, early 90s bands that formed in LA that really wouldn't have existed without our guest today. So without further ado, welcome Joan Jett to Questlove Supreme. So were you talking to us right now? Were you?

• 4:50Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm home in New York, out on Long Island, at the beach.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  You're still Long Island, man?

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, yeah, I live at the beach. Yeah, I'm like right on the water, though, like.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  All right. You know, I just, I discovered, I discovered in the pandemic, and I keep telling everyone, especially New Yorkers, this, and they don't believe me. New York doesn't realize they have their own Mulholland Drive, and they have their own Venice Beach. Now, you know, I've not, there was a point where I think the main train was going to shut down that leads to Williamsburg, causing, you know, it was going to shut down for like two years, whatever, while they did reconstruction, causing a whole borough to literally relocate elsewhere. Like restaurants started shutting down and, and all of them basically relocated to Long Beach.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  So when a friend of mine made me visit out there, I didn't know what to expect. Like, I was personally expecting, you know, kind of, you said Hawkins, like, eh, post Benson Hershey's, you know, whatever. And no, I went out there and it's like, yo, it is the shit.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  It was, it was pretty beat up. Like, when I moved here in 1979.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Oh, so you're like a loyalist. You've been there through everything. So what do you?

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Right after The Runaways broke, pretty much right after The Runaways broke up, which is 79. Then I met my partner, Kenny Laguna.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  What do you make of it now? Because like, literally, it's, like, if I didn't have to be in Manhattan at like the drop of a dime, like, I would actually move out to Long Beach. Like, it's, it's, they totally, I don't want to say just regentified it, but they literally just.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  They did. They did. You know, they're making it, I don't know what you want to call it.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Nice, end quote?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, nicer.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't ready for that. So.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  When I moved here, it was, they had just opened all the mental institutions or something. So when I got here, there were crazy people walking all over the place. And you could, I could have bought my apartment for like 20 grand or something. But, you know, those days are long gone.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  The price has definitely gone up, so.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. And now people want places like this, so even more so.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyone's like trying to sell their house right now in Long Beach can easily take in high six figures to almost a million.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  That's, that's where it is now. People are like headed out there. So I start off each episode with the question, what, do you remember what your first musical memory was?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  I can't, I can't be positive, but it would be either.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Well, just one that you remember, not the technical one, like.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  All right, all right.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Singing Mary Had a Little Lamb at eight months, but I mean.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  But I think of my, my father playing classical music, or my parents listening to Johnny Mathis or something like that, Frank Sinatra.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Okay. How, how long did you live in, well, technically, you were born in Wynwood, right?

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was born at Lincoln all hospital.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Lincoln all, yes.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  So wherever that is.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was quasi.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  But I moved very early. I moved at like six months old and moved to Pittsburgh. So I can't really say I grew up in Philly. I was just born there.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  So when you have memories of your childhood, what's the city you think of?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Maryland.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  I moved to Maryland from Erie, Pennsylvania, when I was eight, when I was eight. So I moved, I lived in, in Maryland, Rockville, Maryland, from eight to thirteen. Teen, so really formative years, you know, when you come into your own, I guess, you know, go from being a kid to puberty and, you know, all those big changes that happen from, I'd say, eight to your teen years.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  What effect does that have on someone that, you know, where you don't have actual roots, like you kind of move every other year, every two or three years, like, what effect does that have on you as far as like?

• 9:08Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I, I wonder how much of it, I'm doing psychology on myself. I was thinking about this the other day, um, how much of it is my, was my lifestyle from a very early age, from being on the road, you know, just constantly moving and also, but growing up that way too, never really being in one place very long, longest was Maryland, when I lived there five years. So maybe you don't really feel secure in making friendships or any kind of relationships. So, you know, I, I don't know, maybe I tend to keep people at arm's length.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  You know, it's not that I'm unfriendly, it's just, I'm not good with intimacy, I suppose.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Hmm, that's real. Uh, do you have siblings or like, what's the, no, it's, it's.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  Well, I'm not good at faking it.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Hey, man, I feel you.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  I have a brother and I have a sister, they both still live in California. My brother's in San Diego, my sister's in North Hollywood.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Are you the baby in the middle or the oldest?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  No, I'm oldest.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Okay, okay.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  I'm the oldest. I said, I'm out of here.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Oh, instantly when you.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  You know, when I was sixteen, pretty much, you know, and I, and I left and formed a band and not really at home much more after that. I think I see, I think I see the, um, repercussions of that now later. But I don't know if that's my lifestyle or if it's from not really having that connective family thing.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  As, uh, the result of moving, was that because you were an army brat or just?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  My father was, you know, my father was an insurance man, so traveling insur- traveling insurance man in the olden days. I, is that a real thing or was that a hustle?

• 11:05Speaker 00

  I, I went out to.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Either way.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  I went out to, to, to, uh, Winwood to sell insurance. So I don't know, maybe I was like working with, for your father.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, but I guess, you know, they'd have areas and they'd go and, I don't know if it was a door to door, I really don't know. I didn't, I didn't discuss it with him that much, but that's, that's what my mother told me anyway, traveling, traveling salesman.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  So we moved around, yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Do you remember the first album that you purchased with your own money?

• 11:36Speaker 04

  I should know this, right?

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Or a single, or a single.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, but probably it was an Osmond Brothers record.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Thank you. You know, oftentimes I.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Maybe I shouldn't be that honest.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, most, most people get stumped with this because I think for a lot of us, the answer's always gonna be an, an uncool answer, you know, I think for, shut up Steve, because he knows.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  No, I'm thinking of my, my own as the least coolest, but yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Well, no, I, you know, I would naturally tell people like, oh yeah, Jackson Five or whatever, but the, the, the real answer was Neil Sedaka.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  How, how's that gonna look in print, you know what I mean?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Not great. Right. Mine could have been the Jackson Five too. I mean, you know what, I just, um, I just got done watching the movie that you won.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Awards for, I've been, uh, it, it is so great and, uh, it reminds me of growing up. Because I feel like the music I grew up listening to was a lot more diversified and a lot, a lot blacker than people would, would even know, I suppose. It just seemed to be a lot, a lot of, all those songs, all those bands that were in that, very familiar with it all. But it feels like stuff I watched as a kid.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  You know, I, I don't know, I loved it.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Thank you. Yeah, you know, I think for a lot of people, you know, especially with this movie, the kind of the underlying or the, the, the undertone of it all is basically like, this was, you know, is easily lost in history. It's sat in someone's basement for fifty years. So, you know, for it to, to, to get out, one was the miracle, but you know, to also just let the world know about, you know, contributions to culture. But thank you, thank you for acknowledging. I appreciate that.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Absolutely, but even more than just the music, I see, you know, what they were saying about the change, you know, that they were right upon this, this change that was happening in society and just the way people looked at themselves and stuff and it, it was, you know, really, uh, quite poignant, my thought and really on, you know.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  I appreciate that. Did you come from a musical family, like a cousin or any of those things or?

• 14:02Speaker 04

  I really think everybody, I think if you gave them, no, to, to answer your question, no, nobody, not that they actualized, but I believe, because my family all tended to be creative, but never actualized it, you know, they were too fearful or didn't think it was their place or,

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  You know, like I know my dad loved art and he loved to draw or paint and he should have done that, you know? And, you know, my mom, all those things, my brother, I know that he would have liked to play an instrument, but didn't pursue it. And I'm sure my sister, you know, she's an artist too, she makes things with her hands. So, yeah, they all have that thing, but, uh,

• 14:48Speaker 04

  didn't really get the chance that I kind of just grabbed and took.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  All right. So what was the entry of, or at least the moment that you felt like, okay, this is what I want to do, like the curiosity factor, what, what, what was that moment for you?

• 15:04Speaker 04

  Hearing, um, songs like Bang a Gong by T-Rex. Just hearing certain songs on the radio, All Right Now by The Free, because there was something that was a little out of tune with one of the guitars on the rhythm guitar and something about that made me want to go, I want to make those sounds. It was something that connected with my bones, you know, with my, my crotch and even as a little kid, I knew it. I didn't know what the word was, but I knew that it resonated deep inside me, you know? And I wanted to make those sounds. So I think though, I'm, I'm just lucky that

• 15:44Speaker 04

  the way my life moved, because it could have been anything, I could have moved on to another thing that I love. I mean, I loved horses. I rode horses for a while. I mean, the guitar, my family, I got this guitar, I tried to learn how to play it. But I didn't really have anyone to play with, so I kind of just learned the basic chords and put it down. Then my family.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Like the Sears catalog guitar?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  Yes, it is, yes, it is.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Everyone starts off with.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. And then my family moved to Los Angeles. So now I'm like, okay. Now I'm going to a place where there's gotta be other girls that want to do what I'm doing. There's gotta be in Los Angeles, there's gotta be other girls that want to play rock and roll. And, you know, I was right. And I'm sure if I'd really looked around Maryland or, you know, any of the big cities that gone to DC, I would have found it too. But I just wasn't thinking that way, because all my magazines that I was reading geared me towards Hollywood.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Okay, um, for you though, you know, how usual or unusual, especially in your formative years? Like was guitar encouraged or, you know, oftentimes? Or was there someone like, ah, you might want to do piano or the clarinet or like something that?

• 17:05Speaker 04

  I did.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  A girl would want to do.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  I did.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  In school, you know, but I, I wasn't very good at it and I wasn't, I wasn't that interested. And now I wish I'd, now I wish I had paid attention, you know, and that I had learned to play, just so I could read music, but, you know, just to be able to play other instruments. It was made to feel quite inadequate. I just worked with a trombone shorty and it made me feel like, whoa, you know, you see that guy on, he's a little, little kid with a big trombone, you know? But, you know, now he's an older guy, but he's just, you know, he's one of those prodigy people. So did you just learn to play just mainly by ear or you, you still don't read music now? Just ear? Just, yeah, yeah, with my records and stuff.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Were you encouraged? Because I think that.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Yes, no, I wasn't.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Es- especially with anyone, um, with a woman grabbing an instrument in the sixties, in the seventies. Um, hell, even eighties almost, like, I'm certain that there has to be some sort of figure there that says, uh, women can't do that and women, you know.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Everybody said that. Nobody encouraged me. Nobody. Only my parents, who told me when I was a little kid that I could be anything I wanted to be. So now they couldn't turn around and say, well, you can be anything except a guitar player. So, you know, they just thought I'd grow out of it, that I'd phase out of it and go into something else. Which I think I might have happened had I not moved to California and been able to find other, other girls. Then maybe I would have gone on to something else, but that didn't happen. And I went to LA and nobody thought it was a good idea. My guitar teacher said, girls don't play rock and roll, which I knew right away what he meant.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  They want you to play acoustic instead?

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Like follow Joni Mitchell or, you know?

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. And, but I knew exactly what that meant. Girls don't play rock and roll. So what are you saying to me? You're saying, girl, you're not saying girls can't master the guitar, because I'm in school, I'm playing clarinet, there's girls next to me playing violin and cello, playing Beethoven and Bach. So you're not saying that you can't master the instrument. What you're saying is rock and roll is sexual by its nature. So if women are playing rock and roll.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  And singing rock and roll, they're singing about sexuality and, and they're owning it. And we're not comfortable with that. And I knew that as a kid, as a kid, even then I knew that that just you weren't allowed to it, but it had something to do with sex. And I was just like, no, you know, because this is so not about sex for me. I want to be able to do this because I want to do it. You know, Mick Jagger rides out on a big inflatable penis. I want to do what the Rolling Stones do. You know, it had nothing to do with with that. It was about fairness. I know it doesn't make sense, but it was about That makes total sense. Quality and the right thing, what's right. I mean, I'm not hurting people, you know? Right.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  I'm playing rock and roll for Christ's sake. Give me a break. So that that's the kind of fire that would fuel me on through through all this stuff.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer songwriter Alex Warren.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  I had this dream of being a musician and everyone I had known was kind of like, you're not good at music. You know, you should probably have other things, a backup plan, whatever. Felt like I didn't have anyone close to me and my wife had flown out to visit and she found out I was sleeping in a car. She didn't know. And she was like, let's do it. And she slept in a car with me. And for the first time in my life, I realized that in a life full of what I thought was things happening to me, something was finally happening for me. Dude, that's like the most romantic shit I've ever heard. It's the coolest thing ever.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart, there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Some basement, some bedroom, somebody with headphones on at three in the morning, chasing a thing they couldn't even name yet. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up, already looping that one bar, already off tempo. On purpose, because on purpose was the point. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there, living stories worth telling.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levi's.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  See, I've never, I've never had the pleasure of having a conversation with anyone who, you know, is pretty much either first out the gate or at least in the pioneering stages of starting a movement to to even ask them what their mind state is, you know? Because oftentimes, you know, our, our, our greats leave and, you know, before we get to ask them about their process. And so, you know, I always wanted to know if, because even when I was in high school, like someone, I think I was honest with one teacher, like what I was going to do, like I'm gonna start a band with da, da, da, da. And, you know, I went to high school with Boys to Men and they were

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were like on fire and, you know, sort of like, well, you know, are you guys going to be Boys to Men popular or you're just gonna be one of these local acts? And, you know, I wasn't thinking that deep about my process or anything.

• 23:10Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  I think he tried to talk me out of like

• 23:15Speaker 00

  pursuing my career, so.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, see, I don't understand that about people. This is what I want to know about people and dreams. You know, you're sitting there shooting the shit with your friends and you say what you said, you want to play? And someone tries to talk you out of it.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Why is everyone geared to try to talk you out of it as opposed to saying, yeah, man, that sounds interesting, go for it. And at least if you don't make it, you gave it a shot, you gave your dream a shot. What is that about people? I think some people get offended or they get intimidated when they see that your dreams don't include them. And so they just try to shoot the shit down, you know what I mean? Right. It's like if I run a hamburger stand, the last thing I want you to do is become a vegan. You know what I mean?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Don't do that, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  But I also think that oftentimes we're just, I think in America, we, we often train ourselves to do the safety thing. Like I think hopefully my generation is the last generation, which you'll hear like fall back on something safe. Like I definitely heard that from every uncle.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, COVID, that showed us ain't shit safe, cuz do what you want to do. Yeah, right, right.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Right. Exactly. So what, okay, so you're a musician in Los Angeles and you're young at the time. Had this been, you know, twenty, two thousand and seven or whatever, you would have the aid of, of the internet to help you. But what is the process of finding what you're specifically looking for? Which I assume are women that play instruments and are passionate about it, just as you are. Like, so what's the process of searching for them? And at any point where you just like, at least, at least in the, the runaway stages, were you like, okay, anyone, male, female can join? Or for you, was it like, I have to find all women?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  No, and for the runaways, it was definitely an all, all women thing because, you know, we hadn't, hadn't really been done. Or, you know, if it hadn't been done, it'd been done years earlier with full grown women, but not teenage girls. And so I just had this thing and I, I wanted to do it and I didn't see a good reason to change that, that plan, you know, and give up so easy, you know, saying, oh, this might be hard. But, you know, it's hard to think back and realize how different it was then than it is now. And how easily you can reach out to people on the phone, on the internet.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  I mean, you're talking, we had rotary phones, you know? We're talking about phone booths. We're talking about, you didn't get a hold of people, you know? If you got a hold of somebody, you met them at a certain time, on a certain corner, or at a certain place, you know, there was none of this.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  So Fonte right here, Fonte is, is probably, to his fan base, probably most known for being one of the first musicians to really take, take advantage of the, I'll say the positive aspect of internet colonization. Um, one of the, one of the bands that he started was a group called Foreign Exchange, in which, where, where's, uh,

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Nick, now he's in Wilmington.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Right, but where?

• 26:30Speaker 04

  He's like, to me, at the time, he was in the Netherlands. And, uh, we just recorded that and we met on OK Player on your site. And, uh, we just started trading files online, back and forth. And, uh, we completed an album. We didn't meet each other until it was Wow. And that was in

• 26:46Speaker 00

  So they didn't even meet yet before they made a classic album, you know what I mean? And so, yeah, so, you know, what, what is the process of how do you find these, these

• 26:57Speaker 04

  You met that time?

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Birds of a feather, if you will, yes, in that time.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  Uh, I believe what we did is we put an ad in, what was it, the LA Weekly?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Maybe, and we went out to a lot of the clubs that I would hang out at. And I would just survey the crowd and look for girls.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Wow, this is around seventy four, seventy five?

• 27:22Speaker 04

  This would have been seventy five.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so you're like sixteen, fifteen, sixteen.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Like after August, after August fifth.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  So, all right, this is what I have to know. You're in, you're in California. Were you a driver? Did you have a car?

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I didn't drive, no. Buses, I took a lot of buses. And also my mother was, you know, sort of complicit in all this. So she, uh, would drive me to rehearsal. She would take me to the club sometimes and pick me up late at night. Yeah, yeah, she

• 27:59Speaker 00

  So clubs weren't sweating like, I mean, of course, now we live in a place where you gotta show, you know, damn near twelve forms of ID to get in anywhere or else your license gets shut down.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  The club I went to was, uh, it was for teenagers, there was no booze. So my mom worried about that. So there was no booze there and I don't think she was really thinking about drugs or anything like that.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Who were your, were your, any, any of your contemporaries also sort of in that movement that later became names themselves, like?

• 28:31Speaker 04

  No, not really.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Once, uh, like Sheri and Lita, your band members sort of like come to play. How did you know that, okay, this is, this is it? They're, they're the ones.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Well, we didn't have that many choices, number one.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  So it was more like, do we want to try? Well, first it was, it was the drummer and myself, Sandy West and I, we met.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Sandy, right, okay.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so we were solid as hell, Sandy and I. I took four buses to her house in Huntington Beach.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Four?

• 29:04Speaker 04

  We, yeah, four buses and I sat up in her rec room and we played, you know, some just basic Chuck Berry rock and roll progression and said, you know, it was really good. Sandy played with a lot of guy, you know, high school band kind of things. And so she was used to playing with bands, but usually guys. So we really locked in and we called Kim Faly, who was our producer,

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  who became our producer and said, hey, check it out. Put the phone down, played for him. He said, it sounds great, let's go find other girls. So it was really, you know, from there, we started looking, we started looking in clubs and I think put an ad in a paper and stuff like that.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Who came up with the name of Runaways?

• 29:50Speaker 04

  I did.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Okay. So already you had your marketing plan.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking about this for a little while now, you know, a couple of months at least.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  Did you guys have a daily regimen or was just like whenever time was free, then we'll rehearse or whatever, but?

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I really, to tell you the truth, I can't remember.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Like, how can you be a kid and also start this very adult thing? Like, were all parents involved, like encouraging of this or?

• 30:22Speaker 04

  No, uh, our parents were involved, but, um,

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Couple of the girls were a year younger than me, so they were like in eleventh grade, so they still had school to deal with and um yeah, not all the parents were thrilled about it, but in the end, I I I don't know, I guess they didn't wanna fight their daughters or something, but um for school, I I got good, pretty good grades and I took my GED, I was already in twelfth grade, but I wanted to get out a little bit early, so we could go on the road, so.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Okay, I always wanted to know, um, I guess to me, the um, the initial incarnation of the Runaways, like, why weren't you the lead singer? Or why didn't you wanna be the the focal?

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I was way too shy at the time, and you know, I was way too shy, I had no confidence. Um, you know, I just I had no confidence and was just really shy. It was amazing that I could do what I wanted, what I was doing, it, you know? Just getting on on stage with the guitar.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  But did you have your voice then, or you just kept it a secret, or?

• 31:36Speaker 04

  I sang back, I sang background vocals. Yeah, I could sing, yeah, I could sing. I did wind up singing uh half of the leads on the first Runaways album. Because Shere Sheree didn't wanna sing the rock and roller, the rock and roll harder songs. She felt that she didn't have the voice for it, or didn't feel comfortable singing some of them. So the ones she didn't feel comfortable singing, I sang the leads, and I sang backup on everything else. So I did have a voice, but I just wasn't comfortable being the focal point.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Man, gotcha. So at this point, at this point in developing the band, who who are you looking up to? Because again, you guys have ushered in, you guys ushered in an era and you know, pretty much uh your your band's existence just basically starts a domino effect on again, people that come ten to fifteen years later, but you know, in seventy-five, seventy-six, when you guys are doing this band, like, who's who's cool to you? Like, are the Stones and Zeppelin sort of like, ah, that's old whatever music, like, who who's grabbing your attention, like?

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I know I was disappointed with the Stones when they started doing um

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Like you weren't an exile mainstream person?

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I uh, no, I I I wanted them to

• 33:03Speaker 00

  You didn't like some?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Play rock and roll, you know, I didn't like them.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Well, it it was, it was fine, but you know, I don't know, I guess I wanted them to be playing something that I could really rock out to, you know, whatever.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  No one stays rebellious forever.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  I know, I know that.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  There's a good seven year.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  I get it now.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Before you start doing your classical record or whatever.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  No, I get it now, believe me. But I I think a lot, I I think I really started looking to the punk rock stuff right away, because the Ramones came out, I believe in nineteen seventy-five, late seventy-five.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Very first Ramones album. And all the punk stuff, rock stuff I was reading a lot about, and I really gravitated very quickly to a lot of those bands, because I felt, you know, kinship with a lot of them.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  I mean, there's always, like, groups or or artists or albums that are always on someone's canon, like, their top five records of all the time, you always see the names, whatever, and I've never sometimes you don't do the investigation of it, and, you know, of course, I'm always seeing the Ramones names everywhere, and finally I listened down from from top to bottom like two years ago and realized like how how genius and hard it is to really convey emotion and and lyricism in less than two minutes.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Hey ho, let's go.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  Yo.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  That shit a jam though. That shit jamming.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  Exactly, so for you, were you seeing that there was a science here, like mu- you know, the the type of rock that you were you were fed as a child is way different than the ideas that you're about to dispel onto the world, like for you is like, look, we gotta, don't bore us, get to the chorus, two minutes.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Well, no, you gotta, uh, see, the thing was didn't really transfer that much into our music, it might might have translated a little bit to my songwriting, but you know, as a group, as a band, most of the girls weren't really into the punk rock the way I was, you know, they were much more they liked heavier bands, you know? More like, um, you know.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  The more mainstream?

• 35:21Speaker 04

  Zeppelin or, yeah, yeah, or, you know, that heavier stuff, Rainbow, you know?

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Richie Blackmore, that kinda stuff. So, you know, we didn't really see eye to eye on our hangout music, so we didn't, you know, we had to come from a place where we met in the middle, so, you know, I just always considered what we did to be basic rock and roll.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  What was the division of labor as far as the songwriting is concerned, and what you're gonna cover, or who's gonna write what, like, who's who's the primary songwriter of the group, was that your job?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  I think it was, I think it was me, for the most part, it was me, I wrote either songs with Kim Falley as the lyricist, or I wrote songs by myself. I think I wrote a couple with some of the other girls, but not too many. And uh, yeah, so I guess I was the primary one.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Back then, like, it was sort of hard for you guys to break out in the States, but yet, you know, you're the magic's working instantaneously when you go overseas, like, how much of a mindfuck was that to kinda, because that's very similar to hip hop, like, you know, my band had to move to Europe for five years.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Just so that, you know, and quote unquote, Paula Hendrix. And then come back to the United States, like, that sort of thing, like.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  In your mind, was it a dream deferred, or like, wait, what's going on here, or? Like, what were your feelings on?

• 36:52Speaker 04

  I thought, well, you know, a lot of different, a lot of different feelings, yeah, one part of me had wished that we had the same sort of response in the States, but it was so different around the world, and Japan was like all girls.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  And like the Beatles, like Mania, people fainting, girls fainting. And I think it, I think it kinda scared a couple of the other girls, you know, I was exhilarated, but you know, there were people were rocking the car, and we'd never really had that kind of experience at all. I mean, anybody in their right mind would probably, should probably be scared, but I I didn't get too scared, and then uh, in Scandinavia, another place, all girls, all wearing real pacifiers. And sucking on these pacif- yeah, tell me about it. Yeah, I didn't get it, and uh, I never found out what it was, I guess it was just some kind of fad or fashion that they were doing, but pretty wild.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  None that Sheree had on a particular photo shoot or something?

• 37:51Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, they were giving us the ideas, you know?

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  But then, then in England, you know, England gets, you know, they I think they got the Runaways a lot more than Americans did, but they still, you know, the English love to take the piss out of you. So we took a lot of shit, but there were a lot of people, I think, there that liked us too. We did well in Germany, and and I think Europe did pretty well, but we didn't tour there a lot, so I don't know face to face, and record sales, I can never go by really, because, you know, who knows?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  So in retrospect, what what would you categorize the genre, you know? Are you guys at the the forefront of of the LA punk movement, were you just hard rock? Were you kind of the the torchbearer for what will eventually become like the glam metal scene that would happen fifteen years later with those groups in LA?

• 38:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I always just called it rock and roll, and I think what we did, I think what we did was punk rock to its core, you know, just doing dictating what you're gonna do and doing it and not listening to what anybody says, and, I mean, I thought and doing that in the context of how society treated you at the time, I think it was the ultimate punk rock stuff, you know, even for the girls that didn't wanna play in punk rock, they were being punk rock just by what they were doing, they didn't have to play it.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  So you guys pretty dissolved almost as quick as

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  You you came aboard, um do you remember how eventful or uneventful the the the last night of of the group was before you realized that it's not happening anymore?

• 39:41Speaker 04

  I don't remember if it was, I know it wasn't a happy time, and we knew, it was uh, uh, New Year's seventy-eight into seventy-nine was our last gig. And we knew it was our last gig, because we had decided to disband after that, because I didn't want, you know, I felt, like I said, that musical separation was there between. Girls want to play heavier music than me. And so I thought, man, I don't want to get fired from a band I started or something weird. So let me just quit and we'll just, you guys can do your thing and.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Well, I I can assume that Lita was one that wanted to do heavier stuff, right?

• 40:17Speaker 04

  It was not animosity. It was not, you know, it was not an anger or anything. We weren't going, fuck you, fuck you.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  You know, it was just like, since we had been friendly, we didn't want it to be weird. And it's just like, just let me, I'll just go. You guys do your thing.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  You know, it's weird. Before, I gotta admit that, uh, in watching the documentary, I didn't realize that, quote, that Lita Ford was the leader forward in The Runaways. Because I guess my, my dealings with Lita, any, anytime there was always a person that wanted to give, I'm not even making any nugent comparisons, but if there was anyone that ever wanted to give, like, hip hop the middle finger with a quote, it was always Lita Ford.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  It was Lita Ford. Really?

• 41:04Speaker 00

  I knew her more for her disdain of hip hop than I did for like, was she actually, yeah, no, for real, like.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  I, I, I guess I should say I'm not surprised, but.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, I knew her for quotes of like, why she hated hip hop. So I always knew that whenever I hear the name Lita Ford, I'm like, uh-uh, what, what happened now? But.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  You know, but then when I started the thing, I was like, oh, she was a runaway. I get it now. So.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  I don't want no guilt by association though, because.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Hey, man, we all.

• 41:32Speaker 04

  Nah, you're good. You made lighter day. I used to watch that movie every day after school when I was in like, third grade. So.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. To find your creativity and to believe in yourself, because somewhere in the midst of it, I stopped believing that my voice mattered and that I could find it again. That's a challenge. I was not feeling very confident creatively, only, um, again, defiant in my belief that what this is about is express something honest. Say something honest.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart, there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Some basement, some bedroom, somebody with headphones on at three in the morning, chasing a thing they couldn't even name yet. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up, already looping that one bar, already off tempo, on purpose, because on purpose was the point. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there. Living stories worth

• 43:28Speaker 00

  telling. What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levi's.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  As a 21 year old, are you feeling like, okay, well, I did that. What do I do now? For you, it's just like, on to the next. Like, did you?

• 43:44Speaker 04

  No, I was feeling like, it was time to die, is what I was feeling like. I was feeling like the whole city of LA was laughing, going, we told you it wouldn't work. We told you girls can't play rock and roll. You know, and I just was, I was not taking care of myself. I was drinking too much. It's like, my dreams were crushed, you know, and, and I had no friends, you know, it was like, everybody was gone. You know what I mean? They disappear on that level and you're just alone with your thoughts and your beer, or whatever it was I was drinking.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  So how, how long did the, sort of the, the, the feeling of funk last before you started your, I assume that, you know, starting the, the Blackhearts was your eventual?

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, actually, I met my partner, Kenny Laguna, uh, my songwriting partner and my producer, he became my producer and manager, because nobody else wanted to deal with me. We met to write, uh, songs for a movie that I had contracted to do before The Runaways broke up. I had to write six songs for a film. And so my manager at the time, a guy named Toby Mamis, knew Kenny and knew that he had worked with a lot of bubblegums bands in the sixties and knew that he could write songs quickly and should be easy to work with. So he called him and said, would you come out and meet Joan to do this project

• 45:08Speaker 04

  with her? And so Kenny did. And, um, we met and hit it off and really became good friends the first day. Uh, I don't know what it was that he saw in me, but, um, he, uh, thought I was the real deal, I guess. And, um, we wrote some songs and then I said, would you produce these songs that we wrote together? And he did. And then, you know, as we continue, I didn't have anybody to manage me. And so we had took that on too, thinking it would be easy, that he could get me deals and all this and that.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  But no, he started getting no's. You know, he knows a lot of people in the business and people just told him no. And then I think it got to him where, oh my God, this is real. And, and then he got pissed because then he saw this sort of, you know, just prejudice and misogyny, you know, straight out bullshit. So I think, you know, that lit that fire in him to help fight for me.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  So it took about two years. First of all, whose idea was it to recover or to redo, uh, I Love Rock and Roll? I don't think many people know that that's a cover song.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. Um, I saw that song when I was in England with The Runaways and I saw this band on Top of the Pops called The Arrows and they were playing the B-side to their hit. And the B-side to their hit was I Love Rock and Roll. I don't know what their, their hit was. The B-side was I Love Rock and Roll. And I'm like, wow, that sounds like a hit to me. And I went out to the record shop and bought the 45 thinking, you know, The Runaways, maybe we could do this and it'll be a hit. But then I was reminded that by the other girls that we had done, we'd covered Lou Reed's Rock and Roll on the first album, on our first Runaways album. And, you know, I guess, didn't want Rock and Roll in every

• 47:11Speaker 04

  title and every album, kind of. So sort of blew it off for a while. And I just held on to the song. And then after The Runaways, thought, here we go.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  See, life, life lesson. You gotta go with your gut.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  That's the second time you learned that lesson. Um, so how different does life turn for you once that song makes you pretty much a, a household name?

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Well, just, I think the, the fame level rose and I, we had more people at our gigs and stuff and made a little bit more money. Finally, it can make a little bit more money. Uh, uh, so those things change a little bit. But, um, you know, for the most part.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  But is that also a scary feeling? Because I think oftentimes when someone gets to success, the first thing in their head is, oh God, how, how am I going to sustain this? How am I going to make it last? What's the next single? Da, da, da, da.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was part of that, but I wasn't like, so far up there that it was, you know, when you're number one and you're, I, I don't know, I guess, you know, on one level, I, you can't stay there forever. And I guess, you know, you know, you have to have your next one. I guess initially, we knew what that next one was going to be, which was Crimson and Clover.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Crimson, yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Right. And, um.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  What was it about that song that made you, uh, want to choose that?

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Damn it. My, my only question of the day. Okay.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  It's a great song.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  Go ahead, Steve. You want to say it? Go ahead. Uh, what made you want to cover Crimson and Clover?

• 48:48Speaker 00

  No, answer the question. I had to turn the light on. Go ahead.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  And when I, when I, you know, when I met Kenny and I knew that he played those songs and I'm like, so you played the moany, moany, da, da, da. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay. So I want to cover Crimson Clover. I just thought, you know, it'd be weird because I didn't want to change the lyrics. And that was just the way I was. I wanted to, you know, push the envelope a little bit, because I just wanted to. But the original recording, so, so I guess.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Delic and so what was you guys?

• 49:27Speaker 04

  My reason for doing, I mean, cause Tommy's Tommy's like when he's, I guess Kenny told me when he was asked what, what is it about? You know, it was about LSD, you know, Crimson Grover. So it wasn't about really a her. So specifically, so when people ask me what I'm singing about, it's like, well, I mean, I guess I'm singing it more literally, but not specifically at anybody, you know? It's just being put out into the world is that is those sentiments, but it's not directed specifically at a person.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  So at that particular point, coming into the early part of the eighties and whatnot, are, do you have a peer group? Are there, is there a trusted circle that you can howl around with? Like normally, you know, birds of a feather flock together as far as like people liking each other's music or whatnot. Like, was there a tight knit community in the sort of the LA rock community by this point for you at least? Or were you still like?

• 50:32Speaker 04

  No, I was gone.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Isolated.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Out of there. I was out of there, but in seventy nine, I moved.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Came back to New York. Okay.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Came into New York.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  So even in New York, like for that, is there, was, I mean?

• 50:45Speaker 04

  No, I didn't hang out. I didn't really, you know.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  I was also going to say, like, everyone was sort of going new wave in New York and you're going straight rock and roll. Like, were you a fish out of water and like, were you sort of upholding a tradition that you felt? Would soon sort of take a backseat?

• 51:09Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know that I thought ahead that much, that I planned it out or thought about, you know, what's the future of rock and roll? Or um, a lot synthier, you know, that there was a lot of synth music going on.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, were you going to the, the, the Lower East Side in, in, in the early eighties to see groups like Bad Brains? Or any like, were you at all interested in the movement that was happening in the Lower East Side?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Right, right. I was, yes, I was interested, but I was working too much to be, I was on the road the whole time. I don't even know if I was around most of the time. I mean, literally on the road all the time.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  All right.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Pretty much in nineteen eighty.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Three sixty five.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  To pretty much, I mean, at least through November and then, you know, depending on what the tour was. We're, we're always working and then be off through January and then start working again in February. It was pretty, pretty brutal. And I didn't realize that till the pandemic hit.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  And then, and then nothing was happening. And then I realized how much of my life I had been on the road constantly. And all these other things we talked about, about, you know, feeling separate, you know, and being isolated. And, but I did, you know, I definitely have friends that I uh, knew once, you know, once I was settled in New York. And I had a routine and um, I, I still have that, that sort of core. Few, I can count on my one hand, level of friends. Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's real life, like.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Real people have two to three people. Wait, I always wanted to know this. Um, okay. So from my, from my point of view as a record collector, um, all right, I'll explain to you. Uh, Fonte, well, you probably know already, but like for me, Boardwalk Records is almost akin to like Malaco Records.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  So.

• 53:15Speaker 04

  I know exactly what you mean.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  That said, I always wanted to know, what was it about Boardwalk Records that made you choose that as your label? Because I knew that sort of as, kind of as, as a second tier label. For acts that were popping in the seventies for soul music. Like I know that Ohio Players wound up on Boardwalk Records for like their eighties catalog. Uh, I remember uh, uh, the Five Stair Steps morphed into.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  Uh, the Invisible Man's Band, uh, for the eighties or whatnot.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Kenny would know so much about this because he, you know, I think he knew Neil Bogart before we got involved. Oh, wow. Um, you know, so Kenny knew him, uh, pre, pre Boardwalk.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  I didn't know that Neil Bogart started Boardwalk Records, so. That explains the Ohio Players.

• 54:10Speaker 04

  Besides Casablanca, yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  And, and, yeah, and he just liked me and wanted, he really liked me a lot and wanted me to, to be able to put out my records. So he said, you know, we'll put it out. And he, and he did, and he died like the week before it went number one. And never got to see it on number one, which really bums me out because he was such.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  He died in eighty one.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, man. Man, I did not know that. But um, yeah, he was a real believer and, you know, one of those guys that, you know, always looked great. It was all sharply dressed and just, you know, believed in me and believed in Kenny, I think, more than anything. So.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, everyone that describes Neil Burgart describes it as like the last true, like, one of the last creatives. And that was a suit at least.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  I mean, I know a suit's a suit, but whatever. Yeah, but I don't know. For me though, I would say that, like, you were so ahead of your time. Was it weird to sort of have, not a comeback of sorts, but just to see? Well, no, no, no, I'm just saying that a lot of these bands that started popping in the mid nineties, late nineties. Started name checking like Jones and Black Hearts, like, or, or even with your work with the Runaways. Like, for you, did you not ever think that the day would come on which you would see? Kind of the, the after effects of your, of people that like grew up on your music or?

• 55:50Speaker 04

  Well.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Especially like when the, the, the Riot Girl, uh, with, with Kathleen and, and.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that was.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Like the Kina Kill.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they totally did tip their hat to me and I, and I knew it. So, because, you know, they told me so. And it was, um, it was great. It was great to, to see that. I mean, I, I always knew that there, whether or not people admitted it. That we'd have some influence, you know, um, in, in life and to music and, and that. And it's really nice to see it confirmed and see people say it, you know, and not just girl bands, but some guys too. And that's really nice, so.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say plenty of times where like Kirk has, has name dropped you or, you know, or I know that girl. Uh, was definitely a big fan. I was there that night and um, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when he.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  Oh, man. What a night.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  That was crazy.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  So how, how did, you know, was that, was that surprising to you, uh, when you got the news or? You know, I, I know oftentimes every, every person I know that gets inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has the same sort of like nihilistic. Uh, if it happens, it happens, whatever, you know, that sort of thing. But for you, was it? When you got the news of, of, of you getting in, like, what was the feeling behind it?

• 57:12Speaker 04

  No, I thought I was very happy, you know? Of course I thought, but I, see, I'm used, I'm kind of used to not being up for awards. My whole life. It's not really been what my career's been about, like nominated for a lot of different things, you know?

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  It's not what's happened. So just the fact I got nominated, I thought was, was really nice, but I thought, you know, I don't know, man. I don't know if I'm gonna win this, but um, and I'll still, I, I still believe this to my core. That because Chris said it on stage that night, that they had, they felt they had no choice but to put me in. Then they forced their hand. So whether, whether I would have really gotten in or whether it was that, I don't know.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  I'll say this much, cause you know, I'm, I'm part of that, uh, I've been part of that. Well, you know, I call the recreation of the twelve angry men scene, but there's like thirty five of us arguing back and forth. Um, you know, your, your name has definitely been, at least for my first year there, which I think was like two thousand and eleven. Has constantly been like champion and argued and, and debated. Well, you know, we were joking about. It's only a matter of time before you do your classical record or your your soft album, but you know, the the latest album you released is your acoustic work.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  And, you know, how how did that feel for you? Like, for you, is it a thing where you need a new challenge? And?

• 58:52Speaker 04

  No, it was really, it was a way to just, we wanted to give the fans something different. We, I'd never looked, because I had had such a weird relationship with guys telling me, my guitar teacher saying, girls can't play rock and roll. I always kept acoustic guitars really at arm's length. I'd never owned one. I never wanted to own one until about, you know, maybe 10 years ago, maybe a little bit less than that. But, um,

• 59:20Speaker 00

  You mean 10 years ago, you like finally like gave in, it was like, all right, let me try acoustic guitar.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Let me just have it because I can't always hear my electric guitar. You know, if you're trying to write a riff and you really need to hear something, you know, so I just had it, but not a good one. You know, this is a little shitty one. Then a couple of years ago, we did a documentary called Bad Reputation.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  It came out, it was all about my career and my life and stuff. And when we did the premiere, they wanted us in LA, they wanted to see if we could perform a couple of the songs in the theater. And I knew we couldn't set up electric and we suggested that maybe we try some acoustic stuff. So we we did it, but with the whole band. So it was myself, my guitar player, acoustic bass, and our drummer. And we, and we, you know, played Bad Reputation and a couple of the songs and it felt really good, actually. It felt a lot better than I thought it was going to feel. And, um, and like, you could transfer the energy. It was going to be different than

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  electric, but it was still worked. So then, last year, 2021 and 2022 is the 40th anniversary of both Bad Reputation album and I Love Rock and Roll album. Because one came out, they both came out in 81, I guess. Something like that. So we wanted to do some extra things for the fans and maybe record some acoustic stuff. So we thought, oh, we did that stuff for the premiere. Let's go in the studio, record a few songs. Once we got in there and started playing songs, we really just did everything we could do live. We just once we started recording, we just kept

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  going. And, um, we didn't really plan on having an album's worth or two of material, but

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

  just wound up there and thought, what the hell? Put it out.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Yes, indeed. How do you, how do you feel about it? Like, you're?

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  I feel good about it. I feel it's fun. It's different. We play some on stage, like we'll do our electric show and then come and then do, instead of an encore, do like three or four acoustic songs. It's been going over. We just started like a month ago, month and a half ago, doing, doing it and see how it would go over live. Because, you know, I don't know unless I'm in front of people. So, so, uh, they seem to like it. So we'll see what happens and we'll see what happens with the stadium tour. You know, we're going to see if we can work some into that. And if it works great, if it doesn't. What are those guys like now, like Motley Crue and Poison?

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't know. We played, we played with Def Leppard before. And, uh, but I've never played with Motley Crue. So I don't know. I have no idea what to expect, but it should be interesting.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  You know, it's weird to me. It's, I, I learned this with Blue Oyster Cult. The Def Leppard's album covers were more scarier than Def Leppard was.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  The thing is, like, if Mutt Lang, you know, like Mutt is too, he's too polished. Yeah, he's too polished and clean to really like, I'm telling you, it's more than covered. Exactly. Like, if you listen to Love Bites, whatever, like, this fucking harmonies, like, it's, it's, it's just more enhanced California harmonies to me. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  And so, I don't know, it's weird. I'd never truly saw, I mean, of course, you know, they, they create one anthem that will probably play in every gentleman's club. Um, now to the end of time.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  No, look how you know that. Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just mean, you know, sugar has a, has a kick ass riff to it. But I've never considered Def, I mean, I don't, I don't consider Def Leppard metal the same way that I don't consider the Police Heart Rock. You know what I mean?

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, people are loose with their terminology now, you know, don't you find?

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, sometimes we were just

• 1:03:21Speaker 04

  Classifying things.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Right now, like, where, with, with this storied career and is there, is there anything that you have yet to achieve or yet to accomplish that you wish to?

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm, you know, I, I wouldn't know who, who to say specifically, but I'm always interested in doing, doing different things. I just actually did something, did I mention that? With Trombone Shorty? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's, it's, it's new for me. Um, I'm not always great with that because I'm good with knowing, you know, being comfortable and doing what I know and that kind of stuff. So I have to try to get better with, you know, just jumping into the unknown and not being so, um,

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  Getting, getting out of, uh, uh, out of your comfort zone.

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. But being okay with that and, and being, you know, you're going to live, you're going to be okay. Don't worry. I don't know. I think I'm ready for my R and B album now. Let's go.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Hey, there it is.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  There it is. Let's go.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  But Joe, thank you very much. Um, yeah, for, for, for joining us and, and, and doing this with us. And, um, you know, we appreciate your work. I've been a long time fan of yours.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you all. It's been a real pleasure. Definitely. For sure.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  I've been a big fan, too. Yeah, be safe out there, Joe. Yeah, you guys take care, okay?

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  Jon Jett on Questlove Supreme. We will see you guys on the next go around. All right. Thank you.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Much Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

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