Laguna famously sent the demo of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ album to twenty-three labels, and got twenty-three rejections. (Hearing it play as a parade of misfit kids pose for school-portrait photos feels simultaneously funny and righteous its use in the sequence enhanced my love for both the song and the show.) At the time of its release, though, Jett didn’t have much of a reputation beyond her work with the Runaways. “Bad Reputation” came out in 1981, as the first single off Jett’s début album, and has since had a robust pop-cultural life, including as the opening theme to “Freaks and Geeks,” in 1999.
I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation You’re living in the past it’s a new generation A girl can do what she wants to do And that’s what I’m gonna do And I don’t give a damn ’bout my bad reputation That’s clear from the song’s opening lines: “Bad Reputation” feels like a rebel’s song-a breakin’-all-the-rules eff-you to society-but it’s actually about ignoring unearned smack talk, Jett told me. He brought an ear for catchy tunes Jett, he’s said, brought the “menace.” They recruited male band members-the Blackhearts-and recorded songs with a sound that’s at once forceful, fun, and inclusive. They landed on the idea of making fun of the criticism “in a tongue-in-cheek way.” Laguna had had a successful career in a Brill Building-style songwriting factory that made bubblegum records. “When I met my best friend and producer-songwriting-partner, Kenny Laguna, we were talking about subjects to write songs about, talking about my life,” she told me. Later, she wrote the song “Bad Reputation” in response to such reactions. As a teen-ager, she co-founded the all-girl band the Runaways, fronted by Cherie Currie-a group that was adored by many and disparaged, with sexist language, by others. Jett’s primal, commanding sound is, in part, a reaction to that attitude. Americans are very uncomfortable with that-with women and sexuality in general, but when you get to teen-agers expressing themselves, forget about it.” A girl playing rock and roll, it’s going to be sexual. Rock and roll, by its nature, exudes sexuality. “Girls don’t play rock and roll,” he said, and taught her “On Top of Old Smokey.” He wasn’t saying that girls can’t master the guitar, Jett told me, but that “girls aren’t allowed to play guitar socially. Then she took lessons and told her teacher she wanted to play rock and roll.
What happened next begins “Bad Reputation”: Jett asked for an electric guitar, and her parents gave her one for Christmas. It was campy, it was pushing the boundaries. It was resonating in my body with a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on, what was going on, but I felt an energy.” She and her mother went to see Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret.” “The music was incredible. “Then, something caught my ear as puberty was hitting,” she told me: rock and roll. (You can hear the radio segment here what follows is from our fuller conversation.) When she was growing up, she said, her parents listened to Johnny Mathis, classical, Sinatra, Top Forty. Recently, I talked to Jett for “ The New Yorker Radio Hour,” and she told me how she developed her sound. I was a sensitive kid and am a sensitive adult, and I was intrigued to learn, by watching “Bad Reputation,” that Jett is sensitive, too. In that era, I liked to wear a T-shirt that said “Let’s Face It-Girls Are Smarter.” And in recent weeks, as the wheels have flown off the shabby jalopy that is American civic life, Jett’s music has helped me feel better. Instead of skirting pedestrian traffic, I walked confidently, claiming part of the sidewalk-and was suddenly blasted back to a sense memory of childhood, when I would request “I Love Rock ’n Roll” at the roller rink and pound my skates in time with the beat. Jett’s sound-the full-throttle drums, guitar, and vocals-made me feel a joyous, uncharacteristic assertiveness.
Not long ago, I saw “Bad Reputation,” the new documentary about Joan Jett, and came out of it exhilarated, listening to “I Love Rock ’n Roll” while powering down Sixth Avenue.
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