(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

In 1975 Kim Fowley put together the Runaways, a quartet of teenage girls (Joan Jett was 15, Lita Ford 16), completely inexperienced. He invented their erotic look and their decadent stage antics (in the manner of Alice Cooper) and wrote for them sex-themed songs set to catchy heavy metal. Jett gradually became the true driving force of the group through Runaways (Mercury, 1976), which includes Cherry Bomb (“hello daddy hello mom/ I'm your cherry bomb/ hello world I'm your wild girl”), and Queens Of Noise (1977), perhaps their best album.

Joan Jett wrote almost all of the material, much of it inspired by blues-rock (Born To Be Bad, 1977), rock and roll (Blackmail, 1976), beat psychedelia (the epic refrain of I Love Playing With Fire, 1977), boogie woogie (You Drive Me Wild, 1977)—in short, the music of the past. The singer, Cherrie Currie, had in her lungs the hoarse sobs of Janis Joplin, and Lita Ford’s lead guitar imitated the intricate solos of Jimmy Page, but it was above all the rhythm section, powered by Jett’s guitar, that drove the band. After a mediocre third pop-metal album, Waitin' For The Night (1978), in which Jett clearly seized the crown and the microphone (Wasted, Waiting For The Night), and the even worse And Now (1979), the band was torn apart by internal strife.

Made famous while still barely twenty by one of the “hottest” shows in Los Angeles, but also plagued by pneumonia and heart problems, Joan Jett then had great difficulty finding a record label. It is therefore surprising that her early solo albums, starting with Joan Jett (Blackheart, 1980), rank among the most explosive and passionate in the history of heavy metal, with terrifying vocal and guitar barrages. Bad Reputation, from Bad Reputation (Boardwalk, 1981), and I Love Rock And Roll (a cover of an old hit by the Arrows that became heavy metal’s biggest success), from I Love Rock And Roll (Boardwalk, 1982), are visceral, anthemic hard-rock songs. In them Jett thrashes about in the guise of a proudly rebellious girl, devoted to the wild life, frustrated in her emotional needs, and ultimately vulnerable.

The extraordinary initial success was helped by the bubblegum-pop inclinations of her manager, Kenny Laguna, already entangled in the careers of Tommy James, the Archies, and the Ohio Express. Jett’s “teen anthems” are pounding mid-tempo numbers that her hoarse, vibrating roar brands with slogan-like choruses. Jett was perhaps the first great female rocker, the first to capitalize on the tradition of provocative and feminist rebels stretching from Wanda Jackson to the riot grrrls.

Album (1983), Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth (1984), which includes I Got No Answers, I Love You Love Me Love, and I Need Someone (and perhaps remains her masterpiece), and Good Music (Epic, 1986), featuring the rap-rock of Black Leather and Good Music, were still respectable albums. But Up Your Alley (Epic, 1988) and the dreadful covers collection The Hit List (Epic, 1990)—despite her return to the spotlight in 1988 with I Hate Myself For Loving You and Little Liar—scaled down the myth.