Joan Jett was told girls didn’t play electric guitar

Beneath the fame, the faux leather, and the decades of trailblazing, Joan Jett is still driven by something simple: the thrill of plugging in a guitar and letting it rip.

From her teenage beginnings with The Runaways to her powerhouse years as a solo artist and leader of the Blackhearts, she’s held tight to the same ambition she had at 13; to be onstage in a band, making unapologetic rock music.

When Jett first strapped on a Gibson guitar girls were told they shouldn’t play rock ‘n’ roll, she told RNZ’s Afternoons.

“It would have been okay if I had an acoustic guitar, but it was the fact the electricity made it you know like you’re not allowed, and it’s like what do you mean I’m not allowed?

“You’re saying I can’t play it but I have girls in my class next to me playing Beethoven and Bach on violin and different instruments so you’re not saying I’m not capable of, what you’re saying is I’m not allowed to.”

Not that it stopped her and first with The Runaways and then Joan Jett and the Blackhearts she went on the release ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’, ‘Crimson and Clover’ and ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ – a series of world wide smash hits.

At the outset, record companies didn’t want to know, she says.

“We have 23 rejection letters to prove it, we sent them five hits, we sent them five hits right? All songs that became hits here in the States and they sent us a variety of rejection letters from uninterested with no reason, to lose the guitar to my favourite you need a song search.”

Now, 50 years on, Jett is a music legend, and she still gets a tingle of excitement before every show, she says.

“I think the day that I don’t feel that is the day I gotta stop for sure. I mean you’ve got to have some kind of you know that little tightness in your belly? It’s not necessarily fear, it’s anticipation.”

And she’s enjoying her career now more than ever.

“I’ve learned a lot more I think in the last six years or so than maybe in my whole life if that makes sense? More about people and just the way the world works I guess which is different necessarily than book knowledge.”