Original subtitles

Subtitles by explosiveskull

JOAN JETT: Ever since I wanted to play guitar...

when I was about 13,

I asked my parents for a guitar for Christmas.

And they kind of thought, you know,

that's strange, but they got it for me.

It's like this thing you get at Sears, you know,

Thirty dollars, you get the guitar and the amp.

I was really excited. I had no idea how to play it.

But I got it plugged in, and I just sat there

on the low "E" string...

(STRUMMING NOTE)

...for hours, and drove my parents absolutely insane.

Then I wanted to learn how to play

and went and took a lesson, and the guy said,

"Girls don't play rock 'n' roll."

♪ I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation ♪

♪ I've never been afraid of any deviation ♪

♪ An' I don't really care if you think I'm strange ♪

♪ I ain't gonna change ♪

♪ An' I'm never gonna care 'bout my bad reputation ♪

♪ Oh, no No, no, no, no, no, no ♪

♪ Not me Me, me, me, me, me, me ♪

♪ Oh, no No, no, no, no, no, no ♪

♪ Not me Me, me, me, me, me, me ♪

♪ Pedal, boys! ♪

♪ Not me! ♪

Growing up in the '70s, it was sort of a feminism,

and I didn't think that it would be such a big deal

for a girl to try to play rock 'n' roll.

♪ ("REBEL REBEL" BY DAVID BOWIE PLAYS) ♪

JOAN: I'd started reading about this club

probably when I was 12,

Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco.

MAN: He was the first to play records by Blondie,

The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Nirvana, to name a few.

JOAN: They'd play Bowie, and they'd play T. Rex,

Iggy Pop, Suzi Quatro, who I'd never heard of,

who was this girl playing bass.

It was a disco for teenagers.

If you were, like, 21, you were already too old,

though rock stars of that era would come in.

I was a naive kid, so going to Hollywood,

it was a big night out.

I talked some kids to come with me,

and there were guys and girls with tons of makeup on

and crazy hairdos and lots of glitter

and really short skirts and dresses and fishnets,

and it was just, "What the fuck is this?"

A club full of a bunch of weirdos

living in a city that's known to be full of weirdos.

♪ I love you so ♪

♪ ("GET IT ON" BY T. REX PLAYS) ♪

JOAN: And they're blasting all this raunchy and dirty...

but clean dirty, you know, like playing on

double entendres and stuff like that,

and some of it was straight-up dirtier.

That music hit you in a spot you couldn't really describe,

and it made you want to do it and there was something...

down there.

As you're a kid, you can't put your finger on it yet,

so to speak.

I'm walking into all these dirty jokes.

I only remember the sex.

I don't remember anything else about LA at all, apparently.

EVELYN MCDONNELL: There was a kind of depravity

going on in Los Angeles at that time.

Quaaludes were really important to understanding

1970s rock 'n' roll culture in California.

DON BOLLES: I think everyone was into Quaaludes then,

'cause you could. Quaaludes were a ridiculous drug,

but everyone seemed to like them.

They were young suburban kids out to wreak havoc,

and get the hell away from the suburbs and their parents.

It was just a nutty time.

EVELYN: Again, this was coming out of Stonewall,

the start of the gay liberation movement.

The nuclear bomb has gone off in the nuclear family.

♪ Bye-bye... ♪

JOAN: My mother and I used to go to the movies

pretty much every weekend.

We went to go see Cabaret.

Really blew my mind. I loved Liza Minnelli.

I loved the combination of the campiness,

1920s Germany, and the flapper girl vibe.

So obviously being around a place like Rodney's,

that was campy, too.

It was exactly the sort of vibe in Cabaret.

♪ You're better off without me... ♪

JOAN: But whatever happened, Cabaret, Hollywood,

and the idea about playing music all fused into one.

RODNEY BINGENHEIMER: I always called Joan Jett

and David Bowie "time travelers"

because they're into all this music before it happens.

JOAN: At one point, I met a girl, and she wrote lyrics.

Kari Krome was just another kid like me

hanging out at the Disco, and she said, you know,

"Maybe you should talk to my publisher.

His name's Kim Fowley."

He called me up one day and, you know,

"So-and-so says you want to form a band."

I said, "Yeah, I want to form an all-girl band.

I can't be the only girl in Hollywood

that wants to do this."

He said, "Well, do you have any demos?"

I didn't even know what a demo was.

A couple days later, it happened that Sandy West,

who was the drummer of The Runaways,

she drove up with some friends to hang out at the Rainbow,

the Rainbow parking lot, which is a place

where people go to watch stars, and people would hobnob

and shoot the shit for a few hours,

and she went up to him saying...

SANDY WEST: I said, "Hi, you know, I play drums,

and I'm in a band right now."

He goes, "How old are you?" "Well, I'm 15 and a half."

He says, "You're kidding me."

He goes, "I'm working with a girl right now who's 14.

I think she knows a friend out in the Valley

who plays electric guitar." Turned out to be Joan.

She arrived a couple weeks later

with her little Sears guitar in hand,

three buses and four hours later

from Canoga Park to Huntington Beach,

and she had such great rhythm

that hit it off so well together.

Picked up the phone, called Kim,

said, "Listen to this," and we played

some sort of Chuck Berry-ish thing

or maybe "Wild Thing."

♪ Wild thing ♪

♪ You make my heart sing ♪

♪ You make everything ♪

♪ Come on... ♪

JOAN: Man, Sandy, we really connected.

That was the genesis of The Runaways.

It was the heart.

INTERVIEWER: What were your first impressions of LA?

It was Rodney and Kim Fowley walking down somewhere together.

Kim Fowley looked like Frankenstein

if Frankenstein was on crack.

He had produced a couple of very obscure novelty hits.

I think he was involved with something

called "Alley Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles.

I always loved the song.

♪ There's a cat in the funny papers ♪

♪ We all know Alley oop-oop ♪

♪ Oop, oop-oop ♪

♪ He lived way back A long time ago ♪

Et cetera.

He flirted around with working with me,

and I really didn't want to get too involved.

One day, he said, "Well, I've got a group going,

and they are The Runaways."

KIM FOWLEY: I said, "Joan, let's go to the Sugar Shack

because there will be some girls out there

who will know who you are."

JOAN: We had a three-piece lineup

that we created in the first month,

but I was so shy at this point,

it was obvious I couldn't sing lead.

You know, I was... I was too shy,

and I was embarrassed kind of to be on stage.

KIM: The whole room was full of miniature lipstick lesbian

teenage girls, and then you had the gay boys

who were mincing around.

♪ ("BLOCKBUSTER" BY THE SWEET PLAYS) ♪

KIM: And a girl, Cherie Currie, walked up

and in a stage whisper said, "That's Joan Jett!"

♪ You better watch out if you got long black hair ♪

CHERIE CURRIE: I had heard about The Runaways.

And there was this little bit of a buzz going on

about this teenage rock group, so when I met her, it was...

you know, it was a little, "Wow, it's Joan!"

KIM: I said, "You're either cruising her

because you're a dyke, or you want to be

the lead singer of The Runaways.

Can you sing?" "Yes."

"Good, you're gonna audition tomorrow."

And then she brought her twin sister up.

And I said, "I'm not interested in a sister act.

I'm interested in one Brigitte Bardot

fronting the screaming, loud, obnoxious, rebellious girls

who can take over the world."

And everybody had big smiles on their faces.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

- ANNOUNCER: The Runaways! - (CROWD CHEERING)

JOAN: I think Sandy came across Lita by December of '75.

The three-piece was over, and we had Cherie

and a bass player named Jackie Fox.

♪ Can't stay at home, can't stay at school ♪

♪ Old folks say "You poor little fool" ♪

♪ Down the street I'm the girl next door ♪

♪ I'm the fox You've been waiting for ♪

♪ Hello, Daddy, hello, Mom ♪

♪ I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch... Cherry bomb ♪

♪ Hello, world I'm your wild girl ♪

♪ I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch Cherry bomb ♪

JOAN: Kim and I wrote "Cherry Bomb" on the spot

when Cherie came to audition,

and it became such an iconic song for The Runaways.

♪ Bad nights Causing teenage blues ♪

♪ Get down, ladies You've got nothin' to lose ♪

KIM: When we were putting The Runaways together,

it was based on Darwin.

Let's start with the evolution of a man in show business.

♪ Hello, world I'm your wild girl ♪

♪ I'm your ch-ch-ch... ♪

KIM: The guys just kept getting more and more

and more and more feminine.

Elvis was feminine. Sinatra was feminine.

Bing Crosby was feminine,

but if you keep getting more and more feminine,

you're gonna get to female, duh.

♪ Hello, Daddy, hello, Mom... ♪

JOAN: What Jimi Hendrix said about women

playing rock 'n' roll

and when they do, they'll be looked at like aliens.

In our case, it was absolutely true.

♪ Cherry bomb! ♪

KIM: If you look at the lyrics of The Runaways,

you'll find that there is an openness

that most teenage girls did not have in real life.

JOAN: Everything happened really fast.

We were playing gigs. We were in the studio.

We just cut the tracks live.

I was so into this idea

of girls being able to play rock 'n' roll,

and that they'll play as well as boys will,

and girls playing rock 'n' roll

would be so cool and sexy

because it's never been done.

I thought everybody would love it.

Once they realized it was serious

and we planned to make an album and go on tour

and do everything the male bands were doing,

the tables turned where it went from,

"Oh, cute, sweet," to "Slut, whore, cunt."

I've been hurt.

I've had my head split open by a beer bottle,

a rib cracked by getting a battery thrown at me,

like, a big metal rig thing just because I was a girl.

You know, get spit on.

I mean, I just felt like I couldn't leave the stage.

You know, I'd go off afterwards and cry

just because they didn't get it, and then I'd feel better

after I'd... you know, cried a little bit, going,

"Why? What's with that, that people need to be so hateful

because you're playing rock 'n' roll," you know?

Some of the other girls got tired of it,

and I don't blame them.

It was just that to me,

it felt like that's what I had to do.

Tell me I can't do something,

and you'll make sure I'm gonna be doing it.

RODNEY: Hey, I heard a story, a rumor.

Someplace where you're rehearsing,

what were you guys wearing during the rehearsal?

I heard it was so hot,

the air conditioner broke down, and...

JOAN: What do you want to hear,

"Yeah, we took off our pants"?

JOAN: I remember early on, one of my first interviews

where people probably asked me about sex in the band.

And I thought to myself, if I answer this question,

that's all The Runaways' music will ever be about, is sex.

I have to talk about music. It has to be about music.

Because just being girls exudes that sexuality.

We don't have to talk about it.

JOAN: (ON RECORDING) They don't know

what to say about an all-girl band

besides the fact that we're just a band.

They don't know where to put us, and so they just say, well,

we're young, we sing about, you know,

slightly outrageous things, rebellious things.

So they stick us in that field.

CHRIS STEIN: I was sitting around my house,

and I found an old copy of Crawdaddy magazine,

it was a review of The Runaways

where the guy just slammed the shit out of them.

The stuff he didn't like about them is all the stuff

that everybody loves now,

the fact that they were young and sexy and female.

DEBBIE HARRY: We were all sort of rejects

in terms of the industry.

A lot of the criticism that was heaped on them

was very negative and condescending

and, you know, misogynistic.

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: Especially with mainstream press

in, like, the mid-'70s,

You know, people are fucking stupid,

and they'll do anything to create an article,

to create some kind of outrage.

JOAN: Rolling Stone hated The Runaways.

The only time they wrote about us,

"Runaways get arrested and thrown out of Disney World."

We were in a line taking a photo,

and we put our arms around each other walking.

"That's it! Lesbians, out!"

But if you listen to The Runaways,

those are bad-ass rock songs, and they kick the shit

out of almost everything else that was out at that time.

♪ ("ALL RIGHT YOU GUYS" BY THE RUNAWAYS PLAYS) ♪

KIM: Women were stepping out as rebels.

Women were getting pissed off in the culture.

They were getting out there and kicking some heads.

The guys were turning into fags,

and the women were turning into John Wayne.

♪ Hey, you, the air Is pretty thick tonight... ♪

JOAN: At this point, there were signs

the women's-lib movement was really taking root.

It showed so much promise.

All it meant to us was that we could do what we want.

♪ We don't care what we do Is right as long as we do it ♪

♪ We don't care What we do is right... ♪

JOAN: Kim took us to see Clockwork Orange

and Rollerball, and afterwards,

he turned to me and Cherie and said,

"That's what I want The Runaways to be."

What he did in rehearsal, you know,

throwing stuff at us, calling us names,

that was our boot camp.

We were preparing for exactly what we walked into.

Kim could come off pretty intense,

but I wasn't afraid of him.

EVELYN: Kim is the, you know, most controversial part

of The Runaways.

There were people who loved Kim,

and there are people who actually despise him

and think he was a kind of Satan.

JOAN: My mother liked Kim,

and he would be on the phone with her for hours.

He talked to her a lot, you know, I mean,

probably more than any of the other mothers

and was probably the most friends with her.

I think she felt reassured, but she also knew

how the other mothers were hesitant.

My parents told me I could be anything

I wanted to be when I was five years old,

and I believed them.

So that's the attitude

as a young child that I took into life.

I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be an archaeologist.

I wanted to be all different things.

You know, I didn't realize, really,

there was this glass ceiling.

When they got me that guitar for Christmas,

the electric guitar, I was thinking,

most parents wouldn't do that.

ANNE LARKIN: She always had this inner confidence

that she knew what she wanted.

She didn't care what anybody else thought,

even when she was young, and it's, you know,

the single vision, and that's how she was, always.

JOAN: My rebellion, as they say, was not against my parents.

What I saw, that society,

with all this lip service to women,

women's lib and all that, I saw that it was... bull.

♪♪♪ Rows and flows of angel hair ♪♪

♪ And ice cream castles In the air ♪

There were a lot of girls

who didn't want to be Joni Mitchell, you know?

They wanted to rock.

The heaviest ones would drink with you,

do everything with you,

but they were always in that sidecar role,

and then along came The Runaways.

Joan Jett was nobody's sidecar.

♪ (PLAYING "NEON ANGELS ON THE ROAD TO RUIN") ♪

EVELYN: It was a very male-dominated

rock-'n'-roll scene in the 1970s,

and the women that were making music at that time

were in kind of stereotypical, "I'm a singer-songwriter,"

had a different kind of cultural power.

♪ In overdrive ♪

♪ Cobra kings ♪

♪ Wet and wild ♪

♪ Love the devil That's in your smile ♪

♪ Let me tell you What we've been doin' ♪

♪ Neon angels On the road to ruin ♪

♪ Let me tell you What we've been doin' ♪

♪ Neon angels On the road to ruin ♪

EVELYN: Rock radio did not play a lot of women artists.

The FM stations at the time,

there'd only be one female artist

on the air per hour.

This was like a literal policy of radio stations.

♪ Let me tell you What we've been doin' ♪

♪ Neon angels On the road to ruin... ♪

How many radio stations are playing

this kind of music in the United States now?

- Do we know? - I would think almost none.

Maybe like one or two in New York, one or two in LA.

TOM SNYDER: But from what I've read about it, there's no music.

It's just chords and ranting and raving and putdowns.

- Uh-uh-uh-uh. - No, it's more than that.

I think it's a B-movie on record.

They were young, they were hot,

and their music spoke about who they were

and about their generation.

I mean, it was heartfelt and mentally correct.

KIM: I feel it's a vacuum

because we're living in a fragmented '70s

where there's so many different things happening

that there isn't one Beatles or one Elvis Presley.

It hasn't come yet, and here we are almost in 1980,

and we're still looking over our shoulders at the '60s.

JOAN: There's an inflection point in every generation

where new ideas bubble to the surface

and express themselves in new ways.

The world had never seen a band like us.

I felt that England got us more and did take us seriously.

CHERIE: We were selling out wherever we went.

♪ ("PRETTY VACANT" BY THE SEX PISTOLS PLAYS) ♪

JOAN: They seemed to get it.

Kids my age in England had a much wider exposure

to different kinds of music and would embrace it.

The Sex Pistols were a huge part of the British punk scene.

We got a chance to see some of the punk stuff up close.

Really influenced me.

So I kind of went over as a glitter person,

came home dressed as a punk.

♪ There's no point in asking, You'll get no reply ♪

JOAN: Yeah, so I used to buy a lot of my accessories

at a sex store, S&M fetish store

called The Pleasure Chest.

I bought this great ring belt, and I used to wear that.

We were hanging out on a houseboat

that we had rented for a month to record in London.

Sid and Nancy came over to the houseboat one night,

and he liked my belt, and so I gave it to him.

SALLY HERSHBERGER: Nobody in the United States

was wearing, like, safety pins on their leather jacket

and all the chains...

and, you know. She was a real punk rocker in California.

Nobody was a punk rocker. I mean, she lived that.

♪ 'Cause we know What we feel... ♪

(PERKY INTRO MUSIC PLAYING)

ANNOUNCER: The Runaways from USA.

JOAN: Thank you, we're really happy to be here.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

JOAN: When we got to Japan, you know,

that's when I felt, "Wow, thousands of girls,

like, treating you like the Beatles."

I mean... I know it sounds funny.

That's the only way you could describe it.

(CROWD CLAMORING)

JOAN: They love their music stars over there,

but it felt like we tapped into something else

with female audiences.

I thought it was exhilarating,

but just because I thought "That's powerful, man,

it's all girls."

The more I thought about it, I realized,

"Wait, Japanese women

are treated sort of like second-class citizens there.

So these teenage girls were feeling

the power of The Runaways saying, "No, we can do it."

The studio audiences went nuts.

- (AUDIENCE CHEERING) - Oh, God. Oh, boy. (LAUGHS)

Okay, why don't you just tell me about...

Oh, they all know you very well,

but why don't you tell me about how this band was made?

It wasn't until Japan

where we actually got a paycheck.

We knew something was wrong

when we weren't really getting paid.

We'd have to ask for money for Tampax

or a hamburger on the road,

and there was always some excuse,

but yet we were selling out everywhere,

and there were the t-shirts,

and there were all the kids and the fans.

In the middle of the tour, we got this booklet.

It was an all-color booklet. It said "The Runaways."

And there was like a tiny picture of all of us,

and then it was like foldout soft-core porn shots

of Cherie all the way through.

CHERIE: Kim made a very bad mistake.

He set up a photo session with the Japanese for me.

Next thing I knew, there was a complete tour book

with, you know, me in my corset.

We're, like, going, "What the fuck is this?"

And we were all really annoyed

by the fact that Cherie had done it

and that she didn't say anything to us.

CHERIE: And the girls really thought

that I had done that myself, but Kim did things like that

that caused damage to the band

that just could not be fixed after a while.

You know, they ended up not trusting me at all,

and that caused me to separate myself a lot from the girls.

And Joan and I had been very, very, very close.

Jackie had left from Japan kind of a broken child,

and I was the second to go.

JOAN: After she left the band and after our Japanese tour,

I didn't follow what she was doing right away.

Obviously, there were parts of me that was very hurt

by that because we were close.

You know, a band is like a family.

No! No!

If you wanna see "Cherry Bomb," find Cherie

because we're fucking tired of that song.

(CROWD SHOUTING AND CHEERING)

EVELYN: Shortly thereafter that, they fired Kim Fowley.

I think Kim's biggest mistake in life

was not recognizing that Joan Jett

was his great star and his great discovery.

TOBY MAMIS: Joan took over the front person's role,

which she earned and which she deserved,

but it changed the perception of the band by the industry

because the industry was so focused on Cherie

and the blonde-bombshell look, and that's haunted

not just the music business but all entertainment formats,

TV and film, for years.

DON: What you do when your iconic lead singer

just is gone, you know, and you gotta step up?

It's kind of incredible that she, you know,

had the balls to even do it.

RODNEY: So do you have a new record or anything coming out?

JOAN: Nope. (LAUGHTER)

No we're going to Europe, right,

two days after the Whisky,

and we're gonna record in either London or Berlin.

♪ Blue-skinned Sleeping boys ♪

♪ Man, You're lookin' wasted ♪

♪ Greasy wheels, Streets of steel ♪

♪ No tellin' what ya tasted ♪

JOAN: We did "Wasted" on the TV show

Old Grey Whistle Test when we were in London.

First time The Runaways were on TV

with me as lead singer, which was really scary.

♪ Sad you are so shattered ♪

Everything was just kind of splintering.

I felt the album was going in a very heavy direction musically,

and I could feel a camaraderie between Sandy,

Lita and this producer, John Alcock,

and I was not part of it.

He drove a wedge between Sandy and Lita on one side

and Joan on the other that destroyed the band.

You know, I'm not gonna get fired

from a band I started, so we're not on the same page.

So I should probably let you guys do your thing.

You know, we'd always been close enough to laugh

and all that stuff, and you could tell

those sort of elements were leaving.

You know, you felt like you had to walk on eggshells,

and I didn't want to fight.

You know, I loved these girls. It was our baby.

♪ It doesn't Really matter... ♪

CHRIS: I remember at the end of The Runaways period,

she, you know, gained weight and was really bummed out

as it was closing.

If they had, you know, proper management, you know,

they probably would have gone a lot further a lot longer.

JOAN: How did I personally deal

with the crumbling of The Runaways?

I drank a lot starting at 8:00 in the morning.

Not a good thing.

Not a good way to deal with things.

No, it got heavier than that. Definitely.

Felt like LA was totally laughing at me going,

"We told you it wouldn't work.

We told you you couldn't do it."

DEBBIE: She moved to Sunset and San Vicente

in that weird house across from the Whisky.

It was decadent, honey.

I would go by there, and it was like

tons of people all over the living room,

and I remember being with Chrissie Hynde,

and Chrissie's like, "Honey," to Joan,

"You gotta pull it together."

TOBY: Her friend Lisa called and said, "Joan's very sick.

"I have to take her to the emergency room.

She's sweating. She's very sick.

Something's wrong," and she had a heart infection.

And she ended up in Cedars, and it was pretty scary.

I'm lucky I'm still here.

I know my mom was really worried about her.

It was a really hard time.

She was really depressed

because she had high hopes for The Runaways.

TOBY: It is funny that it's a heart infection

because she did have a broken heart for losing The Runaways.

JOAN: I was angry.

I didn't know how to make sense of a world

that would give girls shit for playing guitars, you know?

Like, "Don't you have important things to be upset about?"

(MELANCHOLY GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING)

I thought, you know, I'm gonna fucking kill myself.

Accidentally, but I'm gonna do it.

I gotta do something. What can I do?

Maybe I'll join a branch of the military,

straighten up, learn something.

I considered that because I didn't know what else to do,

but we still had some legal obligations.

We had signed to do the music for a movie,

and even though the band wasn't together anymore,

I cannot get sued, I can't afford to get sued.

I need to write these songs.

KENNY LAGUNA: I went through a few offers to produce them,

and I wasn't really interested.

Although I was intrigued by five crazy girls

who were attractive, took a lot of drugs,

made good music, and the band broke up.

And they were teenage girls so they didn't care

about commitments or responsibility.

I probably would have turned it down again.

I was in England.

Joan Jett was the only one left

who was gonna live up to the commitment.

They had eight days to create six songs when Toby called me.

TOBY: Before John Alcott, I had thought of Kenny Laguna

as a guy who might produce this Runaways album.

He blew me off. I went back to Kenny Laguna

because I'm obviously a masochist.

"I know you're a good songwriter,

and I really think that you'd click with Joan."

KENNY: My wife Meryl said to me,

"I've been reading about Joan Jett.

I think she's significant."

I was in the studio with him,

and I used to read "Melody Maker" and the "NME,"

and there was a picture of The Runaways,

and Joan just popped out of the picture.

I said, "I think this girl's got it."

KENNY: And we went and stayed at the Riot House,

the Hyatt House on Sunset,

and Joan walked in the room with Toby,

and I saw this girl with a black leather jacket,

and she was a little beat up by then.

She was drinking.

She was hanging out with Sid Vicious

and Stiv Bators, Sid's girlfriend Nancy,

and a bunch of people who all ended up dead.

She had a sad look in her eye.

MERYL LAGUNA: She was this lost waif,

and your heart just went out for her

'cause you could see she was so upset and destroyed by it.

You know, I was pretty much a mess.

Hi, guys.

But he saw something.

I don't know what it was, you know?

He bought me a pair of pants first, though.

Because he couldn't write songs

with a person with ripped jeans or something.

KENNY: We head into the studio, and I said,

"We'll cut the tracks with the session guys,

and then we'll put your guitar on.

It's no big deal."

She goes, "Then it won't be a record,"

and she wasn't kidding, but I dug it.

JOAN: (SINGING) One, two, three, four!

JOAN: (INTERVIEW) So we fulfilled the contract.

It wound up being on some weirdo porn movie,

which was not what we signed up for.

MAN: Joanie Jett, she's got the greatest voice I've ever seen!

Now, I went out to California to meet Joan

with a fella named Ritchie Cordell.

I said, "You know, Ritchie,

I think we can we have hits with her.

I think we should make her a partner."

"What, do you wanna fuck her?"

KENNY: "We're gonna steal her money."

(LAUGHS) I'll never forget it.

♪ I want you like I never wanted anythin' else... ♪

KENNY: But I knew that this girl should be a partner.

She was that unique.

JOAN: Things were definitely looking up.

I felt good, I felt, "Okay,

I've got someone to talk to, to write music with.

Let's see where this goes."

♪ Yeah! ♪

KENNY: And then I took her to England.

I had a flat on the Kings Road,

and every day, we'd go to Ramport,

The Who's studio, and record the Joan Jett record.

BILL CURBISHLEY: I was introduced to Kenny

by a guy called Peter Meaden,

a real character, and in so doing,

he also came to me with an artist called Steve Gibbons,

and Kenny produced the album for Steve Gibbons,

a fantastic album.

♪ Go ahead on, Tulane ♪

♪ He can't catch up With you ♪

♪ Go, Tulane, he ain't Man enough for you ♪

♪ Go, Tulane, Use all the speed... ♪

But the thing he's got extra is he's got great ears.

He can produce. He knows what he wants.

(PLAYS PIANO CHORD)

KENNY: I was born in the Village,

and my parents were... predated hippies and beatniks.

They were Bohemian.

They started me on piano lessons five years old.

I learned Mozart and Bach,

and then I saw "Jailhouse Rock,"

and he was doing art, and he still had a Cadillac,

and that was all I needed to know.

When I was about 16,

I moseyed into New York City and started hustling.

They gave me a songwriting job at Kama Sutra Records,

and their specialty was bubblegum music.

♪ Sugar ♪

♪ Oh, honey, honey ♪

KENNY: ...which was coined by Neil Bogart,

the great record exec.

♪ You are my candy girl... ♪

DON: Kenny Laguna did some great stuff pre-Joan.

I don't know where we would've been without that guy.

He was a bubblegum hero.

ADAM HOROVITZ: Our generation, when we were kids,

that's what the music was.

No guilty pleasure.

It's just like, "Look, we're making this music to make money.

KATHLEEN HANNA: "We're gonna sell it to kids.

"We're gonna turn it into, like, you know,

records that are on literally the back of the cereal box."

All the songs were, like, about, like,

naughty sexual things that they sort of acted

like they were about candy and bubblegum.

♪ Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy ♪

♪ And I feel like a-lovin' you ♪

♪ Love, you're such a sweet thing... ♪

One of our little sayings was "Don't bore us.

Get right to the chorus."

But something weird happened.

When the punks got on the scene,

they didn't like Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

They hated Neil Young.

They thought those bands were pretentious.

IAN MACKAYE: I am a hook guy. Kenny and I share that.

I like a hook.

Problem with bubblegum is that sometimes,

it's was so saccharine, for me, it was almost unlistenable.

DON: There was a lot of shared DNA between bubblegum and punk.

Bubblegum was short, to-the-point little songs

with hooks and an ass-kicking beat.

KENNY: And that was punk.

♪ They're going Through a tight wind ♪

♪ The kids are losing Their minds ♪

♪ The blitzkrieg bop ♪

KENNY: I was making 100 grand when I was 17.

I remember my father said,

"You should try to save some money."

I said, "I can have a hit anytime I want."

By the time I was 19, bubblegum died,

but we wanted to be cooler than bubblegum.

(DISJOINTED INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)

KENNY: I did a soundtrack album for Andy Warhol,

Lonesome Cowboys, and I used orchestration.

I was putting horns on and then strings

without much of a plot line.

Just very effeminate guys dressed as cowboys

hanging out together,

and I remember giving a spiel to Andy Warhol

and Paul Morrissey about the art,

and Morrissey said, "Don't talk to us about art.

We hired you because we want money."

It was very shocking to me

because I grew up with artists

who thought it was gauche to want money.

PETE TOWNSHEND: I really liked Kenny

from the first moment I met him.

I don't know why. I always have.

(STRUMMING CHORDS)

I remember saying to Kenny, maybe getting a bit bored,

I don't know, but just saying, you know,

"Go talk to Bill."

- Stop all this shit. - Oh, Bill! Oh, my God.

- How you doing? - What's all this shit?

KENNY: What affected me was their self-belief,

but under the self-belief, there's a fear,

"Oh, is it ever gonna happen?"

Or, "Are we ever gonna get a break?"

And for me, life's about that.

JOAN: And Bill said to Kenny, "You know what?

"Why don't you just go into our studio, Ramport,

do what you gotta do and pay us when you can?"

Now I'm in business.

And that was the start of their relationship and ours.

I'll tell you all about this girl.

I'll tell you the truth about this girl. Mwah!

It felt you were kind of blessed by, you know,

the rock-n'-roll gods, and then we were like,

"Well, we want to tour this music.

This is great."

So we needed to form a band.

And went back to LA, put an ad in The LA Weekly

or something and said,

"Joan Jett looking for three good men."

♪ ("LOVE IS PAIN" BY JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS PLAYS) ♪

I remember very clearly going to the audition.

I knew all The Runaways songs

because as a 13-year-old kid, 14-year-old kid,

I'd been at home playing along with the records.

♪ Hey, you must obey ♪

♪ Or you will bleed, you know I need to get my way... ♪

And Joan knew me from the punk scene.

JOAN: I kind of knew in my gut

that there's no way I could play with girls again,

certainly not right away

because it would only be compared to The Runaways,

and that was not good on any level.

ERIC AMBEL: We got the Whisky A Go Go,

and we picked the worst night of the week,

which was Tuesday,

and we played there every week for a month,

and by the time we were done with that,

we were on the map there in LA.

All of a sudden, there's... there's a lot of chicks here.

I'm kind of getting into it, and by the last gig,

I was like, "Well, wait a minute, they're...

they're looking at her."

KATHLEEN: You've got this weird punk rocker

who has an extraterrestrial good voice,

and then you have someone who's worked in the business

of making bubblegum music.

♪ I was caught So unaware ♪

♪ When you made other plans ♪

KENNY: She brought menace,

and I brought a lot of pop sensibility.

♪ More than you Could stand ♪

♪ You don't know What you've got ♪

♪ You don't know What you've got ♪

♪ You don't know what You've got till it's gone ♪

You mix that together,

and you've got, like, a Molotov cocktail

that's gonna, like, totally do some... damage.

JOAN: First one we wrote was

"You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone."

To me, you know, Kenny was taking my life.

You know, I guess being a therapist.

KENNY: And the more we knew each other,

the more she trusted me.

♪ You don't know What you've got ♪

♪ You don't know what You've got till it's gone ♪

Joan sort of needs to experience heartache

to write about it.

♪ I gave you love So true ♪

♪ But you ran away ♪

♪ So you just don't know Whatcha blew ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

JOAN: Kenny actually was looking for record deals.

So Kenny would send the tapes in.

We sent it to all the labels, all the majors, all the minors.

That was 23 labels,

and we got back 23 rejection letters

all saying, "You need a song search.

No songs here. Maybe if she loses the guitar."

These people heard five songs, four of which were top-20 hits.

That can't be a song search. That's you don't have ears.

KENNY: We asked for no money.

JOAN: Just put out the record.

I know it had something to do with my image,

The Runaways, the girl.

I think Kenny thought it was going to be a lot easier

than it ultimately turned out to be.

KENNY: My mom was an outrageous feminist.

She used to drive the car,

and my father sat where everybody else's mother sat.

So when I met Joan and heard about The Runaways,

I never really thought it was, like, weird

or groundbreaking until I tried to promote her,

and I ran into these... walls, these brick walls.

An interviewer who once said to her,

"When you're playing on stage,

do you feel like a man or a woman?"

And I was like, what?

INTERVIEWER: Could you ever see yourself getting married?

No, you know, I don't like to knock

the American dream or anything...

Do you ever want to have children?

No. (LAUGHS)

If you really want to be a musician, now,

that's where you gotta really do some soul-searching

and decide, do I want to be a musician,

or do I want to be a flash in the pan

and ride in limos for a week?

You gotta decide what you want to do with your life.

♪ Are you in the mood For a lot of singing? ♪

(CROWD CHEERS)

♪ Are you in the mood For a lot of singing? ♪

(CROWD CHEERS)

ERIC: Kenny Laguna came over,

and he literally pulled out the map.

He's like, "Look, here's Boston, New York, Washington, DC.

Look at all these towns."

JOAN: In LA, there's a limited amount of cities

you can hit when you're a poor band

and you're struggling, making every penny count.

ERIC: He just convinced us on the spot

that we would move to New York.

(DRUMBEAT PLAYING)

♪ Yeah... ♪

KENNY: It was a circuit.

There was The Rat in Boston,

The Malibu and My Father's Place,

Privates and The Ritz in New York,

The Left Bank in Westchester,

these places that were incubators

for rock bands, and they'd give you $500.

Didn't cover much.

JOAN: But you had a lot more opportunity

to play and survive.

♪ Yeah, oh, yeah... ♪

KENNY: We got a minor deal in Europe.

That was the beginning,

but we couldn't get anything going in America.

And all of a sudden, we find out

that we are the number-one import.

The record's on the radio,

and nobody wants to be our label.

I'm seeing something going on that I can't put my finger on,

but I know we're tapping into something.

So it gave me the courage to empty our bank account.

My daughter was just born. She's only a couple months old.

And we started a college fund,

so there was like $3,000 or $4,000 in there.

I mean, it was like I jumped off the diving board,

and I was hoping somebody was gonna put water in the pool.

JOAN: But we discussed about, you know,

"Let's print up these records.

We'll make our own records... nobody's gonna sign us.

We'll take music we believe in so much

and just do it."

(ROCK MUSIC PLAYING)

JOAN: Our first office was, more or less,

Kenny's big, huge Cadillac.

KENNY: And so we had this big old 1976 Sedan de Ville

We used to always have records in the trunk.

♪ Temperature Is running high ♪

JOAN: You know, we'd hang out, and there'd be a little crowd

of 30 or 40 people, and we'd sign autographs

and then if anybody wanted the record,

we had the trunk full of albums.

KENNY: And it wasn't done.

In those days, you did not sell records at gigs.

JOAN: It wasn't part of the landscape yet.

♪ Yeah, yeah, Do you wanna touch? ♪

♪ Yeah! Do you wanna touch? ♪

♪ Yeah! Do you wanna Touch me there, where ♪

♪ Do you wanna... ♪

And that was the beginning of Blackheart Records.

We're not getting any traction?

Like, fuck it, we'll put out our own records.

I don't know if that came out of a punk aesthetic.

Maybe it did, or maybe it was just

that they were just punks before they knew it.

BILLIE JOE: Oh, you mean I don't need to have someone

trying to discover me?

I can actually just do this myself?

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

KENNY: In the beginning, the first gig we did

was at The Malibu in Long Island.

Fifty-four people came.

Twenty-five of them were my guest list for my neighbors.

ERIC: The next time we played there,

they had to shut down the Southern State Parkway.

♪ My, my, my, Whiskey and rye ♪

♪ Don't it make you feel So fine? ♪

♪ Right or wrong, Don't it turn you on? ♪

♪ Can't you see We're wastin' time, yeah? ♪

♪ Do you wanna touch? ♪

♪ Yeah! Do you wanna touch? ♪

♪ Yeah! Do you wanna Touch me there, where ♪

♪ Do you wanna touch? Yeah! ♪

BILLIE JOE: The way that Joan and Kenny have done things,

it inspired people to make their own labels

because people figured out that they don't need

a bunch of guys in suits and cigars

and cash to start a label.

♪ No, no, no! ♪

CROWD: ♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Do ya, do ya? ♪

MERYL: And I think it was in a bar in upstate New York,

and a big tour manager...

I'll never forget him saying this

because at this club, the line was around the block,

and when we got in, he said to me,

"Remember these days.

This is the best time you're ever gonna have,

and never take it for granted," and I never have.

- ♪ Yeah ♪ - ♪ Fuck you ♪

- ♪ Yeah ♪ - ♪ Fuck me ♪

- ♪ Yeah ♪ - ♪ Fuck everybody ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

INTERVIEWER: Is that something that gnaws at you,

the fact that they'll take you seriously fronting a male band,

but they wouldn't take you seriously

being an all-girl band?

JOAN: I think audiences are forced to listen more,

and they're more accepting than maybe the business.

Like, I think the record companies

haven't come far at all.

Until women get into the position of A&R men.

MIKE NESS: Oh, I'm sure she had to go through a lot of,

you know, "I can play guitars

just as good as you can, motherfucker," you know?

"Just 'cause I'm a girl, don't think I can't play."

THOM PANUNZIO: I know very few men that can play like her.

You know, she's ferocious when she plays that guitar.

Out of nowhere, an old friend of mine,

the head of Buddha, Neil Bogart, decided to help us.

JOAN: Neil ran Casablanca Records,

which had KISS,

but they were a disco label, basically.

♪ I love to love you, Baby ♪

I mean, this guy knew senators and presidents and made movies.

JOAN: He was really into what we were doing,

and that was so different.

I liked it 'cause it felt like

he was shoving it up people's ass.

KENNY: He helped me put out the Joan Jett record,

which he renamed Bad Reputation.

He never checked with us. It completely pissed us off.

He said, "You're a cult marketer.

I'm a mass marketer. I have two Rolls-Royces.

That makes me a lot smarter than you, Kenny."

We were selling so many more records than we knew about

because the factory was printing them up

and selling them out the back door.

You gotta be very careful how you handle it

because the guys doing that are...

thugs. (CHUCKLES)

So you don't sue them. Neil knew how to handle that.

We went, and we took our own money,

and we made "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."

And people just didn't do that. Today, it's common.

I had seen this song that was a B-side

of another song, I saw it on TV.

It was called "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."

I'm like, that's a hit.

The Runaways didn't want to do it,

and so I did a version with the Sex Pistols

and Steve Jones and Paul Cook.

♪ ("I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL" PLAYS) ♪

KENNY: I thought their version

was a little unsophisticated, a little sophomoric.

I thought we could make a better record.

JOAN: So once I was with Kenny

and we formed The Blackhearts,

it was something that I wanted to try,

and the rest is history.

("I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL" PLAYS)

♪ I saw him dancin' there By the record machine ♪

♪♪ I knew he musta been About 17 ♪♪

♪ The beat Was goin' strong ♪

♪ Playin' my favorite song ♪

♪ An' I could tell It wouldn't be long ♪

♪ Till he was with me, Yeah, me ♪

♪ An' I could tell It wouldn't be long ♪

♪ Till he was with me, Yeah, me ♪

♪ Singin' I love rock 'n' roll ♪

♪ So put another dime In the jukebox, baby ♪

♪ I love rock 'n' roll ♪

♪ So come and take your time And dance with me ♪

Ow!

GARY: MTV started around the same time we were starting.

KENNY: I was brought up to believe television

is the enemy of rock 'n' roll.

♪ It's all the same ♪

KENNY: Les Garland started harassing me.

He was one of the heads of MTV, and he just begged me,

and I said, "Okay, but you're only allowed

to play it two times a day."

He was playing it 16 times a day and freaking me out.

There was very little I could do about it.

It was number one for eight weeks.

♪ He was with me, Yeah, me, singin'... ♪

KENNY: But I felt that in retrospect,

the second four weeks it was probably number one

because all of a sudden, the image went on.

I mean, I love rock 'n' roll.

Fuck, of course I love rock 'n'... I'm in.

I kind of wanted to be, like, you know,

the guy version of that.

It was kind of, "Aha, I told you so," in a way,

but, look, it's real.

We're good. It wasn't, "I'm good."

It's, "We're good." It's a team.

It's an effort, a team effort,

and we were all out there to make this music.

("VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE" PLAYS, CROWD CHEERS)

ELLIOT SALTZMAN: Things rapidly changed immediately after that.

♪ The police were waiting When the sun came up ♪

♪ Better move your ass Or we'll really get rough ♪

Touring the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia...

- Joan Jett! - Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.

ELLIOT: We just traveled the world.

(MAN SPEAKS SPANISH)

KENNY: We went down to Panama.

It's like if there's trouble, we go.

So we get there, and we get a message.

Noriega wants Joan,

and he sends his plane to pick up Joan.

You couldn't really tell him no.

We tried to weasel out.

Luckily for us, less lucky for him,

there was some bad incident that happened

that saved our asses because he was serious.

He wanted to meet Joan Jett.

♪ You know I never meant To cause anybody harm, no ♪

♪ Just a victim Of circumstance ♪

- ♪ Didn't you know? ♪ - ♪ Just a victim... ♪

KENNY: David Bowie and Freddie Mercury

came up on stage to watch Joan.

JOAN: We're talking like 80,000 seats or something

in Leeds, England.

A few years earlier,

I was listening to him on the radio, you know,

and all of a sudden, you're on stage with him.

(ROCK GUITAR SOLO PLAYS)

ELLIOT: The fame and everything didn't affect her

like I thought it would.

She didn't care about the press conferences

and the parties and this and that.

To her, playing was what it was all about.

♪ I've been shut out ♪

♪ Let there be no doubt ♪

♪ I've never been afraid Of chances I been takin' ♪

JOAN: It was like you were always one foot in the gutter

and one foot in... possible stardom.

I can't even figure out how to say it.

♪ I ain't that tough, no ♪

♪ Just a victim Of circumstance ♪

♪ Didn't you know? ♪

♪ Just a victim Of circumstance ♪

♪ Doesn't it show? ♪

♪ I'm just a victim Of circumstance ♪

♪ Wherever I go ♪

♪ Just a victim Of bad reputation

♪ I got no chance of shakin' ♪

JOAN: It was surreal, so surreal.

It went so far beyond me, it made me realize

what people can do... in general

if the circumstances are right.

First time I heard Joan, I was in the car with my dad,

and it came on the radio, and it was "Crimson and Clover,"

and I heard that voice, and I was just like...

♪ Ahh ♪

KATHLEEN: Who is this person?

♪ Now I don't hardly know her ♪

KATHLEEN: And then when she would get to the pronouns.

♪ But I think I can love her ♪

And say "she," I got really interested.

♪ Crimson and clover ♪

You could sing a song

about really caring about another girl?

- ♪ Yeah ♪ - ♪ Ba da da da da da ♪

KATHLEEN: 'Cause my friendships were so important to me

at that age that I was like, "Somebody gets me."

It's that sort of, "Oh, my God,

she's gonna take me home and fuck the shit outta me."

It's scary, and it's not what people grew up with.

They're used to being the dominant one.

They're not used to girls using their sexuality

in a way that they feel they own it.

♪ Ba da da da da da ♪

♪ Over and over ♪

MILEY CYRUS: You can say,

"Oh, people just want to play music,

and they don't want it to become about their sexuality,"

even if whatever they're wearing or whatever they're doing.

But sometimes you do wanna fucking be sexual,

and I think there's this thing that women are supposed to act

like we don't wanna fuck, too,

and that we don't like sex, too,

that only guys like to fuck, that we don't like to have sex.

CHRIS: The music scene was a total boys club.

The analogy I always made was Mick Jagger came out

in Madison Square Garden riding a giant inflated cock.

And if Debbie or Joan had come out

riding a giant inflated pussy,

all the fucking male critics

would've been running, screaming for the exits.

BILLIE JOE: If Mick Jagger can transcend his sexuality,

so does Joan Jett, you know what I mean?

ALISON MOSSHART: It gives you power to prove everyone wrong.

There's a huge energy in that.

It's so valuable to have something to fight against.

♪ Over and over ♪

♪ Crimson and clover ♪

ALISON: I think the attitude is a really big one.

I think that's impossible to miss, you know?

I wouldn't know how to get Joan's sound

because I'm not technical in that way,

but the attitude I picked up on right away.

And that's something that I want in my head

and my heart when I'm going out there to do that thing

that's so scary in front of all those people.

♪ ("CRIMSON AND CLOVER" CONTINUES) ♪

Well, because rock 'n' roll is from the waist down

if you're doing it right. (LAUGHS)

(SONG CONTINUES)

KENNY: Neil died unfortunately of cancer

at 39 years old in 1982, and at his funeral,

his mother grabbed Joan and said

that record meant more to Neil

than all the other hundreds of hits he had had.

He said, "See? I can do rock 'n' roll."

Boardwalk went out of business, and we moved to MCA Records.

It was beginning of Irving Azoff's tenure there.

MCA gave us a multimillion-dollar deal,

and while Irving was brilliant,

they weren't really ready for a rock-'n'-roll band.

The album known as "Album"

didn't do as well as I Love Rock 'n' Roll,

and the label kind of started kicking the shit out of us,

and then we had an urban-contemporary

pretty big hit with everyday people.

Joan ran around with The Commodores

and The Temptations and Frankie Crocker.

♪ There is a yellow one that Won't accept the black one ♪

♪ That won't accept The red one ♪

♪ That won't accept The white one ♪

It's yellow, black, red, white.

KENNY: And then Glorious Results came out

and by then, we were fighting with MCA,

and they kind of buried that record.

Rock is a business for people who can't do anything properly.

It's what only a shark would be.

KENNY: The situation at MCA became so acrimonious

that they actually did something unthinkable.

They actually went out in the street

to try to stop people from playing our records

to teach us a lesson, and that was unconscionable.

It's one thing when they're not helping you at all.

It's another thing when they're coming after you

and trying to hurt you.

That's hard to overcome. So what happened?

We were hot, hot, hot, hot, and now we're cold, cold, cold.

We felt like... we're back to square one.

Now, we could still sell out almost any club in America,

but a lot of people who left us for dead.

(PLAYING NOTES)

JEANETTE RASNIK: It's not gonna be so easy this time, Patti.

You're gonna have to prove yourself.

From what I can see, you're not a fit mother.

JOAN: I'd always wanted to act since I was a kid,

and then out of left field, I got an offer to do a movie.

It was called Light of Day.

There's a young woman in rock 'n' roll today

who has long had the respect of her peers,

and now she's breaking out into the mainstream.

And since when are you an authority on fit mothers?

Since when are you an authority on anything?

- This can wait, right? - I ain't staying in this house.

How did Kenny put it? Rock 'n' roll cancer movie.

Paul Schrader of the movie Taxi Driver

and movies like that wrote this movie

and was also directing it.

MICHAEL J. FOX: People who haven't done a lot of acting,

but they're natural performers

it's because they're able to access stuff.

They're able to go to places, look at things

from a different angle, and as kind of rock-hard

and stoic as Joan may seem, she's a very curious person,

and she would test the limits

of where she thought she could go

and bring in new things and new emotions.

I've seen other actors manufacture

and summon up for roles,

but you always see the work behind it,

whereas with Joan, she just had that.

I told her. I warned her. I was real clear.

I told her if she mentioned church or rock 'n' roll

or marriage, I'd walk out of the room if I was in it,

hang up the phone if I was on it.

She can't bring up those subjects no more.

- It was just prayer. - Yeah, that's her trick.

Thought she could get away with it. No way, man.

There's no middle ground. It's her or me.

When she'd get there, it'd be scary.

Whether she was acting or she was playing,

she would get to a place where you just don't fuck around.

Just let her do what she's doing

and hope you don't get hurt.

♪ Just around the corner Till the light of day, yeah ♪

MICHAEL: Bruce Springsteen wrote the title song for the movie.

Initially, Bruce was supposed to play my role.

♪ Driving 500 miles, Got 500 to go, yeah ♪

♪ I've got rock 'n' roll Music on my radio ♪

MICHAEL: She's sensitive and emotional,

and things like loyalty and friendship mean a lot to her

and empathy, and those are all great qualities in an actor.

REPORTER: He said that you were very patient with him.

He got the sense that as long as he took what he was doing

seriously then you wouldn't have a problem with him.

We treated each other as peers in each other's worlds,

which was... I thought was very helpful.

(CROWD CHEERING)

♪ (PLAYING "I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVING YOU") ♪

KENNY: The relationship between your label and yourselves

I think was capsulated by Neil Bogart who said to me,

"Think of me as your surgeon.

And if you piss me off, you're gonna die."

We were a really small boutique label.

♪ Midnight, gettin' uptight, Where are you? ♪

KENNY: A big star machine is available to you

if you're on Warner Brothers or Columbia,

and that was what Joan missed for most of her career

because that star machine makes the difference.

♪ I turn my back, And you're messin' around ♪

♪ I'm not really jealous... ♪

KENNY: So there was a part of me that always wanted the major.

So when we went to Epic, we had our little honeymoon,

and then once again,

we had this monster kind of holding us back.

♪ Away ♪

♪ I hate myself For loving you ♪

♪ Can't break free from The things that you do ♪

♪ I want to walk, But I run back to you ♪

♪ That's why I hate myself For loving you ♪

KENNY: We fought like mad dogs. Joan toured herself to death.

I was working day and night going to radio stations

taking everybody out,

buying televisions for their kids in their dorms,

you know, whatever I could think of to get an edge,

and somehow we kept that record alive for 17 weeks,

and then we were back, and we had friends again.

(SIREN WAILS)

REPORTER: Washington, D.C.

Only two miles from the White House,

storeowners prepare for another night of civil unrest.

The summer of '92, there was a riot

in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C.,

and that neighborhood was filled with punk group houses.

There was a lot of women who were very political.

This woman Jen Thomas said, "We should have a girl riot."

So she said, "We should be riot girls."

That was the beginning of the Riot Grrrl movement

or whatever you want to call it.

♪ Rebel girl ♪

♪ Rebel girl ♪

♪ Rebel girl, You are the queen of my world ♪

♪ Rebel girl, Rebel girl ♪

Two girls, Tobi and Kathi from my band, Bikini Kill,

went to see a Fugazi show.

IAN: And Joan and Kenny came down for the gig,

and you can see her in the back of this...

you know, on the side of the stage just going off.

KATHLEEN HANNA: So they got one of our demo tapes.

They must've had one in their bag or something,

and then they wrote "For a good time call,"

and they wrote my phone number.

Phone rings, and I pick it up, and it's like,

"Hey, Kathleen, it's Joan Jett."

And I was just like, "Yeah, whatever, who the fuck is this?"

"No, I was at the Fugazi show last night."

She's like, "I heard a demo of your band.

I think it's really great, maybe we could work together."

I was just like, "This really is not funny."

So I walk into the living room.

We have this Glorious Misspent Youth poster.

I said, "Okay, if you're really Joan Jett,

tell me what your hair looks like."

And she goes, "It's like a bastardized, disheveled bob."

And I was like, "Oh, shit, you are Joan Jett!"

(LAUGHS)

JOAN: I got such a kick out of watching them

fight their fight because their fight was my fight.

I'm not willing to deal with the mainstream anymore

when they're constantly asking me questions about sexual abuse,

about if I've been a stripper, if I haven't been a stripper,

constantly just completely sexist shit.

And probably on another level, she related to it

because she's a woman, you know?

And she had been, of all people, in the trenches

in an era where women were, you know, so marginalized.

KATHLEEN: I wanted to use music to spread feminism,

and I thought punk was a great vehicle.

I equated being on a major label with, like,

"Oh, I'm gonna start using drugs and die."

Kim and Thurston from Sonic Youth

were really nice to us and would let us crash on the floor,

but Joan was the person who stepped forward

and said, "I want to be involved."

She really understood where we were coming from.

JOAN: For lack of a better term, you know, an updated version

of what The Runaways were trying to achieve,

some kind of legitimacy.

KATHLEEN: She kind of was the cement

that kept a lot of things going

for some of the feminist bands in the '90s, definitely for me.

I mean, she changed my whole career path

and taught me how to record a record.

IAN: When they did that Bikini Kill record,

they produced a record,

which was I think the best Bikini Kill record.

Joan's name is on there, but Kenny's really...

he's involved.

He's working. He's always in the studio.

I have to say, this kind of ties in Joan pretty intensely.

I hadn't heard of The Runaways.

One of the earliest scenes that we were really interested in

was the LA punk scene,

and then The Germs' album came out,

and that record was hugely significant for us,

and Joan had produced it.

Wait a minute, that's the "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" person.

Like, that's crazy that she produced this record.

She has been a part of not only her own music

that she's produced but also some of the greatest

punk music that's ever been put out.

TV HOST: We have a few friends for you to meet,

Mercury recording artist Joan Jett of The Runaways,

and we have with us tonight The Germs

performing at the Whisky.

What are you guys gonna do tonight?

Same stuff we always do.

♪ ("SHUT DOWN" BY THE GERMS PLAYS) ♪

JOAN: The Germs, they were a pretty...

infamous LA punk band.

The lead singer, Darby Crash, and the guitar player,

Pat Smear, were huge Runaways fans.

Eventually, they started this band called The Germs,

and they were hard-core punk.

(SONG CONTINUES)

Darby is some kind of crazed Colonel Kurtz-like

shaman of teenage people.

(SONG CONTINUES)

JOAN: Must have been '79 at some point before I moved,

they asked if, you know, I would produce an album,

and I'm figuring you know, they think I know what I'm doing

because I've made a couple albums with The Runaways.

DON: She didn't engineer. That wasn't her thing.

Had a great sensibility.

She's like, "I think you gotta tune the guitar, Pat."

It was a no-frills album but just straight-up punk rock.

I was very proud of the record.

We needed someone with ears

and someone with a rock 'n' roll heart

and they're helping us make a good record,

and she did that, by gosh.

She knew how to get us to do the things.

And then the last day, I partied too much

and passed out on the couch,

which Darby documents in one of the songs.

(SINGING "SHUT DOWN")

♪ Joan Jett ♪

♪ Passed out On the fucking set ♪

(CONTINUES SINGING)

TV NARRATOR: Since 1991, the hottest spot

in rock 'n' roll has been Seattle, Washington.

Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains

all came out of the local music scene.

Many people thought the next breakthrough band

would be The Gits, a punk-rock group

fronted by Mia Zapata, a charismatic 27-year-old

with a tragic destiny.

MAN: (ON RECORDING) Two of her roommates

finally broke down

and called the morgue, where she... where she was,

and she was an unidentified victim

at the morgue at that time.

JOAN: She was found strangled to death by her...

her hoodie tie, raped, and left in an alley.

Somehow came up in the studio with Joan, and she's just like,

"We gotta do something. We gotta be involved."

Next thing you know, she's, like,

singing The Gits songs

with the surviving members of The Gits.

JOAN: The thing that really struck me

really hard at the time was how it could've been

any one of us and how many times, you know,

I've come home late at night in that exact same situation.

She could've been me, and I could've been her.

Then he slapped you right across the face.

(IMITATES GUITAR STRUMMING)

And there's no singing. So it emphasizes that.

It was a very strange thing because it was...

you're celebrating the music,

but it was about such a horrible thing.

It's gonna blow their minds. It's unbelievable.

JOAN: It's like, really good.

INTERVIEWER: How did you guys make that very painful decision

to keep on playing?

Because Mia would be really upset if we didn't.

JOAN: When you see the footage and you see how close they were

and you see Andy and Mia joking onstage

and you see this rapport and how close they were,

I mean...

(VOICE BREAKS) It really had to be devastating, you know?

Hey, we'd like to thank you all right here real quick

for coming out to Viva Zapata.

Thank you for supporting.

All the money went to charity.

To help protect women walking home,

self-defense classes, all kinds of stuff.

It was a big deal at the time

because women were getting raped, murdered.

KENNY: It was also to contribute money for the private eye...

JOAN: To find the guy that killed Mia.

♪ But I think I know It hurts me to be angry ♪

♪ Kills me to be kind ♪

JOAN: I'll still never forget the day

I got a phone call from Steve Moriarty.

No hello, no nothing. "We got him."

♪ So messed up I want you here ♪

THOMMY PRICE: The mid-'90s, you know,

we were doing all of these one-off shows.

You'd be going to a crappy little town

doing a state fair not really LA but three hours outside of LA.

I went through a phase where I didn't really give a crap.

Because they were, you know,

gigs that I felt we shouldn't have been doing or whatever.

♪ Now I wanna Be your dog ♪

♪ Now I wanna Be your dog ♪

KENNY: Our business is funny.

You're hot and important, then you're not.

JOAN: It was a bad feeling, but I always felt

like we had to fight on.

We knew we had what it took. We didn't stop working.

- And so... - KENNY: It was not fun.

Unless you've been gifted in your 20s

with incredible piles of money

being thrown at you by the system,

which almost all really, really good musicians are not...

♪ Yes, and now I'm ready To close my eyes ♪

♪ Yes, and now... ♪

IGGY POP: You need to exert incredible focus

on maintaining your own identity

while still using a skill to enter the system

without destroying yourself as a force.

♪ Yes, and lose my heart On burning sand ♪

Come on, Charleston, I wanna hear you now!

DEBBIE: You have to be really willing to go anywhere with it,

up or down, you know, sideways, whatever.

THOMMY: Joan, she gives it 100 percent

whether it's a state fair, a sweet 16 birthday party,

or 10,000 people.

She still gives it her all. No matter what.

(SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY, PLAYS SOLO)

DANA WHITE: I saw her live at a summer music festival

here in Las Vegas, 110 degrees out, full leather,

up on stage just ripping it apart.

'Cause this was mid-'90s to late '90s.

We ended up doing some private thing together.

I was like, "Man, I forgot

how bad-ass Joan Jett was," you know?

Rock 'n' roll animal, I mean, is there was ever anyone

that fit that description, it's Joan through and through.

KENNY: I would say our period during the '90s

was the most difficult.

If it was our fate to split up, it would have been then,

but we stuck together.

(MAN LAUGHS)

Pretty scary sight?

MAN: It's a beautiful thing.

You know what?

I'm not trying to tell you how to do lights or anything.

Doesn't it get cold in the middle of the show?

We got a band here from New York City

that have been performing for soldiers for 18 years.

I wasn't for the Vietnam War, but I also had people

in my family, like my godfather, Uncle Nat,

who said, "You have to serve your country."

So I started doing stuff for the troops.

JOAN: I feel it's really important to give back

and serve on some level,

and since I didn't in that capacity,

I feel like that's the least I can do.

KENNY: I never connected the troops with the policy.

GENERAL BYRNES: We put on a show,

packed house in Tuzla, Bosnia,

and you could see her opening up

and trying to understand what the people in that region

had been through, a very bloody three-year conflict.

JOAN: I'm an antiwar person

who loves the people in the military.

I don't like the military for the military's sake.

Isn't it scary that kids fight the wars?

Yeah.

- It's scary that there's war. - Isn't it?

It's scary that they're fighting

because there are two religions

and they can't just be curious about each other

instead of dominant over one another.

Long ago, we decided that was the tack

we were gonna take as species, you know,

that we were gonna dominate instead of sort of merge.

♪ (PLAYING "FETISH") ♪

♪ Oh, look good in latex ♪

♪ Get off having rough sex ♪

When 9/11 happened,

the first thing I thought of was we gotta get over there.

They said they didn't want the band.

They wanted just Kenny and I.

They wanted to keep the footprints light.

People were just incredulous. "Why are you here?"

We said, "We're here 'cause you're here.

We just want to say thank you."

BYRNES: The way she interacted,

there was nothing artificial about it.

Others would come, put on a show and leave.

Joan stayed.

I got so much positive feedback

about how she made them feel.

And, oh, my God, I have to say this.

You lifted up your arm, and you've got hair

under your armpits and no hair on your head!

I love that! It's genius! It's genius!

You sound like my producer, Kenny Laguna.

Will you show that again?

JOAN: Now what are you doing?

KENNY: Why can't you guys get off my back?

Because it's such a lovely back.

KENNY: Do you want to lick it?

No, I don't wanna lick it.

- KENNY: There's no hair on it. - I don't care.

BILLIE JOE: It's almost like watching

The Odd Couple a little bit.

There's something about those two.

There's a special bond

and chemistry that they have between them.

Kind of like George and Gracie in reverse or something.

Can't you just keep your thoughts to yourself for once?

You've been saying the same thing over and over

and over and over all day since I woke up.

Well, 'cause you said as soon as I wouldn't

hand you the thing, then you had to storm out!

JOAN: I'm not arguing with you anymore.

You can tell there's a deep love for each other

and that they're inseparable people.

They're alter egos in a way, aren't they?

They're twins from different fathers.

(LAUGHS) In a sense.

And I guess that happens with most good friendships.

I think people get so stuck on relationships being...

a sexual relationship or having to be a romantic relationship.

BILL: What is it with your best friend

that you hit things off with so easily?

You know, you actually know what the other guy's thinking.

You tune in, and I suppose

that's what they've got going for them.

People don't find this in their life partners.

People don't have the love they have in marriages.

That's why they don't stay together

as long as Kenny and Joan.

BILL: It's a marriage without the sex, really.

Um, it's a mentor marriage.

MILEY: People literally are fucking married

to people that they hate, and then you see these two.

I'm putting this on just so it'll be done for the future.

This is going in the trash.

No it's not. I'm sending it to Caesar.

No. You'll just make another one, Kenny.

I don't care. I'm sending it to him.

No you're not, he won't be able to get the tape off,

and it'll mark up the stuff.

He's gonna do... I know him. Don't give me a fucking face.

Kenny is just... He's just the classic

New York dude that just loves music,

and he's a really caring person that loves Joan

and just loves rock music

and just wants it to just prevail.

Out, please. I gotta get changed.

I'm sending it to The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

It's the one you almost wore.

KATHLEEN: He's a hard-core feminist man.

He is totally just a contrarian.

And he likes to fuck with everything

anybody says ever.

They're a family with each other,

and they're interdependent on each other.

They really are partners.

Sure, it's dysfunctional. Everything's dysfunctional.

But it's like it's my kind of dysfunctional.

MILEY: And people want to tell, I guess, everyone

how to be and who to love,

but you can't help who you love,

and you can't help what your relationship

is with them either.

DOUGIE NEEDLES: Whenever they appear to be at odds...

(CHUCKLES) Just wait until it blows over.

Because it does, it blows over, and ten minutes later...

not even, five minutes later,

they're acting like it never happened.

Best friends are supposed to annoy you a little bit.

They gotta push your buttons a little.

They keep you alive.

So it's an extraordinary situation.

You won't see another one like it, really.

KENNY: So the years went by.

Even though we were having some profile,

we were not making money.

Carianne came back from Colorado,

and Cari came on board.

When I got there, my father was ready

to sign Rick Derringer's Christian album.

It was "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo,"

and instead of "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo,"

it was "Jesus Christ, Hoochie Koo."

My father always had this philosophy of,

"If they're a friend, we will put it out."

KENNY: You know, she was like, "I'll stick around,

but we've gotta treat this like a real label."

And she had grown up in the business

but also had the attitude of a young person.

Like, I didn't want iTunes. iTunes to me was the enemy.

I'm selling "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" for $17.

I don't want to sell it for a dollar.

She finally talked me into doing it,

and the first month, we sold 70,000

"I Love Rock 'n' Roll" downloads,

and we were in business.

JOAN: Cari came in, and boom, boom, boom, boom.

KENNY: I had a meeting with Kevin Lyman,

who owns The Warped Tour.

The Warped Tour was this hip thing,

and it was kind of a weird concept for Joan

to go on The Warped Tour.

CARIANNE BRINKMAN: I think at that point,

Joan was not feeling as inspired and my father, too.

I didn't see the fire that I saw

after The Warped Tour.

It reignited her, and it reignited the passion.

(CROWD CHEERING)

How's everybody doing? Wow, look where we are.

This is so pretty.

I was actually born in Pennsylvania.

(CROWD CHEERING)

LAURA JANE GRACE: And you're traveling around the US

and playing in parking lots, and I'm like, "Whoa,

Joan Jett and The Blackhearts are gonna be on this tour?"

Joan's a real rock star,

and we just all want to be rock stars.

I just will forever have that mental image

of Joan on her BMX bike with camo cutoff shorts

and big black sunglasses just riding around

hanging out with everyone.

CARIANNE: You could just see she was having fun,

and she was reminded of what it was in the beginning.

♪ It ain't mine ♪

♪ It ain't yours ♪

♪ But I'm here ♪

♪ I ain't going anywhere ♪

♪ It ain't his ♪

♪ It ain't hers ♪

♪ It's for all ♪

♪ Is that something We can learn? ♪

LAURA JANE: Your motivations in order to survive

doing something like that can't be, like,

fame and fortune.

You know, it has to be the overall package

of, like, I'm going to be good at every single element of this

or work at every single element of this.

Seeing that as a younger musician at the time,

you know, those are the people I want to learn from.

♪ Gotta change this world ♪

CARIANNE: From there, we found our voice.

We found our next chapter.

JOAN: She runs the company now.

I think that's just a beautiful cycle of life

when you see it right in front of you.

We wanted to be a place that said yes to people

and gave a platform for young bands

that didn't fit into any kind of typical major-label box.

♪ ("FEMINAZI" BY FEA PLAYS) ♪

FEA: There's a lot of bullshit going on right now

with a dum-dum in office, so we're musicians.

We have a platform,

people paying attention to our music and lyrics.

She always let us speak freely because she does so herself.

(SONG CONTINUES)

So in my final stay at the state,

I was giving advice

to the new governor

that I've taken from someone who I admire,

and they all know that I love Joan Jett,

and so I just gave one of her quotes

where she said, you know, "Be yourself.

That's the way it's supposed to be."

SHEPARD FAIREY: A lot of musicians, entertainers,

they develop a degree of success and notoriety

from their work, and frequently,

they're less inclined to take a stand

because that might alienate a segment of their audience.

Joan, on the other hand, is very outspoken.

When I came out in 2012 as transgender, um,

Joan was one of the first people to contact me to just say, like,

"Hey, you know, if you need a friend

or someone to talk to, I'm here."

♪ Well, now, Don't get him wrong ♪

♪ And don't get him mad, He might be a father... ♪

LAURA JANE: And it really... it meant a lot to me, you know,

that there were few people that I felt like I could relate to

at that time and few people that, you know, I felt like

I had any kind of shared experiences with,

not just, like, being in a band

but when you're talking about gender fluidity.

ALL: ♪ Androgynous ♪

♪ Closer than you know, Love each other so ♪

MICHAEL: I know she championed for women's causes

and LGBTQ causes, and that's all great,

but I don't think she's mushy about it.

ALL: ♪ See no damage ♪

She's straightforward about it.

This is the way it should be,

and fuck you... if you don't see it that way.

ALL: ♪ Kewpie dolls And urine stalls ♪

♪ Will be laughed at the way You're laughed at now ♪

I wish that more people who were in a position

to use their voice beyond just the art

that they create, you know, would do that.

GENE BAUR: The way we interact with animals

says a lot about who we are.

When we treat them with cruelty, it says something.

When we treat them with kindness,

it says something very different.

JOAN: The way our culture thinks about animals

or doesn't think about them and their lives

and how they think and that they feel pain and that they scream.

JOAN: (ON PHONE) Chickens recognize each other

by their faces, just like we do.

INTERVIEWER: What do you want Norway to do?

Stop supporting the seal slaughter in Canada.

Joan has always shown up. She speaks out for animals.

She speaks out for people who don't have enough of a voice.

Most people don't think about it.

MICHELLE CHO: Animal rights is human rights.

You know, humans are animals.

We all have the capacity to feel pain,

to feel fear, to suffer.

JOAN: And I'm not trying to demonize people

that do eat meat, and I try not to preach to them,

but I do talk to people about it if they're curious.

What have you been writing? What are you doing?

Where you been? How you doing?

Well, between watching The View...

- 'Cause I watch it... - (AUDIENCE CHEERS)

Yeah. I watch every day. I did a movie.

I executive produced a film about my first band

called The Runaways that had Kristen Stewart,

Dakota Fanning in it, thank you.

♪ Blonde bombshell Better wear it well ♪

♪ Your mama says You're going straight to hell ♪

KRISTEN STEWART: In a rehearsal, before

we actually shot "Cherry Bomb,"

I was, like... couldn't commit to it,

just felt like I was traipsing on something.

I'm not good at rehearsal.

So she was like, "What are you doing? Come on.

You know this. You got this." I was like, "I know, I know.

I know, I know. I do got it. Don't worry."

And she was like, "Pussy to the fuckin' wood."

And I was like, "All right." It's funny,

'cause, like, rock 'n' roll is supposed to be messy

and fuck it, nothing matters,

but it's truly the opposite of that for her.

She has, like, a diligent almost, like,

compulsive, like, dedication to it.

And then was just like, "Kristen...

pussy to the wood."

♪ My brain began to fry ♪

I think the most surprising thing

is just how emotional she is,

and I guess in retrospect it makes total sense.

You look at the music, and it definitely has

this kind of precious, gritty,

girly, feminine snarl that could only come

from somewhere that's a little self-protective.

So here is a lady who I can't believe

is not in The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame

who should be.

Ladies and gentlemen, Joan Jett.

(CROWD CHEERING)

(PLAYING "SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT" BY NIRVANA)

DAVE GROHL: We all have our fucking heroes, you know?

And we made friends

with one of our fucking greatest rock-'n'-roll heroes.

She made Pat want to fucking start a band,

made it okay to be fucking dirty and cool

and play rock 'n' roll like a real rock-'n'-roller.

♪ I'm worse At what I do best ♪

♪ And for this gift I feel blessed ♪

♪ Our little group Has always been ♪

♪ And always will Until the end ♪

♪ Hello, hello, hello How low ♪

♪ Hello, hello hello How low ♪

♪ Hello, hello, hello How low ♪

♪ Hello ♪

♪ With the lights out, It's less dangerous ♪

♪ Here we are now, Entertain us ♪

♪ I feel stupid And contagious ♪

♪ Here we are now, Entertain us ♪

♪ A mulatto, an albino ♪

♪ A mosquito, my libido ♪

Hey, just 'cause you wore a cape doesn't mean I gotta.

You know what? I had a cape.

And I left it at home because you were wearing a fucking cape,

and now you're not gonna wear the cape?

- Can I wear her cape? - Yes.

MAN: Try it on.

JOAN: Depending on what you think is a normal,

regular life,

being in a band, you know,

you're pretty much all consumed with it, yeah.

Is that healthy? I don't know.

I'm not a doctor. Probably not super.

But, you know, it's what I enjoy.

I think it makes it sort of difficult

to have relationships.

I would think that would probably be...

I guess if you call it a sacrifice, that would be it.

To say music is my mate would be pretty fair statement.

And I get a lot from it.

But it's not... it's not a person.

And I think I know the difference.

I'm gonna start off this induction

with the first time I wanted to have sex with Joan Jett.

(AUDIENCE CHEERS)

And we were doing Oprah together,

and I go up to Joan's hotel room,

and Joan opens the door, and I come in,

and Kenny Laguna is laying in bed.

And I don't know what the fuck is going on.

JOAN: Oh, looks beautiful. You look beautiful.

MAN: That's it. You're wearing the cape.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

I know there isn't one other person on this planet

that's been an inspiration to me like you have, and...

Is being famous important to you?

I want a certain sort of fame.

Like when they write the ultimate

rock 'n' roll history book, I want my name to be there,

you know, standing for something,

like being one of the first females to really,

you know, play rock 'n' roll

and have that sort of rock-'n'-roll spirit.

- (CROWD CHEERING) - Hi!

KATHLEEN: I think people don't think of her like,

"Oh, you know, feminist",

like, immediately, but the visceral experience

of Joan is a feminist experience for me.

Watching the way she holds herself like a normal person,

not like someone who is self-conscious

and trying to be a good girl.

Here's somebody who was born to do this and is doing it.

There's just those rare times where you feel like

someone was put on the planet to show you

what rock 'n' roll music is.

It could be Bowie. It could be Kurt Cobain.

It's definitely Joan Jett.

(CHEERING CONTINUES)

I was really gonna try not to cry and be tough,

but that's a little overwhelming there.

Thank you very much.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

First off, I really want to acknowledge my parents,

Jim and Dottie, who can only be with us in spirit,

which I know they are.

Hey, Mom and Dad, did you ever think

that Christmas guitar would lead to this?

(LAUGHTER)

I want to be a release.

I want to be a hard release, a good release,

a primal release.

You do a primal scream, but it's not at someone

or breaking something, it's, "Aah!" just into the air

about appreciation being alive, you know?

KENNY: This is a family that's been together

since 1979 and never wavered from each other.

JOAN: It's all of us.

We all get support and love and strength from each other

and feel like we can go to each other when we need to.

And I think that's really important,

to be able to feel vulnerable to the people you work with

and be able to feel like they've got your back.

If you want to get really deep, there are no two things.

We're all one.

WOMAN: I want to tell you a story about Joan

being a wonderful woman.

I want to tell you a story about how people say

that she opened the door for women in rock.

And I don't think she opened the door.

I think she took out a sledgehammer,

and she knocked down the whole damn wall.

(CROWD CHEERING)

(A CAPELLA) ♪ I don't give A damn 'bout my reputation ♪

♪ You're living in the past It's a new generation ♪

♪ And 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 ♪

♪ ("FRESH START" BY JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS PLAYS) ♪

Ow!

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like I've been here before ♪

♪ It's like the past knocking On my door ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm standing still ♪

♪ Or better yet I'm runnin' up a hill, hey ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like I need a crutch ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like It's all too much ♪

♪ Sometimes I wonder What are we in for ♪

♪ And if I wanna do it Anymore ♪

♪ I need a fresh start, Let's go back to the top ♪

♪ Rewind the tape And reset the clock ♪

♪ This time There's no turning back ♪

♪ Hey! ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ So you say You're not satisfied ♪

♪ And you want A bigger piece of pie ♪

♪ Take my advice, Don't hesitate ♪

♪ Before you know it, It'll be too late ♪

♪ To make a fresh start And go back to the top ♪

♪ Rewind the tape And reset the clock ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

♪ That's right, a fresh start And go back to the top ♪

♪ Rewind the tape And reset the clock ♪

♪ And this time There's no turning back ♪

♪ All right ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, ow ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like I've been here before ♪

♪ Is that the past knocking On my door? ♪

♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm standing still ♪

♪ Or better yet, I'm running up a hill ♪

♪ Don't wanna hear That you're feeling old ♪

♪ Times are tough, You better search your soul ♪

♪ There's some time For one more dance ♪

♪ We may never Get another chance ♪

♪ To make a fresh start And go back to the top ♪

♪ Rewind the tape And reset the clock ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

♪ That's right, a fresh start, And go back to the top ♪

♪ Rewind the tape And reset the clock ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

♪ This time There's no turning back ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

♪ This time There's no turning back ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

♪ This time There's no turning back ♪

♪ This time We're not gonna stop ♪

Subtitles by explosiveskull