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Joan Jett is a pioneer. An icon. A rocker. But most importantly, a woman (and I stress a woman) whose uncompromising dedication to her craft has afforded her the opportunity to be successful in every area of her interest including acting, theatre and running her own record label for over 25 years with long time friend and collaborator, Kenny Laguna.
In town for the Annual Warped Tour ’06, Joan was busy making herself some coffee and getting ready to jump on stage for yet another power packed performance, while Mr. Laguna sat down with me and offered a rare peek into his friendship with Ms. Jett, his admiration for her music and her character, and a little bit of history on how a once underground teenage rebel inspired him to join her on her quest to conquer the world of rock n’ roll. And here’s how it all went down…
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Intrigued by a tip received from a publicist, while producing bands for The Who, Kenny Laguna became increasingly curious of what the Runaways were all about. He had heard everything from “they’re four hot girls” to “they’re sloppy, drunk, horrible chicks.” “Probably both were true,” he says jokingly. Having an inside track, thanks to hits he had produced for Polygram records, Kenny was able arrange a meeting with the girls, who were in Amsterdam rehearsing for what was to be their final album and conveniently in the market for a producer. However, after running into Matthew King Kaufman, President of Beserkely Records, in the lobby of The Mayfield Hotel, who was also en route to the airport to catch a flight, plans changed. Kaufman offered Laguna a ride to the airport in the comfort of his large limo parked outside. On the way, Kaufman asked where Kenny was headed. Replying, “To Amsterdam to see about producing the Runaways.” “Awe, they lost their best person,” referring to lead vocalist Cherrie Curry. “Do you have the job?” When Kenny replied with “No, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have it,” Kaufman threw an irresistible deal on the table. “I’ll tell ya what, you work for me, we’re happenin’ now, we’re about to be huge. I’ll give you four records to produce. We’re in California, you can work five hours a day, live in a hotel with a spa, smoke all the weed you want, OR you can go to Amsterdam, in the winter, with four girls who just lost their best player.” Apparently Kaufman’s offer was too enticing for Kenny to resist and after a pause in the story, he sheepishly turns to me and states “so I changed planes!”
Leaving the Runaways to produce under John Alcock instead, chaos ensued mid-way through the record. “There was a contingent, which was Sandy (West) and Lita (Ford) who were doin’ a lot of blow and wanted to be heavy metal. Then there was Joan who was like left out of the album, kind of. I mean you couldn’t completely cut her out cause she was the only one who could write a song that was any good.” Kenny goes on to explain that when Joan brought the “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” song to the table, the girls laughed at her, including their producer.
In the meantime, the bands manager was still begging Kenny to leave California to come out and produce the girls. When about to give in, Matthew Kaufman dangled the carrot effectively, once again, and bribed Kenny by reducing his work week to just 4 days.
The Runaways were denied his talents for a second time.
After completing his work with Beserkely, Kenny jetted off to England to work on producing singles in The Who’s studio where he received yet another call from the Runaways manager. By this time, the band had completely dissolved. All the girls had jumped ship with no regard for the recently signed 6-song contract with a film production company looking to produce a movie, loosely based on the Runaways, that left Joan and her manager in a panic over the possibility of being sued for breech of contract. Kenny was contacted as a desperate attempt to get him to craft these songs in a short period of time. Eight days to be exact. Being that Laguna had churned out a song a day for advances as a kid, he was without question, the man for the job. Explaining that Joan has to “feel” something before she can write a song, he on the other hand says, “I can feel it without livin’ it, she has to live it to feel it.”
“I almost passed on it, but my wife told me, I’ve been reading about Joan Jett, she’s significant, you ought to go, check it out and see what’s goin’ on with her.” Traveling from England to California, to meet Joan in person, he was immediately inspired by her. Although he claims she wasn’t in the best shape she was ever in, he had never seen anybody like her. Enamored by her look, the black leather jacket, the ink make-up. For the first minute he was like, “Whoa! What’s this?” But as they began to write songs together it was apparent she was a bit withdrawn, due in part to the Runaways break-up, which brought her world crashin’ down around her and Kenny adds “she was pretty wild. She was hangin’ out with Sid Vicious and with the more self-destructive gang. All the punks were taking drugs and stuff, Christ, it was crazy.”
During the first few recording sessions Laguna freely admits he was prejudice when he asked three session musicians to assist with the 3 demos they had chosen to start with, and asked Joan to let him cut the tracks and for her to put her guitar on later. She flat out refused. “Nah, I’m not doin’ it that way,” she said. He retorted with, “Hey, do you understand I’m tryin to do you a favor here and you’re just in the toilet without me?” “Well, then I’ll be in the toilet!” Shocked by her bold response, he let her play on the track, to discover she was the best musician there. Looking back he states “It was a benign prejudice, I was into it, tryin’ to make her great, but I thought why should I wait for her to catch up? But turns out she was ahead of everybody.” After hearing her sing he compared her to Darlene Love, as she had a delivery that “let it all hang out, and be it white or black, sixteen or sixty, it was the one thing that Darlene could do… rock ‘n roll and being a chick, it loses color, it loses age, it’s just that snotty thing.”
From that point Joan and Kenny hit it off and Kenny made it his priority to get Joan a record deal. However, no one wanted to sign her. He claims some of the record companies believed the punks were Nazi’s. “I didn’t understand it. The basic punk is a hippie, only much uglier. They are, for the most part, peace lovin’ people, even the ones in the mosh pits.”
Although he was well-connected in the business, there was no one willing to take a chance on signing Joan. So they headed off to the Who’s studio in England, hired some British musicians and began work on what became the Bad Reputation record, originally titled, Joan Jett. “What came out of those sessions is what has lasted all these years. It’s bizzarro Joan Jett, everything’s really poppy and punky, it’s my favorite record to this day,” he claims.
Upon returning to Amercia, Laguna was confident his new record was gonna be a smash.
He entered the offices of Atlantic records flanked by two close personal friends, Bill Curbishly, manager of The Who and Steve Lieber who had AC/DC. “These were two of the hottest producers who ever lived and basically they asked Atlantic, Hey can you do our friend a favor? He doesn’t even want an advance; just pay him once a month from what you sell.” Only to be met with “Joan doesn’t have the class to be on our label.” He thought, “Who are they holding out for?” Only to discover later “Twisted Sister.”
Turning to Ariola records in Europe, who gave them a deal, also meant that Arista could have them for free in America. Clive Davis is quoted as saying, “Joan Jett is an interesting artist, but she’ll need a song search.” Kenny explains, “That’s Clive’s trip, he’s into searching for the songs that he wants for any artist to do. We gave him ‘I Love Rock ‘n Roll’, ‘Crimson and Clover’, ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me’ and ‘You Don’t Own Me,’ those were the four songs on the demo, and they missed it.”
As it’s been said, things happen for a reason. So out of frustration and lack of any other alternative, Joan and Kenny started Blackheart Records. As he assures, “It wasn’t out of vogue or a plan, in fact, we probably pre-date every punk band that ever was.” The business plan of Blackheart according to Laguna is, “If you’re talented and you’re a good guy, and the industry is ignoring you, then we’ll try to put out your record. So long as you understand you’re not gonna get an amazing deal. We’re not gonna make you rich, unless we sell some records.” With success stories like Metal Church and Big Daddy Kane to their credit, Blackheart Records have maintained the same principals of fighting for the underdogs of today’s music scene, and with the addition of both Kenny’s wife and daughter to the staff, Blackheart’s future is solid.
Turning to the topic of MTV, which was gaining popularity just as Joan Jett made her debut, Kenny was honest in his recollection of that time period and his feelings about it. “There’s something wrong about blasting videos and taking away the mystique of a band or an artist. As a kid, I remember staring at Rolling Stones records and Beach Boy records, for like years, and then when I went to see them live, and that curtain went up, it was like… a rush…like… Oh my God, they came to life! The images were moving! It was the thrill of it.”
Meanwhile, out on tour in middle America, Joan was exposed to MTV, which at the time, happened to be launched in that geographic area and it was freely available for viewing on any hotel TV. Ironically, the two major music meccas of New York and L.A., positioned at either end of the epicenter, were the ones feeling the least amount of MTV’s impact. So when Kenny began to get pressure to produce a video for “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” which had been a number one single for close to four weeks, he became concerned. “No, you’ll burn me a to crisp” Laguna argued, “you’ll make people hate Joan, cause you’ll just bang it until it hurts, ya know? Now, I’m not that bright, but I that I got. I hit that, cause it was right!”
Eventually persuaded by the charms of MTV’s programming director, Les Garland, Kenny and Joan conceded to making a video for their hit song. Although the record came out in November of ’81, and was released as a single in late January, it didn’t become number one until March of 1982. However, the release of the video shot new life into the song. It stayed at the top spot for close to two months. So, that was the formula they adopted, letting radio build the song into the top ten and then turning out a video to sustain the chart position for as long as possible.
“That is next to impossible today. Now we take what we can get. Whatever it is. We never did commercial’s, but now, if the right commercial comes along and it’s gonna help to break our record, then we’re doing it. Do you know how much money we turned down because Neil Young didn’t like it or something?” He says this jokingly, but I’m sure it’s close to the truth. We agreed that the ideals of yesterday are hard to maintain in today’s music industry. The artists are responsible for their own fiscal health. Protecting their interests and capitalizing on any and all monetary opportunities is no longer considered a “sell-out” in my opinion. Haven’t we learned from the likes of say, Aerosmith who were too busy snorting half of their profits up their noses while their management stole the other half right out from under those same noses?
With that said, our conversation continued with Kenny explaining how he and Joan are irritated by how much idolization is placed on rockstars, who are just normal people. “Who the fuck is a rock ‘n roll musician anyway? Why do people look up to them? They are not research doctors trying to cure cancer or some Special Forces guy. It’s not the big deal that people think it is. Actors are worse, I mean rockstars are like ball players, they’re famous for doing what they do. Actors are like, ‘okay, you be the Cisco Kid and I’ll be Poncho!’”
After these statements, my photographer, Dave, who accompanied me on the interview, interjected here and expressed to Kenny our mutual respect for Joan, and musicians like her, that stay true to their music and to what they believe in. Kenny replied, “She’s the real deal, and she’s hard as nails. Ya know, it’s kind of been a big secret, but we do more military than anybody else, I’m not even talking USO tours, but special ops and whatnot. Wherever they will send us, we will go. There’s places like Honduras, where no one wants to go. We’ll go there. We were the first ones in Afghanistan. I saw in her, one of the toughest people you’ll ever see. It’s so hard, you gotta move as fast as them and they’re kickin’ your ass all day. We did one show for the NATO guys, and for five hours after the show she signed stuff for all of them. It was three in the morning and we had to get up at 5:30 am to do something on the Armed Forces network for that week. Get up, do that and then sign all day, then get in helicopters. She is so tough. She is real, Joanie’s real. You can’t buy her and it’s not bullshit. She won’t say ‘I don’t do this’ and then go to Japan and do whatever “this” was.”
“So what’s next for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts?” I asked. “Right now the Warped Tour is going good. The response has been great. But ya know it’s hard to be a chick in rock ‘n roll in any case, but it’s even harder in this case, in this music, cause its young. Like, Joan’s younger than Mike Ness, but no one’s bitchin’ about Mike’s age cause he’s a boy.
In fact, a lot of radio stations won’t play her cause they tell us she’s too old. Not to pick on them, but she’s younger than the Chili Peppers!”
Throughout our conversation, Kenny came across as Joan’s biggest fan and supporter, but in every creative partnership a little rain must fall and I was curious about that. However, Kenny assured me that he and Joan have been blessed in the way that even if they do have a big fight, it’s over in a couple of hours. “We are not in competition with each other. We’re not worried about who’s gonna get the credit. In the beginning, if anything, I was worried that just because she was a girl, it couldn’t just be a partnership, it had to be a Sven Gali. I mean, I got plenty of credit, but I took my name off a lot of things, just because people were so obnoxious.” In fact, Kenny informed me that although Joan maintains a positive rapport with Kim Fowley, people still give him too much credit for the Runaways success. “Then why when they split up did she have this awesome thing that kept going? Kim had a decent career after that, but, Joan, wherever she’s been… you’ve gotta tip the hat…cause that’s the magic, right there.”
Joan Jett, aside from putting years of blood sweat and tears into making record after record of passion filled rock ‘n roll, has starred in major motion pictures, tackled challenging Broadway roles such as “Columbia” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and has dedicated hours of her personal time to entertain our service men and woman in every shit-soaked corner of the globe. Not because she has to, not because she wants to be a role model, not to get rich, but because of her passion for creating kick ass rock music and one other pure and simple fact: she has CLASS!
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Being a long-time devotee of Joan’s music I was beyond honored to conduct this interview on behalf of Glam Metal and would like to offer a sincere “thank you” to Joan and Kenny for their hospitality in sharing the comfort of their air-conditioned bus with us. The poster Joan kindly autographed for me will hang on my wall as a reminder of how cool she was in person as I always imagined she would be.
Rock ‘n Roll forever!
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