In The Runaways and with The Blackhearts, JOAN JETT fought for a woman’s right to rock. In 2022, disquiet over one man’s role in her rise casts a shadow, but should not tarnish her victories. “For women, it’s a no-win,” she tells VICTOR IA SEGAL . “You’ve got to make your own rules and follow them.”

WALKING THROUGH Los Angeles in 1979, Joan Jett felt she could hear the whole city laughing at her. The Runaways, the teenage all-girl glam-metal powerhouse she had founded four years earlier with drummer Sandy West, had just collapsed in a heap of musical differences, leaving Jett devastated. “I just felt we were such a great band,” the singer and guitarist remembers now. “It didn’t work and nobody got it. I started partying too much – Iwas drinking my brains out. I was not in good shape and I started thinking, I can’t do this. I’ve got to straighten up. Maybe I’ll join the military. They’ll straighten my ass out.”

Within weeks, however, Jett met Kenny Laguna, the songwriter and producer who would become her enduring collaborator and manager, and relaunched her career with 1981’s Bad Reputation, then with her band The Blackhearts. She might have been saved from a soldier’s life, but as a rock musician, her tour of duty is never-ending. Currently, she’s sitting in an Orlando hotel room before another soundcheck, looking just as you’d hope Joan Jett would look (“I took a shower, I put on make-up for you, ever ything,” she says, louchely), as her team, Laguna included, m ill around.

The Blackhearts have recently released thirteenth album Changeup, invigorating acoustic interpretations of her songs initially developed to accompany screenings of Kevin Kerslake’s 2018 documentar y Bad Reputation. “I’d always kept acoustic at arm’s length because when I started it was ‘girls can only play acoustic guitar’,” she explains in her Jets-And-Sharks drawl. “I didn’t even own one until maybe 10 years ago.”