“You fucking c**t”: The band Joan Jett never wanted to open for again
Joan Jett is one of the most legendary figures in rock and roll, known for her explosive, rebellious attitude and boundless energy, both in her sonic risk-taking and onstage charisma.
However, because of these achievements, it’s often too easy to forget just how much Jett had to fight tooth and nail to get to such legendary status, and the heinous scenarios she found herself in before she became a major name in rock – after all, during Jett’s rise, many audiences weren’t used to seeing frontwomen, much less accepting them as part of their community.
It’s a harsh reality, but a reality nonetheless, because these spaces – the ones that Jett started to infiltrate – were historically reserved for male frontmen, fostering a community of like-minded chaotic individuals who perpetuated punkish, animalistic behaviours. For instance, we all know about those particularly rowdy crowds who have had one too many and think they’re entitled to act out while a band is performing on stage.
Unfortunately for Jett, these were the spaces that she found herself stepping into in the early days – ones she often couldn’t escape and simply had to endure if she wanted to perform her music live. For male musicians, such environments were slightly easier to navigate, but for Jett, she’d be kidding herself if she didn’t feel at least a little uneasy, and a whole lot frustrated.
Put it this way: making or performing art is a vulnerable position to be in, made worse by the prospect of standing in front of an audience and having them hurl abuse at you, sometimes in the form of spitting or other thrown objects. Anybody in that position, even someone as defiant as Jett, would feel a little put out, if only by the sheer anger of having someone be so outright rude.
One of the worst experiences that Jett had with this was when she opened for the German rock band Scorpions with The Blackhearts in Italy and Spain. Jett had experienced some of these wild crowds during her time with The Runaways, “because it was just what people did” in rock spaces, but not nearly to the same degree as when they opened for Scorpions, because it was the first time she realised that it wasn’t just the nature of the crowd – it was pure, unfiltered sexism.
“They’re very macho countries, and they don’t like to see women,” Jett recalled to Micromag, recalling how the “hateful” crowd launched into a chorus of hideous chants, including “you cunt, you fucking cunt” while covering her “head to toe” in spit. She also discussed how most people would have left the stage, especially given the risk to her physical safety, but that she performed the set because it became a sort of “personal” quarrel between her and the audience.
In her mind, she kept thinking, “Fuck you guys! I am not going anywhere. You’ll have to fucking kill me to get me off the stage,” which is something she said that they tried to do, all because she was a woman playing the guitar. She added, “Then I get pissed. I get indignant, like, ‘you’re gonna get pissed? You’re gonna freak out like that because I’m playing guitar?’”
Needless to say, Jett never wished to play for a Scorpion crowd ever again (“It was not an experience I would want to repeat”), even though she knew what she was in for before. In those scenarios, she realised, it became less about bringing great music to great people and more about proving a point – one that would never have come out victorious in the face of such ugly prejudice.
