Female guitar and bass rockers were a rare breed back in 1975. You can almost count them on one hand. There were sisters June (guitarist) and Jean Millington (bassist) in Fanny, and bassist-singer Suzi Quatro and guitarist Bonnie Raitt in the early 1970s along with Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart in the mid-'70s. There were plenty of female lead singers, but an instrumentalist-singer was rare. Women's liberation was just getting started.
And then there was Joan Jett. She co-founded the Runaways in '75 when she was 16 and then founded the Blackhearts in 1979. Joan grew up on both coasts and was deeply influenced by the glam and punk movements of the '70s. Joan was all in, fully committed to the spirit and sound of hard rock and a product of women who were starting to believe they could do anything guys were doing and weren't going to take "no" or "not yet" for an answer.
In 2018, director Kevin Kerslake and and writer Joel Marcus released a documentary on Joan called Bad Reputation. A good one for a Friday. I found it on YouTube last week. For my 2018 "Anatomy of a Song" with Joan on the song, go here. The documentary, Bad Reputation, is here...
