Joan Jett

I plan to stay in music. I plan to keep making records.

We were really grown up for our age and it was an incredible special band.

I think what I’m going to do is get more balance in my life to still be able to go out and play the hard rock ‘n’ roll and do what I like to do in music.

We always play clubs. It’s not something that I feel above. Those are my favorite shows because they’re intimate, they’re tight, their sweaty, they’re hot. You’re close to the people. Those are my favorites.

I love sports. I love animals. I love kids. I want to save the world. So how do I combine all those things? I don’t know.

Shaving my head was a millennium ritual, to not let it pass as just another New Year’s Eve. A lot has happened to me in the last couple of years, personally and spiritually. I wanted to mark it for myself.

I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn’t play rock ‘n’ roll.

My parents taught me I could be anything in the world I wanted to be.

I’d like to just be a little bit more open to making mistakes and not worrying about it so much.

Aggressive, tough and defiant may describe me, but that leaves the impression I’m mean and I’m not. People expect me to have fangs.

I don’t know if I miss it per se, but I do miss the fact that there just doesn’t seem to be any rock ‘n’ roll out there anyplace. Everything does seem kind of tame. It’s even hard in Manhattan to go out and find a good band to go see.

I’m having fun opening up. Sort of struggling to get the audience into it. It’s good. It makes you fight. Not fight like antagonistic. But fight for what you believe.

I really wanted it to be organic and coming from my heart. So, I think maybe the initial thought of wanting to go in that direction, I had to wait until things happened in our world and in our country that fired me up enough where the words came out organically.

Girls have got balls. They’re just a little higher up that’s all.

You know I don’t care if the world thinks I’m smart or not.

Rock ‘n’ roll music is what gets me off.

So now 20 years later people want us to get together so they can take shots at all these old babes trying to get back some youth. I mean come on; I’ve been there. I know what the press would do.

I’m concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet.

People don’t want to see women doing things they don’t think women should do.

Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren’t able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.

My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.

I love to engage with people who come to see us.

When I came back to it, we amicably separated from Warner Bros. I just picked up where I left off, trying to write the rest of this record. It took awhile to get out.

So it was out of necessity that Blackheart was born. I think it’s great that now, 25 years later, we’re not only putting out our own music, but are able to put out music by other bands. That’s really exciting for us.

I had a blast doing the Warped Tour, but it’s good to be home, for sure.

Why there aren’t people out there willing to have fun playing rock ‘n’ roll. I just don’t get it.

You know, I have a really tough time finding new bands.

Def Leppard is obviously a different band that we are, but the music work well tighter. And the audiences seem work well together too. We are opening, but we’re having a good time.

I feel like it’s my job to carry the torch.

I think I was born strong-willed. That’s not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is, you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

You got nothing to lose. You don’t lose when you lose fake friends.

I’ve been doing this stuff for so long it’s the one aspect of my life that I’ve paid attention to and really sort of not paid attention to the rest of it.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women’s rules.

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it’s catchy, and you’ve got a little bit of help, I think that’s all you need. But there hasn’t been that in music.

I wouldn’t say no to other kinds of musical opportunities. I guess that it just depends on what it was or what it required me to do, and if I felt that it compromised my own soul.

I think there’s nothing better than seeing a three-chord straight up rock ‘n’ roll band in your face with sweaty music and three minute good songs.

I like to hang out with my friends. I love music. I like to go to the movies. I like to eat. I like to cook.

I sure saw a lot of kids that I’m sure didn’t know a lot about us, or we were definitely new to them. The kids who came up to me afterward, we’d talk about music, sign a lot of autographs. So I’m sure we made a lot of new fans.

Only because The Runaways were my baby and there’s no reason to get it back together except to totally have fun. If that’s not the goal, then I don’t want to do it.