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defrogBetween a recent Lita Ford post and the fact that Joan Jett recently turned 54, I got to thinking about this.
Like a lot of people my age (outside of Los Angeles and Tokyo, that is), I heard Joan Jett and Lita Ford before I heard the Runaways.
And of course I heard Joan Jett first with “I Love Rock’n’Roll”. I thought she was great, and I eventually got a copy of the album and listened to it a lot, and then when her debut album was re-released to capitalize on the success of ILRnR, I got that one too, and the next few albums after that.
Hit song aside, I knew some people in high school who didn’t like her, and the reasons can probably be summed up by a comment I remember clearly from a guy I knew in art class: “She’s the kind of girl who’d run around in a lesbian street gang that wears leather jackets with a shark’s fin on the back.”
My kinda dame.
Anyway, it was shortly after high school that Lita Ford had her breakout hit on MTV.
It was nowhere near as popular, but I also liked it, as I liked quite a bit of The Metal at the time. And hey, Hot Leather Chick Playing Guitar.
Then she hit it big a few years later by going pop-metaland covering a Generation X song.
I didn’t like it quite as much. It was okay, but I felt the same way I felt when Heart re-invented themselves as an 80s pop-metal hair band – which is to say, it wasn’t broke, so why fix it? Or more accurately, it wasn’t broke, so they broke it so they could fix it.
Anyway, it’s interesting (to me) to look at how Joan and Lita chose different directions musically, and the results thereof – not in terms of units shipped or chart positions, but just in terms of output and legacy.
Obviously, Joan has become something of a rock icon in her own right, and has maintained a reasonably steady career since the 80s in one form or another. By contrast, Lita’s career peaked in the 80s and faded in the early 90s.
I do chalk that up in part to their musical styles. Loud 4/4 rock can find an audience in any era (since its invention), as opposed to most 80s metal, which sounds horribly dated and took a back seat to grunge in the 90s – by which time Joan was getting a lot of respect in riot grrrl circles. She also got a lot of DIY cred for the fact that her first album was released on her own label, Blackheart Records, because no major label took her seriously (according to legend, 23 labels rejected it).
On the other hand, unlike Joan, Lita took time off to have and raise kids. So that should be taken into account.
Meanwhile, Lita Ford has been mounting a comeback. She released an album in 2009, which wasn’t all that well received, and has a “proper” comeback album out right now. It’s called Living Like A Runaway, which may be shameless reference to the resurgence of interest in The Runaways, but hey, it was her band too, so she’s entitled.
And it does sound like a return to basics – it’s metal(ish), but more like the Donnas variety than (say) the Crue variety. I can’t say I’m that into it, but as hard-rock records go, it’s good.
Still, I have to say, my heart belongs to Joan, if only because she's the one who landed a guest spot in Bloom County.
FUN FACT: I saw Joan Jett and the Blackhearts live once – at Summer Jam ’82 in Memphis, TN. Even from the cheap seats, she was great, and for my money stole the show.
Who did she steal it from, you ask?
Why, Survivor, Kansas and the headliner, REO Speedwagon.
The 80s – you had to be there.
Do you wanna touch,
This is dF
EDITED TO ADD [later the same day]: It's been pointed out to me that Lita's “Kiss Me Deadly” is not the Generation X song. This is true – it's actually by Mick Smiley (the guy whose main claim to fame is having a song on the Ghostbusters soundtrack). I have no idea why I thought it was the same song – I had a distinct memory of seeing Billy Idol's name in the songwriting credits on that particular Lita Ford album, or reading it somewhere at the time, or maybe some radio DJ said it. Anyway, Idol had nothing to do with the album, and probably nothing to do with Ford at any time in her career.
In my defense, I haven't listened to my copy of Generation X's sole LP in probably 15 years.
Thanks tobedsitter23 for the correction. And apologies for deleting his original comment to this post that prompted this correction.
About that:
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: For those of you wondering why this is appearing in yr Friends Page feed again, that’s because when I went back to Dreamwidth to add the above correction, the editor kept sticking in embed code I didn’t want in there, embedding most of the text into the three videos and making the whole post unreadable – and going into HTML more to delete the embed tags did not work because as soon as I went back to Rich Text it stuck them right back in again – all of which was getting crossposted to LJ – thus forcing to delete the entire post and start from scratch, thus wasting a good chunk of my Friday night.
Thanks a bunch, Dreamwidth.
Like a lot of people my age (outside of Los Angeles and Tokyo, that is), I heard Joan Jett and Lita Ford before I heard the Runaways.
And of course I heard Joan Jett first with “I Love Rock’n’Roll”. I thought she was great, and I eventually got a copy of the album and listened to it a lot, and then when her debut album was re-released to capitalize on the success of ILRnR, I got that one too, and the next few albums after that.
Hit song aside, I knew some people in high school who didn’t like her, and the reasons can probably be summed up by a comment I remember clearly from a guy I knew in art class: “She’s the kind of girl who’d run around in a lesbian street gang that wears leather jackets with a shark’s fin on the back.”
My kinda dame.
Anyway, it was shortly after high school that Lita Ford had her breakout hit on MTV.
It was nowhere near as popular, but I also liked it, as I liked quite a bit of The Metal at the time. And hey, Hot Leather Chick Playing Guitar.
Then she hit it big a few years later by going pop-metal
I didn’t like it quite as much. It was okay, but I felt the same way I felt when Heart re-invented themselves as an 80s pop-metal hair band – which is to say, it wasn’t broke, so why fix it? Or more accurately, it wasn’t broke, so they broke it so they could fix it.
Anyway, it’s interesting (to me) to look at how Joan and Lita chose different directions musically, and the results thereof – not in terms of units shipped or chart positions, but just in terms of output and legacy.
Obviously, Joan has become something of a rock icon in her own right, and has maintained a reasonably steady career since the 80s in one form or another. By contrast, Lita’s career peaked in the 80s and faded in the early 90s.
I do chalk that up in part to their musical styles. Loud 4/4 rock can find an audience in any era (since its invention), as opposed to most 80s metal, which sounds horribly dated and took a back seat to grunge in the 90s – by which time Joan was getting a lot of respect in riot grrrl circles. She also got a lot of DIY cred for the fact that her first album was released on her own label, Blackheart Records, because no major label took her seriously (according to legend, 23 labels rejected it).
On the other hand, unlike Joan, Lita took time off to have and raise kids. So that should be taken into account.
Meanwhile, Lita Ford has been mounting a comeback. She released an album in 2009, which wasn’t all that well received, and has a “proper” comeback album out right now. It’s called Living Like A Runaway, which may be shameless reference to the resurgence of interest in The Runaways, but hey, it was her band too, so she’s entitled.
And it does sound like a return to basics – it’s metal(ish), but more like the Donnas variety than (say) the Crue variety. I can’t say I’m that into it, but as hard-rock records go, it’s good.
Still, I have to say, my heart belongs to Joan, if only because she's the one who landed a guest spot in Bloom County.
FUN FACT: I saw Joan Jett and the Blackhearts live once – at Summer Jam ’82 in Memphis, TN. Even from the cheap seats, she was great, and for my money stole the show.
Who did she steal it from, you ask?
Why, Survivor, Kansas and the headliner, REO Speedwagon.
The 80s – you had to be there.
Do you wanna touch,
This is dF
EDITED TO ADD [later the same day]: It's been pointed out to me that Lita's “Kiss Me Deadly” is not the Generation X song. This is true – it's actually by Mick Smiley (the guy whose main claim to fame is having a song on the Ghostbusters soundtrack). I have no idea why I thought it was the same song – I had a distinct memory of seeing Billy Idol's name in the songwriting credits on that particular Lita Ford album, or reading it somewhere at the time, or maybe some radio DJ said it. Anyway, Idol had nothing to do with the album, and probably nothing to do with Ford at any time in her career.
In my defense, I haven't listened to my copy of Generation X's sole LP in probably 15 years.
Thanks to
bedsitter23 for the correction. And apologies for deleting his original comment to this post that prompted this correction. About that:
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: For those of you wondering why this is appearing in yr Friends Page feed again, that’s because when I went back to Dreamwidth to add the above correction, the editor kept sticking in embed code I didn’t want in there, embedding most of the text into the three videos and making the whole post unreadable – and going into HTML more to delete the embed tags did not work because as soon as I went back to Rich Text it stuck them right back in again – all of which was getting crossposted to LJ – thus forcing to delete the entire post and start from scratch, thus wasting a good chunk of my Friday night.
Thanks a bunch, Dreamwidth.
