Joan Jett (born September 22 1958, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania) is an American rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and actress.

She is best known for her hit single "I Love Rock N' Roll", which was #1 on the Billboard charts from March 20 to May 1 1982, as well as for her other popular recordings including "Crimson and Clover", "Do You Wanna Touch Me", "Light of Day", "Love is All Around", "Bad Reputation," "I Hate Myself for Loving You," and "Little Liar."

Jett has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Her musical and song-writing approach is heavily influenced by the hard-edged, hard beat-driven rhythms common to many rock bands of her native Philadelphia, often featuring lyrics surrounding themes of lost love, criticisms of insincerity, the struggles and resolution of the American working class, and the quest for authenticity.

Career and biography

Joan Jett was born at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, in suburban Philadelphia. She moved to Wheaton, Maryland in 1967, but dropped out of Wheaton High School and left Maryland behind when she was 15 to pursue her music career. She moved to Los Angeles, California and attended Taft High School in Woodland Hills.VH1 Joan Jett bio

The Runaways

Joan Jett is one of the original members of The Runaways along with Kari Krome and Sandy West. Kari Krome (replaced by Micki Steele and later Jackie Fox), Lita Ford, and Cherie Currie completed the line-up. While Currie initially fronted the band, Jett also sang lead vocal, played rhythm guitar and wrote or co-wrote much of the band's material. The band recorded five LPs, with one becoming one of the biggest-selling imports in U.S. and U.K. history. The band toured around the world and some of their opening acts included Cheap Trick, Van Halen and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They found huge success abroad, especially in Japan.

While The Runaways were popular in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada and South America, they could not garner the same success in the U.S. After Currie and Fox left the band (to be replaced by bassist Vicki Blue and later, Laurie McAllister), the band released two more albums: Waitin' for the Night and And Now... The Runaways. Altogether they produced five albums from 1975 until they disbanded in spring of 1979.

It was soon after that Jett produced The Germs' first and only album (GI).

Solo

In the spring of 1979, Jett was in England pursuing a solo career. While there, she cut three songs with ex-Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones (one of which was an early version of a cover song called "I Love Rock N' Roll," originally written and performed by The Arrows). Later that year, she moved to Long Beach, New York, and ultimately, Los Angeles, where she reluctantly began fulfilling an obligation of the Runaways to complete a film loosely based on the band's career called We're All Crazee Now!, with three actresses standing in for her departed band members. The plug was pulled on the project halfway through shooting, but in 1984, after Jett had become a major star, producers were looking for a way to make use of the footage from the incomplete film. Bits of the original footage of Jett were used in a completely new project never commercially released, an underground movie called DuBeat-Eo, produced by Alan Sacks. While working on the project, Jett met songwriter and producer Kenny Laguna, who came in to help Jett with writing some tracks for the film. They became friends and decided to work together.