Guitar Tricks Insider November / December Issue | Page 38

‘Midnight Rambler’
from Get Your Ya-Ya’s
Out encompasses
to me what rock and
roll should sound like
on a live level. For a
rhythm guitar player
it just seems to do
everything.
Joan Jett is nothing if not unpredictable.
In high school “the Godmother of Punk”
originally studied clarinet. A defiantly anti-
corporate rocker, she once licensed her
image to Mattel for a Barbie doll. To be fair,
the finished product looked more like a Joan
Jett action figure. Noted as an anti-fashion
icon, she designed a line of denim jeans and
talked about it extensively in Vogue. The
“Original Riot Grrrl,” is an inveterate sports
fan. The ultimate fighter Ronda Rousey used
Joan’s “Bad Reputation” as her theme music.
Cal Ripkin Jr. invited her to sing the National
Anthem the night he tied Lou Gehrig’s
consecutive game record. The last single of
Jett’s to hit the charts was her cover of the
Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, “Love Is All
Around,” in 1996, which started out in life
as the theme for the Women’s Final Four in
basketball. Her song “I Hate Myself for Loving
You,” was rewritten as the opening theme
for Monday Night Football. Briefly, she flirted
with an acting career, playing the role of
the groupie Columbia in The Rocky Horror
Show on Broadway. She also appeared in
an episode of Law and Order. Her list of
accomplishes is vast as it is wide.
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GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER
DIGITAL EDITION
ON SONGWRITING
Just about the only thing predictable about
Jett is her choice of guitar, a 1963 white
double cutaway Gibson Melody Maker, the
one she bought from Eric Carmen of the
Raspberries around 1977 or ’78.
“The Runaways were in Cleveland and he’s
from Cleveland and our road crew knew he
had a guitar for sale,” Jett said. “It’s the
same one he played on ‘Go All the Way.’ It
had ‘the Raspberries’ spray painted on it.
You could tell the guitar had some work done
on it because there were two pickups on it,
as opposed to one. It was refinished and
painted white.”
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER