![]() It was campy, it was pushing the boundaries. It was resonating in my body with a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on, what was going on, but I felt an energy.” She and her mother went to see Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret.” “The music was incredible. “Then, something caught my ear as puberty was hitting,” she told me: rock and roll. (You can hear the radio segment here what follows is from our fuller conversation.) When she was growing up, she said, her parents listened to Johnny Mathis, classical, Sinatra, Top Forty. ![]() Recently, I talked to Jett for “ The New Yorker Radio Hour,” and she told me how she developed her sound. I was a sensitive kid and am a sensitive adult, and I was intrigued to learn, by watching “Bad Reputation,” that Jett is sensitive, too. In that era, I liked to wear a T-shirt that said “Let’s Face It-Girls Are Smarter.” And in recent weeks, as the wheels have flown off the shabby jalopy that is American civic life, Jett’s music has helped me feel better. Instead of skirting pedestrian traffic, I walked confidently, claiming part of the sidewalk-and was suddenly blasted back to a sense memory of childhood, when I would request “I Love Rock ’n Roll” at the roller rink and pound my skates in time with the beat. Jett’s sound-the full-throttle drums, guitar, and vocals-made me feel a joyous, uncharacteristic assertiveness. Not long ago, I saw “Bad Reputation,” the new documentary about Joan Jett, and came out of it exhilarated, listening to “I Love Rock ’n Roll” while powering down Sixth Avenue. ![]()
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