Joan Jett Quotes

1. 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.



2. 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.

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

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

5. 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.


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

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

8. 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.

9. 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.


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

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

12. 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.





13. 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.

14. 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.




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

16. 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.

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


18. 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.


19. 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.

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

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

22. 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.




23. 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.

24. 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.






25. 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.

26. 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.


27. 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.

28. 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.

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


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


31. Rock 'n' roll music is what gets me off.

32. 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.

33. 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.






34. 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.

35. 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.



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

37. 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.

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



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

40.  I know who you are, and I am not impressed.

41. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Make your own victories. Make your own mistakes.

42. I don't really care if you think I'm strange - I ain't gonna change!

43. No ones immune now, to a world of problems. No ones exempt now, from a world of pain!

44. (After both races were complete, Jett and her band performed for the crowd.) I run a little but I couldn't quite keep up with these people... doing a lot of pushups and staying busy.

45. I learned to scream from Marc Bolan of T. Rex.






46. Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate. No more standing outside Tower Records in a long line.

47. I remember times when I was at shows and the person onstage locked eyes with me. And in that moment, everything was right with the world. I think that's part of my job, to create these thousands of moments every night. And for the rest of their life, they can say: "You guys looked at me," or "You sweated on me," or "I got your gum."

48. I like the way black looks. I think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease. The black is sort of the bad-guy guise, so I work overtime to make people comfortable.

49. Don't be afraid. Because you're going to be afraid. But remember when you become afraid, just don't be afraid.

50. Partly, I like a bad reputation. But I also want a reputation of being a good person.

51. I don't look good in beige. 


52. I think some of our lyrics that might be considered angry, if they were sung by a guy, they'd be called passionate or intense.


53. The national anthem is a very hard song to sing. You gotta start in the right spot or you're screwed.

54. If you're a woman who doesn't wear a dress, you are gonna take shit. If you're a woman who doesn't wear a dress and shaves her head, forget about it.

55. When I watch these cop shows, I think of how many things boil down to: Someone's pride was offended. Somebody was disrespected.

56. When the Runaways broke up, I didn't know what I wanted to do. A breakup is like losing a very good friend. It's like a death.




57. I was Mike Tyson's wake-up call for several fights - he would have me call him on the morning of a fight. He was so sweet to me.

58. I was onstage when Howard Dean did his famous yell. It was completely blown out of proportion. The press couldn't even get the emotion right. They were saying he was angry. No, he was effervescent.

59. I don't think about the shouting. Should I do it high, do I do it hard? I just do it. It's guttural.




60. In the beginning, I used to eat discarded food off other people's Holiday Inn trays. I mean, it was discarded.

61. People come up and stab you, give you a shot in the ribs with one finger, like you're the Pillsbury Doughboy. They want to see if you're real. They have a sense of ownership. You're public domain, to be touched, like with the Statue of Liberty.

62. I don't Google myself. Never read message boards, either, because that's even more dangerous.

63. Being in a band is like being in a family. It's intense, it's emotional. It's not always smooth. In fact, something's kind of weird if it is smooth.




64. Pop music is not a threatening style of music. It's music that says: "Take me for what you will". Rock 'n' roll says: "You're mine, motherfucker".

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