![]() The song's co-writer, Alan Merrill, died at 69 on March 29, 2020, one of the first high-profile victims of the coronavirus pandemic.Jett was clearly the star of the show, but The Blackhearts got their due, entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with her in 2015. I brought together the lettering on the cover, and there it was." A photo of Jett with her band The Blackhearts appears on the back cover, but she's all by herself on the front, which is how her subsequent releases were also packaged. Rock said in a interview, "When I shot that, I remember seeing her somehow as a female Elvis Presley with that slightly rockabilly outfit on. Jett didn't have much of a budget, but Rock was friends with her lawyer and agreed to do it. The album cover was shot by Mick Rock, who in the 1970's did a lot of work with David Bowie and Lou Reed - he shot the covers of Reed's albums Transformer and Coney Island Baby, and directed several of Bowie's videos.Although it is by far her biggest hit, Jett has downplayed it throughout her career, typically performing it in the middle of sets while using "Bad Reputation" and "I Hate Myself For Loving You" as bookends. This seems like a perfect fit for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance, but when Jett was inducted in 2015, she didn't play the song.I quickly realized, this song is gonna follow you, so you're either gonna let it bother you, or you gotta make peace with it, and feel blessed that you were involved with something that touched so many people." Everyone knows a song that just makes them feel amazing and want to jump up and down. In an interview with Mojo magazine January 2008, Jett looked back on this song: "I think most people who love some kind of rock 'n' roll can relate to it.The color version, now available on YouTube, was released in 2003 on Jett's Real Wild Child video anthology. The video helped send the song up the charts and establish an image for Jett as a rough-hewn rocker. It became a huge hit on the network, which had launched just months earlier and was becoming a criterion of cool. This black-and-white version stood out on MTV among far more colorful clips by the likes of the Go-Go's and The J. Without the color, the clip looked gritty and retro, which is what they were going for. This was not the rock and roll video they imagined, but when Jett saw the black-and-white work copy, she loved it. When Jett looked at the edit, the colors were a mess, with way too much red and mauve in the shots because of poor fashion choices. In the video Jett wore a red leather outfit to the shoot, which took place at New York club called Private's with an assortment of fans that showed up that day forming the crowd.In the US, this was #1 for seven weeks in 1982.They could have made it universal with "put another coin in the jukebox," but the band liked dime because it sounded American. The original version written by The Arrows who were from England, where they don't have dimes, but instead they would put a sixpenny in the jukebox to buy a song. The line "Put another dime in the jukebox" was dated by the time Jett released her version, as very few jukeboxes took dimes.This song helped shape Jett's image as a tough, confident rock star and became an inspiration to many female musicians. Because Jett sang about aggressively pursuing the guy, which for many women made this a female-empowerment anthem. When Jett covered this, however, it became a song about a girl who notices a guy next to a jukebox and brings him home to have sex. In the original version, the lyrics are about a guy picking up a young girl and taking her home, which was fairly typical rock and roll subject matter.Finally, in 1981, Jett recorded the song with her band The Blackhearts, resulting in a monster hit. So, in 1979, Jett recorded it with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols and released it as a B-side. She wanted to record it with The Runaways, but the other members didn't like the song and made the mistake of passing it up. Jett was touring England as a member of an all teenage girl group called The Runaways when she discovered this song.It was this show that Joan Jett saw in 1976, which prompted her to acquire a copy of "I Love Rock and Roll" and later cover it in 1981, producing what is arguably one of the most successful covers in rock history. The show's producer was so impressed with this performance that they were given their own TV show, simply called The Arrows Show. All was not lost, however, as The Arrows performed this song when they were guests on the UK TV series Pop 45. The song was released as a B-side with "Broken Down Heart." The song didn't chart and was banished to obscurity. This was originally recorded by a British group called The Arrows in 1975, and it was written by their lead singer Alan Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker.
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