Sarah Larson (2:26)

Yeah.

Joan Jett (2:27)

Is that you want to reach people, connect and make them feel, you know, powerful in their own. Whatever it is that they want to try to achieve. It doesn't have to be rock and roll. You know, whatever it is you want to be in life, don't let other people sort of hold you back. So hearing that from you makes Me feel like we achieved.

Sarah Larson (2:48)

Like you're at the roller rink.

Joan Jett (2:49)

Yeah, totally. Exactly.

Sarah Larson (2:52)

So let's talk about how you came to play rock and roll and you getting your first guitar. When you were a kid, your parents gave you a guitar for Christmas?

Joan Jett (3:01)

They sure did. An electric guitar.

Sarah Larson (3:03)

An electric guitar.

Joan Jett (3:04)

I was specific.

Sarah Larson (3:05)

Yeah. What kind of guitar was it?

Joan Jett (3:07)

It was a Sears Silvertone.

Sarah Larson (3:09)

You took lessons and you wanted to play rock and roll.

Joan Jett (3:12)

Yes.

Sarah Larson (3:13)

And what happened?

Joan Jett (3:15)

Well, the guy told me, girls don't play rock and roll. I'm sure I went in there all excited and exuberant as a young teenager would teach me how to play rock and roll. And he could have said, okay, great, let me teach you the basics. Let's learn some basic chords, and then I can teach you some rock songs. But he didn't. He said, girls don't play rock and roll. And, you know, I realized at that time. So you're not telling me that girls can't master the guitar. What you're saying is I can't be the Rolling Stones is what you're telling me. I want to be the Rolling Stones. Rock and roll, just by its nature, exudes sexuality. So a girl playing rock and roll, it's going to be sexual. And Americans are very uncomfortable with that. You know, with. I think, with women and sexuality in general. But when you get to teenagers expressing themselves, forget about it.

Sarah Larson (4:11)

Yeah, I like that in the movie, you talk about how you weren't rebelling against your parents, you were, I think, more rebelling against attitudes like that.

Joan Jett (4:20)

Yes, absolutely. It was more about what society telling. Kind of pretending that we could be anything, but not really, you know, walking the walk, talking the talk, but not really letting girls do that.

Sarah Larson (4:35)

And then you encountered some of that attitude as a teenager in your band, the Runaways.

Joan Jett (4:41)

A lot of it.

Sarah Larson (4:41)

Some people loved you guys. Japan, it was like Beatlemania. But then you also got a lot of sexist pushback.

Joan Jett (4:50)

Yeah, it was very confusing in one respect until you kind of caught on. And I still don't really understand what's so threatening about it, but it's. People were pushing back against us, and when they couldn't kind of throw us off base that way, then they started calling us names and would be extremely rude and call us every name in the book and. Or you just try to drive the subject always about talking about sex as opposed to the music. I find it kind of childish, actually. Say, come on, man, is that. That's where you're gonna go?

Sarah Larson (5:30)

And some of that is part of what inspired You. To write after the Runaways, to write Bad Reputation. Right. Was that.

Joan Jett (5:38)

Well, definitely. I was just reflecting on kind of how people threw my own ambition back in my face, trying to give it sort of a tinge of deviance. Yeah. Something's wrong with her that she wants to play guitar. And so I was really. When I met my best friend and producer songwriting partner, Kenny Laguna, sort of just, you know, talking about subjects to write songs about, talking about my life. It was sort of a natural flow that we discuss these subjects and then sort of turn it on its head and make fun of that sort of a tongue in cheek way and say, I don't give a damn about my bad reputation.

Sarah Larson (6:23)

Yeah. One of the things I really, really love about this song and about your music in general is this irresistible combination of catchiness and real power, real strength. And I was so intrigued in the movie to learn that Kenny had this background in writing bubblegum records.

Joan Jett (7:03)

Yes.

Sarah Larson (7:05)

And the whole connection between bubblegum and punk.

Joan Jett (7:08)

Right, right.

Sarah Larson (7:09)

Can you talk about that sound and what combination of elements you were looking for?

Joan Jett (7:13)

And that's a unique combination. Kenny comes from the Brill Building history of songwriting. And the combination. Yes. Of his bubblegum ness and, you know, I really respect it and I have that in myself as well. So, yeah, the combination just really worked out.

Sarah Larson (7:35)

He said he brought that. And you brought the menace, which I really like, but it's a very warm kind of menace somehow at all.

Joan Jett (7:43)

Yeah, it's not a nasty menace.

David Remnick (7:45)

Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Larson (8:02)

Then another, you know, I was thinking of the combination of elements in your music about power and melody and joy and rage and love and strength and how I loved all those things about Nirvana. And then I suddenly remembered that I actually had the great pleasure of seeing you play with Nirvana. I happened to be writing about that Rock and Roll hall of fame, really, in 2014, where they were inducted, which was such a powerful moment. And to have all these women, these great, powerful women in the Kurt role was so wonderful. And you kicked it off with Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Joan Jett (9:25)

Can you imagine how it was like being asked? I was. I was petrified on one level.

Sarah Larson (9:33)

Yeah.

Joan Jett (9:34)

Not only do you have to be there enough for the band to play the song, but the fans.

Sarah Larson (9:39)

Yeah.

Joan Jett (9:40)

You know, and I was strangely very calm that night. Like I knew I wouldn't mess it up. I think on some level there had to be some spirit there because I wasn't doing it, if that makes any sense.

Sarah Larson (9:58)

Yeah, it does.

Joan Jett (9:58)

Who knows?

Sarah Larson (9:59)

And then the next year, you and Kenny, I believe, were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame.

Joan Jett (10:05)

Yes. Yes.

Sarah Larson (10:06)

And that's a nice moment in the movie, too. I mean, you can see there's a standing ovation for you in this giant stadium, and there's Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono and everybody's cheering and that.

Joan Jett (10:18)

Yeah, it was actually Paul McCartney. When I came out, him and Ringo, I believe, were the first to stand up. And, you know, I had planned on keeping it together, but, you know, seeing that and then the whole building stand up, it was just more than I could handle emotionally. And I just broke down, you know, I didn't expect. I didn't expect it, you know, that.

Sarah Larson (10:42)

Was a nice moment.

Joan Jett (10:42)

It was.

Sarah Larson (10:44)

There have been a lot of portrayals of you in pop culture in various ways, not just in the Runaways movie, which you executive produced, I think. Right. Like, I was watching this series, Red Oaks, and there was a youa character in it, and I was watching this show younger, and there was a character who seemed like a composite of you and maybe Chrissy Hind and some other things. And I just. What do you see in what the culture sees in you?

Joan Jett (11:13)

Perseverance, Fighting for what you believe in. Sort of just. If I can really step back from myself. It's very hard to talk about yourself like this. You know what I mean? But it's like a type. It's a style. I mean, I heard about this years ago, more from fashion shows. I want kind of a Joan Jett look, so I can only imagine that, you know, it means stark dark hair, you know, dark makeup. I don't really know, but it's a type.

Sarah Larson (11:50)

Yeah. What do you want people to take away from your story? Perseverance, for one thing.

Joan Jett (11:55)

Yeah. I mean, that's a big one. Don't let other people dictate what your life is going to be. You know, people tend to shoot down other people's dreams, and I don't know what that is in human nature that seems to go there. So I would say watch for that.

Sarah Larson (12:12)

Yeah.

Joan Jett (12:12)

So if there's something you really want to do or be in life, you have to go for it. I think it's really, really important to not let other people dictate your life.

Sarah Larson (12:22)

Well, I know that when I want to feel charged up, it helps to listen to a little Joan Jett.

Joan Jett (12:29)

Thank you.

Sarah Larson (12:31)

Thank you. Thank you for being here. It's been really great talking to you.

Joan Jett (12:34)

Oh, it's my pleasure, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

David Remnick (12:39)

Joan Jett, the Joan Jett. She talked with Sarah Larson, who writes about culture in all its forms on new yorker.com the documentary Joan Bad Reputation is out now. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're taking a look at the midterm elections, which are just a month away. As if the Republicans didn't have enough to contend with, including allegations against Brett Kavanaugh that have made this the ugliest Supreme Court nomination for a generation. They have a president who tends to undercut them on the economy. Most Republicans want to stick with the positive numbers they have. They can boast about strong employment and economic growth. But Donald Trump, in case you hadn't noticed, is not most Republicans. Trump feels that tariffs and trade wars are a winning issue with his base, and he doesn't really care what economists think either, even economists in his cabinet. He's just imposed another enormous round of tariffs on China, and China has predictably retaliated. Staff writer John Cassidy has been looking at the administration's trade policies and how they're playing out during the midterm election campaign. He spoke with Sheila Kolhatkar, who reports for us on business and labor.

Sheila Kolhatkar (14:08)

We're in this increasingly hostile period right now in terms of the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration around foreign trade. And last week, tariffs on 200 billion worth of goods from China went into effect, and China responded by adding $60 billion worth of tariffs onto US products. And this comes after major tensions between the US and Mexico, Europe and Canada over trade. How politically risky are these tariffs to Donald Trump as we head into the midterms?

John Cassidy (14:37)

Well, I certainly think a lot of people on the Republican side would have wished he'd waited until after the midterms just because they're already in bad shape. And even though, as I think we'll discuss, the politics of trade are quite complicated, basically it's a diversion from the good economic news, which the sort of Paul Ryan's and the Mitch McConnells of the world would rather be talking about a strong economy, low unemployment rate, high rates of economic growth, et cetera. Instead of that, the big economic news is Trump slapping more tariffs on Chinese, Chinese retaliating. It's going to hurt consumers and it's going to hurt Republicans in a few individual states, too, probably.

Sheila Kolhatkar (15:16)

So obviously, these tariffs are going to translate to higher prices and to higher production costs. How quickly do those effects start to be felt?

John Cassidy (15:25)

Well, I mean, the effects of the previous round are already being felt. One of the examples is washing machines. They put tariffs on washing machines and prices of washing machines apparently gone up 10, 15% and sales have gone down. Obviously, these things have to Come around the world. So it takes, it's not immediate, but the 200 billion that have been slapped on last week, you know, that's probably going into effect over the next month or so. And what's new about these tariffs is the 200 billion are on a very wide range of goods, 6,000 and lots of sort of consumer goods, desktop computers, lighting fixtures, furniture, some forms of clothing, et cetera. So that's really going to start hurting the consumer rather than just businesses and farmers.

Sheila Kolhatkar (16:06)

How is this likely to help Trump? I mean, the timing of this and the way he keeps bringing it up over and over suggests he thinks this is going to help sell his message to certain groups of people. So what's his rationale for thinking it will help?

John Cassidy (16:19)

Well, again, I think we have to go back to the fact that the basic fact about the American economy is it's huge, $20 trillion of GDP. It's just an immensely complicated machine with 300 million people, thousands and thousands of different industries, hundreds of thousands of firms, et cetera. So if you slap a bunch of tariffs on things, there's retaliatory tariffs. Different sectors, different industries, even within states, get hit differently. Now, Trump's big argument and the big political argument for him has always been he's defending the sort of industrial Midwest, the Rust Belt. And you can see that the basic policies are pretty popular there. You can see that from the reaction, for example, of Sherrod Brown, Democratic senator, who's up for re election in Ohio in a close race. And he has supported Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs. And he's also urged Trump to stay tough in talks with China and not give in. So clearly, Trump's policies play some places. They play in the Rust Belt, they play in big sort of centers of steel, but at the same time, they don't play elsewhere, just across the border. In Missouri, for example, Claire McCaskill is attacking Trump because his import tariffs on steel and aluminum are hurting local factories which use those goods as raw materials. There's a nail factory which is about to close, or he's threatening to close, and she's blaming the tariffs. So this sort of cuts at quite fine levels within different states. You can see other states, too, where the Republicans are actually on defensive about trade, and Democrats are the ones who are attacking. I mentioned Missouri. There's also Tennessee and North Dakota.

Sheila Kolhatkar (18:03)

I was just going to ask you a bit about how the tariffs are playing out in the Tennessee Senate race. So the Democratic nominee, Phil Bredesen, is a former governor, popular in the state but is it unusual that the Tennessee race would be so close?

John Cassidy (18:18)

It is, yeah. I mean, Trump won the state, I think, by 25 or 26 points in 2016. So you would think this would be a. Republicans would be home free here. And it's obviously Bob Corker who's retiring. So it is a Republican seat. It's much, much closer than the Republicans would like. Bredesen is not in the lead. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican congressman is trying to replace her, still holds a narrow lead in all the polls, but it looks like, you know, we're talking three or four points and it's sort of within the margin of error. And one of the reasons is hitting the Republicans hard on trade, pointing out, for example, Chattanooga, Tennessee is a big BMW factory. They all use imported steel and imported goods, which are being hit by tariffs. So, you know, that's a typical sort of Southern Republican state where you think Trump's policies would be popular, but in this case, they seem to be playing against him.

Sheila Kolhatkar (19:10)

And how's his opponent handling the trade issue then?

John Cassidy (19:14)

Well, you see this in Tennessee and in North Dakota, it's very awkward. There's a sort of paradox here. Some of these Republican voters don't like the trade policies, but Trump is still very popular in these states. If you look at his approval ratings, much higher there than nationally. So they don't want to distance themselves from Trump, both because he's popular and because if they do distance themselves from him, he may well start attacking them on Twitter. They need his support. So they're generally what you're seeing is they're expressing concerns about the impact of some of these tariffs, but they're not coming out straightforwardly and saying, this is a mistake. You know, we need to end this trade war they're trying to straddle. And that's why it's a good issue for the Democrats, because they've got these candidates pinned. They can't distance themselves from Trump, but they don't want to defend Trump's unpopular policies.

Sheila Kolhatkar (20:01)

So in North Dakota, the Democratic senator, Heidi Heitkamp, just ran an ad about how tariffs are hurting soybean farmers. Yeah, let's take a listen to that.

Political Ad Voice (20:10)

China is canceling their contracts to buy soybeans. North Dakota is losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business. Well, when you ask Kevin Kramer why he supports the trade war, he criticizes farmers.

John Cassidy (20:21)

I hear all kinds of hysteria. There's potential short term pain. We don't have a very high pain threshold in the United states of America.

Political Ad Voice (20:30)

Mr. Kramer, that trade War is costing my family a lot of money, and you don't seem to care.

Sheila Kolhatkar (20:37)

The administration announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers, a sort of farmer bailout package to help them cope with the tariffs. Do you think that's going to be enough to help counteract this argument about how he's inflicting pain on farmers?

John Cassidy (20:50)

Well, I think it certainly helped to some point. I mean, I love the Republicans. They're always in favor of socialism for farmers, capitalism for everybody else, socialism for the farmers. But I mean, if you just sort of go in on a sort of ad hoc basis, listening to the vox pops that have been done there, farmers seem to be saying, yes, they welcome the relief from this bailout, but they'd much rather to be selling their goods properly, and they don't want this trade war to go on forever. Now, when you say to them, well, is it bad enough that you're going to vote against Donald Trump or vote for the Democrats? You don't seem to get very many yeses as yet. But if it goes on and on, you know, we shall see whether it may have more political impact. Trump is selling it as a temporary thing, which is, you know, short term pain for long term gain, which is exactly what Kevin Kramer is saying in North Dakota as well.

Sheila Kolhatkar (21:43)

Do you think it's really temporary?

John Cassidy (21:45)

Well, I don't think it's temporary. I mean, it looks to me like Trump likes tariffs. I mean, you know, he don't have to. Doesn't look to me. He looks to. He says it every day on Twitter. You know, tariffs work. I think there's a division in the White House, though. There are some people in the Trump administration who see tariffs as just a way to bully the Chinese into giving up some of their mercantilist practices. And you actually see some support from that. Even in the sort of economic policy institutes in Washington. The sort of feeling is that negotiating with the Chinese hasn't been that successful, so somebody had to do something. They don't necessarily support Trump, but they can see a certain logic to it. But that is a completely different argument. Imposing Trump's tariffs temporarily so the Chinese have to belly up to what Trump seems to be talking about is permanent tariffs so he can rebuild the steel industry and rebuild all sorts of industries in the heartlands. In order to do that, you would need very heavy tariffs indefinitely. And I think that's more to Trump's liking. I don't think he sees this as temporary at all.

Sheila Kolhatkar (22:50)

As the midterms get closer, do you think the Democrats have been effective at developing a consistent message around this trade issue?

John Cassidy (22:59)

Well, I think Democrats don't want a consistent message around it because they want their candidates to have a bit of flexibility. I mentioned the example of Sherrod Brown in Ohio, who is basically not completely supporting Trump, but supported the initial tariffs and has expressed sympathy for the overall approach he's taking to China. Whereas, you know, in California and New York and places which tend to be very deeply integrated into sort of the world economy in a different way, most of the Democrats in those areas are coming out completely against the tariffs.

Sheila Kolhatkar (23:33)

Is the fact that there's now a little bit more flexibility around this issue maybe a healthy sign? Because for a long time, there seemed to be just agreement on both sides that free trade was generally a good and desirable thing. Now there's a little bit more of a debate around it. Maybe that's good.

John Cassidy (23:49)

Well, I mean, if you believe in political diversity, I mean, I guess you can make that argument. There always were people on both sides who were protectionists. Pat Buchanan ran as a protectionist in 92 for the Republicans. He just could never break through against the sort of country club, Chamber of Commerce Republicans, as I say, Gephardt and others in the Democratic Party. I think that diversity opinion has always been there. What's changed is that, you know, a protectionist has taken over, demolished basically everybody else in the Republican Party. So that's a big difference. And whether you think that's good or bad basically depends on whether you think that Trump's right on this trade stuff. And I think that he's not right overall. I mean, I think he's responding to some legitimate grievances in some parts of the country from some industries and some legitimate grievances about Chinese mercantilism in some areas. But overall, starting a huge trade war is a bad idea. There are other ways to go about this. You can do it through the wto. If we're going to take on the Chinese, we need the support of the Europeans, we need the support of Canada, the support of Mexico. Trump's just blundering in because he thinks if I just slap tariffs on everybody, you know, they'll buckle to me. And I think that's the wrong way to go about it, and it's not going to work.

Sheila Kolhatkar (25:08)

Thanks for talking to me, John.

John Cassidy (25:09)

Thank you.

David Remnick (25:14)

That's John Cassidy speaking with Sheila Kolhatkar, and they're both staff writers at the New Yorker, and you can find all of their coverage oftrade and businessewyorker.com that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed the show and I hope you'll tune in next time. I'm David Remnick. Have a good week.

Narrator/Announcer (25:36)

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. We this episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Cal Aaliyah, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix and Steven Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment.