An Open Letter To Rolling Stone (Joan Jett is PISSED and I don't blame her!)

JoanJett.com ^ | Joan Jett

[I_Love_My_Husband]

An Open Letter to Rolling Stone

This letter was written to rolling stone after their "women in "rock" issue was published, but was not printed by their editors. Please forward it to all the rocking people you know!!!!!

I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.

By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!

Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.

Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.

Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.

Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons...Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.

Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.

Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.

What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these--instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.

In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold."

The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.

If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.

[Axenolith]

Great letter. I cannot stand Rolling Stone. One of their writers, David Wild, has something to do with bands that get into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. He was quoted once as saying that as long as he had something to say, there was no way that Rush (my all time favorite band) would ever be in the RNR Hall of Fame.

Being the same, fan wise, I'll fervently hope with you that David Wild suffers unspeakably in a tormented afterlife that involves a lot of Tiny Tim type music...

[Bella_Bru]

Ok, I am off to bed. Had a hellish week and need sleep. 15 hours should do nicely. Feel better soon!! Get yourself some nice old fashioned chicken soup. I swear, it works better than Nyquil.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Thanks!

You too!!! Night! :)

[I_Love_My_Husband]

I love that movie! They were the BEST! And you know, fat unsurgeried Courtney Love was in that movie...weird thing is, she LIVED that movie (later).

[I_Love_My_Husband]

I know, I've heard that Sid didn't kill her either. That was going to be the defense of whatsisname, the famous lawyer.

I did some research on it a long time ago and there are witnesses that say Sid did not kill her. It is hard to believe that he did.

He really loved her...and was disrought without her.

[Axenolith]

I also knew Jello Biafra. He's a complete arsehole. MEAN and a major diva, WORSE than Exene was.

A buddy of mine was working with Ian McKay a lot back in the 80's and he told me Jello was hanging out and crashing with them and beginning to wear out his welcome.
Someone took a frozen rat and suspended it over his face as he slept one night and waking with it dripping on his face pretty much conveyed the "move along" message...

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Snuff Film Proves Sid Vicious Innocent of Murder

By Krash

Punk rocker Sid Vicious’s girlfriend Nancy Spungeon was killed in a snuff video, claims actor Rockets Redglare, whose numerous movie credits include Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio, Martin Scorses’s After Hours, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law--plus a porno with Sharon Mitchell.

Gotham cultural chronicler Gene Gregorits a/k/a Gene Suicide interviewed Rockets Redglare in the actor’s East Village pied-a-terre this week--an experience notable for what he described as a “brilliantly excessive cringe factor.”

Here’s why: “I know that Sid did not kill Nancy,” stated Redglare, a habitue of yesteryear’s Chelsea Hotel punk-and-junk scene. “I was there the night she died.”

“She was killed by a drug dealer who worked at Max's Kansas City.

“Nancy's murder was videotaped --while Sid sits there on the couch, completely out of it.. practically in a coma. This was the tableau I had left them in.

“The big problem for Sid was--it took him so long to report the crime. When he did report it, he had the blood all over him and everything.

“The reason Sid didn't report the murder in the morning right away was that Nancy was dead, and he knew that he was gonna at least be detained [by police] , and he was on the methadone program. He wanted to get his methadone.”

These and other remembrances of Gotham’s downtown demimonde--including heretofore unknown factoids about the late punker Johnny Thunders--will appear in Gene Suicide’s book “Dead On Camera.”

Nice Jewish Girl says: "I have always felt in my heart that Sid did not kill jewish girl Nancy Spungen. I just couldn't imagine it. Everybody in punk rock had that relationship, including Kurt and Courtney. And I just know he didn't kill her. F. Lee Bailey was going to defend him in court, and use the "poor working class boy" defense for him. Sid loved Nancy and would have died for her and was most likely a virgin when he met her. Nancy Spungen is certain type of jewish girl, like Courtney Love, the abandoned messed up working class jewish girl. Had Nancy lived her and Sid would most certainly not be together today. But they were definitely the punk version of Romeo and Juliet and it was completely romantic at the time, to die for the person you love, because you have no hope, no dreams. To die for punk rock . They were the first international martyrs for punk. They killed themselves for love and it is a great and real love story. The movie "Sid & Nancy" is worth seeing, it is great, and everything really happened that way. They were role models for disaffected youth everywhere. Every boy punk wanted to be Sid and every girl wanted to be Nancy for years, till Kurt and Courtney, of course. Sid and Nancy, frozen in time as luckless romantic heroes to this day."

[Axenolith]

try Limewire

[Feiny]

No one mentioned Lita Ford. I used to get mistaken for her back in the 80's....her & Ozzy. Don't make me post the pictures....they are not pretty.;^)

[Feiny]

L7 Rocks. Saw them play a very small club in Hollywood many years ago.

I also second the Wendy O'Williams nomination.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Hmm...I don't think Sid killed Nancy. Look at this letter he wrote:

-The Tropic Evader Hall of Fame-

Sid Vicious Death Letter





"Nancy, you were my little baby girl
I knew all your fears
Such a joy to hold you in my arms
And kiss away your tears
But now you're gone, there's only pain
And nothing I can do
And I don't want to live this life
If I can't live for you
To my baby girl, our love will never die."




Sid Vicious' death letter, bassist of the in-
famous British punk band The Sex Pistols,
after stabbing his American girlfriend Nancy
Spungeon to death, then taking his own life
by overdose while out on bail for her murder.

[jla]

Hard to imagine a gal being "bad news" for someone named Sid Vicious!

I just hope ol' Sid never tried to do a rendition of He Stopped Lovin' Her Today

[jla]

I passed out momentarily

Gals tend to do that after a day's housekeepin' chores.

...I can say that because she can't reach me from the other side of the country.

[rockfish59]

Or:

'She's got a chicken to ride, and it's in my hair!'

[Feiny]

I also think Shirley Manson deserves a mention and the lead for Skunk Anansie (don't remember her name).

[I_Love_My_Husband]

I think that's really true.

He did stop loving her that day they put a wreath upon his door.

You know, maybe country people (then) were just hardier. I mean, Kurt's dead, Sid's dead, Nancy's dead, Tammy's dead.

The punks on the edge, unlike the country folks on the edge didn't survive.

Hmmm. I guess if you drink, you can survive (like George), but if you do DRUGS (like Tammy, Sid, Nancy, Kurt, etc, etc) you might not make it.

Me? I went to edge, but I was always alcohol/smoke/drug free :) STILL am!

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Housekeeping IS tiresome! And endless!! A gal could most definitely pass out because of it! (I know I could and do, frequently!).

If only I could make my house clean and kept clean...*sigh*!!

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Shirly and the lead for Skunk Anasie are definitely very cool :)

[Calico Cat]

Thank you for posting the Rockets Redglare piece. Let me just say that I find it, um, rather far-fetched. Although another semi-famous musician of the era (I believe he played with The Damned) said, "If Sid hadn't killed (Nancy), I would have. She was the most miserable person I ever met in my life." Maybe somebody else had had enough of her?

[Calico Cat]

To clarify: I don't think it's far-fetched that somebody else murdered Nancy--just that it was videotaped.