Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - I Love Rock 'n' Roll

Twenty-three record companies passed on Joan Jett before she and Kenny Laguna simply built their own label to put her music out. Two years later she had the biggest rock single in America. I Love Rock 'n' Roll, released in November 1981, hit number 2 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum in the US, and it remains the defining statement of one of rock's great outsiders.

The title track came from a British glam band called the Arrows, whose 1975 version Jett caught on television while she was still in the Runaways. She spent years trying to record it right, and the take that landed here spent seven straight weeks at number one in the spring of 1982 on nothing but a hand-clap stomp, a two-note guitar hook, and the most convincing sneer of the decade. Producers Ritchie Cordell and Glen Kolotkin cut the record at Kingdom Sound and Soundworks in New York, keeping everything lean and loud. A cover of Tommy James's "Crimson and Clover" gave the band a second top 10 hit, while "(I'm Gonna) Run Away," "Bits and Pieces," and "Victim of Circumstance" show a songwriter raised equally on the Ramones, Slade, and AM radio.

Four decades on, the album stands as the blueprint for every woman who ever picked up a Gibson Melody Maker and refused to apologize for it.

This 33⅓ Anniversary Edition spreads the album across two LPs, remastered and cut at Sterling Sound, with a complete New York 1981 live set filling sides three and four. Housed in a gatefold jacket. The definitive vinyl edition of a genuine rock and roll landmark.

Used copy, VG+