From the Rolling Stones to the Jonas Brothers, rock and roll has always felt like a bit of a boys club. But when a girl decides to crash the party, that’s when things get really interesting. We look at some of the finest women to have ever braved smelly tour buses, lurid hecklers and filthy backstage toilets to make history.
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No Doubt
 Without Gwen Stefani bounding across the stage, exposing her midriff and delivering squeaky-voiced bombshells about her love life, it’s unlikely the members of this Orange County ska-rock band would have become diamond-certified superstars. The guys may have complained about their supporting roles ― most famously in the video for “Don’t Speak” ― but you know they can’t wait for Gwen to put the solo career on hold and stop making babies. “We have this incredible friendship that nobody can touch,” Stefani said.
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Paramore
 Flame-haired singer Hayley Williams sets this band of Tennessee teens apart from just about every other floppy-haired emo outfit vying for your MySpace friends. She may have admitted to Rolling Stone, “I don’t think I would ever listen to our band, honestly … I don’t think I would like my voice,” but you know she’s already inspired a new generation of female rockers.
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Blondie
 Debbie Harry provided the prototype for so many female-fronted rock bands. She rose out of the grubby New York punk scene and proved that you could do glamour, femininity and soft-core hip-hop without losing your cool. She told Rolling Stone, “The things we’ve done to stay together as a group and all are pretty amazing, so I don’t see any reason why we shouldn't be one of the greatest rock groups.” And that was back in 1978.
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Garbage
 Try to imagine the three graying musicians behind Garbage’s industrial-pop clatter on MTV. It would never happen; not until they recruited Shirley Manson, the tempestuous Scottish vocalist who howled her way through hits like “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains.” She told us she was just fine playing with a group of men she hardly knew. “I think if you find the right people in life, it’s irrelevant what sex, age or race they are,” she said. “What matters is if you click with them.”
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The Pretenders
 Chrissie Hynde is not only indisputably cool, she’s been the only constant in this highly influential rock band. When we talked to her a few years ago, she said being a woman in a typically male world has only been a good thing. “I always thought it worked to my advantage,” she said. “When there’s less of a certain thing, there’s more of a novelty aspect and it makes it more attractive to the public, whatever it is. That’s why people can get a chimpanzee to play a trombone. Everybody wants to see that.”
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Yeah Yeah Yeahs
 Like a modern day Siouxsie Sioux, this Brooklyn trio’s frontwoman Karen O looks like she was beamed to earth from another, infinitely cooler planet. In ripped fishnets and smeared lipstick, she turns the band’s gigs into high-velocity affairs that landed them gigs with the White Stripes and Strokes. Taking the job required a full personal transformation. “I put myself into Karen O so I could explore all these different parts of me ― all that sexuality, all that angst,” she said to Rolling Stone. “But doing that, I exorcised some parts of myself.”
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Big Brother and the Holding Company
 Even though she didn’t get to fully unleash that big bluesy voice until setting off on her own, Janis Joplin still left her mark with this original Haight-Ashbury band, giving their ramshackle compositions the crazed wailing they deserved. “Piece of My Heart” remains their crowning moment together. “One day I started singing and I could sing,” Joplin said in a 1969 interview. “It was a surprise, to say the least.”
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