Joan Jett on songwriting:
"I’m always writing songs, always looking for ideas. I can be sure that my best ideas come at the most inconvenient time, like while I’m in the bath or the shower or just before I fall asleep at night. If I don’t write an idea down or record it immediately, I lose it. I speak from experience.
I started writing songs when I was 15. Then it was a feeling of ‘I’ve got to write or I’m going to go crazy. I’ve got to get this out. I have to find a way to express myself.’ Even though it was just me, in my bedroom, strumming my guitar and singing a song.
At that point, my songs weren’t about world issues or what I would consider spiritual issues. They were about getting out of the house or hanging out with my friends or getting laid. Those were important things at the time. Even though my subjects are different now, I still feel the same compulsion to write that I did at age 15. I write because I have to write. There are things I’ve got to get out, and writing songs is the best way to do it.
When I’m in the throes of it and I’m feeling good about it, songwriting is fun and it’s passionate. But I always have that fear of not coming through and it hangs over my head. If I’m not connected to my muse and I sit down and say, ‘OK, I have to write a song today; it’s my job to write a song today,’ it can be a real chore.
Say I’ve got a song half-written. I could sit down and make it half-assed and finish it, but I never want to do that. I always feel a degree of pressure because I want a song to be good, and I don’t know what’s good ahead of time. I can only know if I feel OK with a song after it’s all done.
Very rarely does a great song come to me in one big rush, but I did have that experience a couple of years ago and it was incredible. Kenny Laguna and I had sat down with Linda Perry to write the song “Riddles,” which became the first track on my album Sinner. That song took a long time to write because portions of it spoke to me even though the lyrics were never quite finished. It wasn’t really about anything, but there were a couple of words that were really catchy. Kenny and I kept re-writing. At first, it was called “Stuck in the Middle,” then it turned into “Life is a Riddle.” We were getting down to the deadline to finish the album, and I had to get into the studio to sing but I still wasn’t satisfied with that one song.
During that time politics were heating up. I had been a Howard Dean delegate in 2004, and I was still coming down from that whole experience. While I was in the studio I was thinking about all of this and the lyrics to this song started changing. All of a sudden the song turns into a whole commentary about what’s going on in our country. The way the government speaks to us in confusing terms. How the words they say aren’t really what they mean. That sort of sentiment. It all happened right there in the studio.
I’d sing a line and then I’d come back in to listen to it and we’d change something. Kenny and I were sitting right there in the control room, scribbling it down and trying to phrase it and back and forth. It was just coming and it was changing and it was real. The vision for the song changed right in front of me.
Songs can come to me in a variety of ways, but that was a great experience to have ― for a song to come as I’m singing, that late in the process. That was a whole new one for me. It was like being tapped in. Like a spider web coming up toward the sky."
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