Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – Crimson and Clover

Tommy James’s own producers handed his 1969 No.1 to Joan Jett, and she sang every pronoun exactly as he wrote it.

On April 18, 2015, the night Joan Jett and the Blackhearts entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jett sang Crimson and Clover with Miley Cyrus, who had inducted her, and Tommy James, who wrote it. James had recorded it in 1968 as a man singing about a woman. Jett had been singing it since 1981 without changing that, so a woman sang a love song aimed at a woman, and it went into the Top 10. James ended up onstage beside her because of two men at her mixing desk, who had spent the late 1960s writing and playing on his records.

Keep watching: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – I Love Rock’n’Roll · explore more →

The song has two origin stories and one chorus. James wrote it with Peter Lucia Jr., the Shondells’ drummer, and said the title came to him as he woke up, joining his favorite color to his favorite flower. Lucia traced it to a high school football game between a team in crimson and a team in green. Roulette released a rough mix in November 1968, after a Chicago station played the song early. The Billboard Hot 100 put it at No.1 on February 1, 1969, and it held the top spot for two weeks.

A decade later, the people who carried that song to Jett came from the same circle. Ritchie Cordell was James’s songwriting partner. He wrote I Think We’re Alone Now and co-wrote Mony Mony. Kenny Laguna played keyboards with the Shondells for a time and is on Mony Mony himself. Both had come up through Super K Productions, the bubblegum hit operation at Buddah Records. Laguna met Jett after the Runaways broke up in 1979 and started producing her with Cordell. He also co-founded Blackheart Records with her. Laguna proposed Crimson and Clover as something she could make her own.

She sang it as written

Jett cut it on Long Island during the 1981 sessions for I Love Rock ‘n Roll, with Laguna and Cordell producing. James’s arrangement drifted. Hers stomps, with crunching power chords under a husky vocal that takes its time. She left the lyric as James wrote it, female pronoun included. That was the bold part, and the video makes the most of it. It opens on a close-up of Jett’s red lips as the first pronoun arrives, and later she gives the camera a smirk at the song’s most suggestive image. The song didn’t need a new line to read differently. It only needed a different singer.

Boardwalk Records released the album on November 18, 1981, and its title track went to No.1 on the Hot 100. Boardwalk followed it in the spring of 1982 with Crimson and Clover, backed with Oh Woe Is Me. The Hot 100 ranked it No.7 on the chart dated June 19, 1982, and Cash Box and Billboard’s rock chart both had it at No.6. Canada took it to No.4 and Australia to No.6, while Britain kept it at No.60. The album reached No.2 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum.

The choice got people talking about Jett herself, and the record turned her into a queer-forward figure for many listeners and musicians who came after her. Jett has kept her private life out of interviews. She has said she writes about who she is in her lyrics. She has also said, “I want people to focus on the music.” Neither statement settles the question, and both give the song room to mean what each listener hears.

By 2015 the song had outlived the debate. At the induction, the song’s writer, Jett, and Cyrus, who wasn’t born when Jett’s single charted, shared a microphone. James called the night a “love fest” and said it took four generations of rockers to perform the song. Nobody altered the lyric that night either. James’s own collaborators had brought the song to Jett, nobody touched the words, and the song he wrote about a girl turned out to belong as much to the woman singing it.

On April 18, 2015, the night Joan Jett and the Blackhearts entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jett sang Crimson and Clover with Miley Cyrus, who had inducted her, and Tommy James, who wrote it. James had recorded it in 1968 as a man singing about a woman. Jett had been singing it since 1981 without changing that, so a woman sang a love song aimed at a woman, and it went into the Top 10. James ended up onstage beside her because of two men at her mixing desk, who had spent the late 1960s writing and playing on his records.

Keep watching: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – I Love Rock’n’Roll · explore more →

The song has two origin stories and one chorus. James wrote it with Peter Lucia Jr., the Shondells’ drummer, and said the title came to him as he woke up, joining his favorite color to his favorite flower. Lucia traced it to a high school football game between a team in crimson and a team in green. Roulette released a rough mix in November 1968, after a Chicago station played the song early. The Billboard Hot 100 put it at No.1 on February 1, 1969, and it held the top spot for two weeks.

A decade later, the people who carried that song to Jett came from the same circle. Ritchie Cordell was James’s songwriting partner. He wrote I Think We’re Alone Now and co-wrote Mony Mony. Kenny Laguna played keyboards with the Shondells for a time and is on Mony Mony himself. Both had come up through Super K Productions, the bubblegum hit operation at Buddah Records. Laguna met Jett after the Runaways broke up in 1979 and started producing her with Cordell. He also co-founded Blackheart Records with her. Laguna proposed Crimson and Clover as something she could make her own.

She sang it as written

Jett cut it on Long Island during the 1981 sessions for I Love Rock ‘n Roll, with Laguna and Cordell producing. James’s arrangement drifted. Hers stomps, with crunching power chords under a husky vocal that takes its time. She left the lyric as James wrote it, female pronoun included. That was the bold part, and the video makes the most of it. It opens on a close-up of Jett’s red lips as the first pronoun arrives, and later she gives the camera a smirk at the song’s most suggestive image. The Blackhearts behind her are Ricky Byrd on guitar, Gary Ryan on bass and Lee Crystal on drums. The song didn’t need a new line to read differently. It only needed a different singer.

Boardwalk Records released the album on November 18, 1981, and its title track went to No.1 on the Hot 100. Boardwalk followed it in the spring of 1982 with Crimson and Clover, backed with Oh Woe Is Me. The Hot 100 ranked it No.7 on the chart dated June 19, 1982, and Cash Box and Billboard’s rock chart both had it at No.6. Canada took it to No.4 and Australia to No.6, while Britain kept it at No.60. The album reached No.2 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum.

The choice got people talking about Jett herself, and the record turned her into a queer-forward figure for many listeners and musicians who came after her. Jett has kept her private life out of interviews. She has said she writes about who she is in her lyrics. She has also said, “I want people to focus on the music.” Neither statement settles the question, and both give the song room to mean what each listener hears.

By 2015 the song had outlived the debate. At the induction, the song’s writer, Jett, and Cyrus, who wasn’t born when Jett’s single charted, shared a microphone. James called the night a “love fest” and said it took four generations of rockers to perform the song. Nobody altered the lyric that night either. James’s own collaborators had brought the song to Jett, nobody touched the words, and the song he wrote about a girl turned out to belong as much to the woman singing it.