and her band the Blackhearts (drummer Thommy Price, guitarist Dougie Needles and bassist Hal Selzer), performed an excellent hour and a half set at the scenic on Sunday. The pleasantly rain-free evening show saw a reverent crowd spread out over the lawn who cheered and sang along to a set full of the favorites as well as some choice new tracks.
Recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the 56-year-old remains a spitfire on stage. Clad in tight black leather, slashing at her guitar, Jett still perfectly delivered her vocals in the defiant sneer of a hungry young rocker.
The band hit the ground running with three classics in a row, the raucous “Bad Reputation” followed by the iconic Runaways hit “Cherry Bomb” and Jett’s badass reworking of Gary Glitter’s “Do You Want To Touch Me?”
They followed with numbers from her latest LP “Unvarnished” before digging further into her back catalog to rock out on hits like the Bruce Springsteen-penned “Light of Day” (from the 1987 movie starring Jett and Michael J. Fox), “Fake Friends,” as well as the first song she ever wrote, the Runaways rocker “You Drive Me Wild.”
Throughout the evening, Jett continually worked to amp up the crowd, leading them though both sing alongs and offering brief backstories to her songs — for example explaining the history behind the Dave Grohl songwriting collaboration “Any Weather.”
Wrapping up the set strong with her huge hits “I Love Rock n’ Roll,” “Crimson and Clover” and “I Hate Myself For Loving You,” Jett left the crowd up and out of their lawn chairs cheering for more.
The band returned for an encore highlighted by Jett’s raucous workout of the rockabilly classic “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” and her take on Sly Stone’s classic “Everyday People” to round out an early evening that left it pretty safe to say that Joan Jett still loves rock and roll.
Setlist:
Bad Reputation
Cherry Bomb
Do You Want To Touch Me?
TMI
Soulmates to Strangers
You Drive Me Wild
Light of Day
Fragile
Love Is Pain
Hard to Grow Up
Fake Friends
Any Weather
I Love Rock n’ Roll
Crimson and Clover
I Hate Myself For Loving You
Encore:
Reality Mentality
Real Wild Child (Wild One) Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays
Everyday People
