Joan Jett Keeps Gary Glitter Song at Anniversary Show
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- Joan Jett and the Blackhearts played their first UK headline show in 16 years, an anniversary tour marking 45 years of her career-defining albums Bad Reputation and I Love Rock'n'Roll
- Jett, 67 and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, fronts a slimmed-down three-piece Blackhearts and delivered a set spanning early Runaways cuts to her most recent releases
- The setlist included covers of the Replacements' Androgynous and Sly and the Family Stone's Everyday People, with the reviewer noting that I Love Rock'n'Roll and Crimson and Clover are also technically covers
- Joan Jett continued performing convicted paedophile Gary Glitter's Do You Wanna Touch Me, telling audiences she won't drop it: "Am I going to drop it… after I've had my own career with the song? No."
- The reviewer praised a "grungy, thrashing" Crimson and Clover and the "swaggering, pissed-off arena rock" of I Hate Myself for Loving You, though faulted the setlist for closing on Bad Reputation after the Glitter song rather than excising it
Why it matters: Jett's refusal to drop Glitter's song from her setlist — despite his conviction as a paedophile — highlights an unresolved tension between her four-decade claim of ownership over the track and contemporary pressure to separate art from artists convicted of serious crimes, an angle that intersects with broader ongoing legal scrutiny of Glitter himself.
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