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Sun 12 October 2025 18:30, UK

Unsourced creativity isn’t the only marker of artistic brilliance, and Joan Jett alone is proof of that. Just as much a product of her influences as the authenticity that made her one of rock’s most unique figures, she hasn’t had to prove her originality since quite early in her career.

Ideas rarely fall out of the sky, so it isn’t really fair for greatness to be contingent upon such a strict standard for innovation. Take, for instance, Oasis and the Gallagher brothers’ complete and utter obsession with The Beatles. You probably couldn’t claim that the Mancunians had directly ripped off the Fab Four, at least any more than any other rock band of the last 60 years, but they certainly dipped their grubby mitts into the well every so often.

Likewise, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts also put on their torch hats, grabbed a pickaxe and mined the archives for inspiration while conceiving their fifth studio album, Good Music. The 1986 record comprises a total of ten tracks, half of which the group leader wrote in collaboration with record producer Kenny Laguna. The highlight of this alliance, it is worth noting, was the result of the pair taking bits and pieces from songs they loved and fusing them with their own creation.

“We were trying to say good music as opposed to hack music,” Laguna told Songfacts about the title track. “The bells are from ‘Rag Doll’ by The Four Seasons — if you listen carefully, it’s the exact same part. We took a bit from ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles. We had The Rolling Stones, we had ‘Bang A Gong’ by T-Rex. It was just a little homage. We’d take just a tiny bit — not long enough to get sued — but just little bits like the rhythms or melodies. We had ‘Layla’. if you listen carefully you can hear a little bit of ‘Layla’ in the fade. We also had ‘Lean On Me’ [by Bill Withers] in it.”

Then, there’s the Beach Boys, four of whom made an appearance on the song as well. In addition to the Blackhearts delivering their own rendition of the California group’s ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ on the record, they were blessed with backing vocals from Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and Mike Love on ‘Good Music’ as well.

Laguna had summoned Wilson to the studio to play the guitar on the song’s second verse. As they were in the studio, Johnson joined them too.

“I’d been told by their agent that if you try to get all the Beach Boys, they will not be in the same room together,” he recalled. “They don’t even make their records in the studio together. So now we’ve got two of them, then their tour manager calls me in the studio and says, ‘Mike [Love] is feeling left out. He’s wondering why you didn’t invite him.’ I told him the story, that I heard if I invite all of them, nobody will come.”

He continued, “So the next thing I know, all the Beach Boys are showing up. We worked on it and Bruce Johnson goes, ‘We’re going to show you how to make a Beach Boys record.’ They were putting those beautiful ‘oohs’ on. I was managing Darlene Love, who never mentioned that she helped arrange ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love,’ she sang on ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ sang on all those great Beach Boys records during their heyday, because she was one of Phil Spector’s voices, and she would sing in Brian [Wilson]’s pool.”

At one point, Laguna even remembered Jardine accusing him and Jett of stealing the Beach Boys’ sound as the one-off supergroup fine-tuned the song. ‘Good Music’ went on to peak at #83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart when it was released as a single in 1986.

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