Somehow just came across this mesmerizing photo of Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde. There are conflicting captions on the internet, but an educated guess tells me it was taken on April 14, 1980, after Joan Jett and the Blackhearts played their first gig at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. (The Pretenders were in town for an April 12 show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium; that's drummer Martin Chambers and bassist Pete Farndon in the background.) Photographer Donna Santisi wrote about introducing the women, who seem enraptured with each other and then later compared bruises they'd received courtesy of their guitars. (Joan even let Donna photograph hers!)
Joan was regrouping after the recent disbanding of the Runaways while Chrissie had just become a bona-fide rock 'n' roll star with the Pretenders' stunning debut LP earlier that year. Joan, of course, would go on to rule the charts a year and a half later with "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" while Chrissie would lose half her band to drug overdoses. But all that was a million miles away that night in West Hollywood, when fans like me truly didn't know what they got.
And Chrissie summed it up nicely, below:
"They don't ... make 'em like they used to."
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