With Twilight star Kristen Stewart portraying Joan Jett in an upcoming Runaways biopic, a new hits collection on the way and even a Christmas album on Jett's Blackheart label, Rolling Stone caught up with rock's original tough gal and her longtime co-writer/manager Kenny Laguna to chat about Pete Townshend, being burned by Clive Davis and recording the perfect cover.

You've got a new Gibson signature model guitar now?
Joan Jett: I sure do. It's a Gibson Joan Jett Melody Maker. It's copied from a guitar that I've used for years and years. The Melody Maker works with me well because it's light and it's easy to handle.

Kenny Laguna: It's called a California style, they only made a very few of them. The one she bought from Eric Carmen, he had played it on those Raspberries hits. Over the years she made modifications. They're very unique, it's part of what the Joan Jett sound is. This guitar is totally backordered. They're so popular we can't even get them. We're trying to get one so we can get it to Pete Townshend, we can't even get one for Pete!

Speaking of Townshend, is it true that the who put up the money to make your first album?
Jett: Oh absolutely, yeah, we would not have been able to make that record if they hadn?t helped us. They basically let us record what became Bad Reputation and [said], "Pay us when you can." Because Kenny had been friends with the Who and Bill Curbishley, who was their manager for many years. They let us come into their place and do it.

How did you wind up starting Blackheart Records to put it out?
Jett: [Laughs] Basically, when nobody wants to sign you, you don't have much of a choice. In retrospect it looks like a brilliant decision, but at the time, we wanted to get signed. We sent four songs — "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," "Crimson and Clover," "Bad Reputation" and "Do You Wanna Touch Me" — to all the labels at the time, and we still have all the rejection letters. It boiled down to printing up the records ourselves. Kenny had an infant daughter at the time, who's now running the record label, at the time he had put away some money for her college, and he took that money out to print up [the records]. We started selling these records out of the trunk of a car at the gigs, and they would sell.

Laguna: Clive Davis could have had us for nothing. We still have his letter, he said, "Joan's an interesting artist, but she would need a song search." After we had the Number One record in the world, I sent a letter to Clive saying, "If you signed Cole Porter, you'd do a song search." He never really forgave me for that, because the guy has a fragile ego.

Jett: They didn't miss one hit, they missed four.

I'm sure you haven't missed any with the new greatest-hits album that's on the way.
Laguna: We're trying to come up with at least two new songs [for the album]. But when we have to come up with a new song that compares with the huge hits that we had, that's a tall order. It?s scheduled for May or June right now. And there'll be some of the hits that we kind of left behind, like the Mary Tyler Moore song ["Love Is All Around"], we did it as a favor for Women's College Basketball, and it became the number one request in the United States for two, three weeks.