Real Runaway Joan Jett is still rockin’ like it’s 1975

It may not seem like a convention-bucking stance these days, but in 1975 rock terms, it was downright revolutionary. What’s more, Jett’s refusal to use her sexuality to realize her dreams (or even to discuss her sexuality at all, for that matter) inspired countless acts such as Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill and the other bands that populated the Riot Grrrl movement of the ’90s.

“I always kept it about the music,” Jett explains. “As a kid, in the Runaways, I would see the interviewers start to ask about our personal lives and what we did — and I could see the look in their eyes. They were practically frothing at the mouth. So if I answered these questions, I knew they were never gonna talk about the music. It was like that instinct — don’t go there, man. Have boundaries. Have mystery. You don’t have to let everybody in! I want to be singing to everybody, and I want everybody to think that I’m singing to them. Guys, girls and everyone in between.”

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At an impressionable 18 (inset at LA’s Starwood Club in 1976), Jett couldn’t have possibly predicted the staying power she’d have more than 30 years later. “I’ve been lucky that people still want to come to our shows,” she says.

Naturally, it was important to Jett that the band’s story be told the right way. “When I met [Stewart] and she had that long, long hair, I said, ‘Are you gonna cut your hair for this?’” she recalls. “And she was like, ‘Yeah, you BET!’ She really committed herself to it. If it was some actress who couldn’t give two sh---s about the movie, I wouldn’t have been supportive at that point.”

Not every executive producer is so hands-on. “Yeah, I don’t tend to do things half-way,” laughs Jett. And that’s not just with regard to this project: A lifelong sports fanatic and self-described “roughhouser,” Joan attended fantasy training camp with the Baltimore Orioles in the early ’90s, a fact that may surprise her fans. “I played like 150 percent,” she exclaims, with a refreshing dose of fangirl awe. “I learned how to throw a screwball from Mike Playard, the famous screwball pitcher for the Orioles. I mean, I was iced up every night — my leg, both shoulders. And I think I ripped my rotator cuff. It was awesome.”

She’s also an admitted television junkie. A love of cop shows like “Burn Notice” and “CSI” led to a guest gig on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” in 2008: “I really enjoyed it. I got to be dead! I even tried to keep my autopsy scars, the staples or whatever they’re called? It was so great.”

Recent years have found Jett expanding her reach in other realms as well, hosting a four-hour show on Steven Van Zandt’s Underground Garage Sirius radio show called “Joan Jett’s Radio Revolution,” and a weekly showcase of video shorts for Maryland Public Television for three years each — all the while busily signing emerging bands such as the Dollyrots and Girl in a Coma to her label Blackheart Records along with continuing the nonstop touring that she relies on to “stay connected.”

And despite recently crossing the 50-year mark, she’s showing no signs of slowing down — though she refuses to conjecture about what the coming years might bring.

“You know, I try not to project down the line too much,” she admits. “I don’t like to say where I’ll be in 10 years. I don’t think I ever did that as a kid, like — ‘Wow, am I going to be doing this forever? Is this what I want to do for life?’ I don’t think I ever had those thoughts. I just put one foot in front of the other.”

What was it that her younger self said about not caring about one’s reputation? Sounds about right.