I Love Rock N Roll
"I Love Rock 'n' Roll" is a rock song written in 1975 by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker of Arrows, who recorded the first released version. The song was later made famous by the hit version by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts in 1981. Alan Merrill has been playing the song recently live in England, Europe, Japan and most often in his home town New York City.
The song was originally recorded and released by Arrows in 1975 on RAK Records, with lead vocals by Merrill and produced by Mickie Most. In an interview with Songfacts, Merrill said he wrote it as "a knee-jerk response to The Rolling Stones' 'It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)'.". This version was first released as a B-side, but was soon re-recorded and flipped to A-side status on a subsequent pressing of the record. Although not a chart hit in its original version as a result of nonexistent promotion by the band's label, the song has come to worldwide prominence due to very successful cover versions.
Read more about I Love Rock N Roll: Joan Jett Version, Britney Spears Version, Alex Gaudino and Jason Rooney Version, Other Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words love, rock and/or roll:
“‘Tis a barbarous temper, and a sign of a very ill nature, to take delight in shocking any one: and, on the contrary, it is the mark of an amiable and a beneficent temper, to say all the kind things one can, without flattery or playing the hypocrite,—and what never fails of procuring the love and esteem of every one; which, next to doing good to a deserving object who wants it, is one of the greatest pleasures of this life.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“It was easy to recognize in him the anti-social animus of a born evangelist, but there was also something else—a kind of voluptuous delight in the shabby and preposterous, a perverted aestheticism like that of a latter-day movie or radio fan, a wild will to roll in and snuffle balderdash as a cat rolls in and snuffles catnip.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)