GATLINBURG, Tenn. — Joan Jett didn’t simply walk onto the stage at The Mountain Music Festival.

Her history arrived first.

As the curtains opened inside the Gatlinburg Convention Center Saturday night, the large video screen behind the stage came alive with images and footage tracing a career that has stretched from the Runaways to the Blackhearts and through some of rock ’n’ roll’s most recognizable songs.

It was an elaborate introduction for an artist who hardly needed one.

Then Joan Jett & the Blackhearts took over.

From the black hair and sticker-covered guitar to that unmistakable voice, Jett sounded strong, the Blackhearts were tight, and the performance carried the stripped-down swagger that has defined her music for decades.

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts took the stage Saturday, August 24, during The Mountain Music Festival at the Gatlinburg Convention Center. The appearance came during a busy summer of touring for Jett, whose live show continues to draw from a career that began before the Blackhearts even existed.

And that history is considerable.

Jett was still a teenager when she helped form the Runaways in 1975. The all-female band arrived in a rock world that wasn’t exactly accustomed to teenage girls showing up with electric guitars and every intention of being taken seriously.

What happened next became one of the more satisfying stories in rock ’n’ roll.

After the Runaways dissolved, 23 record labels rejected Jett as she attempted to establish a solo career. Instead of waiting for somebody in the music business to change their mind, Jett and longtime producer and collaborator Kenny Laguna took matters into their own hands.

They pressed records themselves and sold them directly at gigs — including from the trunk of Laguna’s Cadillac — laying the grassroots foundation for what became Blackheart Records.

The operation wasn’t glamorous.

It worked.

The career that record labels had declined to take a chance on soon became considerably harder to ignore.

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ I Love Rock ’n Roll album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, while its title track spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982.

And the catalog kept growing.

“Bad Reputation,” “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)” and Jett’s version of “Crimson and Clover” became part of a body of work that has crossed punk, hard rock and straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll without fitting particularly neatly into any one box.

That’s appropriate for an artist whose career has rarely depended on fitting into one.

Jett’s official biography credits her with eight platinum and gold albums and nine Top 40 singles, and in 2015, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The statistics tell one part of Jett’s story. Seeing her on stage in Gatlinburg told another.

The show worked because Joan Jett sounded great.

There is an economy to the way Jett performs. The songs don’t require elaborate reinvention, and she doesn’t bury them beneath unnecessary production. The guitar comes forward, the Blackhearts lock in behind her, and that unmistakably rough-edged voice does the rest.

The 2024 Blackhearts touring lineup included guitarist Dougie Needles, bassist Hal B. Selzer and drummer Michael McDermott, giving Jett a tight band behind material that ranges from the Runaways through her solo career and the Blackhearts catalog.

That history was literally playing across the screen when the night began.

By the end, it didn’t feel particularly historical.

The songs remain too immediate for that. “I Love Rock ’n Roll” still does exactly what its title promises. “Bad Reputation” still carries the defiance that helped define Jett’s public identity. And the combination of guitar, attitude and a voice that has never needed to sound polished to sound right remains unmistakably hers.

There was something particularly fitting about watching that opening presentation trace Joan Jett’s career before seeing the woman herself take the stage.

The Runaways. The Blackhearts. The hits. Decades of Joan Jett history played across the screen before the live show took over.The Runaways.

That’s a lot of history to put on a screen.

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts spent the rest of the night reminding Gatlinburg that it’s still very much alive.