Joan Jett, a pioneering figure who helped confront rock and roll's sexism throughout the 1970s and beyond, has recalled a particularly hostile 1984 tour that left her permanently wary of certain European countries. Speaking in a 1999 interview, the singer described supporting German metal band The Scorpions in Italy and Spain, where audiences reacted with open hostility to a woman performing hard rock, subjecting her to sustained verbal and physical abuse. The episode illustrates the scale of misogyny female musicians faced on stage even as Jett was achieving mainstream success and reshaping perceptions of women in rock.

During the shows, crowds hurled obscenities and spat at Jett to the point where she was left covered from head to toe, yet she refused to leave the stage, drawing on experience of enduring violence, including being struck with batteries and suffering broken ribs, during her earlier years with The Runaways. She later summed up her defiance with the declaration that audiences would have to "fucking kill" her to remove her from the stage. Although she and The Blackhearts completed the tour, Jett made clear at the time of the 1999 interview that she had no intention of returning to what she called those "macho" countries.