Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are pulling a set of lost 1980 studio recordings out of the vault for Record Store Day Black Friday, with I Love Rock ’N Roll: The Shadow Album set to arrive November 27. A deluxe 45th-anniversary edition pairing those tapes with the landmark album follows December 11.
The Shadow Album is not a pile of rough demos. Recorded in 1980 at New York’s ODO Studios, it captures the first version of the record that would become I Love Rock ’N Roll, including the original takes of “I Love Rock ’N Roll,” “Crimson and Clover,” and “Little Drummer Boy.” The band had already been playing the material on the road for more than a year when it booked a one-hour session and cut the set live. Those tapes were presumed lost for decades. Members of the Blackheart family recently found them, and Thom Panunzio and Ken Dahlinger restored the recordings.
“We put everything we had into these songs, and these recordings capture the excitement of finding our sound as a band,” Jett said in the announcement.
The November 27 release is a standalone vinyl LP on Blackheart Records, limited to 4,500 copies and available in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom as a Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive. That pressing adds the bonus track “Black Leather (Live).”
Side A runs “Bits and Pieces,” “Victim of Circumstance,” “Crimson and Clover,” “I Love Rock ’N Roll,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “You’re Too Possessive,” and “Be Straight.” Side B continues with “Love Is Pain,” “Nag,” “I Love Playin’ with Fire,” “Wait for Me (Live),” “Star Star (Live),” and the RSD-only “Black Leather (Live).”
Two weeks later, on December 11, UMe will issue I Love Rock ’N Roll + The Shadow Album (Limited Edition 45th Anniversary) worldwide. The collection pairs a remastered version of the original album with The Shadow Album, available as a two-LP gatefold and a two-CD digipak. Artist and Obey founder Shepard Fairey created the anniversary artwork. The campaign also includes T-shirts, jewelry, and a beer collaboration with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, with more events still to be announced.
The timing fits the album’s place in the catalog. I Love Rock ’N Roll, Jett’s second studio album and her first with the Blackhearts, was originally released November 18, 1981. The title track spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album has sold more than 10 million copies. It remains the band’s most celebrated record and still draws millions of streams across generations.
For collectors, the Black Friday pressing is the first chance to hear the session that sat in the shadows while the finished album rewrote rock radio. The December set is the fuller document: the record that broke through, and the hour in a New York studio that came just before it.
