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- I've managed to find a marvelous song called
"Society's Child", written, astonishingly enough,
by a 15-year-old girl named Janis Ian.
This tune is very well known
among the followers of pop music,
but you may not have heard it, since it's been withheld
by most of the radio stations, for reasons unknown to me,
although probably having to do with its subject matter,
which is, as you'll see, somewhat controversial.
Listen hard to "Society's Child".
(Harpsichord intro to "Society's Child" plays)
♪ Come to my door, baby ♪
♪ Face is clean and shining black as night ♪
♪ My mother went to answer ♪
♪ You know that you looked so fine ♪
♪ Now I could understand your tears and your shame ♪
♪ She called you boy, instead of your name ♪
♪ When she wouldn't let you inside ♪
♪ When she turned and said, but honey, he's not our kind ♪
(gentle piano music)
- [Crew Member] This is Janis piano, take one.
(tablet bleeps)
- [Camera Operator] Got it.
(piano music continues)
(Janis breathes deeply)
- [Janis] When I started out, I wanted to be a Beatle.
I wanted to be really famous.
I wanted to be the person that couldn't walk down the street
'cause everybody would stop me and ask for my autograph.
- [Interviewer] What do you consider yourself, Janis?
- [Janis] Just a singer.
- Singer? - Yeah.
- [Interviewer] Of any particular notoriety?
- [Janis] (chuckles) Infamously, yes.
I mean, it's an unreal thing
to have a hit record in the first place.
And it's even more unreal to have a hit record
where everybody runs around saying you're the new Bob Dylan,
the new Messiah, yada yada.
- [Leonard Bernstein] I congratulate you on what I'm sure
is going to be a brilliant career.
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much for coming to see us.
- [Janis] Forget about glory, because that fades.
(applause)
- [Janis] Being an artist, it's about service.
It's about feeling like you are part
of something bigger than yourself.
Music is about telling stories.
This is mine.
(Janis chuckles)
(chickens cluck)
- [Janis] I grew up in New Jersey in Farmingdale.
My dad and my mom ran a chicken farm.
It was pretty isolated.
The nearest neighbor was over a mile away.
But there was always music in our house.
(Piano playing: Debussy's "Clair De Lune")
- [Janis] I think like many Jewish immigrant homes,
that was a way of connecting.
My father played the piano, and one day,
when I was about two and a half,
I realized that he was making those sounds.
So, I went to him and I said,
"I need to learn how to do that."
And he laughed and said, Well, I'd have to be able
to tell time and know the alphabet.
So, I went into the kitchen and said to my mother,
"I need to tell time and know the alphabet,
and I need it as quickly as possible."
The next day, I marched back to my father and said,
"I can tell time, I know the alphabet. Teach me."
And he started to teach me and (laughs)
I think from the first, we argued.
(upbeat piano duet: "Heart And Soul")
- [Janis] My father ran an integrated
chicken vaccination crew,
which you would not think was a big deal,
but it was a big deal.
He also was active in the civil rights movement,
and one day, my father went to a meeting of egg farmers
about the price of eggs
and he was picked up by the FBI on his way home.
(engine revs) (siren wails)
- [Celia] That was the era of McCarthyism.
They were accusing people of always being communists.
McCarthy tried to make himself a hero
by taking other people down,
and Janis's father got sort of caught up in that mess.
- [Janis] Several times, the FBI showed up at our door
and demanded entry, and my father asked for a warrant.
They said they had none, and he slammed the door on them.
My dad later became a music teacher,
but he could never get tenure because the FBI would show up
wherever we went and then inform the principal
that he had consorted with known communists.
- [Arlo Guthrie] When Janis and I were starting out,
the world was different.
I remember a time when, in the fourth grade,
the teacher said, "Now, class,
when you see the mushroom cloud,
be sure to get under the desk immediately."
- [Announcer] First, you duck, and then you cover,
and very tightly, you cover the back of your neck.
- [Guthrie] They had brought us to the brink,
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, of nuclear catastrophe.
The world that they had created
didn't make any sense anymore.
And the thought was, "Okay, we tried it their way.
It didn't work. There must be something else to try."
(Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are a-Changin'")
♪ If your time to you is worth saving ♪
♪ Then you'd better start swimming ♪
♪ Or you'll sink like a stone ♪
♪ For the times, they are a-changing ♪
- [Guthrie] During the '60s, all
the new artists who were arriving
hoped that in some way they could establish an economy
and a culture and a country and a justice system
that was more equitable, more fair.
And Janis and I and others came up, at that time, as kids.
(audience cheers and applauds)
(radio interference)
- [Radio Host] It gives me a lot more than the-
- [Janis] In those days, when you only had
half a dozen radio channels,
there was one folk radio show in Newark, New Jersey,
once a week, for an hour.
I would crawl under the covers and hide and listen to it,
and that's how I heard Phil Ochs,
Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie,
all of these people that I later became friends with.
(water splashes)
(Odetta sings on radio) ♪ Tall as a mountain ♪
- [Janis] I was in the shower and I heard this voice.
I had grown up on jazz and classical music and folk music,
but I'd never heard a voice like this.
I went racing out of the shower
with a towel draped around me, yelling,
"Who is that, who is that, who is that?"
And my mother was watching Harry Belafonte's show
and Odetta was singing.
And that changed my life.
In the same year I discovered Odetta,
I picked up my dad's guitar and decided I wanted to play.
I was in camp, Camp Woodland, at the time.
(Pete Seeger) ♪ What did you see, my darlin' young one ♪
- [Janis] (chuckles) My friend, Janey, calls them
"The Commie Pinko Red Diaper Baby Camps",
but they weren't, really, they were more peace and love,
Woodstock camps.
- [Janey Street] I met Janis when we were like 12 years old,
at summer camp.
It was very progressive, you know, it's integrated,
and you learn folk songs.
I had a blues band (chuckles) and Janis was writing songs.
And we were the only two girls that we knew,
this was in the '60s,
the only two girls that we knew that played guitar and sang.
- [Janis] I stole my dad's Leadbelly songbook,
I learned the chords from that.
Then I started imitating Odetta, which was terrible.
And then I started imitating Joan Baez,
which was even worse.
And then eventually, I started trying to become myself.
- [Street] She was already writing stuff
like "Hair of Spun Gold."
I remember that was one real early one.
- [Janis] ♪ When I was just the age of five ♪
♪ My world had just come alive ♪
- [Janis] I was listening to a fair amount
of old English ballads,
because that's what I was learning at camp
and I found this way to play an A minor chord,
way high up on the neck of the guitar,
and the song just started to come.
♪ With hair of spun gold ♪
♪ Lips of ruby red ♪
♪ And eyes as deep as the deepest sea ♪
- [Janis] I wrote out the lead sheet,
with the vocal line and the chords
and I sent it into Broadside Magazine,
and then Broadside Magazine decided to publish it,
not knowing how old I was.
It was a very big deal to be in Broadside.
They were the first ones to publish Dylan,
first ones to publish Phil Ochs,
first ones, for what it's worth, to publish me.
(phone rings)
They called the house, and they talked to my father.
They said, "Well, we would like her to come
and perform at the Village Gate at a hootenanny."
And my father sputtered, from what I understand,
and he said, "Do you know that she's only 13?"
And Sis Cunningham from Broadside said, "Well, that's okay.
Then can you drive her?"
(car door slams)
- [Tom Paxton] We had a hootenanny once a month
on a Sunday afternoon at the Village Gate.
The Village Gate was the biggest venue in the village.
- [Janis] I got there and saw all these people
that I'd only heard on the radio or seen on album jackets.
People like Phil Ochs, Eric Anderson, Tom Paxton.
This was my first chance to sing
in front of the paying audience.
- [Paxton] We didn't know who she was.
She was this little kid from New Jersey
and her guitar was as big as she was.
(audience cheers and applauds)
(gentle acoustic guitar music)
- [Janis] Hey, come on. I'm getting hung up on this chord.
(waitress laughs)
- [Paxton] She got up and she sang a song
that was so full of sass
that Len and I were banging on the chair saying,
"Great, great."
- [Janis] I sang my song and then I turned around
and went back to my seat 'cause I was very worried about
using up too much time, I had been warned about that.
People kept applauding and Paxton said,
"Get back up there, kid! Go on, you idiot!"
- [Paxton] In the hootenannies, you didn't do an encore.
But we made her get up and go sing another song,
'cause we loved her.
She was one of us.
Still is.
- [Janis] After the show, my mom went to my grandparents
and asked them to loan my parents the money to buy me
my first own guitar 'cause I'd always played my dad's.
And I got that for my 13th birthday.
And that was just huge.
I mean, I suddenly had a way out.
I wanted into the big city.
I wanted to go to New York and make my fortune.
So, when we moved to New York,
I took it for all it was worth.
(Janis Ian, "Month of May")
♪ Lazy with the sun ♪
♪ Crazy with love ♪
We moved when I was 14 and I remember the first night
I walked up to Broadway, a block away,
and I sat on an orange crate and I felt this rumbling
under my feet and I realized the trains ran all night long.
Janey and I would take the subway,
we'd go down to the village on the weekends.
You could go from seeing B.B. King at the Au Go-Go,
to Bob Dylan hanging out at the Kettle of Fish,
to the Gaslight and Reverend Gary Davis.
You could do all of that in one night.
And if you were an artist, you got to get in free.
So, you got an education in all of these different genres.
- [Guthrie] There was a short period of time
where it seemed as though we were all influencing
and playing off of each other and learning from each other
and sharing with each other and having fun
and goofing off and getting in trouble together.
It was a wonderful time.
(acoustic guitar)
(Gary Davis, "12 Gates to the City")
♪ Oh, what a beautiful city ♪
- [Anthony DeCurtis] In Greenwich Village,
there was a very active club scene.
This kind of folk revival, I suppose,
is what people were calling it.
Janis was a part of that world.
♪ 12 gates to the city ♪
- [Janis] I got to open for the Reverend Gary Davis.
Gary's wife, Miss Annie, she liked me a lot,
so she told Gary he ought to teach me.
Gary took me under his wing, and he took me to the Gaslight
and he wanted me to open for him.
You can imagine this audience of people
coming to hear an old blind black blues singer
and here's this 13-and-a-half,
or 14-year-old white girl from New Jersey.
(laughs) They must've been appalled.
(Janis Ian, "Lonely One"]
♪ You make me feel I'm the only one ♪
♪ To know that you're not real ♪
♪ Lonely one ♪
♪ Turned down thumbs on the world ♪
(audience cheers and applauds)
- [Joan Baez] To be acknowledged by Broadside
and then go to the Gaslight, I mean, it's sort of
what one did on the road to being discovered
and appreciated.
- [Janis] After my show, this guy came running backstage,
Jacob Solomon, and he started yelling,
"Kid, I'm gonna make you a star!"
And I said, "You and what army?"
And he said, "No, no, no, no, no."
And he pulled out a business card and he said,
"Meet me tomorrow at this address",
which turned out to be Shadow's office in Columbus Circle.
- [DeCurtis] Shadow Morton was not necessarily
the likeliest producer for folk songs.
Shadow Morton produced the Shangri-Las.
♪ They say he came from the wrong side of town ♪
♪ What you mean when you say that he came ♪
♪ From the wrong side of town ♪
- [DeCurtis] He was into drama.
- [Artie Butler] Shadow was a good name for him.
He used to wear a cloak.
If he just stood next to the coat rack,
we didn't know he was in the office.
- [Brooks Arthur] He would disappear.
- [Artie] He would just disappear. He'd become vapor.
- [Janis] He had his cowboy boots on the table
and he had the New York Times propped up in front of him,
and he was smoking a cigarette with his fedora.
So, I started to sing, and he kept the newspaper up.
(Janis Ian, "Month of May.")
♪ sometimes get lonely ♪
♪ when you turn out the light ♪
- [Janis] And I thought, "That's incredibly rude.
Here I am, pouring my heart out,
trying very hard to be good, and here's this guy reading." ♪ In the month of May." ♪
So, at the end of the second or third song,
I put my guitar away and closed up the case
and then I pulled out my cigarette lighter
and I set fire to his newspaper,
then I went to the elevator.
Shadow had managed to put out the fire
and stuck his boot in the elevator and said,
"Wait, wait, wait!"
I don't think he'd realized how young I was.
He apologized and he asked me to come back and sing,
and I said, "Why should I?"
And he was just really adorable about it.
So, I went back and I sang.
I probably sang him the six songs,
or 12 songs I had written to date.
He said, "That one," when he heard "Society's Child".
And I said, "Okay, what?"
And he said, "We'll go into the studio."
I said, "Okay."
He asked if I needed anything for this session in the studio
and I thought really fast that I would never get a chance
to play a harpsichord or a 12-string, so I asked for both.
And he asked why I needed the harpsichord,
and I said, "For the introduction."
And he said, "Okay."
And then I had to go home and write the introduction.
- [Herb Jordan] "Society's Child" is a great song.
You have this young girl,
with a guitar,
taking on the beast, interracial relationships.
(bus engine hums)
- [Janis] I was sitting on a bus
in East Orange, New Jersey.
I was 14 and I was one of, I think, four, maybe five
Caucasian kids in an all-Black school and neighborhood.
A very middle class, very upwardly mobile neighborhood.
But still, I was definitely the outsider.
I was on the bus, watching a young couple.
He was black and she was white and they were young
and they were holding hands and they were just oblivious
to the way people were glaring at them.
Not just white people. I mean, everyone was glaring at them.
And I started thinking about how hard that was going to be
and wondering whether their parents even knew
that they were dating, and if their parents didn't know,
whether anybody on the bus was going to tell on them.
I wondered whether the girl
would be able to take the pressure.
And in the end, I thought she probably wouldn't.
(moody harpsichord music)
- [Artie] I mean, that first session when she walked in,
and I'm looking at this little girl.
I mean, honestly, I can say little...
She was the size of a hood ornament on a Chevy.
(Brooks laughs)
I mean, she was a tiny little girl.
To think "Society's Child"
came out of a young girl like that.
- [Brooks] 14, 15 years old.
- [Artie] Wow.
She'd never been to
a recording studio before.
And she brought me a piece of paper,
eight and a half by eleven,
with her lyrics, with the chord changes,
written right above them.
And she thought that was sufficient to pass out to the band.
- [Janis] I didn't know how to talk to musicians,
'cause I only knew how to talk to folk players,
and that was a whole other world.
I just thought that everybody was going to learn it,
like we did in camp.
And then we started playing and it was just horrible
and my stomach was starting to hurt,
and I didn't know what to do.
And Shadow, who had left me alone in the studio
with these musicians, came in and asked what was wrong,
and I told him that it sounded horrible.
And God bless him, George Duvivier came over,
and he called the band together and he said,
"Gentlemen, just listen to the song once.
Listen to the words."
♪ Walk me down to school, baby ♪
♪ Everybody's acting deaf and blind ♪
♪ Until they turn and say ♪
♪ Why don't you stick to your own kind ♪
♪ My teachers all laugh, their smirking stares ♪
♪ Cutting deep down in our affairs ♪
♪ Preachers of equality think they believe it ♪
♪ Why won't they just let us be ♪
- [Artie] When she sang the song for us,
we had to recuperate for a few minutes.
Out of her fingers, out of her mouth.
She was connected.
She was a poet.
She was an actor when she sang too,
because she got inside the lyric and you felt the pain.
♪ One of these days I'm gonna raise ♪
♪ My glistening wings and fly ♪
- [Brooks] Being in the control room when that moment was
happening, man,
I felt like it was a privilege to be behind the board
handling all the sounds and all the instruments, you know?
- [Artie] We learned a lot from this little girl.
- [Janis] They listened and then they talked to each other,
and they worked out an arrangement,
and Artie Butler ran back and forth from the harpsichord
to the organ, playing my intro.
- [Artie] I sat on one of those chairs with three wheels,
you know, like a secretary sits on?
- [Brooks] Yeah, yeah.
- [Artie] And we greased the wheels so they didn't squeak.
I should've gotten paid mileage. I would've made more money.
(lively organ music)
- [Janis] Artie played that amazing rip
at the end on the organ,
as a kind of counterpunch to the lyric,
and it was perfect the first take.
- [Artie] She made a record that is true art.
It's foresight.
It's foresight about what the world should be like.
- [Janis] After this session in the studio,
Shadow took me outside and he said,
"You don't have to do this, but if you change this one line,
'Shining black as night' to any other line,
you can change it to whatever you want,
'Shining like the moon', 'Shining like a fight',
whatever you want, just not 'Black'.
If you change that line,
I will guarantee you a number one record."
Folk music has a tradition of standing up.
You stand up and you make your beliefs known
and that's how I was raised
and that's the people I was raised among.
Those were the people I admired.
So, I said, "No."
- [Joan Baez] For me and for Janis, you took the things
that you really believed in and cared about
and you stuck to that and you wrote the songs,
you sang the songs around that.
She wasn't gonna change words for somebody else.
- [Janis] I got to make a record.
I got to hold my head up in front of people like Odetta
and Dave Van Ronk that I admired so enormously,
and I was going to get to make an album.
That was the big deal.
- [Jordan] She took on forces that she probably
didn't even understand.
And that's one of the great things about being young.
Maybe it's only a child who could sing a song like this.
Only a child is fearless enough
to take on something so dark.
The right to love who you choose, to me,
is like the most fundamental right there is.
(gentle piano music)
- [Janis] More than half my first album budget
went on "Society's Child".
The goal was to get on the radio and have a hit,
but when Shadow brought the finished record
to Atlantic Records, who had paid for it,
they said they couldn't release it,
and gave Shadow the master and said, "Good luck."
- [Greg Caz] It was in the middle
of the civil rights movement,
just literally a handful of years
removed from separate water fountains and Jim Crow.
And that's where "Society's Child" came in.
I don't think that she intended to become
like a symbol of social change.
She was writing about what she knew.
- [George Wallace] And I say segregation now, segregation
tomorrow and segregation forever!
(audience cheers)
- [Muhammad Ali] No intelligent white person
watching this show,
or no intelligent white man, in his or her right white mind,
want black boys and black girls marrying their white sons
and daughters, and in return introducing their grandchildren
as half-brown, kinky-haired black people.
- [Janis] Shadow brought "Society's Child" to 22
of the labels that were in New York then,
and every single one of them turned it down.
It was just too dangerous.
- [Herb Jordan] It could cost you your life to express love
to the wrong person.
You know, the song was an act of courage.
- [Janis] Finally, Verve Forecast
released "Society's Child", and it got great reviews
from places like the Gavin Report,
but Gavin closed his very stellar review with,
"Too bad it'll never see the light of day."
- [Artie] The record company was afraid of it,
the radio stations were afraid of playing it.
All the odds were stacked against her with this song.
- [Janis] Robert Shelton from the New York Times
had heard the record and he had called David Oppenheim,
who was Bernstein's close friend,
and David took it to Bernstein and said,
"Let's have her on the show we're doing about pop music."
And Bernstein said, "Let's do better.
Let's give her a whole segment."
(lively organ music)
- [Leonard Bernstein] It kills me.
That sassy retort of the organ at the end,
that voice, those words, and that key change.
♪ But for now that is the way they must remain ♪
♪ I say I can't see you anymore ♪
- [Janey Street] I don't know if you know
what the Leonard Bernstein show was,
but he's the guy that wrote all the music
in "West Side Story", and he's a brilliant man,
and it was like being on the Ed Sullivan Show.
- [Bernstein] Oh, Janis, how did you ever write such a thing
at the age of 15?
You're a great creature.
- Thank you.
- [Lily Tomlin] That was an embrace of God.
And that just catapulted "Society's Child".
- [Street] It just took off, and then she took off.
- [Studs Terkel] "I can't see you anymore, baby.
I won't see you anymore, baby."
Today, the singer, the composer, Janis Ian, is our guest.
The song is "Society's Child".
This is perhaps one of the most censored,
I think, of all records.
- [Janis] Well, it's a dirty song.
- [Studs] Why was it considered a dirty song?
- [Janis] 'Cause it talks about Blacks and Whites,
and people don't like hearing that, because it scares them.
- [Officer] This march will not continue.
(protestors scream)
- [Herb Jordan] What she sang about in 1966 and 1967
still exists.
People measure their words.
People are very careful about what they say,
but it still exists.
- [Tomlin] It was a very strong, emphatic
social commentary.
(gun fires)
- [Studs Terkel] We live in a kind of world where
when you want to shout and you want to talk about it,
we'll say, "Shh, now cut it out, you're dangerous."
You're not really a threat.
Somewhere they were saying,
"you're attacking the older generation."
- [Janis] I'm not attacking anybody, except hypocrites.
- [Joan Baez] It would bother the progressives,
'cause it wasn't progressive enough for them,
and it would bother the racists to talk about,
you know, integration, basically.
Well, I would say congratulations.
If you get both sides nipping at your heels,
you know you're doing something right.
- [Brooks] Some of the club owners wouldn't even
let her get onstage,
for fear of what might happen.
- [Artie] I did not know that. How sad.
- [Janis] "Society's Child" was the first song
to come along to incite national anger.
I was suddenly dealing with things like,
do I go onstage when I know that someone has sent in
a bomb threat to the theater?
- [Greg Caz] Anybody who wrote that song at that time
was always gonna run into some problems.
♪ Don't let it bother you ♪
- [Janis] By the time I hit Encino,
it was probably my fourth or fifth time on a concert stage,
and I sang my first four or five songs.
(audience applauds)
♪ Come to my door, baby ♪
♪ Face is clean and shining black as night ♪
♪ My mother went to answer ♪
♪ You know that you looked so fine ♪
When I started "Society's Child",
these people started yelling.
And I thought that they were yelling something nice,
'cause onstage, you can't really hear
what people are yelling very clearly.
But I realized that they were all yelling
"Nigger lover" at me.
I didn't know if it was 10 or 20 people,
or if it was the majority of the audience.
It became this horrible, almost prayer-like chant.
"Nigger lover, nigger lover. Beat, beat, beat, mm.
Nigger lover, nigger lover. Beat, beat, beat, mm."
Nobody in the audience knew what to do.
I tried to keep singing and I tried to keep my wits about me
but they got louder and louder.
(audience jeers) (heartbeat thumps)
And I knew that I was gonna start to cry, and I,
I didn't want them to see me cry.
So, I put down my guitar on the stage,
and I walked off stage and I went to the restroom.
(footsteps running)
And I started to cry.
I just didn't know what I was supposed to do.
(Janis sobs)
The promoter came in. (Janis chuckles)
And he had been in the box office.
He had no idea what had happened.
So, he asked me what I was doing offstage.
And I said, "Well, they were calling me a name."
I couldn't even say the words.
I had been so raised not to use that word.
And he asked me what they were calling me and I told him
and he looked at me and he said,
"Well, you don't leave the stage
because somebody called you a name."
People were getting shot. People were getting knifed.
People were disappearing.
Freedom Riders were getting killed
It was civil war and I didn't want to die.
I really did not want to die.
We argued for quite a while and it felt like years.
And he finally said something like,
"I can't believe the girl who wrote that song is a coward."
And I thought about that for a really long time because
I had been raised to be a Maccabee.
My family came from Russia so that I could have a chance.
My grandfather was arrested on his way across Russia
and locked up and beaten so badly
that his left hand was forever maimed.
My grandmother had hidden in a hayloft
and watched part of her family slaughtered in a pogrom.
My parents had both fought and fought and fought
so that I could have a stable life and get to go to school.
And my friends were getting clubbed and hosed.
And who was I to leave the stage?
So, I went back on stage and I picked up my guitar,
and I started to sing again and I thought "Okay, here I am."
♪ Come to my door, baby ♪
And I made it my business to get through the song,
get through the show, and as I kept singing the song,
they kept yelling and fist-pumping,
and they were standing by now.
And then all of these ushers came like a swarm of bees
from the back and they shone their flashlights
into these people's faces so that the whole audience
could see who they were.
And then the theater manager came and he threw them out.
The whole clack of 'em.
♪ But honey he's not our kind ♪ (audience applauds)
And in between realizing that these 20-odd people
had actually bought tickets
with the express purpose of booing me off the stage,
there was also this sense that what I was doing was right
and that's why it scared them.
And these other people, people my age who were ushers,
the theater manager and his group,
they were supporting me,
and most of the audience was supporting me.
♪ I'm going to raise my glistening wings and fly ♪
♪ But that day will have to wait for a while ♪
♪ Baby, I'm only society's child ♪
It was a life-changing moment for me because
I realized, for the first time,
that the song didn't just have the power
to make people angry, but it had the power to make people
stand up and stand up for what they believed,
and that was a huge deal that music could do that.
I think that was a large part of what set me on my course.
♪ Don't wanna see you anymore, baby ♪
- [Arlo Guthrie] I'd obviously heard the name
Janis Ian before we met.
The first time we actually looked at each other eye to eye
was probably at the Grammys, which was '67 or '68, '69,
something like that.
She had bought this gown in the village in New York
at that time, just for this occasion.
Janis Joplin had helped her pick it out.
I thought that was pretty cool.
(spacey electric guitar music)
- [Janis] I got to work with Joplin
at the Berklee Folk Festival.
Then I would play guitar after hours with Jimi Hendrix.
They didn't care that I was 16.
They were protective because of my age,
but otherwise, it didn't matter.
What mattered was the songs I was writing.
[Janis Sings "Queen Merka And Me"]
♪ Oh, the pretty little girl, on Easter's day ♪
♪ By a bright center fountain consented to play ♪
♪ Held an Easter star ♪
I went on the Society's Child Tour with Merka,
my friend from camp, who was five years older than me,
and whose family had known mine since before I was born,
as a chaperone.
I had to have a chaperone because of the
childhood labor laws.
So, it was just me and Merka,
and it was great because she was like a big sister.
- [Announcer] It's the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
- [Dick Smothers] We're going to present
an extremely talented
and very amazing young lady named Janis Ian.
- [Janis] I was a big fan of the Smothers Brothers.
It was a huge deal to me to go on that.
But when you're shooting a TV show,
especially in those days, there's a lot of waiting around.
You might get there at eight o'clock,
and not be called until two o'clock in the afternoon.
And then you might be called for 10 minutes,
they show you your marks and then you go away
until showtime at 10.
Merka was there with me and there was only one chair.
So, I fell asleep sitting on her lap.
And apparently, Bill Cosby saw us,
and decided that we were lesbian lovers.
- [Lily Tomlin] Bill Cosby spoke out against her.
He said she was probably a lesbian.
He said that to the press.
- [Janis] My manager then, Jean Harcourt Powell,
read me the riot act.
She said that I had almost gotten myself
bounced from television forever.
My contract had morals clauses in it.
I could've lost my ability to perform anywhere.
I could've lost my union membership.
So, I was forbidden from ever hugging Merka in public,
or sitting in her lap,
or doing anything that might be misconstrued.
- [Interviewer] How do you react to the music business?
- [Janis] If you want to be a star,
then you have to do what's necessary to become a star.
- [Interviewer] What's that?
- [Janis] You have to sacrifice a certain part of yourself
for a time and you have to set a balance between
what you say and do and what you really want to say and do.
I haven't resolved it yet at all.
- [Janey Street] Child prodigies in general,
and she was one,
have complications.
15 years old, I think she had $750,000 in the bank.
It's just weird.
(school bell rings)
- [Janis] Can I just say without going into detail
that I hated school?
My teachers gave me a very hard time.
- [Interviewer] What's happened with school with you now?
Are you still in school?
- [Janis] My presence in class was found to be disturbing,
and I was asked to leave.
- [Interviewer] How disturbing? I mean, emotionally?
- [Janis] No, not me. I mean it wasn't disturbing me.
- [Interviewer] It was disturbing-
- [Janis] It was disturbing the teachers.
They get they get very disturbed teachers in New York.
(audience laughs)
♪ Stop hey, what's that sound ♪
♪ Everybody look what's goin' down ♪
- [Peter Cunningham] In the fall of 1967, the Vietnam War
was going strong.
There was a march on Washington to go to.
My friend John Howell and Merka,
they were driving down to the march on Washington.
So, I went with them, and on the way,
they wanted to stop by and say hello to Janis in New York.
(lock clicks)
I happened to have a pumpkin, so I presented a pumpkin.
- [Janis] He held a pumpkin out, and I thought
he was the most adorable thing I had ever seen.
We were lovers for five years, and friends since.
- [Peter] We toured the country in small clubs.
Then we came back to New York,
and we got an apartment on 72nd Street.
We learned to cook spaghetti with sauce,
and the Beatles' White Album came out that fall,
so we listened intently to that.
Janis and I never talked about "Society's Child".
Never.
And she also never sang the song onstage,
when I was with her.
- [Janis] I got really tired of seeing posters that said,
"Little Janis Ian, Society's Child, live tonight."
- [Peter] It wasn't the best move
to never sing your hit song.
- [Janis] The record company wanted to follow up
"Society's Child" with something equally important,
and I was barely a writer.
So, it was just one thing after another,
in this perfect storm of horrible things.
- [Radio Host] Back last May, Henrietta Yurchenko and I
brought you an interview with a virtually unknown young lady
by the name of Janis Fink.
She is widely known for her singing
and her songs as Janis Ian,
and tomorrow night, Friday, December 8th,
Janis will be making her debut at Philharmonic Hall
in a solo concert that I guess will be virtually sold out.
(acoustic guitar strums) (audience applauds)
- [Janis] When I was 17, I played Philharmonic Hall,
and as I walked off stage I said to my then manager,
"I'm done. I'm leaving.
I'm finishing my contracts, I'm leaving."
And she said, "They all say that."
I remember that's what she said, and I said,
"They may all say that, but I'm doing it."
- [Peter] That was '67 and then '68 happened
and change was happening all over the world.
We were going to see a B.B. King and Janis Joplin.
It was at Generation Club where Jimi Hendrix had his studio.
- [Janis] Somebody came out on stage, interrupted the show,
and said something to B.B. and he announced to the room
that Martin Luther King had been shot and was dead.
And then he played, 'cause what else do you do?
(mellow blues music)
- (BB King, "There Must Be A Better World Somewhere")
♪ Sometimes I wonder ♪
♪ Just what I'm out fighting for ♪
- [News Anchor] The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,
39 years old,
and a Nobel Peace Prize winner,
and the leader of the non-violent civil rights movement
in the United States, was assassinated in Memphis tonight.
♪ I keep right on stumbling ♪
♪ In this no-man's land out here ♪
- [Peter] Our hearts got ripped out a lot, at that time.
- [Janis] We listened and played until dawn.
Everybody was so shook.
And then I decided that I would walk home.
And on my way home, a big beefy guy bumped into me
and knocked me flat.
This other guy rushed forward and he said,
"Hey, you okay? You okay, you okay?"
And I said, "I'm all right." And he gave me a Coca-Cola.
I guzzled about a third of it and things got really weird.
(Janis Ian, "Insanity Comes Quietly to the Structured Mind")
♪ She sits on a windowsill, looking down it's quite a thrill ♪
The world started to shimmer.
It was like everything had light at the edges.
There were flames, cars were melting,
and then the street got wavy.
It was your proverbial bad acid trip.
Now, in retrospect, I know if I'd drunk that whole thing,
I would've been checked out forever.
♪ Looking outward through my pain ♪
♪ Looking through my window pane ♪
♪ See her face turn into rain ♪
- [Janis] I was just hallucinating for four days.
- [Peter] She would say crazy things.
No, she wouldn't be able to answer the phone.
She refused to talk to people.
(upbeat rock music)
♪ Well, I'm tired of being a fool ♪
♪ And my mind going from hot to cool ♪
♪ And trying to conform to others ideas ♪
♪ And someone else's rules ♪
- [Peter] She was not able to cope with daily reality.
- [Janis] I was terrified, most of the time.
I smoked a lot of dope.
I just wanted to sleep until it was different.
So, I took a lot of Seconal
when Peter was supposed to be gone for the day.
I got very lucky that he came home early,
and he found me and took me to the hospital.
- [Peter] She stopped functioning,
and her friend, Carol Hunter,
who's a guitar player, helped Janis find a shrink,
and the shrink was in Philadelphia.
(wipers thump rhythmically)
- [Peter] We went to Philadelphia and met this amazing man
named Jerry Weiss.
- [Janis] Jerry said to me,
"If you keep trying to kill yourself,
I'm going to put you somewhere where there will be no pen,
no paper, and no piano."
And that took care of it for me.
There was no way I was going there.
- [Janis] Peter brought me books.
He brought me Rimbaud, Cocteau, all the great poets.
All the things that I had never really been exposed to,
because of my age.
- [Peter] That kind of just normal life,
not having to be onstage and on, all the time.
It was something I could give to her,
so she was able to find herself in a different way.
- [Janis] The middle of the winter,
I walked out with no jacket,
and I took the train into Central Philadelphia,
not telling Peter where I was going, of course,
'cause why would I?
- [Peter] She just disappeared one day I was fearing the worst, you know?
Some kind of self-harm.
And Jerry Weiss, who had never lost a patience,
was also concerned.
- [Janis] I stayed at the library, and I just wrote.
I just wrote for the day.
That night, I walked over to Jerry's office,
found him in his car, and he started crying,
and it suddenly occurred to me that there were people
who really cared about me.
Not my music, not my talent. Me.
That was a big realization.
And then somebody had sent me Don McLean's record,
and I heard "Vincent".
♪ Starry, starry night ♪
♪ Paint your palette blue and gray ♪
♪ Look out on a summer's day ♪
♪ With eyes that know the darkness in my soul ♪
- [Janis] It was everything that I ever wanted
to be as a writer.
It was true, it was beautiful, it was elegant,
but it was accessible.
♪ And how you suffered for your sanity ♪
- [Janis] It's a brave song, and for me,
it taught me that Jerry Weiss was right.
The best way for me to write was from an open place.
♪ Perhaps they'll listen now ♪
- [Peter] She was playing music all the time and writing,
and at the same time, I picked up a camera
for the first time and fell in love with the darkroom.
(water splashes)
(light guitar strumming)
- [Peter] I was in the darkroom and I'm quite engaged
with what I was doing and she was right on the other side
of the door sitting, I think, on the floor,
picking at her guitar and apparently
writing a song called "Stars".
♪ I was never one for singing ♪
♪ What I ♪
♪ Really feel ♪
- It's a song that has perspective
on what it means to be a performer.
People will pay attention to you and then they won't.
Your star will rise and then it will fall,
and that is the way of the world.
♪ Stars, they come and go ♪
♪ They come fast, they come slow ♪
♪ They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze ♪
♪ And all you see is glory ♪
♪ Some make it when they're young ♪
♪ Before the world has done its dirty job ♪
♪ Later on, someone will say you've had your day ♪
♪ You must make way ♪
- [Ann Powers] It's interesting to me
that "Stars" was inspired
by Don McLean's song "Vincent",
because they're very different in a way.
Janis actually goes somewhere that Don McLean didn't go,
which is into self-analysis and observations
about the present day, about the attractions of stardom,
as well as the way it damages people.
♪ I just meant to tell a story ♪
♪ I lived from day to day ♪
- [Janis] "Stars" is my story.
"Stars" is every performer's story, in a way.
That's probably why it's my most recorded song.
But for me, after I wrote "Stars" and then "Jesse",
I thought, "Well, maybe I can be a really good writer."
"Jesse", take one.
♪ Jesse, come home ♪
♪ There's a hole in the bed ♪
♪ Where we slept ♪
- [Joan Baez] "Jesse" has an aura.
It is something unique and it gets under your skin
and you can't really say what all that is.
♪ Hey, Jesse ♪
♪ Your face ♪
♪ In the place where we lay ♪
♪ By the hearth ♪
- [Baez] Somebody's lonesome and wants their person back.
To find the ways to say that that aren't trite,
that's the trick.
I think that's what makes the song brilliant.
♪ And I'm keeping the light on the stairs ♪
- [Powers] It takes you right into
the experience of longing,
of yearning, of hunger,
of almost being blinded by loneliness.
♪ Hey, Jess ♪
♪ Me and you ♪
♪ We'll swallow ♪
♪ The light on the stairs ♪
♪ We'll do up my hair ♪
♪ Come home ♪
- [Peter] She had a meeting in LA to go to,
so she took a flight.
It was literally one of the first times we'd been separate.
(plane engines roar)
- [Janis] Flew out to LA and I tried to strip away
everything that I had been taught I was
and become who I actually was.
And I started morphing then,
as you do in your late teens, early 20s,
into a different person physically.
All of a sudden, I had short hair and it was like,
"Oh, look at this, I'm a different human being."
- [Peter] Janis came back with the announcement
that she had fallen in love with another woman.
"She left me for another woman" is the joke I make.
And after I got over the shock,
I did nothing but encourage it.
- [Janis] So, I was attending this health club,
The Sanctuary, and I met this teacher, Claire,
and just fell head over heels with her.
(Janis Ian, "Light a Light")
♪ Now am I humble, who once was proud ♪
♪ Now am I silent, who once was loud ♪
♪ Now am I waiting for the sound of your saying ♪
♪ Lover, am I coming ♪
- [Janis] Claire was an earth mother.
She was all of the things that would be wonderful in your
first relationship as an adult.
Just as Peter was all the things that were wonderful
in my first relationship as an adolescent.
- [Peter] Although I didn't know how my life
would go from there,
it was kind of exciting that I would have
an independent life again.
- [Janis] He had a real eye for a portrait.
I mean, all of my photos from 1968,
right up through the '80s, was Peter.
I moved into a little place on Hollywood Boulevard.
Couldn't afford air conditioning.
I would go down to a store called Zodys in the summer
and sit and nurse a Coca-Cola for two hours
and sit in their air conditioning.
It was great because I had nothing to do
and no money to do it with, but write all day long.
- [Janey Street] She was writing songs and doing something
that was very special and people picked up on it.
Her and Claire came to our house in Woodstock
and stayed with us and Brooks Arthur came up, and Jean.
Jean Powell was the manager and they were gonna talk
about doing a record.
- [Brooks Arthur] Knowing Janis from '65
and "Society's Child",
we did groove back then and there's no reason in the world
we couldn't groove again, you know?
(Janis, "The Man You Are In Me")
♪ I love the light, I love the changing season ♪
♪ I love without much thought to reason ♪
♪ I'd give it all if I could make you see ♪
♪ I love the man that you were meant to be ♪
- [Barry Lazarowitz] I had been playing with
Janis for a bit.
Janis had started recording the "Stars" album.
We used to work at 914, which was Brooks' studio.
- [Janis] I would record in the mornings.
Melanie would come in after,
and then Springsteen would come in after.
So, the studio was running 24-7.
The more that I put together this album,
the more I realized I was tremendously excited.
♪ I love the man who hides behind you ♪
♪ I love the shadow though it disappears ♪
♪ I love the afterglow reflected through the tears ♪
♪ I love the shadow in my tears ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ I love the dreams you can't remember ♪
- [Janis] Brooks was just at the height
of his engineering prowess.
Ron Frangipane at his arranging prowess.
And they believed in me when nobody else did.
- [Brooks] My wife Marilyn and I got a second mortgage
to pay studio bills.
We found a little bungalow for her
and her housemate, Claire.
And Claire attended the recordings like a studio groupie.
(Janis, "You've Got Me on a String")
♪ You've ♪
♪ Got me on a string ♪
- [Brooks] She'd come in with food,
making sure Janis was eating correctly,
and then they would primp and prop their hairs together,
you know what I mean?
They would fix up their faces and be chicks for a minute.
♪ I'm holding on to no one ♪
- [Brooks] That's something I'll always remember, you know?
"Move over, I have to go out and do a vocal."
"Yeah, but fix your hair. You gotta look right."
♪ I would get down on my knees ♪
- [Brooks] The guys envied and goggled over Claire,
and yet, Janis was the one who took her home, you know?
- [Lazarowitz] In those days, we were
all kind of progressive hippies,
you know, anything goes, everything's fine.
It was family.
(Instrumental interlude from Janis's "Dance With Me")
The first few tracks with Janis on "Stars",
we cut them as trios, just me and Janis and Richard Davis.
Probably one of the 10 greatest upright bass players ever.
When he would play with Janis, the music would just soar.
(Janis, "Dance With Me")
♪ Come and dance, come and dance ♪
♪ I'm home from overseas ♪
♪ And I need your company ♪
♪ Celebrate the victory ♪
- [Brooks] I had a meeting with my friend Charles Koppelman,
who was then the head of Columbia Records, and he said,
"What's Janis's deal? We love what we're hearing."
I said, "She needs a comeback.
Time hasn't been easy for her."
- [Janis] Charles Koppelman said that if I could go down
to the Columbia CBS convention and get 600 promotion people
to give me a standing ovation,
I could get a record contract.
So, I went down with Barry Lazarowitz and Richard Davis,
and we came out on stage.
(Janis Ian, "Without You")
♪ I miss you, jealous lover ♪
♪ Won't you come on over to my side of town ♪
♪ I need you ♪
- [Lazarowitz] Janis, standing there
with just an acoustic guitar.
You could hear a pin drop. It was just mesmerizing.
♪ I see you, a world without end ♪
♪ Then I need you all over again ♪
♪ Without you, the sun doesn't shine ♪
♪ Tomorrow is blind ♪
♪ Without you ♪
(audience cheers and applauds)
- [Janis] I got my standing ovation.
Then I got a record contract.
- [Alison Steele] That's Janis Ian.
Alison Steele, The Nightbird, WNEW-FM and the new groove,
and we fly many miles.
- [Brooks] The record came out and started to make it.
Alison Steele, The Nightbird,
went completely through the first side,
flipped the album over and played the complete album
on the second side, which is a miracle in those days.
And then, of course, Roberta Flack recorded "Jesse".
♪ Hey, Jesse, your face in the place ♪
♪ Where we lay by the hearth ♪
- [Powers] Roberta Flack was total royalty in the '70s.
She was at the top of every chart.
She was winning tons of Grammys.
If Roberta Flack was gonna cover your song,
that was gonna take you places.
(Cher singing "Stars")
♪ I was never one for singing ♪
♪ What I really feel ♪
- Cher recorded "Stars" itself, the title track.
- [Janis] Mel Torme covered it and Glenn Campbell.
Just this amazing, wide group of artists.
(Nina Simone singing "Stars")
♪ Stars, they come and go ♪
♪ They come fast, they come slow ♪
♪ They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze ♪
♪ And all you see is glory ♪
- [Janis] Somehow between the age of 10 and 14,
and I don't know how, I decided that I was going to be
a performative songwriter and a player.
And I knew that I wanted to record and I wanted to arrange.
And the only person doing all of them
that I could find was Nina Simone.
♪ Some make it when they're young ♪
♪ Before the world has done its dirty job ♪
- [Powers] Janis may not have been
thinking about Nina Simone
when she wrote "Stars", but you certainly can see how
the lyrics to that song apply to Nina Simone's life.
She was one of the greatest geniuses popular music ever saw,
but also someone who suffered so much in her life,
and in her art.
♪ Time to tell my story ♪
♪ Janis Ian told it very well ♪
♪ Janis Joplin told it even better ♪
- [Janis] It is the thrill of a lifetime
to have a hero perform your work.
And even then, (chuckles) she does such a Nina with it.
- [Powers] For a very young woman to get almost eaten up by
the same machine that was afflicting her
and causing her pain,
the identification must have been instant.
- [Janis] Sometime between the "Stars" album coming out
and being able to go on tour,
I had no money and I had nowhere to live.
So Claire and I moved in with my mom,
until I could actually start earning enough on the road
to get a place of our own.
And it was hard, I mean, it's hard going back home
in your 20s, and in my day, it was shameful.
So, one of the things that I did to feel like I was
carrying my weight was to write every day.
I was sitting at my mom's,
and I was reading the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
There was an article by a woman who talked about
when she was 18 and she had her coming out debutante ball,
and as it turned out, it was a hard lesson.
(gentle acoustic guitar music)
I was playing that (hums melody) on the guitar,
and then I thought, "I've learned the truth."
It's literally the first line of the article.
But 18 didn't scan, so it became 17. (laughs)
(Janis Ian, "At Seventeen")
♪ I learned the truth at 17 ♪
♪ That love was meant for beauty queens ♪
♪ And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles ♪
♪ Who married young and then retired ♪
(paper tears)
♪ The valentines I never knew ♪
♪ The Friday night charades of youth ♪
♪ Were spent on one more beautiful ♪
♪ At 17, I learned the truth ♪
[Janis] I wrote that first verse and then put it in the drawer
'cause it was scary.
Came back to it a month later, wrote the second verse,
and then I called Brooks Arthur at 914.
- [Brooks] Janis and I got together,
and professionals in the studio
all suddenly quieted down
as Janis showed us the first 32 bars of "At Seventeen".
When the song was over, there was a gentle ripple
of applause from the pros in the studio,
the pros in the office,
and the pros coming out of the bathroom,
and the pros who heard the buzz from the football field,
they all came inside, there must've been 15 or 18 people.
This was my litmus test.
My litmus test, and the first time I realized
that Janis had a smash.
(sound of door opening)
- [Janis] We were in the studio, and I brought in a kid,
David Snider, who'd never been in the studio before,
because I wanted his energy.
And the guitarist,
who was supposed to be the lead guitarist,
kept making rude comments about David, and at David,
because, you know, he wasn't a professional,
he wasn't a real musician,
he wasn't in the union.
- [David Snider] She stood up for me.
She said, "Well, I like the way he plays,
and I like the way he makes my music sound,
and I like the energy he's bringing to my music,
and if you don't like it, there's the door."
It was really nice for her to stand up for me like that.
- [Janis] Brooks backed me up,
the arranger Ron Frangipane backed me up,
and everybody shut up,
and we got on with the business of making a record.
- [Brooks] It's a very hard phenomenon to explain.
We'd get into our seats at the studio
and Janis would get behind the guitar mic and the vocal mic.
Ronnie Frangipane would count it off,
and as if by some superpower, or by magic,
in my mind's eye, we would lift off.
(Janis Ian, "When the Party's Over")
♪ Would you like to sing my song ♪
♪ Would you like to learn to love me best of all ♪
- [Snider] I watched Brooks and Janis interacting
when they were mixing and also recording.
Brooks was a great producer.
He knew how to get the best out of musicians,
but at the same time,
you could see that he respected her genius.
♪ I can teach you how to sing and dance ♪
♪ With a song and dance routine ♪
♪ And when the party's over ♪
♪ You can fall in love with me ♪
- [Brooks] She and I would walk through
every bar, every measure,
and yes, my hands were on the faders,
and I'll take some credit for some of the sound,
but it was really all about her performance.
(Janis Ian, "In the Winter")
♪ There's always radio ♪
♪ And for a dime I can talk to God ♪
♪ Dial-a-Prayer, are you there ♪
- [Brooks] There was some kind of
crazy chemistry between us.
A kind of studio love story.
Music only, though.
♪ Extra blankets for the cold ♪
♪ Fix the heater getting old ♪
♪ I am wiser now, you know ♪
- [Janis] Brooks taught me to sing on a microphone.
Brooks taught me how to be in the studio,
just like Shadow taught me how to be with musicians.
And then it became this great circular thing.
- [Brooks] The net result is art.
♪ Ooh ♪
("In The Winter" crescendos)
- [Brooks] This is one of the reels from 1974.
The album was called "Watercolors",
which became "Between the Lines".
I can't say the rest is history, but history was being made.
Irwin Segelstein was then the president of Columbia Records.
He had a daughter who was a college-level daughter.
She told her dad to listen to this song
called "At Seventeen", she thinks that's a hit,
and Irwin Segelstein called Charles Koppelman.
Charles Koppelman called us,
and said that he's gonna release "At Seventeen".
- [Janis] We were facing a music industry with
"At Seventeen" that said "It's gotta be under three minutes.
This is four and a half. It won't work.
It's gotta be up-tempo. We can't play it in drive time."
So, we sent copies of that record,
not to the program directors at radio, but to their wives.
Every radio station I visited,
I made sure that I honed in on the women in the station,
the secretaries at the time.
(plane engines roar)
- [Brooks] I got a job offer in LA to do
an album with Art Garfunkel.
I was working at this recording studio right here,
Village Recorders here in West LA,
and Art Garfunkel told me,
"You're in your final days of poverty.
Your single 'At Seventeen' is lighting up the charts."
(upbeat music)
I would drive on the Coast Highway,
to let some air out of my head and I would click onto KNXFM
and I'd be hearing "At Seventeen".
I'd move to another station, I'd hear "At Seventeen",
and another spot, all within the breadth of five
or 10 minutes, I'd hear it at four different radio stations.
- [Johhny Carson] When Janis Ian was about 15 years old,
she had an enormous success
with a song called "Society's Child".
- [Janis] Carson, at the time, was undisputed king.
- [Carson] She recorded this album
called "Between the Lines".
- [Janis] If you were on Carson, it was like you reached
this gigantic audience and it put you on the map.
- [Carson] Would you welcome, please, Janis Ian?
(audience applauds)
(Janis Ian, "At Seventeen")
- [Celine Dion] I always hated school,
because I didn't fit in.
I didn't look pretty. I didn't feel pretty.
And I think that's why...
[Celine] ♪ I learned the truth at 17 ♪
[Janis] ♪ I learned the truth at 17 ♪
- [Laurie Metcalf] I played the hell out of that record.
It was so specific
and so relevant
for generations of women.
To this day,
it affects me the same way, as when I first heard it.
♪ And the rich-relationed hometown queen ♪
♪ Marries into what she needs ♪
- [Jean Smart] It's not just she's talking
about the pain of adolescence,
and the pain of feeling like an ugly duckling,
and the pain of not being in the in-crowd, or whatever.
It's also about being the tall, blonde,
blue-eyed cheerleader.
♪ Remember those who win the game ♪
♪ Lose the love they sought to gain ♪
- [Smart] I was the cheerleader. (chuckles)
I was the girl that Janis sang about in "At Seventeen".
I was the good girl who was dating the bad boy. (chuckles)
♪ Their small-town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise ♪
♪ When payment due ♪
- [Snider] I don't care if you're super handsome, beautiful,
if you're smart, or you're dumb.
Everybody feels like a piece of shit, in some kind of way.
- [James Reed] I was a very weirdo kid
growing up in the '80s and '90s
in the Midwest and all of my peers were listening to Nirvana
and Guns N' Roses and I, for some reason,
was this little sad closeted kid who was like listening
to Joan Baez and Phil Ochs and Janis Ian by candlelight.
(James chuckles)
The line that always made me laugh,
because if you didn't laugh, you would almost cry,
was the line, "To those whose names were never called,
when choosing sides for basketball."
♪ And those whose names were never called ♪
♪ When choosing sides for basketball ♪
- [Reed] I was never picked (chuckles) for any sports team.
♪ When dreams were all they gave for free ♪
♪ To ugly duckling girls like me ♪
- [Powers] I mean, I was that ugly duckling girl,
and so the song hit me pretty hard.
♪ Inventing lovers on the phone ♪
- [Powers] The fact that Janis had such a huge hit,
and such an iconic impact with that song,
I think speaks to its universal relevance.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- [Janis] When the Grammy announcements came out in '76
for the records that had been released in '75,
I had five nominations.
It was amazing.
- Best Engineering Non-Classical, "Between the Lines",
Brooks Arthur, Larry Alexander and Russ Payne.
- [Brooks] I won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album.
Janis was up for Best Female Vocalist.
And Lily Tomlin comes walking out,
envelope in hand, and says,
- [Tomlin] And the winner is, "At Seventeen", Janis Ian.
(audience cheers and applauds)
(House orchestra plays "At Seventeen")
- [Brooks] It was just an all-time high.
We did it.
She did it.
And Janis looked so beautiful that night.
- [Janis] Thank you. It's been a long time.
Thank you.
- [Tomlin] Most people can't bear to have a platform,
and not use it in some way.
But she just said, "It's been a while."
- [Brooks] The album was a smash and the Grammys were won,
and Janis was at the top of her game.
(Janis Ian, "Bright Lights and Promises")
♪ Bright lights and promises ♪
♪ Ain't that what it's for ♪
- [Janis] The last three years have been great,
'cause I've been doing what I want to do,
how I want to do it,
with people that I really enjoy doing it with.
I mean, you can't ask any more than that.
♪ I'm gold lame and diamonds ♪
♪ Even if my gold is worn ♪
♪ Honey, can you show ♪
♪ Me more ♪
- [Lazarowitz] Going from a coffeehouse to, you know,
thousands of seats,
it was just a fabulous experience.
(audience applauds)
- [Brooks] The Janis Ian world was awaiting
the next heartbeat.
I kept on lobbying for another "At Seventeen",
a song that speaks for those
who can't quite speak for themselves.
I needed another one of those to launch the third album,
"Aftertones", and I was kind of annoyed
that it wasn't coming.
- [Janis] I make records and I do concerts and I write,
and they're three very separate things.
There's no way to duplicate a record in a concert,
for instance.
There's no way to write while you're doing concerts.
- [Baez] There are a few songwriters
who can just crank this stuff out.
Most of us needed time to make songs not all sound the same.
You cannot write, in my opinion, a hit,
just 'cause you're clever enough to write a hit.
It has to come from somewhere deep.
- [Lazarowitz] There were some really wonderful
pieces on "Aftertones".
(Janis Ian, "Love is Blind")
♪ Love is blind ♪
♪ How will I remember ♪
♪ In the heat of summer pleasure winter fades ♪
♪ How long will it take before I can't remember ♪
♪ Memories I should forget ♪
♪ I've been burning since the day we met ♪
- [Lazarowitz] Songs like "Love Is Blind"
and "Boy I Really Tied One On",
they're great songs, they're great tracks.
- [Brooks] The songs that she was writing were all great,
but some songs are drop-dead unbelievably magnificent.
I would've waited until one more song was ready,
but Columbia wanted the record out,
and if you don't come through,
the artist's not guilty, the producer's guilty.
So, I felt it was my business to speak up.
♪ In the morning, waking to the sound of weeping ♪
♪ Someone else should weep for me ♪
- [Brooks] In Japan,
"Love is Blind" was number one for a year.
But though the album went gold, I labeled it "cold gold",
'cause coming off of "Between the Lines",
which was multi-platinum, it was rough waters.
- [Janis] I knew that album wasn't ready.
I knew I wasn't ready.
I knew it was not an appropriate follow-up
to "Between the Lines".
Brooks also knew it. My manager knew it.
But everybody bowed to CBS's need
for the fourth quarter, for the stockholders.
♪ In the heat of summer pleasure ♪
♪ Winter fades ♪
- [Janis] Billy Joel and myself and Bruce Springsteen
were three artists close to the same age,
all on the same record label.
And so it's natural for the record label to try
and get us all to work together as much as possible.
Billy opened for Janis at the Universal Amphitheater in LA.
They hadn't covered the roof yet,
so it was open and it was beautiful.
It was like singing to the gods,
for goodness sakes, you know?
(Billy Joel, "Piano Man")
♪ Sing us a song, you're the piano man ♪
♪ Oh, sing us a song tonight ♪
- [Janis] Billy opened the show and he slayed!
He was just amazing!
- [Brooks] He was Billy Joel, man.
He played "Piano Man" and he played "Italian Restaurant",
and the place lit up, it was incredible.
(harmonica solo)
Janis followed Billy,
but she wasn't communicating with the audience.
She was tuning the piano a lot and kept her head down,
and she had a beautiful smile,
but she didn't show that beautiful smile
that particular night.
The contrast between Billy and Janis was night and day.
- [Janis] The show was terrible.
That day, I swore to myself that
I would never be unprepared for a show again.
Didn't matter how tired I was,
didn't matter how hard it was,
I would never turn in that bad a show, ever.
- [Brooks] A lot of people started to leave
and as they were leaving,
they'd be singing a Billie Joel tune, which broke my heart,
'cause it was Janis' night to win.
At the end of the show, I told her and Jean
that Billy blew you off stage,
and you don't want to let that happen.
You gotta involve your audience.
They made you platinum and multi-platinum,
and you just gotta be part of that.
Of course, they didn't like what I said,
and Janis and I got together and we talked it through.
- [Janis] Brooks was a genius engineer. Absolute genius.
And I don't use that word lightly.
But we talked and I said, "Man, you've got two choices.
You can produce people like me,
people who are not going to be the flavor of the month,
who may not have hits,
but who will give you street credibility.
Or you can go to LA and you can produce those other people."
And I can't fault him for it.
He went to LA and produced those other people.
But to me, the moment he took his hands off the board,
he was only half of what he'd been.
- [Brooks] It took some time, it took some doing,
but Janis and I repaired our differences.
Time heals everything, so to speak.
- [Peter Cunningham] Janis and I were no longer together,
but we were pals,
and she asked if she could use the apartment one afternoon
to do an interview.
- [Janis] A reporter for the Village Voice,
a guy named Cliff Jar, he came on tour with us,
and I kept saying to my manager,
"I don't have a good feeling about this.
I don't know why, but I don't have a good feeling about it."
And then one day,
Peter called me at about midnight and said,
"I've just seen the upcoming Village Voice article.
The back page is about you being bisexual."
And I think I crawled under the covers
and hid for half a day until Claire pulled them off me
and told me to pull myself together.
- [James Reed] On the male side of pop musicians,
and rock musicians,
you were allowed to be flamboyant.
You could sort of skirt the edges of,
"Is this person gay, is this person not?"
You think of David Bowie, you think of Lou Reed.
Even Iggy Pop.
You had these virile male rock stars who could,
they could toe that line.
Women couldn't do that.
- [Janis] I was living my life and living it openly
in terms of my circle,
but not making a huge thing of it in the press.
So by what right did he say
that that was the most important part of our lives?
- [Lazarowitz] At some point along the way, you know,
you know, as love would have it,
I don't know exactly what and when and what day it happened,
but, you know, Claire and I fell in love.
- [Janis] We were on tour and my manager pulled me aside
and said, "You're the only one who doesn't know,
and here's what's going on."
- [Brooks] Claire was having a scene going
with Barry Lazarowitz, the drummer.
- [Janis] Barry hit on me and I said "No."
So, he hit on Claire and she said "Yes."
But she forgot to tell me.
That was devastating.
- [Brooks] Claire went on with Barry.
They got married and had kids,
and Janis was left in the lurch.
- [Janis] People come and go. The work goes on.
The work is the constant.
It's the glory of being an artist.
(Janis Ian, "Silly Habits")
♪ I'm still in love ♪
♪ Though I don't care to let you know ♪
- [Janis] I found myself bereft.
And so, one night, I sat down and I wrote
a very sad love song.
I sent it in to my publisher and a few weeks later,
he called and he said,"Oh, we love that jazz song you wrote.
That's great. We're really excited.
Aren't you excited about it?"
And I said, "Well, my heart's broke,
but I'm feeling a little better."
♪ Silly habits mean a lot ♪
- [Janis] He calls in another couple of weeks and he says,
"Oh, you know that jazz singer Mel Torme
wants to cut that song of yours, isn't that great?"
I said, "Well, my heart's broke but I feel a little better."
(Mel Torme) ♪ I've been parading ♪
♪ Yeah, I've led a lot astray ♪
♪ Why bother waiting ♪
♪ You can have it all today ♪
- [Janis] So, I go down and make this record with Mel Torme.
Six months after it comes out, the Grammy people call.
They say, "You know, that record you made with Mel Torme
it's nominated for Best Jazz Duet for a Grammy."
And I said, "Well, my heart's still broke,
but I feel a whole lot better now."
Two weeks after the Grammys, I run into my ex, who says,
"I hear you took it really hard.
I will stand here and you can yell at me,
as much as you want.
Go ahead, hit me right here. Do whatever you want.
I'll just stand here and take it."
And I said, "I have four words to say for you.
Thank you so much."
(Janis and Mel singing together) ♪ Silly habits ♪
♪ Mean a ♪
♪ Lot ♪
(piano closing, audience cheers and applauds)
- [Host] How about that!
The great Janis Ian! Oh, what a kick for me.
- [Janey Street] After that whole thing, she moved to LA,
and was living with Tino.
He was this real intellectual, and he was an older man.
I remember him really being like kind of an older man.
(chuckles) I don't know, man.
It's pretty hard to keep up with Janis.
- [Janis] If you're in love with somebody,
you're in love with them.
You may tilt. I tilt toward women.
But I fell in love with Tino.
I had been very insulated in many ways, for many years.
And now, here was the world. Here was the Comedie-Francaise.
Here was Portugal.
Here was an entire universe I knew nothing about.
The man spoke seven languages fluently.
He could make me laugh for hours and hours and hours.
- [Street] Janis seemed happy, you know?
And that's all I cared about, is Janis being happy.
(Janis Ian, "Fly Too High")
♪ Anonymous autonomous will likely get the best of us yet ♪
- [Arti Dixson] At this time in Janis's career,
she wrote a song called "Fly Too High".
- [Janis] I'd been hanging out a lot with gay guys
who were going to the baths,
and so the song was about the baths, you know?
"Anonymous likely get the best of us yet."
♪ Run too fast ♪
♪ Fly too high ♪
♪ Run too fast ♪
♪ Fly too high ♪
- [Interviewer] Some people are saying,
"Well, what the hell is she doing now?"
- [Janis] Well, I'm just doing stuff that's going to-
- [Interviewer] Ian goes disco.
- [Janis] I haven't gone disco. It's not a disco song.
If I wanted to go disco, I'd have cut a whole album.
- [Arti Dixson] "Fly Too High" offered
another energy to her music,
and she was a big star in other countries.
We were given this red carpet treatment
in most every country that we visited and toured in.
(Janis Ian, "Will You Dance?")
♪ Someone is waiting ♪
(audience applauds)
♪ Over by the window ♪
♪ Just beyond the stairwell, someone's crying ♪
- [Dixson] I remember the limousine driver in Japan
wearing white gloves.
- [Reiko Yukawa] In Japan, her concert tour was huge.
Very successful concerts.
- [Arti Dixson] Traveling to Australia, traveling to Holland,
Ireland, Scotland, we were taken out to dinner every night.
It was pretty amazing.
- [Janis] I got an offer to go to South Africa
and spend six weeks playing there.
- [Mark Fine] In 1948, the South African authorities
implemented apartheid, which means "apartness" in Dutch.
And since then, there was this discrete separation
between Black and Whites, in all aspects of life.
[South African activist] The African people are realizing that apartheid
means nothing else but oppression and exploitation.
(gun fires)
- [Officer] We are going to take action against you.
- [Dixson] At the time, there was a cultural boycott
for musicians and anybody to go to South Africa.
- [Janis] I thought about it a lot,
because a lot of my fellow performers were boycotting,
and I decided that I didn't believe in cultural boycotts.
I had the contracts written so that they specified
integrated theaters, integrated hotels,
integrated transportation, everything integrated.
- [Fine] I think she had a mission to go there,
to literally open hearts and minds.
(Janis, singing later version of "Society's Child")
♪ You come to my door, baby ♪
♪ Face is clean and shining black as night ♪
♪ My mama went to answer, you know ♪
♪ That you looked so fine ♪
- [Mark Fine] The "Society's Child" song
was an extraordinary gift
to a society that was going through
some extraordinary tensions.
- [South African couple] You are only married before God. That's all.
- To think that a mixed marriage is making
such a big shebang here, that's sort of sad.
(drum solo)
- [Janis] Mr. Artie Dixon on the drums.
- [Janis] To this day, I get letters
from people who were there
who say, "That's the first time I ever saw
an integrated band onstage playing together."
"It's the first time I ever sat next to a Black person."
"First time I ever sat next to a White person."
- [Fine] She got the consent to perform
to mixed-race audiences.
And that's very important because that was the very reason
the boycott was put in place.
- [Dixson] We were able to play for all the people
in South Africa,
but there were some repercussions for going there.
- [Janis] The UN banned me.
I couldn't do television or radio for two years,
and they offered me the choice, the UN, they said
if I would say that I didn't understand
that it was apartheid, they would forgive me, and I said,
"No, I'm not gonna lie and say I didn't know it existed."
(Janis ) ♪ I sure get lonely ♪
- [Janis] The job of an artist is bigger
than a cultural boycott.
It doesn't make sense to keep people from hearing
what may change their hearts.
(gentle string music)
- [Dixson] When I first met Janis,
her husband, Tino, was with her.
- [Janey Street] He had a gun, and he showed it to me
and it went off.
I'll never forget that.
And my ear, I mean, it took me like days
to get my hearing back and it was very fortunate
that it just went into the wall somewhere.
(string music continues)
- [Janis] He had to be there all the time.
He would get very jealous of anybody I spent time with.
(Janis Ian, "Watercolors")
♪ I said do you wish me dead ♪
♪ Lip service to books you've read ♪
Things started to get weird.
I couldn't go into his closet, and there were locks.
Then he hit me.
And I remember thinking, I have a lot of money,
and I have fame and I'm not one of those women.
- [Street] She acted like everything was fine.
She was very under his thumb, though.
I mean, I knew that, but I didn't think it was a problem.
♪ Go find a fence, locate a shell ♪
♪ And hide yourself, go on, go to hell ♪
♪ Go away from me ♪
- [Janis] The last time I saw him,
he held a gun on me for seven hours.
I talked to him about being Catholic,
about how his grandmother would feel.
I urged him to take more Valium,
because he took a lot of Valium.
I urged him to keep drinking. I hoped he would pass out.
He finally agreed with me that he was tired,
and I helped him up to bed, left the house, that was it.
And it's a terrible thing to say in some ways,
but the day that he died
was the day that I finally felt free
because I no longer had to worry about him coming for me.
♪ Set me free ♪
(Instrumental conclusion of "Watercolors")
(phone rings)
- [Janis] I woke up one day and my checks had bounced.
Somebody called me from a credit card company and said,
"Are you aware that your bill is three months overdue?"
And I said, "Ah, it's gotta be a mistake.
My business manager's been with me since I was 14."
It wasn't a mistake.
He'd been running two sets of books
out of Chemical, New York.
So when it looked like I had paid $20,000 in taxes
on one set, the exact same check
went to pay $20,000 of his taxes.
- [Jamie Yadoff] She's literally back at square one.
And meanwhile, during all this now, her mom is sick.
(gentle piano music)
- [Janis] Got on the phone with the IRS agent, Mr. Granite,
you cannot make that up, and his first words to me were,
"Fuck you. I know about you artists.
Fuck you."
And I said, "Look, I'm sole support for my mother.
She's got multiple sclerosis.
I need $500 a month to send her."
And he said, "Fuck you."
I had a Bosendorfer piano that I had looked for
for three years and waited for for three years,
and I sold it so I'd have money to send my mother money.
And by then, I had lost everything,
but my instruments, to the IRS.
So, pretty soon, there was no money left at all.
- [Al Hagaman] She was in dire financial situations.
Really, by the time that Janis and I
started working together, our next game plan was,
"Okay, how do we start to build some
new intellectual properties to try to get you out of this?"
(acoustic blues music)
- [Local TV news Reporter] When things fell apart for Janis,
she needed to find a place to pull her life back together.
She had fame, she had a fortune and lost it.
What she needed was to remember
why she became a songwriter in the first place.
She found that answer in Nashville.
- [Janis] At the time, Nashville was very much a place that
you didn't admit to going, unless you were a country singer.
I took a flight down there, and I hit the tarmac,
and I thought, "I'm home."
♪ I've been round a hard road ♪
♪ Rough times behind ♪
♪ Rough times ahead ♪
- [Robert K. Oermann] Janis treated herself like
a brand new artist,
when she came here.
She was building herself back up from scratch,
and the very, very wise thing she did
was hanging out at the Bluebird Cafe, night after night.
That is the songwriting mecca. That's like ground zero.
♪ If you'll call my name, I'll ring you in ♪
♪ Set you down in the country town with the sky ♪
- [Amy Kurland] Don Schlitz was playing with his friends,
and I got the word Janis was coming down to see the show.
After that, every time they would play,
she would come to hear them,
and maybe get invited up to do a song or two.
- [Oermann] The community went,
"Oh, here's this great big pop icon
who really likes what we do and respects who we are."
- [Kathy Mattea] This town was a perfect fit for Janis,
because this is a town that reveres
songwriting and songwriters,
and it's a place where she could meet her match.
- [Marti Jones] Kye Fleming had written
a lot of country hits.
"I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool".
"Sleeping Single in a Double Bed".
♪ Sleeping single in a double bed ♪
♪ Thinking over things I wish I'd said ♪
♪ I should've held you but I let you go ♪
♪ Now I'm the one sleeping all alone ♪
- [Jones] Kye had that sort of commercial edge,
having been a writer in Nashville for some time,
and having hits.
- [Kye Fleming] I was writing with Don Schlitz.
MCA was his company and he said, "You know,
they're sending Janis Ian here to write with a few people."
And he said, "Would you like to meet her?"
And I said, (scoffs), "Yeah, of course."
- [Hagaman] If you're a songwriter, you know Janis Ian.
If you're a songwriter,
you know the integrity of her writing.
And so the opportunity to sit in a room with this woman
and co-write with her was an honor.
- [Kye] Janis had a friend, her name was Mary.
She had a restaurant called Options.
And we would go there for lunch every day.
It wasn't doing well.
Tough business.
- [Janis] We walked in one day and Mary was really down
and I said, "What's wrong?"
And she said, "I'm gonna lose the restaurant.
Why should I stay alive?
I mean, I'm not doing anything in the world."
- [Kye] She started talking about committing suicide.
And I knew that Janis and I were both feeling
the same thing and it was like, "What do we do here?"
- [Janis] We said the usual platitudes and she said,
"No, no, it's different for you.
Whether you have children or not, your work's gonna live.
But I haven't left a mark."
- [Kye] What do you say after that?
What did we need to say to Mary?
(gentle acoustic guitar music)
- [Janis] I was sitting there with a guitar and I said,
"Man, some people's lives just...
I don't know, some people's lives just run down."
And Kye said, "Some people's lives run down like clocks."
(Janis Ian, Kye Fleming, "Some People's Live")
♪ Some people's lives ♪
♪ Run down like clocks ♪
♪ One day, they stop ♪
♪ That's all they've got ♪
♪ Some lives wear out ♪
♪ Like old tennis shoes ♪
♪ No one can use ♪
♪ It's sad but it's true ♪
♪ Didn't anybody tell them? ♪
♪ Didn't anybody see? ♪
♪ Didn't anybody love them ♪
♪ Like you love me? ♪
- [Kye] We were looking for this clincher
that we hadn't found.
And one day, we were driving down the interstate,
and it just popped in.
♪ And some people's lives ♪
♪ Are as cold as their lips ♪
♪ They just need to be kissed ♪
- [Stephen Holden] "Some people's lives are
as cold as their lips.
They just need to be kissed."
Oh, that's just fantastic.
It's one of the great songs of all time.
I heard Janis and Kye sing it together at the Bottom Line.
- [Don Dixon] The Bottom Line, at the time in the late '80s,
was an iconic club where Bruce Springsteen
played one of his first shows.
♪ Some people's lives ♪
♪ Fade like their dreams ♪
♪ Too tired to rise ♪
- [Dixon] I'm not an easy crier, but my goodness,
you just could not help it, it was so beautiful.
- [Holden] It was magic, and I immediately,
immediately actually,
sent it to Bette Midler, who I knew,
in my heyday as an A&R man.
(Bette Midler singing)
♪ Some people laugh ♪
♪ When they need to cry ♪
- [Janis] Bette's album was heard by millions of people.
And I remember that we went to Mary's,
to her restaurant with a guitar.
- [Kye] We sat there and said,
"We want to play you something.
And here's your song."
♪ Some people ask ♪
♪ If the tears have to fall ♪
♪ Then why take your chances ♪
♪ Why bother at all ♪
- [Kye] We played it for her.
She just busted out in this smile.
"That's my song?
That's my song."
- [Janis] I told her,
"You don't know the ripples you're creating.
Now you've made a change in the world."
♪ 'Cause that's all they need ♪
- [Janis] Kye Fleming is probably the greatest lyricist
I've ever worked with.
She made me think about my work
in a way that I had never thought about it.
Just basics that I hadn't learned,
like if you're gonna hit the audience
with a really heavy line, give them another couple of lines
that aren't so deep so that they have time to recover.
- [Kye] We were writing every day,
and it was just total inspiration.
And what is inspiration,
except being filled with love?
And of course, we fell in love.
- [Janis] We ended up living together
for two and a half years.
When we started living together,
she was coming out of a Pentecostal family.
It was hard for her, because she hadn't grown up
in a culture where people were as accepting
as the culture I grew up in.
- [Kye] I was always conflicted about the sexual part,
and of course, I felt like I had to hide it from my parents.
They wouldn't understand that.
- [Janis] Her mother, Verda, was so upset.
She got on her knees for three days,
and she prayed to God to change Kye.
- [Kye] I knew it was okay.
How can love be wrong?
(Kye sighs)
(Janis Ian and Kye Fleming, "Hearts Take Time")
♪ Heart takes time ♪
♪ No calls anymore ♪
♪ Just four walls and a lock on the door ♪
♪ No denying you're in hiding but that's all right ♪
♪ Hearts take time ♪
- [Kye] I ended up in another relationship,
and that broke us up.
Janis and me.
- [Janis] We were supposed to keep writing,
even though we'd broken up.
(chuckles) That's what you think is going to happen.
So naive.
♪ One day, they'll be someone to love on again ♪
- [Amy Kurland] When their relationship ended,
when Janis wanted to get out of herself,
this was the place she would come.
- [Janis] I was at the Bluebird Cafe and I watched
a young writer from a strip mining town in Virginia
named Lance Cowan, sing a song about the Holocaust.
And I thought, "Here's this kid from West Virginia,
not a Jewish bone in his body,
and he's writing about this subject, and I'm silent."
And I walked out of there, feeling so ashamed
that I hadn't dared to write it,
because I grew up on stories of the Holocaust,
and I knew a lot of people with tattoos,
but I'd never felt myself qualified.
So, I started this song, and it was a hard song to write,
because what do you say?
(Janis Ian, "Tattoo")
♪ Her new name was tattooed to her wrist ♪
♪ It was longer than the old one ♪
♪ Sealed in the silence with a fist ♪
♪ This night will be a cold one ♪
♪ Centuries live in her eyes ♪
♪ Destiny laughs over jack-booted thighs ♪
♪ Work makes us free, says the sign ♪
♪ Nothing leaves here alive ♪
♪ Tattoo ♪
- [Janis] I know what it is to feel trapped.
I know what it is to feel terrified.
I know what it is to feel powerless.
Not to that extent, not in that circumstance,
but I know those feelings, and so I can use those feelings
as part of being truthful in the song.
♪ It gets darker every night ♪
♪ Spread-eagled out among the stars, she says ♪
♪ Somewhere in this tunnel lives a light ♪
♪ Still my beating heart ♪
- [Jamie Yadoff] That song, whenever she sings it,
always gets me.
We had family who were lost in the Holocaust
and that's something we held onto.
We knew that that could happen at any time.
It's our history but it's also our present.
♪ Surgeons took the mark but they could not take it far ♪
♪ It was written on her heart ♪
♪ Written on her empty heart ♪
♪ Tattooed ♪
- [Oermann] Janis had severe health problems
when she moved here.
And so part of coming to Nashville was also to recuperate.
- [Janis] I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.
I couldn't drive, I couldn't think.
I was in pain all the time. It was horrible.
And I complained to a friend that I needed somebody
to play chess with and she said,
"Oh, I have a friend named Pat."
So, I called her and I said, "Hey, this is Janis Ian.
Our mutual friend says maybe you'd play chess with me?
I'm kind of housebound right now, but I'd love to meet you."
So, the next day, I get this message
and it's on my answering machine and it says,
"Hi, this is Pat Snyder and I understand that you called me,
but I didn't realize because I thought,
'Why would Janis Ian be calling me?'
So and I would love to meet you,
but I have to go now 'cause my dryer is on fire."
We went out for dinner and Pat said something
about being on a date and I said, "It can't be a date.
You didn't bring flowers."
And she said, "Excuse me", and she went into the parking lot
and she brought back a leaf and she said,
"I couldn't find any flowers, but here."
(Janis Ian, "Through the Years")
♪ Through the years we've been happy ♪
♪ Through the years we've been sad ♪
♪ And sometimes feeling lucky ♪
♪ Was the only luck we had ♪
- [Kathy Mattea] They were just perfect for each other.
It was just each met their person, finally, you know?
- [Janis] I had paid off the last of the IRS.
After 13 years, I was out of debt.
I could start working again, but I needed an album.
I was telling Pat about it and saying,
"You know, I've got this song, 'Tattoo',
that I desperately want heard.
I've got this song, 'Some People's Lives',
I desperately want heard, and I can't get a publisher
or a record company to save my life."
- [Ann Powers] Ageism, for women in the pop world,
starts at, well, you could say it starts at, like,
age 28 or age 30,
but certainly by the time you're 35,
you're not as saleable in many people's eyes.
- [Janis] Pat said, "What would it cost to make an album?"
And I said, "$30,000, $35,000?"
And she said, "How much of a second mortgage can we get?"
(Janis Ian, "Breaking Silence")
♪ Come into my solitude ♪
♪ Though I weary be ♪
♪ Come into my tenderness ♪
♪ Dream along with me ♪
♪ Listen to the whispers sing ♪
♪ Listen to the singers shout ♪
♪ Come into my solitude ♪
♪ Me and my big mouth ♪
- [Al Hagaman] What I recall about "Breaking Silence"
is the intimacy
of the record from its creation to its content.
Very few of those songs
would have ever had a prayer on US radio.
- [Janis] A friend of mine who I was working with
at the time called me and said,
"'Breaking Silence', just nominated for a Grammy."
And I was like, "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, Best Folk and Best Engineered."
So, all of a sudden, people were buying it.
♪ Breaking silence ♪
- [James Reed] "Silence" was such an important
part of the discourse
around gay and lesbian issues at that time.
Think about don't ask, don't tell.
- [Bill Clinton] Most homosexuals would probably not declare
their sexual orientation openly,
thereby making an already hard life even more difficult.
- [Janis] It was '91, Pat and I were together.
We were out to everybody.
So, I was all set to be out to the world, but Urvashi Vaid,
who was then head of the National Gay Liberation Task Force,
took me to lunch and asked me to wait until I had an album.
♪ Thought I was the only one ♪
♪ Thought I was the only ♪
♪ Thought I was the only, only one ♪
She said, did I realize that three out of every ten
teenage suicides or attempted suicides
were because the child thought that they might be gay?
And she said, "Just imagine some 16-year-old
saying to their parents, 'I'm gay.'
By the way, your favorite artist is also gay."
So, I waited until "Breaking Silence".
♪ Breaking silence ♪
- [Reed] The idea that here was a major songwriter saying
"I'm going to break the silence",
I thought that was very powerful.
- [Howard Stern] Listen. This is a story about
how you felt at 17.
You couldn't get guys, true? - [Janis] Right.
- [Stern] You were not.... - [Janis] Couldn't get girls.
- [Stern] Couldn't get girls or guys.
You couldn't talk about the fact that you were a lesbian,
or else you would've been the outcast of the school.
- [Janis] Oh, definitely. I think I would've been dead.
- [Stern] You were having lesbian feelings?
- [Janis] Yeah.
- [Janis] I went ahead and did Entertainment Weekly
and did Leno
and did all of the various shows and said, "I am gay."
- [Stern] I wanna explore sexuality next.
- [Janis] Not a problem. - [Stern] With Janis Ian.
She has a brand new CD out.
- [Kathy Mattea] It was not cool to be out of the closet,
in those years
- [Jon Vezner] I'm not saying she was ostracized,
but it definitely affected her.
- [Janis] I remember living with Pat in Nashville,
afraid to put my arm around her in the movie theater,
afraid to hold hands walking on the street.
All of those things where you go, "I won't be afraid"
and you go ahead and do it,
because you're not gonna let the world do that to you.
Then you get a Matthew Shepard,
and you realize how tenuous your position is.
- [Reporter] Some say what happened at this fence post
in the cold and barren foothills of the Rockies
was a hate crime.
Others try to pass it off as just a robbery.
The one thing that's clear is that what happened
to Matthew Shepard was horribly brutal.
- [Janis] Matthew Shepard met a couple of guys in a bar
who offered him a lift and then proceeded to hang him
from a barbed wire fence and beat him until he was dead,
because he was gay.
When that happened, every gay person in the world flinched.
(Janis Ian, "Matthew")
♪ Footsteps on gravel at the neighborhood bar ♪
♪ Things start to unravel, then they go too far ♪
♪ The sound of pain ♪
♪ Written on the wind ♪
♪ Fades to gray ♪
♪ And then goes dim ♪
- [Janis] As a Jew, I was raised to believe
that if I didn't stand up for the rights of others,
there would be nobody to stand up for my rights,
when they came for me.
And I think that's true of a gay person, too.
- [James Reed] She turned this horrific moment
into a very pointed
and very poignant commentary on
what does it mean to be a man.
♪ What makes a man a man ♪
♪ The cut of a coat ♪
♪ The hint of a tan ♪
♪ It's not who you love ♪
♪ But whether you can ♪
- [Janis] "What makes a man a man?"
I tried to keep that the focus of the song.
To really just make it a song where the questions are asked.
- [Reed] It's not who you love, but if you can.
♪ That makes a man ♪
♪ A man ♪
- [Ann Powers] "Matthew" is on a great album
called "Billie's Bones"
that Janis made here in Nashville.
She also started her own label,
which is something that a lot of artists today are doing,
in order to get their music out.
- [Reed] Another way that Janis Ian really
spoke to LGBTQ listeners
was through this column that she had
for the Advocate magazine.
And it was the first time I realized how funny she was.
Later, I would discover through songs
like "Married in London" that she has a very wicked
sense of humor, a very barbed sense of humor.
(Janis Ian, "Married in London")
♪ We're married in London but not in New York ♪
(audience laughs)
♪ Spain says we're Kosher, the States say we're pork ♪
(audience laughs)
♪ We wed in Toronto, the judge said Amen ♪
♪ And when we got home, we were single again ♪
(audience laughs)
(audience applauds)
[Janis] I'd been playing in England,
when the UK made gay marriage legal.
And then I read on the CNN news scrawl
that we were about to be legal in Canada.
So, I texted Pat and I said,
"Do you wanna get married while I'm there?"
And she said, "Okay."
♪ Thank God I'm not Catholic, I'd be a mess ♪
♪ Trying to figure out what to confess ♪
- [Malcolm Sinclair] Janis's entourage showed up,
wearing Hawaiian shirts
and enjoying the moment.
Janis and Pat walked through the door,
and I suddenly thought to myself,
"Holy smokes, I've got Janis Ian,
(chuckles) 'At Seventeen', standing right in front of me."
- [Janis] We had a New York Times photographer, because Pat,
who refuses to take photos, or be in the press, said,
"I want to be a gay couple
in the New York Times marriage section."
- [Colin Campbell] This was going to be the first same-sex
Sunday Wedding Vows column the New York Times had ever done.
I remember really well, George R.R. Martin was
one of their best men.
- [Janis] The idea of getting married as a gay person
was so foreign.
We kept thinking that it wasn't going to mean that much.
Everything was going to be the same.
We were really shocked when we both started weeping,
after the ceremony.
♪ But love has no colors and hearts have no sex ♪
♪ So, love where you can and fuck all the rest ♪
(audience cheers and applauds)
- [Reed] Her legacy is not just as a songwriter,
but as an LGBTQ icon.
- I had been keeping a whiteboard of new songs
for five or six years,
and each time I wrote a song that I felt was
the best I would ever be able to do,
I would put it up on the white board.
Songs fell off, songs went on, and I thought,
"Someday, if I have 11 songs that I think are impeccable,
I'll make a record."
And then in the middle of COVID,
I looked up and there were 11 songs.
But there were no studios open.
I recorded at friends' houses, into their tape recorders.
And I wrote the title song,
two weeks before we went to mastering.
I'm gonna sing a few songs from my new album,
titled appropriately enough,
"The Light at the End of the Line".
I'm gonna have a good time. I hope you do, too.
(gentle acoustic guitar music)
- [Debra Hyslop] The Light at the End of the Line tour
is Janis's farewell tour.
She really wanted to spend time with her fans,
and to thank her fans.
- [Janis] I have people who have followed me
and supported me
since I was 14, 15 years old. That's an incredible honor.
(Janis Ian, "The Light at the End of the Line")
♪ You were there when I laughed ♪
♪ You were there when I cried ♪
♪ You were there as I tell you goodbye ♪
- [Mattea] I got an email from Janis
a few weeks ago and she said,
"I just wanted to share something with you.
Do you have a good doctor? 'Cause I'm having some trouble."
- [Janis] I got laryngitis and I thought it was laryngitis.
I was gonna rest for a couple of days, and then one night,
I woke up and there was a knife in my throat.
It felt like somebody had just thrown some knives in it.
And I thought, "Okay, this is part of the laryngitis."
I got up, I took a couple of Tylenol, I went to bed.
My voice didn't come back.
Didn't come back, didn't come back.
I went to a local doctor.
Finally, in real desperation, I called Joan Baez.
Her otolaryngologist recommended someone in Tampa,
about an hour from where I live and she took film
of me singing and she said immediately,
"You've got vocal scarring.
You've got scarring on your right vocal cord."
So, that Monday, I saw the speech pathologist,
and I asked her outright, I said,
"Am I ever gonna sound like myself again?"
And she said, "No."
- [Hyslop] It's hard to actually describe it.
Tours get canceled. I get that.
But for it to be someone at the end of her touring career
and not being able to have any kind of resolution
is a little shocking.
- [Janis] I can't hold my notes. I can't stay in tune.
I'm just flailing, 'cause I don't know where to put it.
I know intellectually that there is nowhere to put it.
I know that.
I know that this is just a cataclysmic event in my life.
That to anybody else sounds like,
"Oh, you can't sing anymore, well, you can still talk.
You can still write. You can still play."
Yeah, I could still do all of those things,
but I can't sing and I've sung
since I was two-and-a-half, three-years-old
with my dad, at Workman's Circle meetings,
sitting on Pete Seeger's knee, I've always sung.
(gentle acoustic guitar music)
(Janis Ian, "Tea & Sympathy")
♪ I don't want to ride the milk train anymore ♪
♪ I'll go to bed at nine ♪
♪ And waken with the dawn ♪
♪ And lunch at half past noon ♪
♪ Dinner prompt at five ♪
♪ The comfort of a few old friends long past their prime ♪
♪ Pass the tea and sympathy ♪
♪ For the good old days long gone ♪
♪ Let's drink a toast to those who most ♪
♪ Believe in what they've won ♪
♪ It's a long, long time till morning ♪
♪ Plays wasted on the dawn ♪
♪ I'll not write another line ♪
♪ For my true love is gone ♪
Look at this guitar. It's amazing.
This guitar is amazing.
This guitar is older than I am.
This guitar is just stunning. Look at that.
Look at this. Look at all of this.
I was playing it and I was just crying and my wife said,
"Why is it all pitted there?"
And I said, "Well, that's how I learned to play."
And she said "I thought you learned to play on the strings?"
And I said, "Well, that's what happens when you're learning
to play with a pick and your pick keeps falling onto it,
and smacking it."
My wife, who had worked in the Vanderbilt Archives,
forced me to start keeping things.
I used to just throw everything away,
and Pat was just horrified.
I started keeping them and I looked up one day
and I had 200 boxes.
(acoustic guitar strums)
And it's just...
It's almost like playing a bongo, or a conga.
You know how you go, like that, on those?
I never went to school. I left in 10th grade.
So, I didn't have an alma mater to leave my archives to.
So, I was having lunch with Teresa Kash Davis,
who works with Berea and I love Berea,
because every student attends tuition-free.
So, just put this finger back there.
Like me, who started out on a chicken farm,
a lot of students come from rural areas.
Like my dad, they are the first people
to attend college in their families.
They're in college because this is a stepping stone
to a better future.
There you are!
So, I was talking to Teresa, and I started thinking about it
and I said, "Look, why don't I just donate
my archives to Berea?"
And what I wanted them to do was to communicate a life,
not my life, but the life of the times I lived in.
(Janis Ian, "Still Standing")
♪ See these lines on my face ♪
♪ They're a map of where I've been ♪
- [Mattea] A lot of us that have been doing
this for a long time,
we're afraid that we won't know who we are,
when we're not doing it.
- [Peter Cunningham] We get knocked off our pedestals,
but Janis has the ability to be resilient.
- [Robert Oermann] She's got an inner fiber of steel.
She will always be a writer.
♪ And I could not trade a line ♪
♪ Make it smooth and fine ♪
♪ Or pretend that time stands still ♪
♪ I want to rest my soul ♪
♪ Here where it can grow without fear ♪
♪ Another line, another year ♪
♪ I'm still standing here ♪
- [Guthrie] Janis's music will be
around for a very long time,
because there's a creativity there, there's a power there.
- [Baez] This meaningful little woman
wrote giant works of art.
She's true to her music and true to herself.
♪ I'm still standing here ♪
(audience cheers and applauds)