Janis Ian

I was planning to present Janis Ian a little later, but today I felt like writing about someone familiar and listening to songs that I really love. Janis fits the bill.

Janis Ian was born Janis Eddy Fink on April 7, 1951, in New York City. She was primarily raised in New Jersey, initially on a farm, and attended East Orange High School in East Orange, New Jersey and the New York City High School of Music & Art. Her parents, Victor, a music teacher, and Pearl ran a summer camp in upstate New York.

As a child, Ian admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Starting with piano lessons at the age of two (at her own insistence), Ian, by the time she entered her teens, was playing the organ, harmonica, French horn and guitar. At the age of 12, she wrote her first song, Hair of Spun Gold, which was subsequently published in the folk publication Broadside and was later recorded for her debut album. In 1964, she legally changed her name to Janis Ian, taking her brother Eric's middle name as her new surname. Here is Hair of Spun Gold:

At the age of 14, Ian wrote and recorded her first hit single, Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking), about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl's mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers. The song, which was based on her experiences living in a largely black neighborhood in East Orange, N.J., was largely banned from radio until Leonard Bernstein invited her to perform it on television, propelling the record and its message, controversial in the mid-1960s, across a country awakening to its racial divide. It eventually made #14 in the US Hot 100, two years after it was first released, selling more than 600,000 copies. It still sounds amazing today - and the fact that such a young girl had already reached this level of maturity sends shivers down my spine.

Hair of Spun Gold, as well as Society's Child, both appeared on her first album, titled Janis Ian (1967). Also in this album was her second single, Younger Generation Blues, which was underwhelming, especially compared to Society's Child. Therefore, it wasn't surprising that it didn't become a hit.

Too Old To Go 'Way Little Girl was much more interesting and lyrically complex song - a take on the repression of female teenage sexuality.

With Lover Be Kindly Ian examines the idiosyncrasies of a love affair:

New Christ Cardiac Hero was a nod to Dylan:

The album's closing number was the painfully personal Janey’s Blues:

Now, a moment of supreme irony: At age 16, Ian met comedian Bill Cosby backstage at a Smothers Brothers show where she was promoting Society's Child. Since Ian was underage, she needed to be accompanied by a chaperon while touring and after her set, she had been sleeping with her head on her chaperon's lap (an older female family friend). Cosby interpreted their interaction as "lesbian" and is alleged to have warned other television shows that Ian was "not suitable family entertainment" and "shouldn't be on television" because of her sexuality, thus attempting to blacklist her. Although Ian would later come out as lesbian, she states that at the time of the encounter with Cosby she had only been kissed once, in broad daylight at summer camp.

Knowing what we know about Cosby today, just aaaarghhh!!!

Her first album cracked the US Top 30, eventually selling 350,000 copies. The follow-up, however, called … For All The Seasons Of Your Mind and released later in 1967, only just made the Top 200. A pity, because it too was a good album. This was the age of psychedelia though, and the bittersweet musings of a teenage singer-songwriter were not chart material.

The first single off this album, Insanity Comes Quietly To The Structured Mind, bubbled under the Hot 100:

... Which was more than the second single, A Song For All The Seasons Of Your Mind, managed to do:

Lonely One was the single's B-side, and also an album track:

By the time her third album, The Secret Life Of J. Eddy Fink, was released in 1968, Ian was considered a commercial has-been. The quality of her albums was consistently good though. But so much was happening in pop music then, that it was easy to slip through the cracks.

There was one (unsuccessful) single released from this album: Friends Again:

Here are a couple of good album tracks. First, 42nd St. Psycho Blues:

... Also, Everybody Knows:

Who Really Cares was her last album for Verve, released in 1969. Calling Your Name was the album's single:

... But it's the B-side, Month Of May, that I prefer (a great song):

Her next record was called Present Company and was released by Capitol in 1971. My favorite song from this album is He’s a Rainbow:

The title track is also good:

The album wasn't a hit and Capitol dropped Ian. But Lady Luck smiled at last: Roberta Flack picked Janis' composition, Jesse, as the follow-up single to her huge hit Killing Me Softly With His Song, in 1973. Jesse, was a sizeable hit:

That was good enough for Columbia Records, which signed Janis; together they released seven studio albums, in what was commercially and creatively Janis' best period. The first album was released in 1974 and was called Stars. The title track is a masterpiece:

Here's a cover version by Nina Simone:

Janis' own version of Jesse was included, of course. This touching song, an elegy for a Vietnam veteran, was as good as, if not better than Flack's version:

There was another great album track dealing with Vietnam; it was called Dance With Me:

The Man You Are in Me was a single that almost made the Hot 100:

The album did make the Top 100 in the US, even at a rather lowly #83. What a pleasant surprise then, when her next album, 1975's Between The Lines, reached #1 on the Billboard album chart in September 1975, and sold 1.9 million copies in the United States. This was mainly because of this song:

At Seventeen is the perfect song describing teenage angst. It contains powerful lyrics such as:

We all play the game, and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone

Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say: "come on, dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen

The song peaked at #3 in the US Hot 100 and at #1 in the Adult Contemporary chart. Somehow this song transcended its target audience and became a hymn for anyone who felt insecure and self-conscious of their appearance and/or social status at any point in their lives. Which means, practically everyone who posseses an ounce of sensitivity. This is Shirley Bassey performing Jesse (with Janis on piano), followed by Janis performing At Seventeen:

This is a great cover version by Celine Dion:

There were other great songs in the album as well. When The Party's Over is one of them:

From Me To You is another:

... So is In The Winter:

... As well as the title track, Between The Lines:

Her next album, Aftertones (1976), was also a hit (US: #12, Japan #1), but failed to produce hit singles. As with all of Janis' albums, it contained a number of good songs. Boy, I Really Tied One On was one of the lively ones:

This is I Would Like To Dance:

This is Roses:

... And this is Love Is Blind, which was a #1 hit in Japan:

Her album for 1977 was Miracle Row. From it, here's a beautiful song called Sunset of Your Life:

Here's Candlelight:

... And here's Will You Dance?:

In 1978, a second album simply called Janis Ian was released, and it's altogether different from the one released in 1967. From it, here's a lovely song called Do You Wanna Dance:

... And here's Silly Habits:

Janis' album for 1979 was called Night Rains. It contained Fly Too High, produced by none other than Giorgio Moroder. It was Ian's contribution to the soundtrack of the Jodie Foster film Foxes. It also became her first international hit, reaching #1 in many countries, including South Africa, Belgium, Australia, Israel and the Netherlands, and going gold or platinum in those countries as well as charting in the UK.

Also in this album is The Other Side Of The Sun:

... As well as Here Comes the Night:

In Jenny (Iowa Sunrise), Chic Corea joins her on piano:

In 1980, You Are Love was a Japan-only single. It appeared on the soundtrack of a film called Virus:

In 1981 her last album for Columbia was released. It was called Restless Eyes - and unfortunately no songs from this album appear on youtube.

In the mid 80s, Uncle Wonderful was released in some European countries, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. It contained, among others, Mechanical Telephone, a song that was originally recorded in 1980:

For the next couple of years she unwound from eleven solid years of touring and recording with dance lessons and theatre lessons from Stella Adler. Then in the mid-1980's everything fell apart. She ended an abusive six-year marriage with Portuguese filmmaker Tino Sargo, endured emergency intestinal surgery, suffered a family loss, and lost everything in an IRS nightmare of gross financial business mismanagement. In 1988 she moved to Nashville. Here she worked to establish herself as a premiere songwriter. Since then such diverse artists as Kathy Mattea, Bette Midler, Nanci Griffith, and Amy Grant have recorded her works.

By 1989, she was living in Nashville, dusting herself off after a breakup and struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome. She told a friend she wanted a chess partner and was introduced to Pam Snyder, who was 42, a single mother and an assistant archivist at Vanderbilt University. Within months, chess had blossomed into love. By then Janis knew she was gay, and she was out to her family and friends, but had not yet come out in public. She would do so 4 years later, in 1993, along with the release of her first album in 12 years, aptly named Breaking Silence. The alarming rate of suicides among lesbian and gay teens was one of the decisive reasons for coming out. She wanted to do this five years earlier when she started to try and get funding for the record, but couldn't find any. (Janis ended up mortgaging her home to finance the recording of Breaking Silence.) She talked to the people from The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and they felt pretty strongly that she should wait until she could do a decent amount of publicity around it, otherwise it would be wasted. So she waited for five years.

The album got great reviews, and was eventually nominated for a Grammy, Janis' seventh nomination. Most of the songs dealt with "controversial" subjects. His Hands is about spousal abuse:

Tattoo is about the Holocaust:

The title track, Breaking Silence, is about incest:

Guess You Had to Be There is about failed idealism:

Ride Me Like a Wave is a wonderfully sensual song that avoids being gender specific. It was Janis' favorite song from this album:

Her next album, in 1995, was Revenge. From it, here's Take No Prisoners:

... As well as Take Me Walking In The Rain:

Two years later came Hunger. Here's Getting Over You:

God And The FBI was recorded in late 1999 and released in early 2000. Here's the title track:

In Memphis she collaborates with Willie Nelson:

This Jolene is not the one by Dolly Parton:

Snyder and Ian married in Toronto on August 27, 2003. The brides wore Hawaiian shirts, as did one of their best men, Janis' friend George R. R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series.

A few months later, the album Billie's Bones came out. From it, here's Forever Young:

Her last album so far was released in 2006 and was called Folk Is The New Black. In it, My Autobiography can be found:

Another good song is Danger Danger:

Here's the title track:

Finally, here's Crocodile Song:

In 2009 her collection Essential Janis Ian was released. It contained a haunting rendition of the traditional Irish anti-war song, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye', recorded a few years earlier:

Her last non-album single came out in 2010. Every Woman's Song was written by Janis Ian and Angela Aki. It is performed by Janis Ian & San Diego Woman's Chorus:

As an epilogue, here's Janis' answer to the question: what message would you hope the body of your work conveys?

"Take no bullshit! An audience can smell that. I think a lot of my work says accept nothing less than what you're worth. People deserve the truth and their integrity and they shouldn’t forget that."