FORTY YEARS AGO, a preternaturally gifted fourteen-year old walked into pop music producer Shadow Morton’s office and got a record deal. A week later Janis Ian was in the studio recording “Society’s Child,” a folk ballad about interracial dating. Soon after, she was touring the country with this controversial hit song. Twenty-four albums and two Grammy awards later, she is still going strong.
Along the way, Ian evolved into a lesbian icon as she wrote a monthly column for The Advocate for five years, married her partner Pat in Toronto in 2002 with a wedding announcement in The New York Times, and headlined pride festivals around the country. On the release of her latest album Folk is the New Black, the singer-songwriter spoke with me in person for the G&LR.
John R. Killacky: So “Society’s Child” comes out. A radio station in Atlanta got burned down for playing it. You’re fifteen years old and on tour. What was that like for a teenager?
Janis Ian: Well, when you’re fifteen, you’re really busy being cool. I was about as cool and pretentious as you could get at fifteen, and of course I knew everything. On the one hand, it was tremendously exciting. I’m a second-generation American, my people never had money, and here I was flying around the country meeting people and hanging out with all these famous people that I’d only heard of, going to California, to the ends of the earth. On the other hand, it was absolutely terrifying because of the nature of the record. People would spit at me on the street, trip me when I walked onstage. They would buy whole blocks of tickets so they could sit in their chairs and chant “nigger lover” while I was singing to disrupt the shows. In that sense, performing became extremely painful and very scary. It stayed that way until about ten years ago, when I had this brilliant idea that in order to sell more merchandise I would stay after the shows and sign. I gradually lost my fear. It’s hard to be a good performer when you’re afraid.
JK: You’ve talked about being so far down, that the gutter looked like up, and being so far up that the stars look like down. Let’s first talk about the up period in the 70’s. In 1973 you released Stars.
JI: I wrote my first song at twelve, published at thirteen, recorded at fourteen, had a hit at fifteen, and was a has-been at seventeen—that’s a lot of lifetimes! When I was seventeen, I quit the music industry because I really didn’t know if I had the kind of talent to be the writer I wanted to be. I always think that it’s better to be the best than the first. So I went away and had a fair amount of therapy, and when I was 21 wrote a song called “Jesse” and a song called “Stars,” and when I’d finished both of those I thought maybe I had it in me to be a really good writer. I was fortunate that I had a manager then who believed in me, and an attorney who was the same. We finally got a record deal through a production company with Herb Gart. He got our funding out of Australia, and we cut an album called Stars. It got great critical reviews, but there wasn’t a hit single on it. So I went on the road and did talk shows for a year, and then made Between The Lines, which had “At Seventeen” on it. And then I did that same thing for another two years until it was a hit. I was very lucky after that. Sony Japan, who was the CBS affiliate, took a big interest in me, and the next album yielded a song in Japan that was number one for a year—the album was number one for six months. When you think about something being number one anywhere for a year, it’s pretty amazing. So now I had a career in the US, and in Japan, and then two albums later I did a co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder and we had a number one record everywhere but the US and Japan. By 1980, I had a thriving global career that I’m still trading off of.
JK: What was life on the road like for you then?
JI: Same as it always is. Tedious. It loses its glamour in about thirty minutes. It doesn’t much matter if you’re in a car, van, or limousine; you’re still butt to the seat looking at the scenery. It doesn’t much matter if you’re in the Hilton in a five-star suite or in the local Super8. You’re still stuck in a hotel room. In a way it was worse back then, because with “At Seventeen” and all of that, there had to be bodyguards, and there had to be tremendous logistical planning, and really no privacy at all.
JK: And in ’83 you walked away for nine years. What happened during those years?
JI: I left because, well, I thought I had enough money and I didn’t have to worry again. I was married at the time, to a man, and I wanted to have children. And then it turned out that I couldn’t have children, and then it turned out that all my money was gone, as was the accountant. Then it turned out that I didn’t have my health, either, and I looked up in 1986 owing the Feds 1.3 million dollars and no way to make a living for a couple of years because I was ill. So, a long road back.
JK: You grew up around New York, lived in California, and you wound up in Nashville. How did you wind up in Nashville?
JI: In 1986 I was wiped out, I had to make a living. I had no recourse, so I signed a publishing contract with MCA. Leeds Levy, who was heading the company, thought if he could put together my depth with another writer’s commerciality, he might get something very interesting. Since Nashville at the time was the most commercial place in the country, just in terms of getting covers, they sent me to Nashville for two weeks. And it was the damnedest thing. My foot hit the tarmac and I thought, “I’m home.” I knew nothing about Nashville. I knew next to nothing about country music. I mean, I’d grown up on the music of Hank Williams and Jimmy Reeves, but knew nothing beyond that. I felt at home the moment I got there. The songwriting community didn’t look at what I was doing now; they looked at what I had done. They’re still like that. They look at the body of your work, not your current status. I felt at home there and I’ve always felt at home there. Now, of course, I’ve been with my partner for seventeen years. She has a law practice there; my grandchildren are there, so I’m pretty much stuck there until I die.
JK: So how did Nashville and the music industry take to you and your partner Pat?
JI: I met Pat after I’d been kicking around Nashville for three years, and living there for one, so most people initially knew me as single. I confess I anticipated problems once we began living together, but truthfully, there hasn’t been a single incident. There are probably people who wouldn’t want me to baby-sit their children because I’m gay, and they assume all gay people are pedophiles. Then again, I wouldn’t want those people babysitting my grandkids, either!
JK: You’ve been out and proud as a lesbian for two decades now. Has that had an impact on your career?
JI: Hard to tell. I was outed in 1976 by The Village Voice, so for anyone really watching, I’ve been out almost thirty years. I know I’ve lost a couple of opportunities—Chet Atkins tried very hard to get me on Prairie Home Companion with him, but was told I wasn’t “family values.” But I think it’s probably had very little over-all effect on my career, particularly during the last decade. Remember, I’ve always been able to work worldwide, and Europe, Japan, Australia could really care less what my gender preferences are.
I think the important thing to remember is that you have to do what’s right. For me, being in the closet was not an option. You can’t be in two places at once, and I think trying to do so makes you crazy, splits your soul. So really, there’s nothing brave about Pat and me living our life together without pretense; the alternative isn’t something either of us had ever contemplated.
JK: Talk about how you see an artist in society, and you as a songwriter in society.
JI: To me, artists are the last resort. There is a reason Plato gets rid of artists in The Republic first. Artists always stand on the edge of anarchy. An artist’s job, first and foremost, is to question everything. When you’re an artist, and you start leaving your own culture to perform in other cultures, you suddenly realize how much of what you think is right and wrong is just culturally imposed. To me, a piece like Guernica, or any great work of art, is what stands between us and chaos. It’s why as adolescents we respond so strongly to music and to our own generational music: because there is chaos at the door. And if you can find a tiny little spot where things make sense and somebody seems to understand what you’re going through, and can give phrase to it, then all of a sudden the world is a safer place—because at least you’re not alone. It’s the abyss we all have to cross.
So to me, the place of artists in this world, be they Madonna or Martha Graham, is to elevate our lives, to bring us redemption, or at least the hope of redemption, to make us feel something. Whether it’s good or bad, at least we’re feeling, at least we’re not dime-store dummies sitting in a window. In these days of Nintendo and PlayStation, where everything is passive, people are not being taught to be active. I think art is even more important now, because art at its best—and the reason I can still fill a 500-seater—art at its best cannot be passive. Art at its best has to be active. There has to be a movement between the audience and the artist, and from the artist to the audience. It’s almost visible when it really works. If you’re positive that it’s right, it translates to the audience, and from the audience, feeds back to you, the artist, and creates this astonishing loop of energy. People walk out feeling like they’ve been redeemed, like they’ve experienced something they cannot get anywhere else. That’s what makes it noble, that’s what makes it tragic.
John R. Killacky co-edited Queer Crips: Disabled Men and their Stories.
