♪♪ ♪♪ -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."

♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ 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" ♪ [ Piano playing ] -Sound speed.

Okay, this is Janis piano, take one.

[ Beeping ] ♪♪ -[ Breathes deeply ] 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.

-What do you consider yourself, Janis?

-Just a singer.

-Singer?

-Yeah.

-Of any particular notoriety?

-[ Laughs ] 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.

-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.

-Forget about glory, because that fades.

Being an artist, it's about service.

It's about feeling like you were part of something bigger than yourself.

Music is about telling stories.

This is mine.

[ Chuckles ] 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.

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 2 1/2, 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."

He started to teach me, and [Laughs] I think from the first we argued.

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.

[ Siren wailing ] -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.

-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.

-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."

-First you duck, and then you cover, and very tightly you cover the back of your neck.

-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."

-♪ If your time to you is worth saving ♪ ♪ Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone ♪ ♪ For the times, they are a-changing ♪ -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.

[ Applause ] -It gives me a lot more than -- than -- than the... -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.

[ Guitar playing ] -♪ On this mountain ♪ -I was in the shower, and I heard this voice.

-♪ That ring like mine, boy ♪ -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.

-♪ What did you see, my darling young one?

♪ -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.

-I met Janis when we were like 12 years old at summer camp.

It was very progressive and, you know, it's integrated, and you learn folk songs.

I had a blues band, and Janis was writing songs, and we were the only two girls that we knew -- this is in the '60s -- the only two girls that we knew that played guitar and sang.

-I stole my dad's Lead Belly 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.

-She was already writing stuff like "Hair of Spun Gold."

I remember that was one real early one.

-When I was just the age of five ♪ ♪ My world had just come alive ♪ -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 ♪ -I wrote out the lead sheet with the vocal line and the chords, and I sent it in to 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.

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?"

[ Folk music plays ] -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.

-I got there, and I saw all these people that I'd only heard on the radio or seen on album jackets, people like Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton.

This was my first chance to sing in front of a paying audience.

-We didn't know who she was.

She was this little kid from New Jersey, and her guitar was as big as she was.

[ Guitar playing ] -Shh!

-Hey, come on, I'm getting hung up on this chord.

-She got up and she sang a song that was so full of sass that Len and I were -- were banging on the chairs saying, "Great, great."

-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."

-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.

-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.

-♪ 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.

-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, uh, getting in trouble together.

It was a wonderful time.

[ Guitar playing ] -♪ Oh, what a beautiful city ♪ -In Greenwich Village there was a very active club scene, you know, this kind of folk revival, I suppose, is what people were calling it.

Janis was a part of that world.

-♪ Twelve gates to the city ♪ -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 1/2- or 14-year-old white girl from New Jersey.

They must have been appalled.

-♪ You make me feel I'm the only one ♪ ♪ To know that you're not real ♪ ♪ Lonely one ♪ ♪ Turned down thumbs on the world ♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -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.

-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.

-Shadow Morton was not necessarily the likeliest producer for folk songs.

Shadow Morton produced the Shangri-Las.

-♪ They said he came from the wrong side of town ♪ -♪ What you mean when you say that he came from the wrong side of town?

♪ -He was into drama.

-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!

-He would disappear.

-He would just disappear.

He'd become vapor.

-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.

-♪ Hotels on the road ♪ ♪ Sometimes get lonely ♪ ♪ When you turn out the light ♪ 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."

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?"

He was just really adorable about it.

So I went back and I sang.

I probably sang him the 6 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.

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.

-"Society's Child" is a great song.

You have this young girl with a guitar taking on the beast -- interracial relationships.

-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.

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.

♪♪ -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.

I mean, she was a tiny, little girl!

To think "Society's Child" came out of a young girl like that.

-14, 15 years old.

-Wow.

She'd never been to a recording studio before, and she brought me a piece of paper, 8.5x11, with her lyrics, with the chord changes written right above them.

And she thought that was sufficient to pass out to the band.

-I didn't know how to talk to musicians because 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?

♪ -When she sang the song for us, we had to recuperate for a few minutes.

Out of her fingers and out of her mouth.

She -- 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.

-♪ Up high ♪ ♪ One of these days I'm gonna ♪ ♪ Raise up my glistening wings and fly ♪ -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?

-We learned a lot from this little girl.

-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.

-I sat on one of those chairs with three wheels, you know, like a secretary sits on.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And -- And we greased it.

We greased the wheels so they didn't squeak.

I should have gotten paid mileage.

I would have -- I would have made more money!

♪♪ -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.

-She made a record that is true art.

It's foresight.

It's foresight about what the world should be like.

-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.

And I said no.

-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 going to change words for somebody else.

-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.

♪♪ -She took on forces that she probably didn't even understand, and that's one of the -- one of the great things about being young.

Maybe it's only a child who could sing a song like this, uh, only a child who's 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.

♪♪ -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."

-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.

-I say segregation now... segregation tomorrow... and segregation forever!

[ Cheers and applause ] -No intelligent white person watching this show, 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.

-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.

-It could cost you your life to express love to the wrong person.

The song was an act of courage.

-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."

-The record company was afraid of it.

Radio stations were afraid of playing it.

All the odds were stacked against her with this song.

-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."

[ "Society's Child" finale plays ] -It kills me -- that sassy retort of the organ at the end, that voice, those words, and that key change.

♪ But for now, this is the way they must remain ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I say I can't see you anymore ♪ -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 -- a brilliant man.

And it was like being on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

-Oh, Janis, how did you ever write such a thing at the age of 15?

You're a great creature.

-Thank you.

-That was an embrace of God, and that just catapulted "Society's Child."

-It just took off, and then she took off.

-"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.

-Well, it's a dirty song.

-Why was it considered a dirty song?

-'Cause it talks about Blacks and whites.

And people don't like hearing that because it scares them.

[ Siren wails ] [ Indistinct shouting ] -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.

-It was a very strong, emphatic social commentary.

[ Gunshot ] -We live in a kind of world where when you want to shout and you want to talk, they 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."

-I'm not attacking anybody.

Except hypocrites.

-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.

I would say congratulations.

If you get both sides nipping at your heels, you know you're doing something right.

-Some of the club owners wouldn't even let her get on stage for fear of what might happen.

-I did not know that.

How sad.

-"Society's Child" was the first song to come along to incite national anger.

I was suddenly dealing with things like, do I go on stage when I know that someone has sent in a bomb threat to the theater?

-Anybody who wrote that song at that time was always going to run into some problems.

-♪ Don't let it bother you ♪ 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.

♪ Changing times ♪♪ [ Applause ] ♪ 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"... [ Crowd shouting ] ...these people started yelling.

♪ Tears and your shame ♪ And I thought that they were yelling something nice because, on stage, 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, uh... almost prayer-like chant.

"Nigger lover.

Nigger lover."

Beat, beat, beat.

Mnh.

"... lover.

...

lover."

Beat, beat, beat.

Mnh.

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.

[ Crowd jeering ] 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.

[ Crowd shouting ] [ High-pitched buzzing ] And I started to cry.

I-I just didn't know what I was supposed to do.

[ Crying ] The promoter came in.

[ Laughs ] And he had been in the box office.

He had no idea what had happened.

So he asked me what I was doing off stage.

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.

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."

[ "Society's Child" plays ] ♪ Come to my door, baby, face is clean... ♪ 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 shown 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.

♪ "He's not our kind" ♪ 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.

♪ One of these days, I'm gonna ♪ ♪ 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 ♪ ♪♪ -I had 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.

♪♪ -I got to work with Joplin at the Berkeley 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.

♪ Oh, the pretty little girl on Easter's day ♪ ♪ By a bright center fountain consented to play ♪ ♪ Held in 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.

-It's "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

-We're going to present an extremely talented and very amazing young lady named Janis Ian.

-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 8:00 and not be called until 2:00 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 10:00.

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.

-Bill Cosby spoke out against her.

He said she was "probably a lesbian."

He said that to the press.

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 have lost my ability to perform anywhere.

I could have 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.

-How do you react to the music business?

-If you want to be a star, then you have to do what's necessary to become a star.

-What's that?

-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.

-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.

[ Bell rings ] -Can I just say without going into detail that I hated school?

My teachers gave me a very hard time.

-What's happened with school with you now?

Are you still in school or home...?

-My presence in class was found to be disturbing, and I was asked to leave.

-How disturbing?

I mean...emotionally...?

-I don't know.

No.

Not me.

I mean, it wasn't disturbing me.

-It was disturbing -- It was disturbing the teachers.

-Yeah.

-They get very disturbed, teachers in New York.

[ Laughter ] [ Applause ] ♪♪ -In the fall of 1967, 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.

♪♪ I happened to have a pumpkin, so I presented a pumpkin.

-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.

-We toured the country, uh, 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 on stage when I was with her.

-I got really tired of seeing posters that said "Little Janis Ian.

'Society's Child.'

Live tonight."

-It wasn't the best move to never sing your hit song.

-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.

-Back last May, Henrietta Yurchenco 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.

[ Applause ] -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 that's what she said.

And I said, "They may all say that, but I'm doing it."

-That was '67, and then '68 happened, and change was happening all over the world.

We were going to see B.B.

King and Janis Joplin.

It was at Generation Club where Jimi Hendrix had a studio.

-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?

♪♪ -♪ Sometimes I wonder ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Just what am I fighting for?

♪ -The Reverend Doctor 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 stumblin' ♪ ♪ And there's no-man's land out here ♪ -Our hearts got ripped out a lot at that time.

-We listened.

Played until dawn.

Everybody was so shook.

And then I decided that I would walk home.

[ Siren wails ] 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 alright."

And he gave me a Coca-Cola.

I guzzled about a third of it, and things got really weird.

♪ She sits on a window sill ♪ ♪ Looking down, it's quite a thrill ♪ -The world started to shimmer.

It was like everything had light at the edges.

And 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 have been checked out forever.

♪ Looking outward through my pain ♪ ♪ Looking through my window pane ♪ ♪ See her face turn into rain ♪ -I was just hallucinating for four days.

-She would say crazy things.

No, she wouldn't be able to answer the phone.

She would not -- She refused to talk to people.

♪♪ -♪ 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 ♪ -She was not able to cope with daily reality.

-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.

-She stopped functioning.

And her friend Carol Hunter, who was a guitar player, helped Janis find a shrink.

And the shrink was in Philadelphia.

We went to Philadelphia, met this amazing man named Gerry Weiss.

-Gerry said to me, "If you keep trying to kill yourself, I'm gonna put you somewhere where there will be no pen, no paper, and no piano."

That took care of it for me.

There was no way I was going there.

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.

-That kind of just normal life, not having to be on stage and "on" all the time.

It was something I could give to her... so she was able to find herself in a different way.

-The middle of winter, I walked out with no jacket and I took the train into Central Philadelphia, not telling Peter where I was going, of course, because why would I bother?

Poor guy.

-She just disappeared all day, and I was fearing the worst, you know, some kind of self-harm.

And Gerry Weiss, who had never lost a patient, was also concerned.

-I stayed at the library, and I just wrote.

I just wrote for the day.

That night, I walked over to Gerry'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 ♪ -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 ♪ -It's a brave song.

And for me, it taught me the Gerry Weiss was right.

The best way for me to write was from an open place.

-♪ Perhaps they'll listen now ♪ -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.

♪♪ So 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" ♪ -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 ♪ ♪ And live from day to day ♪ "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 ♪ -"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 ♪ -Somebody is 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 ♪ -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 ♪ ♪♪ -She had a meeting in L.A. to go to, so she took a flight.

It was literally one of the first times we'd been separate.

-I flew out to L.A., 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."

-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.

-So, I was attending this health club, The Sanctuary, and I met this teacher, Claire, and just fell head over heels with her.

-♪ 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... ♪ -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.

-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.

-♪ Home again ♪ -He had a real eye for a portrait.

I mean, all of my photos from 1968 right up through the '80s was Peter.

-♪ Hmm-hmm ♪ -I moved in to 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.

-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.

You know, Jean Powell was the manager.

And they were gonna talk about doing a record.

-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?

♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ 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 ♪ -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.

-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 ♪ ♪ Ooooh ♪ ♪ I love the dreams you can't remember ♪ -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.

-My wife, Marilyn, and I got a second mortgage to pay the studio bills.

We found a little bungalow for her and her housemate, Claire.

And Claire attended the recordings like a studio groupie.

-♪ You've got me on a string ♪ -She'd come in with food, make 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 ♪ -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 ♪ -The guys envied and goggled over Claire, and yet Janis was the one who took her home, you know?

-In those days, we were all kind of progressive hippies, you know?

Anything goes.

Everything's fine.

It was family.

♪♪ 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.

♪ Come and dance, come and dance ♪ ♪ I'm home from overseas ♪ ♪ And I need your company ♪ ♪ Celebrate the victory ♪ -I had a meeting with my friend Charles Koppelman, who was then the head of Columbia Records, and he said, "What's Janis' deal?

We love what we're hearing."

I said, "She needs a comeback.

Time hasn't been easy for her."

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.

-Ladies and gentlemen... -And we came out on stage.

-...Janis Ian!

-♪ I miss you ♪ ♪ Jealous lover ♪ ♪ Won't you come on over to my side of town?

♪ ♪ I need you ♪ -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 ♪ ♪ And I need you all over again ♪ ♪ Without you, the sun doesn't shine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow is blind ♪ ♪ Without you ♪ -I got my standing ovation and I got a record contract.

[ Applause ] -That's Janis Ian.

Alison Steele, The Nightbird.

WNEW-FM in the new groove.

And we fly many miles.

-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 ♪ -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.

♪ I was never one for singing ♪ ♪ What I really feel ♪ -Cher recorded "Stars" itself, the title track.

-Mel Tormé covered it.

And Glen Campbell.

Just this amazing wide group of artists.

♪ Stars, they come and go ♪ ♪ They come fast, they come slow ♪ ♪ They go like the last light of the sun ♪ ♪ All in a blaze ♪ ♪ All you see is glory ♪ -Somehow, between the age of 10 and 14 -- and I don't know how -- I decided that I was going to be a performer and a 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 ♪ -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.

-♪ I'm trying to tell my story ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Janis Ian told it very well ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Janis Joplin told it even better ♪ -It is the thrill of a lifetime to have a hero perform your work.

And even then, she does -- she does such a Nina with it!

-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.

-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.

♪♪ I was playing that... [Imitates strumming] on the guitar, and then I thought... ♪ I learned the truth ♪ Literally the first line of the article.

But "eighteen" didn't scan, so it became "seventeen."

[Laughs] -♪ I learned the truth at seventeen ♪ ♪ That love was meant for beauty queens ♪ ♪ And high-school girls with clear-skinned smiles ♪ ♪ Who married young and then retired ♪ ♪♪ ♪ The Valentines I never knew ♪ ♪ The Friday night charades of youth ♪ ♪ Were spent on one more beautiful ♪ ♪ At seventeen, I learned the truth ♪ -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.

-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 were -- who heard the buzz from the football field.

They all came inside.

There must have been 15 or 18 people.

This was my litmus test -- my litmus test and the first time I realized that Janis had a smash.

-We were in the studio, and I had brought in a kid, David Snider, who had 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.

-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.

-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.

♪♪ -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.

-♪ Would you like to sing my song?

♪ ♪ Would you like to learn to love me best of all?

♪ -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'll teach you how to sing and dance ♪ ♪ With a song-and-dance routine ♪ ♪ And when the party is over ♪ ♪ You can fall in love with me ♪ -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.

-♪ There's always radio ♪ ♪ And for a dime, I can talk to God ♪ ♪ Dial a prayer ♪ ♪ Are you there?

♪ -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 ♪ -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.

-And that result is art.

-♪ Ooh-ooh-ooh ♪ ♪♪ -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."

-We were facing a music industry with "At Seventeen" that said, "It's got to be under three minutes.

This is four and a half.

It won't work.

It's got to be up-tempo.

We can't play it in drive time."

So we send copies of that record not to the program directors of radio, but to their wives.

Every radio station I visited, I made sure that I homed in on the women in the station, the secretaries at the time.

-I got a job offer in L.A. to do an album with Art Garfunkel.

I was working at this recording studio right here, Village Recorders here in West L.A., and Art Garfunkel told me, "You're in your final days of poverty.

Your single 'At Seventeen' is lighting up the charts."

♪♪ I would drive on the Coast Highway to let some air out of my head, and I would click on to KNX-FM and I'd be hearing "At Seventeen."

I'd move to another station, hear "At Seventeen" in another spot.

All within the breadth of 5 or 10 minutes, I'd hear it at four different radio stations.

-When Janis Ian was about 15 years old, she had enormous success with a song called "Society's Child."

-Carson at the time was undisputed king.

-She recorded this album called "Between the Lines."

-If you were on "Carson," it was like you'd reach this gigantic audience and it puts you on the map.

-Would you welcome, please, Janis Ian?

[ Applause ] ♪♪ -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... ♪ I learned the truth at seventeen ♪ -♪ I learned the truth at seventeen ♪ -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 ♪ -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, blond, blue-eyed cheerleader.

-♪ Remember those who win the game ♪ ♪ Lose the love they sought to gain ♪ -[Laughing] I was the cheerleader.

I was the girl that Janis sang about in "At Seventeen."

I was the good girl who was dating the "bad boy."

-♪ The small-town eyes will gape at you ♪ ♪ In dull surprise when payment due ♪ -I don't care if you're super-handsome, beautiful, if you're smart or you're dumb, you know, everybody feels like a piece of... in some kind of way.

-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.

[ Laughs ] 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 ♪ -I was never picked... [ Laughs ] ...for any sports team.

-♪ When dreams were all they gave for free ♪ ♪ To ugly-duckling girls like me ♪ -I mean, I was that ugly-duckling girl, and so the song hit me pretty hard.

-♪ Inventing lovers on the phone ♪ -The fact that Janis had such a huge hit and such an iconic impact with that song, I think, speaks to its universal relevance.

[ Song ends ] [ Applause ] -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 Engineered Non-Classical.

"Between the Lines" -- Brooks Arthur, Larry Alexander, and Russ Payne.

-I won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album.

Janis was up for Best Female Vocalist.

Then Lily Tomlin comes walking out, envelope in hand, and says... -And the winner is "At Seventeen," Janis Ian!

[ Cheers and applause ] -It was a night of nights for us.

It was just an all-time high.

We did it.

She did it.

And Janis looked so beautiful that night.

-Thank you.

It's been a long time.

Thank you.

[ Chuckles ] -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."

-The album was a smash and the Grammys were won, and Janis was at the top of her game.

-♪ Bright lights and promises ♪ ♪ Ain't that what it's for?

♪ Last three years have been great because I've been doing what I want to do and 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.

-♪ Gold lamé and diamonds ♪ ♪ Even if my gold is worn ♪ ♪ Honey, can you show me more?

♪ -Going from a coffeehouse to, you know, thousands of seats, it was just a fabulous experience.

[ Applause ] -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.

-I make records and I do concerts and I write, and they're three very separate things, you know?

There's no way to duplicate a record in a concert, for instance.

There's no way to write while you're doing concerts.

-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.

-There were some really wonderful pieces on "Aftertones."

♪♪ -♪ 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 ♪ -Songs like "Love is Blind" and "Boy, I Really Tied One On," they're great songs, they're great tracks.

-The songs that she was writing were all great, but some songs are drop-dead, unbelievably magnificent.

I would have waited until one more song was ready, but Columbia wanted the record out.

And if you don't come through, the artist is not guilty -- the producer is guilty.

So I felt it was my business to speak up.

-♪ In the morning ♪ ♪ Waken to the sound of weeping ♪ ♪ Someone else should weep for me ♪ -In Japan, "Love is Blind" was number one for the year, but though the album went gold, I labeled it "cold gold" because coming off of "Between the Lines," which was multi-platinum, it was rough waters.

-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 ♪ -Billy Joel and myself and Bruce Springsteen were three artists close to the same age, all on the same record label, and so it was 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 Amphitheatre in L.A.

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?

♪♪ -♪ Sing us a song, you're the piano man ♪ ♪ Oh, sing us a song tonight ♪ -Billy opened the show, and he slayed.

He was just amazing!

-He was Billy Joel, man.

He played "Piano Man."

He played "Italian Restaurant."

And the place lit up.

It was incredible.

♪♪ 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.

-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.

-A lot of people started to leave, and as they were leaving, they'd be singing a Billy Joel tune, which broke my heart because 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 got to involve your audience.

They made you platinum and multi-platinum.

And you just got to be part of that."

Of course, they didn't like what I said, and Janis and I got together, and we talked it through.

-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 L.A. and you can produce those other people."

And I can't fault him for it.

He went to L.A. 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.

-It took some time, it took some doing, but Janis and I repaired our differences.

Time heals everything, so to speak.

-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.

-A reporter from The Village Voice.

A guy named Cliff Jahr.

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.

-On the male side of pop musicians and rock musicians, you are 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.

-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?

-At some point along the way, you know, as -- you know, as love would have it, I don't -- I don't know exactly what and when and what day it happened, but, you know, Claire and I fell in love.

-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."

-Claire was having a scene going with Barry Lazarowitz, the drummer.

-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.

-Claire went on with Barry.

They got married and had kids.

And Janis was left in the lurch.

-People come and go.

The work goes on.

The work is the constant.

It's the glory of being an artist.

-♪ I'm still in love ♪ ♪ Though I don't care... ♪ -I found myself bereft, and so one night I sat down and I wrote a very sad love song.

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 ♪ -He calls me in another couple of weeks and he says, "Oh, you know, that jazz singer Mel Tormé wants to cut that song of yours.

Isn't that great?!"

I said, "Well, my heart's broke, but I feel a little better."

-♪ I've been parading ♪ ♪ Yeah, I led a lot astray ♪ ♪ Why bother waiting?

♪ ♪ You can have it all today ♪ -So I go down and make this record with Mel Tormé.

Six months after it comes out, the Grammy people call.

They say, "You know, that record you made with Mel Tormé was nominated for Best Jazz Duet for Grammy."

I said, "Well, my heart's still broke, but I feel a whole lot better now."

Two weeks after the Grammys, I ran 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."

-♪ Silly habits ♪ ♪ Mean a lot ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -Bravo!

-How about that?!

The great Janis Ian!

Oh, what a get for me!

-After that whole thing, she moved to L.A. 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.

-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 Comédie-Française, 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.

-Janis seemed happy, you know?

And that's all I cared about, is Janis being happy.

-♪ Anonymous, autonomous ♪ ♪ Will likely get the best of us yet ♪ -At this time in Janis's career, she wrote a song called "Fly Too High."

-I'd been hanging out a lot with gay guys who were going to baths.

And so the song was about the baths, you know?

"Anonymous will likely get the best of us yet."

-♪ Run too fast ♪ ♪ Fly too high ♪ ♪ Run too fast ♪ ♪ Fly too high ♪ -Some people are saying, "Well, what the hell is she doing now?"

-Well, I'm just doing stuff that's going... -"Ian Goes disco."

-I haven't gone disco.

It's not a disco song.

If I wanted to go disco, I'd have cut a whole album.

-"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.

-♪ Someone is waiting ♪ [ Applause ] ♪ Over by the window ♪ ♪ Just beyond the stairwell, someone's crying ♪ -I remember the limousine driver in Japan wearing white gloves.

-In Japan her concert tour was huge.

Very successful concerts.

-Traveling to Australia, traveling to Holland, Ireland, Scotland.

We were taken out to dinner every night.

It was pretty amazing.

-I got an offer to go to South Africa and spend six weeks playing there.

-In 1948, the South African authorities implemented apartheid, which means "apartness" in Dutch.

And since then, there was this discrete separation between Black and white in all aspects of life.

-The African people are realizing that apartheid means nothing else but oppression and exploitation to them.

-We are going to take action against you!

-At the time, there was a cultural boycott for musicians and anybody to go to South Africa.

-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.

-I think she had a mission to go there to literally open hearts and minds.

-♪ 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 ♪ -The "Society's Child" song was an extraordinary gift to a society that was going through some extraordinary tensions.

-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.

♪♪ -Mr. Arti Dixson on the drums.

To this day, I get letters from people who were there who say, "That was the first time "I ever saw an integrated band on stage 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."

-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.

-We were able to play for all the people in South Africa, but there were some repercussions for going there.

-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."

♪♪ ♪ I sure get lonely ♪ 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.

♪♪ -When I first met Janis, her husband Tino was with her.

-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.

♪♪ -He had to be there all the time.

He would get very jealous of anybody I spent time with.

♪ 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.

Then 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."

-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 ♪ 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.

♪ Hold the darkness and stay the night ♪ 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 ♪ ♪♪ [ Telephone rings ] [ Birds chirping ] 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, "Oh, that's got to 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.

-She's literally back at square one.

And meanwhile, during all of this now, her mom is sick.

♪♪ -Got on the phone with the IRS agent, Mr.

Granite.

You cannot make that up.

And his first words to me were, "...you.

I know about you artists.

...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, "...you."

♪♪ I had a Bosendorfer piano that I had looked for for three years and waited for her 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.

-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 intellectual -- new intellectual properties to try to get you out of this?"

♪♪ -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.

-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 the hollow ♪ ♪ Rough times behind ♪ ♪ Rough times ahead ♪ -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.

-♪ Call my name ♪ ♪ I'll ring you in ♪ ♪ Set you down in a country town where the sky ♪ ♪ Never ends ♪ -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.

-The community went, "Oh, here's this great big pop icon who really likes what we do and respects who we are."

-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.

-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 have held you but I let you go ♪ ♪ Now I'm the one sleeping all alone ♪ -Kye had that sort of commercial edge, having been a writer in Nashville for some time and having hits.

-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, "Yeah, of course."

-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.

-Janis had a friend.

Her name was Mary.

She had a restaurant called Options.

And we would go there for lunch every day.

And it wasn't doing well.

Tough business.

-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'm not doing anything in the world."

-She started talking about committing suicide, and I knew we were both -- that Janis and I were both feeling the same thing.

It was like, "We've -- What do we do here?"

-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."

-What do you say after that?

What did we need to say to Mary?

♪♪ -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."

-♪ 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?

♪ -We were looking for this clincher that we just -- 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 ♪ -"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.

-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 eyes ♪ ♪ Fade like your dreams ♪ ♪ Too tired to rise ♪ -I'm not an easy crier, but, my goodness... -No, you're not.

-...you just could not help it.

It was so beautiful.

-It was magic.

And I immediately -- immediately, actually -- sent it to Bette Midler, who I knew in my heyday as an A&R man.

-♪ Some people laugh ♪ ♪ When they need to cry ♪ -Bette's album was heard by millions of people.

And I remember that we went to Mary's, to her restaurant, with a guitar.

-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?

♪ -We played it for her.

She just busted out in this smile.

"That's my song?

That's my song."

-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 ♪ -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."

-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.

-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.

-I was always conflicted about the sexual part.

And of course I felt like I had to hide it from my parents.

They didn't under-- They wouldn't understand that.

-Her mother, Verda, was so upset, she got on her knees for three days and she prayed to God to change Kye.

-I knew it was okay.

How can love be wrong?

-♪ Hearts take 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 ♪ -I ended up in another relationship.

And that broke us up, Janis and me.

-We were supposed to keep writing even though we'd broken up.

[ Chuckles ] That's what you think is gonna happen.

So naive.

♪ One day, there'll be someone to love all again ♪ -When their relationship ended, when Janis wanted to get out of herself, this was the place she would come.

♪♪ -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?

♪ Her new name was tattooed to her wrist ♪ ♪ It was longer than the old one ♪ ♪ Sealed in 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 ♪ ♪♪ 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.

♪ And it gets darker every night ♪ ♪ Spread-eagled out among the stars ♪ ♪ She says ♪ ♪ "Somewhere in this tunnel lives a light" ♪ ♪ "Still my beating heart" ♪ -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 ♪ ♪♪ -Janis had severe health problems when she moved here, and so part of coming to Nashville was also to recuperate.

-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?'

"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."

♪♪ ♪ Through the years, we've been happy ♪ ♪ Through the years, we've been sad ♪ ♪ And sometimes feeling lucky ♪ ♪ Was the only luck we had ♪ -They were just perfect for each other.

It was just, each met their person finally, you know?

-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."

-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 salable in many people's eyes.

-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?"

♪ Come into my solitude ♪ ♪ Though I weary be ♪ ♪ Come into my tenderness ♪ ♪ Dream along with me ♪ ♪ Listen to the whispers sing ♪ ♪ Listen to the singer shout ♪ ♪ Come into my solitude ♪ ♪ Me and my big mouth ♪ -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.

-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 ♪ -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."

-...that most homosexuals would probably not declare their sexual orientation openly, thereby making an already hard life even more difficult.

-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 one ♪ ♪ Thought I was the only one ♪ She said, did I realize that 3 out of every 10 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 ♪ -The idea that here was a major songwriter saying, "I'm going to break the silence" -- I thought that was very powerful.

-Listen, this is a story about how you felt at 17.

You couldn't get guys, true?

-Right.

You were not accepted -- -I couldn't girls, couldn't get guys.

-Couldn't get girls or guys.

You couldn't talk about the fact that you were a lesbian, or else you would have been the outcast of the school.

-Oh, definitely.

I think I would have been dead.

-You were having lesbian feelings.

-Yeah.

I went ahead and did Entertainment Weekly and did Leno and did all of the various shows and said, "I am gay."

-I want to explore sexuality next.

-Not a problem.

-With Janis Ian.

She has a brand-new CD out.

-It was not cool to be out of the closet in those years.

-I'm not saying she was ostracized, but it definitely affected her.

-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.

-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.

-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.

♪ 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 ♪ 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.

-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 ♪ "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.

-"It's not who you love, but if you can."

-♪ That makes a man a man ♪ -"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.

-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.

♪ We're married in London, but not in New York ♪ [ Laughter ] ♪ Spain says we're kosher ♪ ♪ The States say we're pork ♪ [ Laughter ] ♪ We wed in Toronto, the judge said "Amen" ♪ ♪ And when we got home, we were single again ♪ [ Laughter ] [ Cheers and applause ] 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 want to 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 ♪ -Janis' 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 -- 'At Seventeen' -- standing right in front of me."

-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."

-This was gonna 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.

-The idea of getting married as a gay person was so foreign.

We kept thinking that it wasn't gonna mean that much, everything was gonna 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...all the rest ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -Her legacy is not just as a songwriter, but it's 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 whiteboard.

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.

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.

[ "The Light at the End of the Line" plays ] ♪♪ -"The Light at the End of the Line" tour is Janis' farewell tour.

She really wanted to spend time with her fans and to thank her fans.

-I have people who have followed me and supported me since I was 14, 15 years old.

That's an incredible honor.

♪ You were there when I laughed ♪ ♪ You were there when I cried ♪ ♪ You were there as I tell you goodbye ♪ -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."

[ Birds chirping ] -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 -- 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, um -- 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."

-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, um, and not being able to have any kind of resolution is a little shocking.

-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 -- but I can't sing.

And I've sung since I was 2 1/2, 3 years old when my dad at Workmen's Circle meetings -- sitting on Pete Seeger's knee.

I've always sung.

[ Janis Ian's "Tea & Sympathy" plays ] ♪♪ ♪ 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 ♪ ♪♪ -Where are we going?

-Don't go yet.

Hang on one second.

-Wait, wait.

-Camera.

-This guitar is astonishing.

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, 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.

[ Guitar strumming ] And it's just -- It's almost like playing a bongo.

Or a conga.

-Mm-hmm.

-You know how you go... [ Imitates strings whining ] Like that, on those?

-Yeah.

-I never went to school.

I'd 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's "I'm Still Standing" plays ] ♪♪ ♪ See these lines on my face?

♪ ♪ They're a map of where I've been ♪ -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.

-We got knocked off our pedestals, but Janis has the ability to be resilient.

-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 ♪ ♪ 'Nother line, another year ♪ ♪ I'm still standing here ♪ -Janis' music will be around for a very long time because there's a -- there's a creativity there.

There's a power there.

-This meaningful little woman wrote giant works of art.

She's true to her music and true to herself.

-♪ I'm still standing here ♪ -♪ I'm still standing ♪ -♪ I'm still standing here ♪ -♪ I'm still standing here ♪ -♪ I'm still standing he-e-re ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ [ Janis Ian's "Stars" plays ] -♪ Stars, they come and go ♪ ♪ Some of them come fast ♪ ♪ Some come slow ♪ ♪ They go like the last light of the sun ♪ ♪ All in a blaze ♪ ♪ And all you can see is the glory ♪ ♪ But most of us have seen it all ♪ ♪ We live our lives in sad cafes and music halls ♪ ♪ And we always have a story ♪ ♪ I'll come up singing for you ♪ ♪ Even when I'm down ♪ ♪♪