Singer/songwriter Janis Ian will always have a special place in my heart. She was the first artist I interviewed at the beginning of my journalism career. It was 1994, after the release of what some considered to be her comeback album “Breaking Silence.” She couldn’t have been more delightful or forthcoming. I’ve interviewed her four more times (including this one), as well as attending a few of her concerts over the years. Now retired from touring and recording, Ian is the subject of Varda Bar-Kar’s informative documentary “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence.”
Gregg Shapiro: I’d like to begin by asking you to say a few words about how the documentary “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence” came to be?
Janis Ian: I’ve been offered the chance to tell my story in documentaries since I was 16. It was not something that I was looking for. I figured that between touring starting to wind up, and my life starting to kind of wind down, it was a good time to release the last album and then go quiet. That was my plan. Then, I got approached by a fairly big company to do an autobiography. The point they made was that this is an autobiography, it ties in with your archives, it’s good for people to understand, and so on. I signed [it], and then the company completely changed. I waited out the contract and walked away. I thought, “Well, this is not meant to be clearly. But then Varda approached me. She sent me an e-mail and I spoke with her out of courtesy. She was so enthusiastic and so understanding that I said, “OK, let me see your previous work.” She sent me links to the previous work and then my lawyer said, “OK, you need to show me a 20-minute idea of what you’re going to do.” She did that, and it was interesting. So, I kept talking to her. We were at the start of COVID and nobody knew what was causing it. She said she would put on a hazmat suit and fly out, and I said, “No. You’re not getting within 20 feet of me.” We kept talking and the more she talked about her ideas for it and the more she understood what I wanted out of it, which was a slice of the times, the more comfortable I got until I finally said, “OK.” It’s a very straightforward deal. I don’t get any money for it. She agreed to give me – not approval of the rough cut – but the right to request factual corrections in the rough cut. There are a few of those. Otherwise, the first time I saw it was pretty much along with everybody else in its finished form during my Berea [College] archives opening.
GS: Do you see the documentary as a visual extension of your 2008 memoir “Society’s Child”?
JI: I think so, to a point. It’s not based on the book. We can’t really say that. Although I just got the rights back to the book so that’s gonna be interesting.
GS: Wow!
JI: Yeah, what an unusual thing, right? You as a writer know publishers never give you anything. But it happens. I see it as just an examination of my work and my life within that work.
GS: Early in “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence,” there is a clip of you in the 1967 TV documentary “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution,” hosted by Leonard Bernstein. What did it mean to you to be featured in that program?
JI: [Laughs] I don’t remember. I thought it was pretty cool, but it sort of ended there. My parents, I think, were more excited than I was. To me, I didn’t really understand the impact that it could have. I was pretty clueless about that. So, once it did come out and everybody went, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” then I went, “Oh! Okay.” I didn’t grow up watching a huge amount of TV, so I didn’t really understand the power of an “Ed Sullivan Show” or a primetime special.
GS: Did you remain in contact with Bernstein after that?
JI: Lightly here and there. A couple of books were exchanged. I sent him a couple of notes; he sent back notes. My uncle went up to him at Tanglewood and told him who he was, and Bernstein said that he had been following my career very closely. Then, in a granfalloon sort of way, I ended up studying with Stella Adler, whose daughter Ellen married David Oppenheim, who had been the great love of Bernstein’s. It was just one amazingly big circle.
GS: The documentary includes a great deal of vintage footage. How much of it was drawn from your archives at Berea College in Kentucky?
JI: Very little, because the archives weren’t open or finished collating then. I don’t really know how much Varda took. I know I sent her everything I had. I had digitized all of my photos way early. But in terms of the archival footage, she and her daughter, who was her main researcher, did an astonishing job of finding things. There was stuff there that I’d never seen.
GS: I loved the variety of interviews featured in the documentary, especially hearing Laurie Metcalf and Jean Smart talking about the impact that “At Seventeen” had on them.
JI: Wasn’t that great?
GS: Yes! How does it feel to hear Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez and many others singing your praises?
JI: It’s pretty splendid, I will say. My wife once told me that I had to be careful when I talked about my friends. I asked and she said, “You throw around names like Joan and Arlo, and it doesn’t mean anything to you because those people are your friends. But for other people, these are very famous names, and it can sound like you’re bragging.” I thought, “I have to watch myself now when I talk about my friends.” But she was right. I think somebody in my position, doing it as long as I have, winds up knowing a lot of people that other people don’t get the chance to know.
GS: Well, I think it’s great that you’ve earned the right to drop those names.
JI: I think it’s pretty cool. But I think it’s cooler because of what they’ve meant to me. Joan has been so good to me all my life. I’ve known Arlo since I was 16. There’s not a lot of people who’ve been through what I’ve been through or been in my position. It’s becoming more and more of an exclusive club every year. So, when I could reach out to somebody like Arlo and say, “Hey man, do you remember…?” Or, like, I called him the morning Pete [Seeger] died, and I said, “I’m just making sure you’ve already heard.” Stuff like that. It’s things that people not in this position wouldn’t think about.
GS: In the doc, gay journalist James Reed described you as an LGBTQ icon. What does such an accolade mean to you?
JI: Nothing [laughs]. What’s an icon? An icon is something you put on the dresser and pray to. I understand what he was trying to say. I think anytime you make somebody an icon, it’s a great danger to that person. I don’t think of myself in that way. I think we’ve talked about this before. People keep telling me when they see the film how brave I was. To me, it’s mostly accidents. I was there, and I did the right thing. I think if you stop and think, “Am I going to be brave about this or not?” therein lies perdition. If you think about it too long, you get scared.
GS: I also enjoyed listening to the late music producer Brooks Arthur talk about your collaboration. Is there anything about Brooks you’d like to share with readers?
JI: I think I was remarkably fortunate in [working with producer] Shadow [Morton], and Brooks was the engineer under Shadow. I was incredibly fortunate that both thought I could do anything. If you listen to [the album] “Stars” or most of “Between the Lines,” after I fired the lead guitarist, we suddenly realized we didn’t have a lead guitarist. So, all of those lead guitar parts are me. It never occurred to Brooks that I couldn’t do that. He just figured, okay, put a guitar in her hands and see what she comes up with. I think that’s an amazing gift. Especially when their careers are riding on it. Especially for a female artist in those days, and even now. Brooks said something great to me once. He said, “No matter who you work with, no matter what you do, even if they don’t use your guitar track, make sure you’re playing when they’re putting the track down, because there’s a different energy. I thought that was a really great observation. I really wish he’d lived to see this film. He would have been very proud.
GS: You also have the distinction of being the second musical guest, following Billy Preston, on the October 1975 premiere episode of “Saturday Night Live” at which you performed “At Seventeen” and “In the Winter.” Do you have a memory you’d like to share about that?
JI: Actually, I really don’t. It just kind of flew by. CBS flew me in and flew me out. Boom, boom, boom. I didn’t make any of the rehearsals. I was on tour at the time behind “[At] 17” and couldn’t cancel any shows. I think we postponed a show for that night so I could do it and then they took me right back out to the West Coast.
GS: At the October 2024 Janis Ian tribute concert, some of the next generation of queer artists, including Amythyst Kiah, S.G. Goodman, and Melissa Carper, were among the performers. Would you agree that you helped pave the way for queer artists to be able to be open and out about their identities?
JI: No. I think if it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else. There were three of us at The Triangle Ball the year that Clinton was elected. There was Melissa [Etheridge], k.d. [lang] and me. We all came out at the same time, very loudly, for all the reasons I say in the film. Honestly, I think anybody who lives an open life has paved the way.
“Janis Ian: Breaking Silence” is available on DVD from Kino-Lorber. It’s also available for streaming on PBS and additional platforms like Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu.