DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Janis Ian, the singer-songwriter who had her first hit record as a teenager in the 1960s, is the subject of a new documentary, "Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, " now available to stream on demand. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: When Janis Ian was young, she was very precocious. She got her first song, both lyrics and music, printed in the same folk music magazine that first published a song by Bob Dylan. But at the time, she was only 13. Not long after, she recorded another composition, "Society's Child," which was about a young girl whose date arrived to pick her up and was met with disapproval from her mother because her daughter was white, but her date was black. That was in the mid-'60s, and the song became a hit after Leonard Bernstein featured it and her on a TV special he hosted for CBS in 1967.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEONARD BERNSTEIN: 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."
JANIS IAN: (Singing) 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.
BIANCULLI: The next time Janis Ian had a hit record was almost a decade later. At age 24, she appeared as a musical guest on the very first episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," singing a song looking back on her own adolescence. It was called "At Seventeen." In "Janis Ian: Breaking Silence," the new documentary by Varda Bar-Kar, you get to see and hear Janis perform it while people, such as actress Jean Smart, talk about what the song meant to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE")
JEAN SMART: To this day, it affects me the same way as when I first heard it.
IAN: (Singing) And the rich-relationed hometown queen marries into what she needs with a...
SMART: It's not just she's talking about the pain of adolescence and the pain of feeling like an ugly duckling and the pain of not being in the in crowd or whatever. It's also about being the tall, blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader.
IAN: (Singing) Remember those who win the game lose the love they sought to gain.
SMART: 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 (laughter).
IAN: (Singing) Their small town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise...
BIANCULLI: Janis Ian won her first Grammy for "At Seventeen." When it was presented to her by Lily Tomlin, Janis noted the long gap between her first and second hit records in her acceptance speech, which I will now play in its entirety.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
IAN: Thank you. It's been a long time. Thank you.
BIANCULLI: Janis Ian won her second Grammy not for singing, but for talking. In 2013, she won a Grammy for best spoken word album for her reading of her just-published memoir, "Society's Child." That memoir showed that Janis Ian was a gifted writer even when she wasn't writing lyrics. Her writing style is clear and honest. And the way she read her own words was both conversational and confessional. The same elements shine through in this new film documentary, which has Janis Ian talking candidly about her past. Whether she's talking in vintage or newly recorded interviews, she's a gifted storyteller - even when she's talking about such personal memories as her then-husband, who abused her.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE")
IAN: (Singing) 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.
(Singing) 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.
(Singing) Come on, set me free.
BIANCULLI: After that marriage, Janis Ian kept recording albums and writing songs, but approached her work and her life differently. She came out, and wrote a regular column for The Advocate. She married again in 2003 - this time to a woman, Patricia Snyder. And after their marriage, she wrote a song about it, "Married in London," which she performed gleefully in concerts until a medical problem with her throat forced her to quit touring.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE")
IAN: (Singing) We're married in London, but not in New York.
(LAUGHTER)
IAN: (Singing) Spain says we're kosher. The States say we're pork.
(LAUGHTER)
IAN: (Singing) We wed in Toronto. The judge said, amen. And when we got home, we were single again.
(LAUGHTER)
IAN: The idea of getting married as a gay person was so foreign. We kept thinking that it wasn't going to mean that much - everything was going to be the same. We were really shocked when we both started weeping after the ceremony.
(Singing) But love has no colors...
BIANCULLI: "Janis Ian: Breaking Silence" tells her story using several visual techniques, including animation and recreations. Not all of them work. But the best storyteller in this documentary is the artist herself. Whether she's singing or talking, Janis Ian is captivating. And in her 70s now, she's still quite precocious.
DAVIES: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed "Janis Ian: Breaking Silence," now available on many streaming sites to view on demand. On tomorrow's show, writer Amy Larocca joins us to talk about her new book, "How To Be Well," a guide drawn from her search for balance in a world obsessed with wellness. From fitness fads to mental health trends, she tries to unpack what it really means to take care of ourselves. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
