Kim Ruehl: Maybe we can just start with the most basic question: Why did you write this book?
Janis Ian: Well I've been getting offers to write it since I was 16. I always thought that was kind of premature. Then a few years ago I was hanging out with a couple musicians and I said something about Jimi. One of them said "Jimi who?" and, without thinking, I was like, "Jimi Hendrix." I kept going and he said "Woah, woah, you knew Jimi Hendrix? You met him?" I said, "No, of course I knew him. I knew everybody and so did everybody else." I realized that there's an entire generation of people—actually two or three generations of people—who'd never seen Jimi Hendrix perform, or John Lennon or the Doors or anybody [from that time]. That was part of it. I thought maybe I grew up in an interesting time in this country's history and I might have a slightly different slant on it than other people, since I was so young.
How did you choose where to start and what to write about? Was that something you'd been thinking about since you started getting offers?
I just took the first three months of last year and went through all my old journals, went through a lot of old letters I had friends send back to me, a bunch of old press clippings. I kind of made a map of my life, if that makes any sense. I attached a time to when the songs were written, when the records were made, when songs were hits. And then once I decided to do a prologue and open it with the "Society's Child" chapter, it all pretty much fell into place.
How do you deal with the artistic process? Writing a book is so far removed from your audience. You don’t get the response you'd get from writing a song and playing it that night.
Oh I don't think I've ever written a song and played it that night. It's usually months and months after.
But, was it any different writing the book? With a song, you can get up and give it to people and see their reaction immediately. But, with a book, you just kind of send it out to the ether.
I wouldn't look at it like that. I’ve never looked at a song like that. Normally by the time you go on tour and you record a song—for me, anyway—by the time I get around to that, it could be years since I'd written the song. Certainly it'll always be weeks and months. In that sense, it's very similar [to writing a book]. It didn't feel like a long time because I come from an era where you would make a record and it would sit there six months to a year before they released it.
That has all changed now, obviously. How do you feel with the new recording industry and how things are going? There's that immediate gratification of downloading MP3s...
I'm still not sure how immediate most of it is. It's immediate for the listener, obviously, but I don't know how immediate it is for the recording artist. I guess for some people, you can have it released the next day. I hadn't actually thought about that much. It's changing fast right now. Technology is changing so quickly that I think a lot of us are just kind of keeping our heads down and trying to keep up with things, and not making many decisions or forming any opinions. It's hard to have an opinion about this stuff when it's changing so fast.
Let's go back to the book a little bit. Right out of the gate, you talk about growing up in a divided country. With all the talk about unity and the "two Americas" and everything that's been going on the last couple of years, reading that seemed like we're nowhere near that divided at this point. Would you agree?
I think we're a lot less divided on certain things. Certainly on the racial thing we're less divided. We're as divided or moreso on the gay rights issues and marriage, just because it's out in the open now. It's certainly different. We've certainly come a long way since the '60s. But there’s still racism, there's still a ways to go. We're a young country. I keep reminding my friends in Europe we're only a couple hundred years old. We're still in the experimental stages.
Do you feel like the kids today are responding similarly to what was going on in the '60s in terms of the level of activism and whatnot?
I don't know. I really wouldn't know that. I'd have to be in that age group to know that age group, really. I wouldn't trust statistics.
Your latest news item on your site talks about you staying home a lot next year to work on some exciting project. Do you want to talk about that at all, or is that a secret?
It's no secret, I just don't have things finalized. I'm going to be working on a bunch of books, a bunch of short stories and stuff like that. Mostly prose writing, fiction. That's really what I’m looking at. I'm looking at staying home most of the time. I've got some gigs booked and I've got more coming to make sure I keep my hat in. But I'm looking forward to staying home. I'm tired of traveling.
Does that mean you'll stop making music as much, or are you just shifting your focus?
You know, I really have no idea. I'm one of those fortunate people who's always been able to write songs when I feel like writing songs. I've never known my talent to desert me, so if I end up writing prose for four or five years, it's okay. I know I'll be able to write songs when I want to. I guess I just look at it all as writing. It doesn't matter much to me whether it's articles or songs or stories or novels. It's just all writing...and a work in progress.
Interview conducted Oct., 2008
