'I don’t think it’s something you get over': Janis Ian on not singing again
Janis Ian will take part in an event at the National Concert Hall as part of Temple Bart Tradfest. Picture: Gerard Viveiros
Janis Ian is still coming to terms with the random cruelty of the universe. In 2022, the folk artist best known for hits 'At 17' and 'Society’s Child' contracted a virus that caused permanent scarring on her vocal cords. A doctor had to deliver the terrible news she would never sing again.
“I don’t think it’s something you get reconciled with. I don’t think it’s something you get over,” Ian says from the Florida home she shares with her wife of 20 years, Patricia Snyder. “You just, at some point, become resigned to it. And then you try not to get depressed because that’s going kill your ability to do art.”
She continues to reckon with the fallout. It is a journey that must be started anew each day. Ian likens the experience to bereavement. Singing has been the one constant in her life. Now it's gone.
“Calling it a death minimises people who have lost someone physically. But, for me, it’s very much a death. It’s 60-years plus. So for me [as a singer] it’s a death. There’s nothing to replace it. There’s no way to turn around and say, ‘Oh, I’ll go be a writer’.”
Before her voice was taken from her, Ian planned to finish her tour in Dublin. So it is fitting she will return to Ireland on January 28 to celebrate her music and legacy. Janis Ian: A Life Between the Lines takes place at the National Stadium, where Ian played the first ever Irish show in the early 1970s, and will feature interpretations of her music from Mary Black, Wallis Bird, Dublin folk singer Aoife Scott, Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Nuala Kennedy and Swedish-American husband and wife jazz duo Ulrika and Eric Bibb.
It won’t be the same as singing in person. Ian is nonetheless looking forward to being with people who cherish her music and have drank deep of her lyrics’ sad, quiet wisdom. “It’s bittersweet. I was supposed to end my touring at that same venue, the National, with a three-night stand,” she says. “I’ve always tried to end my tours in Ireland. They are the best audiences. Now I get to end my playing career there – but not sing. It’s a little strange.”
Still, she appreciates the artists who have taken the time to honour her in an event that has been programmed as part of Temple Bar Tradgest. “It’s amazing. Aoife Scott came up with the idea and presented it to the Tradfest people. They fell right into it. Every single artist I invited… Mary Black is joining her family for [husband] Joe’s birthday vacation, two days late. She changed all of her schedule. Wallis changed her dates. Everybody has changed their schedules around. I had no idea I had such generous friends.”
Ian has also been working on a remastered version of her biggest album, Between The Lines, which topped the American charts in 1975. It is best known for its single 'At Seventeen', which beat out Olivia Newton-John and Linda Ronstadt to win the Grammy for Best Pop Performance.
Revisiting the LP has been emotional. It brought her back to a period when she was determined to prove she was more than the one-hit wonder who had released 'Society’s Child' in 1965. Between The Lines was recorded at 914 Sound Studios outside New York City. The brainchild of her producer, Brooks Arthur, it had opened in 1970 to a glorious baptism: Bruce Springfield began Born To Run there; The Ramones and Dusty Springfield also used it.
“There was a diner next door where we would all meet up,” recalled Ian. “I would go have pie with Bruce Springsteen or [1970s songwriter] Melanie because we were all recording at the same time. There was a lot of stuff we couldn’t afford. Because of that we had to make it work. Drawing a parallel with The Beatles, because they were just the four of them, they had to make it work. Even if they might have wanted a piano at some point or strings at some point, in the early days they had to do that with their voices and their instruments. That makes for a lot more creativity than having it handed to you.”
Much has changed in the intervening decades – both in her life and the music industry. That things cannot stay the same is a truth with which Ian is long familiar. She is an authority of several decades standing on science fiction and a friend of writers such as Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman. And so she is not surprised by the emergence of AI as a threat to music, with its ability to produce “deep-fake” recordings of artists both dead – and very much alive.
She fears the music industry will seek to capitalise on this new technology. This, after all, is a business only too happy to milk dead artists for everything they are worth. They will find the digital necromancy offered by AI irresistible.
“I wrote a whole article on the virtues of being a dead artist decades ago. What I realised was that it would be much better for the record company if I was dead,” she says. “Because I wouldn’t be there to argue with them or to complain. I just shut down a YouTuber who did an AI rendering of my voice, singing a Madonna song. And I actually didn’t expect YouTube would be as cooperative as they were taking it down. It’s scary. How many people are going to be able to sing with my voice? And it’s only starting.”
For now, however, Ireland is foremost on her mind. She’s always loved playing here – and can’t wait to attend the Tradfest. “The first gig I ever played was at the stadium that I’m playing. Back when it was the boxing ring, mostly. And I remember because it was what we call a very sweaty stage. The stage was wet in spots because it was so humid. Clearly, it’s been cleaned up a lot."
She had touched down in Ireland a confirmed Hibernophile. “I was so excited to go there. I was huge James Joyce fan. I arrived with a copy of Ulysses under my arm. And Jim Aiken the promoter looked at me and said, ‘Oh, so now you’re going to tell us all about our literature, are you?’ And I said, ‘No, I just really like Joyce’. And it was great because he got me tickets to see the first production of [Hugh Leonard’s] Da. I got to go to Trinity and go to the library there. And he had this great guy driving us – we went all over Ireland.”
She’ll be back this month, and for new and old fans, it will surely be an evening to savour.
- Janis Ian – A Life Between the Lines takes place at the National Stadium, Dublin, January 28
