Billy’s Music Without Borders is all about music including reviews of albums, interviews of composers, songwriters, and musicians, and discussions about music.
I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die.
To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men,
thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.
But they are murdered children all the same.
—Kurt Vonnegut
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Beauty awakens the soul to act."
—Dante Alighieri
Peter Xifaras has done a simple thing. This is a 20-minute EP. There is an orchestra, a little bit of narration, and a singer from some foreign land. Oh yes! There are six videos that go with the six short movements of this little piece of orchestral music. He uses some modalities to evoke a foreign feeling. And the subjects of this small work are children. The setting is any of a few war-torn countries in the current news. And this little piece will break your heart. It is supposed to do that, and you should listen to it in order to have your heart broken for 20 short minutes. After that, you will never watch the war described in numbers on TV without feeling the loss of children lost in those numbers.
When adults wage war, children perish.
—Elie Wiesel
We were children
Thrust into war
And once it ends
What will we become?
Why the hell would you subject yourself to such emotion? As Jesse said while healing the sick in Greaser's Palace: "If ya feel ya healed." The news has taught how to feel less and less. The valiant children dying as heroes have given the world the gift to be able to celebrate our wars in patriotic ceremonies. Yeah, but that doesn't change a thing. As Kurt Vonnegut reminded us before he died, "But they are murdered children just the same."
Every war is a war against children.
—Eglantyne Jenn
So I am writing about this little piece of music and its videos because it is better to feel than to embrace the little death in numbers and statistics of war that we are told to see as the scoreboard of victory. No sides have been taken here, but for the advocacy of dead children and the lives of those who have lost their childhoods to the hell of a war before they even learned to throw a ball.
The only way to eliminate war is to love our children
more than we hate our enemies.
—Golda Meir
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask:
“Mother, what was war?”
—Eve Merriam
It is so very easy to talk about war. Nobody is in favor of it. It feels noble to express the most obvious sentiment and call that wisdom. I don't know the answer to any conflict, but I have taken the 20-minute challenge to see and hear and feel the losses of dead children and even worse the "Children of Conflict" living through total madness — gassed with the inevitable cloud of lies that have always defined the onset of war.
In war, truth is the first casualty.
—Aeschylus
When I can't bear to say what needs to be said, or when I just don't have the words, I look to better wisdom like Aeschylus, Elie Wiesel, Eglantyne Jenn, Kurt Vonnegut, Eve Merriam, Golda Meir, and Dante Alighieri. I even repeat their words in the same damn review if I feel I have to. We need to weep for the children, or we will become too dead inside to raise our own families without teaching them fear, bigotry, hatred, white nationalism, xenophobia, and a cultivated ignorance of the lives of our forefathers.
I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die.
To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men,
thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.
But they are murdered children all the same.
—Kurt Vonnegut
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Beauty awakens the soul to act."
—Dante Alighieri
Beauty awakens the soul to act. Peter Xifaras and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra have made something beautiful to awaken your souls to act. What are you gonna do?
The following two paragraphs descript the composer's prior accomplishments and they were provided by the artist:
Peter Xifaras is music embodied. In his roles as a solo-artist, film-composer, guitarist, orchestrator, and producer, he has garnered praise for successfully crossing over musical boundaries. He is just as comfortable writing a piece for symphonic orchestra as he is laying down a wailing blues solo on guitar. Peter's music has been heard on hundreds of radio stations and has been on SiriusXM rotation for over a decade. As a multi-award winning artist, Peter's music has also topped Billboard's Classical and Crossover charts.
The diverse nature of Peter's genre-bending compositions has attracted a wide range of talented guest artists who frequently appear on his releases as well as his SymphoneX Orchestra® project. Peter recently recorded with the great legendary jazz-trumpeter Shunzo Ohno for an upcoming release, composed a 6 movement classical work for social justice recorded by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and is currently working on a concerto for classical guitar - all while getting ready to score the next feature-film produced by JawDoc productions.
My Friend Marco & His Friend Ennio: Music is Love!
Music is an experience, not a science.
—Ennio Morricone
Imagine you buy this bootleg album on advice from an insider friend, and it is said to be the solo piano played by a great pianist of a never before performed manuscript of an Ennio Morricone score! You pay plenty for this gem! It will be the most precious album in your rare collection. Add to that, this performance happened at Ennio Morricone's home at his own piano by Ennio's friend Marco Fumo — who was heretofore known best for Classic Ragtime and of course some of Ennio's "experimental" compositions. Ennio's wife Maria was there and she served sandwiches, and his son Andrea — later a composer himself — can be heard entering the room to listen before going back to his room to do his homework! What would that album be worth to you, Record Collector?
The scene has already moved me nearly to tears. Of course, there no such bootleg. This is much better. Mario Fumo was in fact the man on piano playing through Ennio Morricone's piano music for his great cinematic scores. The family was there. Andrea heard Mario and later would consult with him about the piano parts in his own scores. I cannot imagine a more holy place in music on those days than the Morricone family living room when Marco Fumo came to play through the score for Ennio. If you have heard the soundtrack for The Mission or Cinema Paradiso or the scores of other scores then you know! I wouldn't trade my seat in that living room for a front row ticket to any symphony in the world. To top it off, Mario and Ennio are friends, in fact Mario is a friend of the family. After the music, Marco was regularly asked to stay for dinner, at first because he didn't live in Rome, but later because that was just what they would do.
That is the movie I am writing about in this review. Not The Mission or Cinema Paradiso. This is NOT those movies at all. For a perfect description of Mario Fumo's music life, and each individual song on this precious album, Marco Fumo will have the last word. You see, I know Marco. Marco is a friend of mine. I wrote about him once more than a decade ago, and he sent me birthday posts on Facebook and he kept in touch with me for 10 years when I was not writing about music at all as a security guard in Cincinnati working night shift. As a music journalist, I know that the most important part of a musician is the ears and what separates the great from the good is the heart. And I know Marco, and he is a friend of mine, because he has a heart so big it honestly makes no sense to me at all. It is no surprise that I can hear it in his music.
This album has more heart than those perfectly wonderful orchestral recordings of these songs for the cinema that should already be in your record collection at home — and I do mean record albums on vinyl! For solo piano on this album to sometimes eclipse the definitive orchestral arrangements of these pieces is a musical miracle from the heart of a masterful interpretive pianist and a loving man. Marco is the only man on earth who could play the secret inner form of these soulful scores.
So what would you pay for that bootleg? All you are being asked to donate is your time. It is an awful business model, but you win and everybody is happy! We all know the music is there for the listening. "Il Mio Morricone: A Tribute To A Friend" is available for streaming or download, but you might want to go old school on this one. It has so much heart, I would fear your MP3, ALAC or FLAC player might just melt.
I asked my friend Marco to write a few words about his friend Ennio Morricone that had nothing to do with music. He sent me this:
During the period in which I studied to perform "Rag in frantumi," or other pieces, I went to Rome to Ennio's house to ask him for advice or simply to give him a feel for at what point I was in my work. Regularly. I was invited by the Master to stop by for dinner or lunch. (I lived in Pescara at the time, and I moved wherever I was needed, and I had no home in Rome.)And sometimes there was Andrea (one of the children, and a future composer), and always Maria, his beloved and inseparable wife.
We talked about everything, even football, and I remember one evening in particular that I happened to witness. We were together to watch a live football match on the TV. Ennio was a great fan of Roma. Woe to those who had touched the Roma! — then linked to the Viola families and subsequently "nemte Sensi," to Lidholm as coach, and Di Bartolomei and Falçao as players. Ennio followed the Roma when he could with great passion! Roma and their matches! He was an active and dedicated fan!
—Marco Fumo
This album is a soundtrack to the memories of Marco Fumo and his friend Ennio Morricone. There is real love in all the love songs, and when there is triumph in this music, you might hear Ennio screaming "Gooooooaaaaaaallllllll" for the Roma, who had no better fan than the composer of the world's greatest soundtracks. There is deep and abiding sentiment on this album, but not a hint of sentimentality. Marco wouldn't do that. Ennio wouldn't have accepted it. The feelings on this record are real.
Now, I have talked to enough musicians to know better than to ask Marco what he was thinking when he played this music. As pianist Laszlo Gardony recently corrected me: "No. I was one with each note. I was each note." Those sorts of answers are fairly universal. But when Marco takes the time to listen to this album, I imagine he isn't thinking about the cinema. This entire album, for Mario, is the soundtrack of a lifetime working with his friend Ennio, and the lovely Maria, his wife, and the lunches and dinners, and the football matches in the living room after the music with the great Master, Ennio Morricone!
Billy: I didn’t want to write this review before, because I can only write it once. I don’t want it to be over. This album makes me feel reverent and I contemplate all the losses of my own life as well as you and Ennio.
The story I want to tell in the review is not the story of music written for the soundtracks of movies. I know that is why Ennio Morricone wrote that music, and it is the best the cinema has to offer. But this album is not that to me at all. This album is the soundtrack to the movie of your memories of your own life and the life of your friend Ennio Morricone. I know that it is a tribute to Ennio, but you are also very near retirement and the feeling of finality and deep sentiment (not sentimentality) is pervasive in this music. I will imagine whatever that music makes me feel, as I believe you feel the memories of Ennio and also your own life when you listen to this music.
I know music well enough to know that you were not imagining anything when you played this music, but rather you were the music completely. You were the notes (as my friend jazz pianist Laszlo Gardony told me recently). I don’t want to lose you, so I didn’t want to write this review. I still have “Reflections” to look forward to. I can write about your other albums, and there are many. And our friendship will continue.
Marco: What you want and how you want, there is no problem to use everything that is written on the liner notes. Do what you feel and how you feel it, feel free to use what you want as you want and when you want. I've already been retired for quite a while, I'm 76 years old.........
Billy: When I finish writing about your albums, maybe you do some watercolors or some macrame or something, so I can never run out of something of Marco Fumo to write about. I always want to have some Marco to look forward to.
Marco: Thanks, but i don't able......
Billy: Ah well. I had to ask.
What does Billy hear when this music is playing? I hear my good friend Mario, on my patio, in the beautiful air of a sun-drenched day. The wind blows the palms, and birds try to mimick the piano, because the song they hear is so natural and beautiful the birds believe there must be a bird making that song. And the dogs stop barking. And I feel a tear start to form for everyone I have lost, and for all those that I will lose, and even when I will lose Marco one day, and when I will lose myself. This music is love for those who have passed, and love for those who are living. And love for us who know that passing is part of our living and it always has been so. This music is emotion.
This music is love.
By Special Permission: The Complete Liner Notes to
"Il Mio Morricone: A Tribute to a Friend"
Written by Marco Fumo
The complete liner notes from the album "Il Mio Morricone: A Tribute to a Friend" were transcribed by permission and are printed immediately below. These notes were written by Marco Fumo himself, and they tell the story of Marco's work and friendship with Ennio Morricone, as well as a short version of Marco's biography in music. It is a privilege to print them here by permission:
THE COMPLETE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LINER NOTES
WRITTEN BY MARCO FUMO
It all began at the end of 1980, when I decided to change direction in my career as a musician and pianist and make a choice that would turn out to be fundamental to my future. Ragtime had been back in vogue as a musical and piano genre for a few years, as a result of some pieces featured both in the soundtracks of successful films (see The Sting) and in the theme songs of popular television broadcasts. I had chosen to devote myself to that repertoire as it sounded so particular and so close to jazz music, which had always attracted me, although I lacked the technical and stylistic knowledge that would enable me to play it.
Ragtime had contributed to the birth of jazz, but it was a genre of written, not improvised music, which made it more suited to my skill set. I also came up with the idea of trying to reproduce what was happening in Europe when ragtime entered the musical scene in the continent, at the beginning of the 20th Century: it happened that a good number of the avant-garde musicians of the time took an interest in the phenomenon and wrote pieces inspired by this music so rich in rhythm and vitality.
I decided to ask several contemporary musicians to write ragtime-inspired pieces and began to collect, study, play, record and include in my repertoire, so as to create a very inspiring concert program, ranging from historic ragtime, through Parisian avant-gardes of the early 20th Century, up to contemporary Italian composers. The idea was successful and Piano in Rag was released, a record which marked my first step in this direction.
In that very fervent and productive period, among other things, I began a collaboration with the Florentine musicologist Sergio Miceli. We invented a program called “From the entertainment of art to the art of entertainment,” a multimedia program consisting of a text written and ready by Miceli, accompanied by artistic photos chosen by Miceli, accompanied by artistic photos chosen by Miceli and projected onto a screen, while I was playing a repertoire which also included songs related to cinema in various ways.
At the time, Miceli was just beginning to work with Ennio Morricone on the book that would later become a cornerstone of a brand-new approach to the analysis and study of film music: Composing for the Cinema: The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film. Miceli and Ennio met very often and had entered into a relationship of trust. Thinking back over my contemporary ragtime project, I thought I could ask Morricone if he was interested in writing a piece inspired by ragtime. I asked Sergio to use his good offices to put me in touch with the Maestro; Sergio told me that Morricone was very busy and that I could only involve him in the project by writing to him and sending him a copy of Piano in Rag. Then, I could only patiently wait for something to happen, if ever…
It was January 1986: at the end of the month I received a letter from Ennio in which, after thanking me and paying me many compliments on my record, he gladly accepted to write the piece I asked for. This was the beginning of Rag in frantumi, written in no time (at the end of February I already had a copy of the script), which Morricone, out of kindness, dedicated to me.
From that moment on we began to meet more and more often: as I studied, I would let him listen to the results and ask him for suggestions and advice. During these meetings he told me that he got the thematic idea for Rag in frantumi by inverting the three notes that formed the basic theme of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood. It so happened that the first performance of Rag in frantumi took place in L’Aquila on 17th December 1986, during the multimedia program that Sergio Miceli and I were touring with! Later on Ennio asked me if I would also like to play his transcriptions of movie themes: I gladly accepted, since I really enjoy playing different musical Ingres and styles! He also asked me if I would like to play his other compositions of contemporary music for piano, and of course I accepted.
I almost became like part of the family: I did not live in Rome, so Ennio and his kind and caring wife Maria would always invite me to stay for lunch. I remember that Andrea, their third son, was often there too: he was the only one of Ennio’s four children who would later become a musician, a conscious and firm decision that Ennio was not initially happy with. However, he admitted that he was moved when he listened to one of Andrea’s first works!
This, in a nutshell, is how it all happened between Ennio and me: a relationship that has always been fair and intellectually stimulating, based on friendship, respect and affection, and which has continued over the years precisely for these reasons.
Let us now consider the contents of the album. The Four Preludes (Cane Bianco; Star System; Metti Ana sera a cena; Indagine) and the Four Studies (Il deserts die tartare, Le due station della vita; Gott mit Ins; Il potter deli Angeli), along with Cinema Paradiso, were an obvious choice, as they have always been in my repertoire and I h ave often played them in front of Ennio. Of course, Rag in frantumi was an obvious choice too. Since the album is a long tribute, I decided to also include Love Theme, which Andrea wrote for Cinema Paradiso. In my relationship with Ennio, there has always been a place for Andrea: every now and then he would ask me questions as a curious composer about the piano and pianism in general
One night in 1994, Ennio and Giuseppe Tornature came to a concert of mine in Rome and afterwards we sent out for dinner. The director told us the entire plot of The Legend of 1900 before its release date: I was supposed to have a role in the making of the film, but then nothing came of it. So, Playing Love from the film 1900 is also featured on the album. Finally, to balance out the contents of the record, I added one more beautiful theme from the movie Love Affair.
The pieces are in chronological order, regardless of the collections in which they were first released, in favor of a variety of atmosphere and story.
I would like to dedicate this tribute to Ennio, a careful, helpful, affectionate musician and man, to whom I feel greatly indebted. This is what I feel and what I can do, from the bottom of my heart.
— Marco Fumo
"Il Mio Morricone: A Tribute To A Friend" can be found at:
I didn’t really think about all of that part of it until we were partially assembled and I was looking at all of the songs and I thought “Wow! This is really everything that, if I was making a final statement, I would be very proud to have this be my final statement and then I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m 70. It probably is my final statement. Okay, then.”
This one was fifteen years since the last one, and I’ve never said it before about an album, but I think this is my best album. It says everything that I wanted to say the way that I am pleased to say it and having been lucky enough to be born with a lot of talent, its the first time in my life I felt like I really lived up to the talent I was born with.
I fell into a different world with this album. I thought it would be a good omen for my return to music blogging, since Janis was the first musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Silly reason, I know. I did this writing as Billy's Bunker (Music Reviews), but that was more than 10 years ago.
I resolved to listen to every Janis Ian album and every interview and I did that listening before I wrote a word. On every album and in every song, I encountered an honesty and strength of character that moved me and challenged my own life to be better. I started writing what turned out to be the beginnning of a biography, and not a music review at all.
Janis Ian wrote and recorded her own biography and won a Grammy for it. I don't mean that metaphorically! She won a grammy "Society's Child," which is her autobiography of the early years. She won another Grammy for "Best Pop Vocal Performance" for her song "At Seventeen." The Light At The End Of The Line has been nominated for Best Folk Album in the 2023 Grammy Awards. From Janis: “This is full circle for me: my first Grammy nomination ever was in 1967, also for 'Best Folk Album.'" From Billy: "Janis Ian should win this time. No one has given away so much, or told more truth in any one album ever!"
I abandoned that review for two months. I decided to write about this last album and only that, and I discovered the key to this album was generosity, and the key to Janis is honesty and the courage to tell the truth. The abandoned review is about honesty, and it has become the last part of this review, but I begin with this: The Light at the End of the Line is the most generous album I have ever heard. I believe it is the most generous album of music in a decade.
“I’ve worked with wonderful singers and songwriters and instrumentalists — and Janis is all of that. The sheer honesty of her work is really what shines through.”
— Randy League
So what makes The Light at the End of the Line the most generous album of the last decade? Here we go!
Let's start at the end: "Better Times Will Come." Janis gave the song to the world for free and started a "Project" to make the hope of the song a realilty. The Better Times Will Come Project has resulted in more than 180 versions of the song posted by musicians from all over the world. And who gets all those royalties? You guessed it! Nobody. Janis makes her money selling music, and musicians often starve. That is generosity! Oh my!
Next, there is "Resist!" Many musicians write songs that become anthems to a movement, but nobody gets paid when a crowd sings the anthem at a protest or gathering. If you sing “Happy Birthday,” you may get a letter from an attorney! I am not kidding. “Happy Birthday” is aggressively enforced. “Resist” could really be the "I Shall Be Released" of the women’s movement one day. It has the substance and juice for that, if it catches on. I suspect neither Janis nor Bob are expecting checks when you sing their songs at the “million person march” or sit-ins or whatever. Those songs have a special kind of generosity to them.
Other musicians are selfish sometimes, and complain when they don't win a Grammy, and hire lawyers to squeeze a little more money from any similar song or sample. There is no good reason for giving it away, besides a core of generosity and a God-like love of people who sing.
BREAKING NEWS FROM JANIS
I saw just now — weeks after this review was first published — Janis sent a post on Facebook with bad news and also some love from another musician and his daughter. This is Janis Ian learning the truth about her voice at 70, and learning about Dave Grohl and his daughter Violet singing “At Seventeen:”
This morning I woke up and thought "How strange. I'll never be able to sing 'At Seventeen' again." And I don't mind admitting that it was really depressing.
But what better antidote could there be than to hear my work, 47 years after I wrote it, beautifully and sincerely sung by Violet Grohl?
What a perfectly happy day this turned out to be. Thank you, Violet.
Thank you, Dave. Thank you.
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
(lyrics from "At Seventeen" by Janis Ian... but you knew that, right?)
Here's what Janis Ian originally posted about her medical condition:
It is with unfathomable sadness that I announce the cancellation of all upcoming tour dates. Unfortunately, the laryngitis that forced the postponement of some spring dates has turned out to be more complicated than a simple, treatable laryngitis. There is vocal fold scarring; the doctors can only speculate as to why, but treatments are very limited. And it would be many months before we’d know the outcome of any treatment.
It is most unlikely that I’ll ever sound like myself again.
I want to stress that this had nothing to do with "singing wrong". I've had excellent vocal training all my life, which is why I've managed to sing professionally for almost 60 years without interruption.
I consider myself lucky that this is not life-threatening, though the loss in my own small world is staggering.
Thank you all for your support and love.
Janis
BACK TO THE SONGS
What about the rest of the songs? Janis shows her unrivaled empathetic ability to tell the story of good people who are targets of intolerance in our society -- which has been her hallmark and monument since album #2 in her catalog. This album celebrates transgender people ("Perfect Little Girl"), undocumented immigrants who are being deported ("Stranger"), the great and severely, physically damaged mentally ill master songwriter and Janis' friend Nina Simone (“Nina”), and, to leave nobody out, even Lucifer himself ("Dark Side of the Sun").
And something like "Dark Side of the Sun" where there’s just that huge fat guitar sound and a vocal that’s filled with compassion for Lucifer. There are things I’ve never even tried before.
This is Janis Ian's most personal album. She is a woman of heart and mind, great wisdom, pure joy, substance, and an abiding love for humanity which has endured an enslaught of good reasons to give up on us all. I believe this album is manifesto on how to make an album in the 21st Century. From the content to the recording technique, the songs, and every detail of this production, Janis offers her wisdom to anyone who will listen.
Take a half hour as soon as you can and listen to Janis Ian at the Berklee College of Music. My friend musical genius Ernst Ströer of Ströer Bros & Howard Fine watched it, and thanked me at some length! I tell you this lecture is a necessary addition to any musician's working life!
After listening to this album, I am confident you will lose your objectivity about this music, and hopefully about transgender people, immigrants, humanity in general, and most certainly your own damn self! If you don't care, you don't matter. If we don't start caring real fast, we may not last. I got that from this most generous album of a decade, Janis Ian's The Light at the End of the Line.
TRUTH: JANIS IAN's BIOGRAPHY
This all started with a 12-year-old who decided to write songs. One day she was on a bus near her New Jersey home, and she saw a couple making goo-goo eyes at each other. The boy was black and the girl was white. This was 1965. All the riders on the bus that day — both black and white — were staring daggers. The couple was blinded by love and completely oblivious. Love is a wonderful thing.
Little girl Janis went home and wrote their story in a song. Everybody likes a happy ending, but this story would have to obey the hatred of the time. Even in fiction, Janis thought the girl would break up with the boy. A happy ending would be a lie, so a very young Janis Ian told the truth. She wrote what avery articulate little girl might say:
One of these days I'm gonna stop my listening
Gonna raise my head up high
One of these days I'm gonna raise up
my glistening wings and fly
But that day will have to wait for a while
Baby, I'm only society's child
That amazing 15-year-old Janis toured the country singing this and her other songs because she was so good. Society’s Child was powerful because of its honesty, but most radio stations wouldn’t play it. Then in November of 1966, Leonard Bernstein did an unprecedented 15-minute segment on his show about young Janis and her amazing song. He said,
It’s 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 to do with its subject matter, which is as you’ll see somewhat controversial. —Leonard Bernstein on CBS Special Report “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution” (Bernstein Introduction)
After radio stations were shamed into playing the song by Leonard Bernstein, the song became a hit, and it triggered a bigoted backlash that threatened Janis Ian’s career and her life.
Oh my gosh back then people just lost their minds. People were wound so tight over that song! I mean, people would trip me as I tried to go up on stage. People would stop in the street, say “Are you Janis Ian?” I’d say, “Yes.” They’d spit in my face. It was very threatening and I didn’t realize the impact until people started telling me about it 10 15 years ago… — Janis Ian (Meredith Interview)
When it became a hit, it created quite a stir and there was a pretty violent reaction. I mean, there were radio stations burned for playing [it], and people were fired and it’s pretty amazing. — Janis Ian (John Brought Interview)
Janis toured with that hit song and her new album at 15. When she got home, her star began to fade.
So, I say in concert that I wrote my first song when I was 12, and I got published when I was 13, and made a record at 14, had a hit at 15, and I was a has-been at 16. — Janis Ian at Friends of the Island Library (2009) (Island Library)
Janis Ian got home and left the music industry for ten years. She made a lot of money with that hit song, but she didn’t think she needed a lot of money. So she gave a lot of it away:
John Broughton:In the 60s and early 70s … you gave away all your earnings, is that right?
Janis Ian:I gave away a lot. I didn’t give away all of it. I had an unfortunate business manager who ended up taking most of it. John Broughton:What prompted that decision for you to do that. To give away a lot of your earnings? Janis Ian:It just seemed like I had way more than I needed. I had friends who needed it more. It was, you know, again, pretty basic. — John Brought Interview (1998)
Ten years later, Janis wrote At Seventeen, which brought her back into the spotlight, won her a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and landed her a gig as the first musical guest (along with Billy Preston) on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. At Seventeen was another controversial song, and it was so personal that Janis was initially unwilling to perform it in public. Once again, she chose to tell the truth, when it might have been easier to do something else.
Janis Ian accepts her Grammy for "At Seventeen" with this speech:
"Thank you. It's been a long time. Thank you."
(That is the entire speech.)
John Broughton:I believe it took four months for you to write "Seventeen". Is that right? Janis Ian:Yeah, three months. John Broughton:Is that usual for you to labor over a song for that long? Janis Ian:Depends on the song. "Seventeen" was a hard song because I knew that it was going to be an important song for me. So, I didn’t want to blow it, you know, and when you’re sort of striking new ground for yourself as a writer, you have to be real careful not to rush it. — John Brought Interview (1998)
The song At Seventeen was a hit, and the album Between the Lines was a huge success, and Janis got 461 Valentine's Day cards.
The album Between the Lines was also a smash and reached number one on Billboard′s album chart. The album would be certified platinum for sales of over one million copies sold in the US. Another measure of her success is anecdotal: on Valentine's Day 1977, Ian received 461 valentine cards, having indicated in the lyrics to "At Seventeen" that she never received one as a teenager.
Trouble came when Bill Cosby campaigned to ruin her career.
At the age of 16, Ian met comedian Bill Cosby backstage at a Smothers Brothers show where she was promoting "Society's Child". Since she was underage, she was accompanied by a chaperone while touring. After her set, Ian had been sleeping with her head on the lap of her chaperone (an older female family friend). According to Ian in a 2015 interview, she was told by her then manager that Cosby had interpreted their interaction as "lesbian" and as a result "had made it his business" to warn other television shows that Ian wasn't "suitable family entertainment" and "shouldn't be on television" because of her sexuality, thus attempting to blacklist her.[9][10][11] Although Ian would later come out, she states that at the time of the encounter with Cosby she had only been kissed once, by a boy she had a crush on, in broad daylight at summer camp.[12]
When I was researching this review, my heart broke listening to these interviews. I kept imagining that 15-year-old girl being treated so badly. I believe there was a choice, when faced with insults and inhumanity, that Janis had to make. She might have let it destroy her as an artist and as a person, but somehow she became stronger. That is how wisdom comes from pain. According to Aeschylus in about 500 bc, wisdom comes from no other place but pain. While my heart breaks for that little girl, I believe Janis Ian is uniquely suited to comment on these hard times we are in right now. There seems no hope for the United States with all the hatred and division, mass shootings, removal of long-held rights, and all the lies and lies and lies and lies. Who can give us hope? Without hope all is lost.
I know I have not so far reviewed Janis Ian’s final studio album The Light at the End of the Line. This is my first review for a new website. I have no readers yet. I did this before for 10 years, but has been 10 years since my last review. With no readership and a new website, this writing may be considered a kind of prayer. I like to point at things that matter, and this album matters.
Search well and be wise, nor believe that self-willed pride will ever be better than good counsel. Nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know. Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.
—Aeschylus
A review of this album can be found below in a description of every song. On first listen, this is a simple and sweet album of singable songs. It has a sense of humor, and a lot of heart. But when all of those achingly beautiful songs reveal themselves through repeated listening, I realized that this album hurt me like a surgeon might wound me to make me better. This album is necessary. The message of Janis Ian has always been to embrace The Truth, because there is no other honorable way to live. And the potent medicine in this album comes with the strength of Janis Ian’s ability to remain true to herself through it all, and even in these times, to always offer hope.
I find myself realizing as I grow older just how lucky I’ve been in my life. ‘Cause if you stop and think about it, to do what I do, its pretty amazing to be born with a talent in the first place. But to take that talent and have it pop up in the right family, in the right country, in the right era for that talent to flourish, that’s all just luck. That’s pretty amazing. And the luckiest part of it for me is that I wanted to do this since I was three because it always seemed like people who got to be onstage got to make magic. They got to really be alchemists. They got to turn lead into gold. Every night, they got to stand up there and take everybody’s hopes and dreams and fears and disappointments, and just pull ‘em right out of the air and turn them into something that you can see, that you can hear, that you can read. And that’s alchemy to me. That’s being a magician. Its the best part of the job. And the way I figure it, if we are doing our jobs right, then when times get hard, and God knows the times are a little strange right now… You know when times get so hard that you forget that you had a dream in the first place. And we’re the ones who get to step forward and say “Here are your dreams back. I tried to keep them safe for you.” And for those of us who get to do that, this is an immense privilege. So I thank you all for the privilege.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, “And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
— Robert Kennedy quoting Aeschylus as he announced the death of Martin Luther King in Harlem(Video)
Janis Ian’s half hour speech at the Berklee College of Music is a must watch for all musicians. I have shared it with some great musicians and they have thanked me. Please watch the video below. Did you watch it when I posted it earlier in the review? If no, than you get another chance. It may change your life as a musician:
THE SONGS(Click the song titles to read the words at AZ Lyrics)
This may be as personal a song as I have ever heard. Janis sings of the lines on her face: “They’re a map of where I’ve been.” The marks on her skin: “They’re the lyric of my life.” And she adds
See these bruises? See these scars?
Hieroglyphs that tell the tale
You can read them in the dark
Through your fingertips, like Braile
The first verse ends with the question: “How do we survive living out our lives?” That question jumps out at me. If anyone knows the answer to that question, Janis must know. This question dangles unanswered. I also feel uncomfortable hearing “Here where it can grow without fear.” That world does not exist on Earth, I think, but only in music. The unanswered questions stick with me.
Another line, another year
I’m still standing here
I’m still standing here
I’m still standing here
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 grows in “lines to time.” Shakespeare wrote “in lines to time thou growest” perhaps about a person, but certainly about the poem itself.
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
— Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
For extra credit: Janis Ian’s song This Train Still Runs has some interesting similarities. It makes me smile that her 55-year career has been so long and prolific that she has written two songs that seem to say, “Hey, I’m still here!”
Resist is a logical outgrowth to me of "Society’s Child." —Janis Ian (Meredith)
And then you contrast that with something like “Resist," which has me and Randy Liego and I’m playing guitar and Randy is playing everything else — that’s totally different from anything I’ve ever done with someone…” —Janis Ian (Meredith)
This is the protest song that has been missing from the movement for equality and women’s rights.
My favorite version of this song was done in 2019 by Janis Ian at the Woodstock Film Festival. Janis obviously felt at home there, and she sang Resist as a new song, hoping some other younger singer would produce it because she didn’t have a lable at the time. This performance is fierce! Janis is angry, and that fits this song. The first impulse for Resist was Yoko Ono’s comment and the song, “Woman Is The Nigger To The World.” (Woodstock 2019 Interview) This song grew out of her experience with Bill Cosby, who “outed” her at the age of 15 to try to keep her off TV. (See Wikipedia)The song has a sense of humor, but it also has teeth. It might be the sing-along protest for post-Roe America, time will tell. When asked, Janis suggested that Pink should sing this song. This album is the vehicle that Janis didn’t have in 2019. Pink should do this song.
“I was once a stranger here” begins this song with a voice, a guitar and a haunting harmonica. She came from a place of fear. She left everyone for safety of a “Land of Opportunity / built by people just like me.“ She has received devastating news. “Now I have to leave again / Leave my family, leave my friends / Don't know where they're sending me / Only know that I will be /A stranger there.”
“Stranger” joins Woody Guthrie’s empathetic blockbuster “Deportee” to share the humanity of immigrants who have been forced to return to a hostile home they left in order to survive. In Woody Guthrie's song, these immigrants all died in a fateful airplane crash. His original impulse was to sing each and every name. It would have been a long song.
Swannanoa is an Italian Renaissance Revival villa built in 1912 by millionaire and philanthropist James H. Dooley (1841–1922) above Rockfish Gap on the border of northern Nelson County and Augusta County, Virginia and sits high atop the Blue Ridge Mountains at Afton.
“Swannanoa” sounds like it was influenced by the 19th Century folk song “Shenandoah.” This song has a couple of similarities with that very troubled, and extraordinarily beautiful bit of anonymous Americana. In both songs, the subject shifts from verse to verse. Both songs have a haunting melody. I cannot say the word “Swannanoa” without thinking of “Shenandoah.”
The duet with Nuala Kennedy on the porch (linked below) is just wonderful. Nuala Kennedy is a big part of this song. Her own music is astonishing. And both Janis Ian and Nuala Kennedy were at the “Celtic Week” festivities from July 10-16, 2022 at the location Swannanoa.
In addition, this year, folk legend Janis Ian will offer her
“Master Class in Artistry” during all five of our weeks.*
— from the website for Celtic Week at The Swannanoa Gathering
*I believe the word “weeks” should have been days. The schedule for “Celtic Week” is for five days. Ah well!
I could not hear this song. I wrote that the song eluded me. Then Janis Ian's assistant Judy wrote:
"Sorry ´Where Good Dreams Go' eludes you — Janis has gotten at least half a dozen thank yous from people who've lost a child. She wrote it for a friend whose son had died."
—Judy
I began to sob bitterly. I lost my nephew more than a decade ago, in a death so tragic his father (my brother) took his own life on his son's birthday six months later. I had never mourned my nephew properly. I couldn't allow myself to feel the tragic suicide of that innocent young man. After hearing from Judy, I mourned for two days, and didn't write again for a week. This song is poison to denial, but only if you can hear it. I cannot listen to this song now without sobbing, but now my nephew has been mourned.
I am lighter in my spirit, and I feel things more deeply, now that the wall in my heart has been demolished. I have quoted Robert Downey Sr.'s movie Greaser's Palace in several of the reviews I have written this month. "If ya feel ya healed." I may be falling in love now. Maybe that blockage forbidding mourning was keeping me from feeling love.
This is my favorite song in the Janis Ian catalog now, but I will not listen to it very often, and never in company. I feel my nephew with me now. He sings a duet with Janis. I knew they would get along.
I worked for a civil rights lawyer who had an open-door policy and who wound up representing LGBTQ and transgender clients almost exclusively. I know what this song is about from that experience. I learned that gender is sometimes assigned by doctors in consultation with the parents when a child has been born between the lines. This subject is far less simple than the haters would like it to be. The four lines of lyric posted above are devastating, chilling, and the stuff of nightmares. This song is pretty. Janis knows how to sell a little truth dipped in honey, in a hard sugar casing, and wrapped in pretty foil. It is, however, devastating.
“I tried to make that song about anyone but Nina. … I loved Nina.” Meredith
"I got hold of Don McLean’s American Pie and I probably listened to Vincent 50 times and then I sat down and wrote Stars. Vincent was exactly the kind of song that I wanted to be writing."
At a time when Janis Ian was lost as a songwrter, Don McLean’s Vincent restored her inspiration. The song Vincentdid not obey the standard rules of songwriting, but it had a logic of its own, and it captured the tortured beauty of a great artist with unique vision including Van Gogh's fatal mental illness. Janis credits that song in her interview with James Broughton for reviving her songwriting career.
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you
—Don McLean’s song "Vincent"
Nina Simone was Janis Ian’s friend. Nina was a genius at song. Nina saw the world through the eyes of genius, and madness.
Any kind of fool could see
You were always meant to be
Miracles in moonlight, worshipped from afar
Burning like a falling star
Nina was mentally ill, in a deep and physical way.
Crazy as a loon, in your own cartoon
What a world those eyes must see
When you hit the mark, you stopped my heart
Then you'd turn around and grind it
Right into the ground. I'd find it
Janis Ian discusses this song at length with Kyle Meredith in his exceptionally fine 2022 interview. This song was problematic for Janis. But Janis Ian’s love of the song Vincent was the subject of a different interview with James Broughton in 1995. Janis has toured with Don McLean. I believe McLean’s solution to the problem of writing about an artist touched by genius and brought down by madness has simply become part of Janis, and it found its way into the song Nina to express itself again.There simply is no better solution to the poignant problem of incredible beauty living alongside undeniable (and fatal) mental illness.
But how were you to know this world
Was so damned hard on beauty
Frightened by your lightning song
Nina can't you see?
You were always beautiful to me
My friend and great poet and teacher Richard Howard passed away last year. He said there was a word in Greek. It meant “holding something close, while pushing away.” He got that from the Greeks. I think Janis Ian got this same wisdom from Don McLean.
This is a song about unburdening. "Give me light / Illuminate the darkness in my heart / Dancing with the dark / I'm dancing with the dark" This song is a prayer. It may shock some people and disappoint others, but Janis Ian believes in God. Just so! She says that her atheist parents encouraged her to read, and that lead her to believe, to their chagrin as she recalls. Who wouldn't sing this song who has lived an honest life? It has been a lot to take. For Janis, and for all of us. That's life, Pilgrim!
"And something like *Dark Side of the Sun* where there’s just that huge fat guitar sound and a vocal that’s filled with compassion for Lucifer. There are things I’ve never even tried before."
"Sympathy for the Devil"this is not, but "things are different down here" sounds a bit ominous to me.
David Bianculli: You aren’t thinking of writing a musical, are you?
Janis Ian: Boy, that would be a life goal, wouldn’t that? That would be great. I would love to write a musical. Yeah, if you’re listening, I’d love to write a musical. That’s been a goal since I was two-and-a-half and saw a run through of “Oklahoma.”
— Janis Ian from the Interview by David Bianculli at Rutgers
This is a show tune in search of a show! Wherever this song is sung becomes The Stage!
“As I wrote ‘The Light at the End of the Line,’ I realized that it’s really a love song. I didn’t understand that so many years of meeting my audience after shows, of corresponding with them, had created this very real relationship that few artists are privileged to have.”
“The Light at the End of the Line is a tip of the hat to Stars. Stars is all about what it is like to be a star and then not be a star and then trying to come back and be a star again. The Light at the End of the Line is all about having been a star and not a star, having done this with my career. Gratitude to the people who’ve hung in there.”
I met Janis Ian at McCabe’s Guitar Shop. She gave a gem of a concert in that legendary small venue in the back room with an audience on folding chairs. Janis became my friend that day. Mind you, I didn’t speak to her. I didn’t have to. That concert was so intimate that I knew she was singing to me. Perhaps she could see “all the love in [my] heart.” I felt good after that concert. I felt loved and appreciated. I took that feeling home with me and I have considered Janis a friend ever since. I felt the same from a concert with the late Richie Havens, who I met the same way at McCabe’s Guitar Shop. Janis knows. That spark continues to shine.
“I mean even something like the vocal on, my vocal on "Better Times Will Come" when I did it originally, I sang it into my phone, and I didn’t want to do that, but I did want the feel of it. So I sat in John’s studio and literally just started singing. Didn’t worry about vocal. Didn’t worry about mic. Didn’t worry about any of that.” — Janis Ian (Meredith)
The “Better Times Will Come” Project has made resulted in many many many more videos than I can catalog here. For all of the videos, following this link:The Better Times Will Comes Project
Paul Leslie:What does it mean to you to be an artist?
Janis Ian:Paul, that’s a serious big and loaded question. Gosh. You know and every artist I'm sure it would have their own definition of that question it's really impossible to put into a few words. To me, being an artist means in part being part of the community at large standing between that community and chaos and helping that community when crimes are chaotic to find itself and find its voice, and to hold on to its voice. It means really being the keeper of the history of your community and your country and of the world. It means being a citizen of the world and not just a small portion of it. I think for me being an artist really supersedes race and nationality gender all of those things and that's why I like thank you for that of all the ways that I could find myself from female or gay or short or northern or second generation or whatever the only one that really I am interested in laying claim to is an artist. The Paul Leslie Hour (2015)
* * *
I transcribed the following speech from a song introduction on the album Janis Ian Live: Working Without A Net. (Click the link to hear Janis say these words from the album on YouTube)
I find myself realizing as I grow older just how lucky I’ve been in my life. ‘Cause if you stop and think about it, to do what I do, its pretty amazing to be born with a talent in the first place. But to take that talent and have it pop up in the right family, in the right country, in the right era for that talent to flourish, that’s all just luck. That’s pretty amazing. And the luckiest part of it for me is that I wanted to do this since I was three because it always seemed like people who got to be onstage got to make magic. They got to really be alchemists. They got to turn lead into gold. Every night, they got to stand up there and take everybody’s hopes and dreams and fears and disappointments, and just pull ‘em right out of the air and turn them into something that you can see, that you can hear, that you can read. And that’s alchemy to me. That’s being a magician. Its the best part of the job. And the way I figure it, if we are doing our jobs right, then when times get hard, and God knows the times are a little strange right now… You know when times get so hard that you forget that you had a dream in the first place. And we’re the ones who get to step forward and say “Here are your dreams back. I tried to keep them safe for you.” And for those of us who get to do that, this is an immense privilege. So I thank you all for the privilege.
Email:billymwb@gmail.com
Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.
