Janis Ian – "Everybody Knows" (1968)

You’ve been a bad girl 

You’ve been had, girl

Your mama’s in the pantry with your other daddy 

Janis Ian was a precocious little thing. 

She started taking piano lessons when she was just two years old, and later learned to play the organ, harmonica, guitar, and French horn.

She wrote her first song (“Hair of Spun Gold”) when she was just 12, and performed at the famous Village Gate nightclub in Greenwich Village the following year.  (Others who performed at the Village Gate include Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Woody Allen, and Aretha Franklin.)

In 1965, Ian wrote and recorded “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),” a song about an interracial teenage romance.  Some radio stations refused to play it, but the record sold 600,000 copies and reached #14 on the Billboard “Hot 100” nonetheless.

The 16-year-old Janis Ian in 1967

Ten years later Janis released her biggest hit, “At Seventeen,” an angsty song that struck a chord with unhappy teenaged girls everywhere.  It was a #3 hit in 1975, and the album it was released on (Between the Lines) went all the way to #1 on the Billboard album charts.

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That same year, Janis Ian’s mother Pearl was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  

Janis and her brother persuaded her to pursue her dream of going to college, and she enrolled at Goddard College – a nontraditional “low residency” college that allows students to design their own curricula and study independently.  Pearl eventually earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Goddard.

Janis Ian and her mother, Pearl Fink

After Pearl died in 1997, Janis created a foundation to raise money for scholarships for older students who wanted to attend Goddard.  Her initial fundraising effort – an online auction of some of her memorabilia – brought in $70,000.  Since then, the Pearl Foundation has raised and given away almost a million dollars.

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Janis will do just about anything to raise money for her mother’s foundation.  

If you’d like to send a Janis Ian fan a personalized card with a handwritten message from Janis, it will cost you only $29.95.

A 15-minute phone call with Janis will set you back $249, while the opportunity to work as a roadie at one of her concerts costs $695.

If you’re a really, really, really big Janis Ian, she will come to your house and perform in your living room.  You can invite up to 40 friends and family to attend, and you can videotape the whole shebang for your personal use.

The current price for a Janis Ian living-room concert is $15,000 – plus airfare, hotel, taxi and/or rental car, and a $500 fee for the artist’s manager.  

The 60-year-old Janis Ian in 2011

Don’t forget to provide some bottles of unopened spring water and Perrier, and a deli tray – which “should be heavy on protein (salmon,  chicken, cheese), with vegetables and dip (onion or blue cheese preferred).”

Since Janis Ian is very allergic to feathers and cats, the living-room concert contract includes the following provisions:

The room where the concert is to take place, as well as the “dressing room”, must contain no feathers, not even on a high shelf in a closet.  Please check your pillows, comforters, couches and chairs carefully, we do not want to provoke an asthma attack!

If you have cats, or have had them in your home in the past 3 months, you will have to choose another space for the concert.  Even if you remove the cats days before, and clean like mad, the dander will still be present and Artist cannot tolerate it.  Artist will not be able to breathe if cats have been present, and your concert will be jeopardized.

Sorry, kitty, but you need to get the hell out of Dodge!

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Today’s featured song, “Everybody Knows,” was released in 1968 on The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink, which was Janis Ian’s third studio album:

The album title refers to Janis Ian’s birth name, which was Janis Eddy Fink.  She changed her name legally to Janis Ian – Ian was her brother’s middle name – when she was 13 years old.  (Can you blame her?)

Click here to listen to “Everybody Knows,” which includes the following lines: “Don’t mind the words of my song/They’re not strong.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: