The harrowing racist concert that almost broke Janis Ian: “It was life changing”
Teen starlets always have a tough job to handle. But in the case of Janis Ian, one of her earliest moments to make a mark on music was marred by an ugly societal blight, the pressure under which many would crumble.
Yet it was testament to the woman that she was beyond her years from a young age, making the bold leap to become an artist at just 13, and not only that, doing it with a song that would truly turn heads. After all, we like to think of the 1960s as a time in which spirits were high, free, and inclusive to everybody – but was this really the case when Ian’s song about an interracial romance was enough to incite a complete barrage of hate?
This was exactly the state of affairs in which Ian was landed in when it came to her breakout single ‘Society’s Child’, originally recorded in 1965 but not becoming a hit until two summers later. The main spanner in this works was because, although they had agreed to record it, Atlantic Records refused to release the song on account of the subject matter, so Ian had to take it to Verve Recordings instead.
With that hurdle ultimately put behind her, ‘Society’s Child’ placed Ian on the trajectory to success, with it selling over 600,000 copies over the years. But despite this, it didn’t mean the initial response was always positive – and, indeed, there was one performance where the blatant racism of the audience left the young singer in tears, not knowing if she should ever continue on this uphill battle.
The fated incident took place “probably my fourth or fifth time on a concert stage,” Ian later recalled, at the Valley Music Theatre in Encino, California, where only a few songs into the set, all hell broke loose when the singer tried to perform what would later become one of her greatest legacy hits.
“When I started ‘Society’s Child,’ these people started yelling,” she said, describing the “horrible, almost prayer-like chant” of racial slurs they hurled.
In tears, Ian ran off the stage and was later found by the promoter, who corralled her to get back out there. “So I went back on stage, and I picked up my guitar, and I started to sing again, and I thought, ‘Okay, here I am’,” she explained. “And I made it my business to keep singing the song, get through the show.” When ushers eventually kicked the hecklers out of the audience, Ian realised the mob had only been there to intimidate her.
“It was a life changing moment for me,” Ian said. “Because I realised for the first time that the song didn’t just have the power to make people angry, but it had the power to make people stand up and stand up for what they believe. And that was a huge deal, that music could do that. I think that was a large part of what set me on my course.”
As much as no one would have wished for such a horrific incident, it nevertheless proved to be seminal in solidifying Ian’s sights even further on making a change. It may have meant a teenage girl taking on a mob, standing up to societal injustice and looking hatred square in the face, but the eventual success of ‘Society’s Child’ was a testament to her determination never to be brought down. The power of one 13-year-old changed her entire life.
