The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [69]
How about pop music?
You see, pop music was something else in that time. We’re talking about the Fifties now. When I was thirteen, The Hit Parade was one hour a day—four o’clock to five o’clock. On the weekends they’d do the Top Twenty. But the rest of the radio was Mantovani, country & western, a lot of radio journalism. Mostly country & western, which I wasn’t crazy about. To me it was simplistic. Even as a child I liked more complex melody.
In my teens I loved to dance. That was my thing. I instigated a Wednesday night dance ’cause I could hardly make it to the weekends. For dancing, I loved Chuck Berry, Ray Charles. “What I’d Say.” I like Elvis Presley. I liked the Everly Brothers. But then this thing happened. Rock & roll went through a really dumb vanilla period. And during that period, folk music came in to fill the hole. At that point, I had friends who’d have parties and sit around and sing Kingston Trio songs. That’s when I started to sing again. That’s why I bought an instrument. To sing at those parties. It was no more ambitious than that. I was planning all the time to go to art school.
What kind of student were you?
I was a bad student. I finally flunked out in the twelfth grade. I went back a year later and picked up the subjects that I lost. I do have my high-school diploma—I figured I needed that much, just in case. College was not too interesting to me. The way I saw the educational system from an early age was that it taught you what to think, not how to think. There was no liberty, really, for freethinking. You were being trained to fit into a society where freethinking was a nuisance. I liked some of my teachers very much, but I had no interest in their subjects. So I would appease them—I think they perceived that I was not a dummy, although my report card didn’t look like it. I would line the math room with ink drawings and portraits of the mathematicians. I did a tree of life for my biology teacher. I was always staying late at the school, down on my knees painting something.
How do you think the other students viewed you?
I’m not sure I have a clear picture of myself. My identity, since it wasn’t through the grade system, was that I was a good dancer and an artist. And also, I was very well dressed. I made a lot of my own clothes. I worked in ladies’ wear and I modeled. I had access to sample clothes that were too fashionable for our community, and I could buy them cheaply. I would go hang out on the streets dressed to the T, even in hat and gloves. I hung out downtown with the Ukrainians and the Indians; they were more emotionally honest and they were better dancers.
When I went back to my own neighborhood, I found that I had a provocative image. They thought I was loose because I always like rowdies. I thought the way the kids danced at my school was kind of, you know, funny. I remember a recurring statement on my report card—“Joan does not relate well.” I know that I was aloof. Perhaps some people thought I was a snob.
There came a split when I rejected sororities and that whole thing. I didn’t go for that. But here also came a stage when my friends who were juvenile delinquents suddenly became criminals. They could go into very dull jobs or they could go into crime. Crime is very romantic in your youth. I suddenly thought, “Here’s where the romance ends. I don’t see myself in jail . . .”
So you went to art school, and at the end of your first year decided to go to Toronto to become a folksinger.
I was only a folksinger for about two years, and that was several years before I actually made a record. By that time, it wasn’t really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people got nervous about that word. Art. They think it’s a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, words are only symbols, and the word “art” has never lost its vitality. It still has meaning to me. Love lost its meaning to me. God lost its meaning to me. But art never lost its meaning.