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How we made Janis Ian's At Seventeen

‘I am the American dream’ … Janis Ian.
‘I am the American dream’ … Janis Ian. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Janis Ian, singer and songwriter

I’d made the album Stars and was getting great reviews but couldn’t get any work. I was living with my mother, spending a lot of time writing. One day I was sitting at the dining room table, reading the New York Times Magazine. There was an article about a woman who’d thought her life would change and be perfect when she had her debutante ball. The first line was, “I learned the truth at 18.” Since “At Eighteen” didn’t scan, it became “At Seventeen”.

It took three months to write, because it was scary. This was the mid-70s, before confessional songs, and I’d never been that honest about feeling ugly and never being asked out. I kept picking it up and putting it down, saying: “I can’t do this.” In the third verse, the narrator steps forward and you realise it’s about her. “Those of us with ravaged faces,” she says, but near the end there’s the line: “Ugly duckling girls like me.” Well, ugly ducklings become swans, so there’s hope.

It was a very tense recording session. It was the first time I felt like I’d written a hit. I have no idea why I thought that. The melody sounded so familiar, I worried that I’d lifted it. So I called three musician friends, sang it and said: “Have you heard this before?” They all said no.

My manager told me I was ruining my chances because it was over three minutes long. But it was a great session and we finished what we thought was a killer take, then realised the ending wasn’t as strong as the beginning so we did another and spliced its ending on to the previous take.

When we brought it to CBS, they said four minutes was too long. They didn’t have a clue how to market it either, because it was so wordy. I went on a promo tour that seemed to last 10 years. We played small shows for six to eight months, getting up at 5am to do TV, then having lunch with promo people. At five we’d stop for dinner with someone from the record company, at eight there’d be a show, then it was bed at midnight. In Britain, I did an early-morning show with Queen, who were promoting Bohemian Rhapsody.

I remember the day I first thought At Seventeen might be doing something. We’d graduated from playing to 100 people to 800. We were at a college in the midwest and I walked out of the dressing room - which was the locker room – and there were kids lined up on both sides. And it was: “Look, there she is! There she is!” That was the highlight, exactly what I’d been working for.

I don’t think the song would be successful now. I told a friend that I am the American dream, the reason why my grandparents came here, so that someone with my talent could have these breaks.

Brooks Arthur, producer

I melted the first time Janis played the song. It wasn’t folky, it wasn’t pop – it was just honest and straight from her heart. She was powering through her feelings, which was very delicate territory, but she wouldn’t really uncork vocally. It took us two or three days to finesse it. She was easy to work with, though, because she was so organised – beyond organised, actually. She’d come in to the studio with lyric sheets and arrangements printed out.

There’s was a moment during recording when I suddenly felt like we were in a spaceship blasting off from Earth. It was the most incredible feeling and it’s only happened a couple of other times – while I was recording Bruce Springsteen’s first albums.

Two or three hours later, we landed safely. We listened to the track and knew we were making some kind of wonderful. But I didn’t feel it was a hit. I’d just been trying to make Janis sound as good as she did on Stars. But then Allen Klein, who’d managed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, dropped by and said: “This is a hit.”

• Janis Ian headlines the Cambridge folk festival on 5 August.