A WONDERFUL (IF FAIRLY "EARLY") AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY THE FAMED ACTIVIST SONGWRITER/SINGER

Holly Near (born 1949) is a singer-songwriter (e.g., A Live Album, And Still We Sing: The Outspoken Collection, Simply Love: The Women's Music Collection, etc.), actor, and activist for social change. This book was published in 1990.

She wrote, "I decided that while I participated in these productions of women's music (which, as far as I could tell, was a safe code for lesbian music, with the exception of a few women like me and Kristen Lems), I would not cling to a heterosexual safety net." (Pg. 105-106) Of the early relations between her record label (Redwood) and Olivia Records, Near notes, "It was impossible not to work together in some fashion... We tried to be compatible but instead we were often at odds. However... we seldom aired those differences publicly. As we became more visible, we were thrown into one lump... This was especially difficult for me, because Redwood was not a separatist company. My father was the business manager! ... Olivia and Redwood didn't like or trust each other much, but we were in the forefront of women's music together." (Pg. 119)

She recalls, "Meg [Christian] and I did a concert at Harvard. We had a solution now for working together. We would do two shows, one for women only and one for a mixed audience. But some young law students... sued the producers for discrimination... and won. Although the women-only show was sold out, the judge said fifty tickets had to go on sale to the general public. Men who were friends of women's music and women's right to gather together stood in line, bought the tickets, and gave them to women." (Pg. 133-134)

She admits, "the economic realities of the Reagan era were hitting us hard. Some purists in the audience started to cry 'Betrayal' or 'Sell out' when feminist artists began work in nightclubs or take jobs with commercial promoters... political artists are thought of less as workers than as guardians or moral and cultural integrity. Usually it is hard to wear that honor or bear that responsibility and still pay the rent." (Pg. 217) She notes that 'Don't Hold Back' "brought on a wave of criticism. Some of the mainstream press that had for so long accused me of being too political now accused me of selling out for a commercial career. My audience bought the headlines. Ticket sales to my concerts dropped and the record was slow to sell... It was scary that even with my track record and my body of work, I could become suspect so quickly." (Pg. 245)

She summarizes, "What is women's music? ... Maybe it is music for those who love or want to learn to love women amid misogyny... Women's music affirms the uniqueness of what women have to say and how we want to say it... we took it a step further, and now we are so pushed out there into the world, we can't even be neatly called 'women's music' any more. We need the radical forum, the cutting edge." (Pg. 255-256)

Near's book will be a delight to all of us fans of her music---progressives, folk music fans, women's music fans, LGBT community, etc.---and you will probably end up wanting to read a SEQUEL!

I gave Fire in the Rain…Singer in the Storm three stars. One was for all the nostalgia that it gave me. I can see why it only has one other entry on GR to date. Holly Near is more descriptive than prescriptive. She has probably changed the world, but I just can’t sing like her.

Holly Near was born in 1949. She had a “vision” that she would die at the age of 35; that would be in 1984. About New Year’s Eve in 1983 she writes: “Now I was tired. I was ready. I had done a lot in thirty-five years. Enough is enough.” So I thought it was going to be a short autobiography. But the book was published in 1990, so she must have made it past 35. I was relieved. I hadn’t heard about her for a long while and thought maybe she hadn’t made it. Obviously I was not paying attention; Holly has released 10 albums this decade.

When I paid attention to Holly Near in the 1980s she was a radical feminist, lesbian singer whose politics were somewhat like mine, focused on women’s liberation, disarmament, Central America, anti-Reagan, anti-capitalist, anti-war. The 70s and 80s were important times for me. My bookshelf includes: Reunion by Tom Hayden; Sixties – Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlan; Democracy Is in the Streets by James Miller; And a Voice to Sing with by Joan Baez. So when I came across her book last year, I bought it on half.com and added it to the shelf. I have finally just read it. I am glad I read it. I will be glad to move on to something new.

Great literature? No. Interesting? Probably only for someone who lived through those years or who has a relationship with Holly’s (and my) issues. Holly was an insecure girl from a very progressive family who started singing at the age of 7. She was a Hollywood film actress at the age of 20. She is a name dropper so get used to hearing a lot of names of people who sang, organized, or slept with her. (Is Holly a sex addict or a liberated woman? Read the book and decide for yourself.) She kept a journal.

She was in the Broadway play Hair and had an abortion before she was 21. She was part of the Jane Fonda anti-war tour (Free the Army) to military bases in Japan and the Philippines and recorded her first album at 23. She acted in the film Slaughterhouse Five and on the TV show The Partridge Family. She volunteered in the defense committee office of the Pentagon Papers trial. She traveled to Vietnam during the war for concerts including one in Hanoi. All this time she only had heterosexual experiences, several of them. At 25 she had her first crisis of sexual identity and began a 3 ½ year relationship with singer Meg Christian. She came out at the 1st Michigan Women’s Music Festival in 1976 in front of “1500 dykes.”

In 1977 she entertained at the International Conference Against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo. Her running her “lesbian feminist” record company Redwood Records was ongoing. She was urged into anti-nuke action by Three Mile Island in the spring of 1979. In 1984 she toured to Central America during the time of the Sandinista and Contra activities. She was the 1984 Ms. Magazine “Woman of the Year.” She wrote of 1984: “I had made three albums, been in 11 countries, and suffered a broken heart – all in one year.”

Sexual identity continued to stalk Holly. Family and friends and fans all had a role in this. “I still thought of myself as a lesbian, which was not altered by sleeping with men.” She worried about lesbians thinking that she “was going to pull a tennis-player-or-entertainer-takes-new-boyfriend-on-national-TV-talk-show-and-says-it-was-a-phase-and-a-big-mistake.” Holly’s reconciliation of her sexual identity is too complex to discuss here. But readers of the book will travel with Holly as she sorts out her options and feelings.

Holly suffered from serious back problems and depression. She almost retired and maybe considered her own death by suicide. But she came back, as they say, stronger than ever. You can tell because she starts dropping names again. Daniel Ellsberg, Dr. Spock.

What might her self-description be?

“What is the word for a friend who shares a holistic and revolutionary perspective on the world; who is simultaneously humbled and empowered by music and dance, film, and art; who has seen my weakest moment and strongest self only to love me more; who has been or is or could be a lover and yet it doesn’t define the friendship; who strives for a coming together of all that is woman including the part of us that is man; and who stands in the wings ready to held her friend, the singer?”

And what is her style of community organizing?

“Whenever new ideas emerge, songs soon follow, and before long the songs are leading.” And “Instead of being aggravated that we haven’t become mainstream enough or thinking we’re not needed once the mainstream has what we looked at fifteen years ago, it is simply time for the cutting edge to move on. And we are. We did what we set out to do . . . we moved the world forward . . . and that being a task never completed, we are not finished.”

In 1987 the cutting edge moved on to the 600,000 person gay and lesbian National March on Washington and the AIDS quilt.

“Women had been too successful and the right wing was raising its head hard and heavy against the new order being embraced by both nuclear and nontraditional families. Equal pay, child car, support of women on welfare, better education and health services, intervention in domestic violence, sex education, safer birth control, lesbian rights, programs to stop rape, criticism of pornography, shutting down the sale of dangerous baby formulas being sold to Third World mothers, opening up drug and alcohol clinics for our children, and expanding low income housing were among the issues that women worked for in the seventies and eighties while Reaganomics pulled the rug viciously out from under our feet. “

This book has a co-writer, Derk Richardson, listed on the title page and on the spine of the book but not on the jacket. Although I hate to think it of our politically correct Holly, this seems a little two faced. Seems like your standard big-name-gets-someone-else-to-write-a-book-for-her/him deal. I hope Holly had more to do with this book than reading a draft, making comments, then signing off on the final version. There is still plenty of bad writing so maybe she wrote it herself. Interesting life, Holly, and you clearly didn’t do it all for the money. As far as I am concerned, being motivated by principles is an excellent thing and not common enough in the entertainment industry.

Although this book is out of print, it is still available at the online used book vendors for $1.99 (for a ‘signed’ copy from Bookfinders in Ohio) and for $.99 plenty of other places. Couldn’t find a price under $.99! But you can pay more if that would make you feel better.

Holly Near is a legend...

This memoir is as relevant today as it was in 1990. The author is a fantastic storyteller and has lived a life of activism, music, great loves...much of her writing could be manifestos for today's activists. She also has the ability to inspire in a profound way. Don't miss this work from a PBS American Master!