The Bronx-born singer-songwriter found instant success with the controversial Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking).

Forty-five years on from the song which told the story of inter-racial love, Janis has had some of her CBS albums re-issued by Edsel Records.

The first pairing is a CD and DVD set, featuring Between The Lines and a concert recorded for BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test, as well as performances from The Shirley Bassey Show and The Lena Zavaroni Show.

The double CD pairing of Stars and Aftertones also includes live tracks available for the first time officially in the UK.

Speaking from her home in Nashville, Tennessee, on the eve of a two-month North American tour, Janis said: "I still get a buzz from writing and performing, but it does get harder as you get older."

Born Janis Eddy Fink and raised on a New Jersey farm, her parents Pearl and Victor had to deal with government surveillance because of their left-wing politics.

Janis, of Russian and Polish descent, recalled: "It was a time in American history where paranoid individuals had taken over the country.

"The FBI was led by J Edgar Hoover - here was a guy who made notes on his classmates at the age of seven.

"My parents were very involved in the civil rights movement and we used to see government guys hanging around the farm."

The authorities no doubt became even more suspicious when Janis, barely into her teens, wrote and recorded her contentious debut song.

She also legally changed her surname at the same time, Ian being her brother Eric's middle name.

Society's Child was released three times between 1965 and 1967, becoming a hit on its third release, after Leonard Bernstein featured it in a TV special called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.

But the song's lyrical content was taboo for some radio stations - and they withdrew or banned it from their playlists.

Janis also received death threats and hate mail.

She said: "I dealt with all the controversy as any adolescent would.

"My parents were actually really proud of me: they had always been big on their children speaking their mind."

But future success eluded her for more than eight years until she signed with CBS.

Janis recalled: "I was not writing good songs, perhaps it was due to circumstances surrounding me.

"I just felt it was a cycle of interminable singing and recording, until I had my second hit song At Seventeen.

The song, a bittersweet commentary on adolescent cruelty and teenage angst, won her a 1975 Grammy award and the album Between the Lines reached number one.

Many more successful and award-winning albums followed, but Janis still had troubles in her personal life.

She married Portuguese filmmaker Tino Sargo in 1978, but ended up in a emotionally and physically abusive relationship.

Janis explained: "I met him through a friend and things were fine for a year, but then he started showing his true colours."

The marriage ended in 1983 and later in the decade Janis moved to Nashville, where she met her now-wife Patricia Snyder.

"I'd known I liked females since I was young," she added.

"I had always been 'out' to my friends, my family and my record company.

"I was in love with Tino and I don't think there is a dichotomy in that.

"My mother said it was important just to bring someone home who was Jewish - it did not matter about the sex."

Janis and Patricia, who is also Jewish, married in Canada in 2003 as most of America had banned same-sex marriages.

She said: "It is a little embarrassing - we are supposed to be the world's leading country.

"You know, we are still woefully behind in education, welfare and civil rights."

Describing Nashville as a great place to be a songwriter, she is an advocate of free downloading of music.

Janis added: "More research has been done on the subject and I was one of the first to write that downloading was a good idea.

"Merchandise for certain artists, for example, has gone up 300 per cent due to it."

She has since released several of her songs for free download from her website.

Music may dominate Janis' life, but she has other interests too.

She is a long-time fan of science fiction, contributing to a number of anthologies and also bringing out her own Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian.

Janis also set up The Pearl Foundation, named after her mother, who died from multiple sclerosis.

The foundation is a scholarship at Goddard College, in Vermont, for older continuing-education students.

Despite playing in many countries, Janis has visited Israel just once, in 1983 - and was assigned a personal bodyguard, as revealed in her autobiography Society's Child, published two years ago.

While there, she was shocked to learn of a kidnap threat.

Janis became suspicious when her guide, David, slept on the sofa in her hotel suite.

She wrote: "Part of his job was to make sure I saw as much of the country as possible between shows and press.

"People were urging me not to go; there was a lot of violence and everyone was worried I'd be caught up in it".

Janis told the Jewish Telegraph: "Israel was amazing and we had a great time.

"But it is very far away from America and quite a hike."