Jennie Franks
Jennie Franks is an English playwright and filmmaker. She was the first wife of Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, and wrote some of the lyrics for the Jethro Tull song "Aqualung" (1971).
Career
[edit]Franks co-wrote and directed an educational film about the effects of AIDS in rural Colorado titled Soft Smoke, AIDS in the Rural West.[1][2] She wrote and acted in the play Stuck!, about "one woman's courageous struggle to get out of a locked basement bathroom at a coffee house and reclaim control of her stalled life", which debuted in New York in 2008.[3] She filmed The Ballad of Arthur Muldoon with Terry Jones.[4]
Franks founded SPARKy Productions in 1998, a group dedicated to highlighting social justice issues via creative performance, and acts as its artistic director.[5] The organization produced the annual Telluride Playwrights Festival.[5] The film festival culminated in 2016 with Franks' production of The Hispanic Women's Project.[6]
Life
[edit]Franks was the first wife of Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, from 1970 to 1974. She wrote some of the lyrics for the Jethro Tull song "Aqualung" (1971). Ian Anderson, the principal songwriter for Jethro Tull, has said, "[she] in fact was responsible for lyrics in the first couple of verses ... I suppose in total probably about half of the lyrics were words or word associations that she had come up with," based on pictures of homeless men Franks had taken as a photography student.[7] "And so she wrote some words and we fashioned that into lyrics. Some of the lines were definitely not lines I would have written. Like, “Snot is running down his nose” was not one of mine [laughs], it was one of hers."[8]
Franks later[when?] moved to Los Angeles and married screenwriter and novelist Jeffrey Price. They relocated to Telluride, Colorado in 1993.[1] Franks and her second husband have two daughters.[citation needed]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Denver Rocky Mountain News. Denver, Colorado: 8 November 1999. p. 7.A
- ^ HIV Plus. Here Publishing. p. 12. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ Broadway World Retrieved on 7 March 2008.
- ^ "3rd annual Telluride Playwrighting Festival opens with reading July 1". Telluride Inside... and Out. 29 June 2009. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ a b "Mountain Confidential: Jennie Franks". The Watch. Telluride Daily Planet. 23 July 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ "The Hispanic Women's Project: Inspired, Inspiring, GO!". Telluride Inside... and Out. 27 July 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ Who is Jennie Anderson, the person credited on the Aqualung album as the author of the title track? Archived 22 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Jethro Tull FAQ. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
- ^ "Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson: My Life in 10 Songs". Rolling Stone. 27 June 2018.
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