Ravinia 2019, Issue 2, Week 4

Melissa Etheridge has played Ravinia twice before her June 23 stand with The Medicine Show , in 2013 and 2015, following her albums 4th Street Feeling and This Is M.E. Crazy” and “Let Me Go” with then-bass- ist and producer Kevin McCormick—to playing for thousands in huge arenas in the early ’90s. All along in her still-young career, the songwriter had been harboring a secret with a clever lyrical trick. Plenty of her songs wrestled with romance, and she commonly sang about the other woman—but the person who did the heartbreaking was always “you.” In other words, she employed a second-person gender-neutral pronoun, never a specific third-person “he” (or “she”). Listeners could project any gender onto the Ca- sanova, and Etheridge could walk a fine line of avoiding a public coming-out at a time when such a thing was commonly thought to be career suicide. She laid plenty of bread crumbs, though. In “Testify,” from her 1989 sophomore album, she told attentive queer fans just who she was, and she made a promise she’d live up to soon enough. She sang of people “drenched in pride / Marching to their drum with fear standing beside,” and built to the chorus: “I, I want to testify / My love still lives and breathes / And my soul is screaming why / The thoughts won’t let me sleep / Don’t let hearts break / And don’t let children cry / Before it gets too late / I want to testify.” Her public testimony accompanied what felt like a new era in American history. A supporter of Bill Clinton during his first presidential campaign, she attended his inauguration and came out to the country at a ball in January 1993. Later that year, she released her fourth album, triumphantly (if cheekily) titled, Yes I Am . It might not sound like a big deal to a most people today, but it truly was a brave step 25 years ago. (For further context, Etheridge came out four years before Ellen DeGeneres and nearly a decade before Rosie O’Donnell. Mean- while, male stars who poked their heads out of the closet, such as Elton John, Boy George and Michael Stipe, typically claimed the label “bisexual” before even- tually using the word “gay.”) In a stroke of poetic justice, Yes I Am became her biggest-selling release ever. As life would have it, that proclama- tion was not the last time she’d publicly address a deeply personal issue. Yes I Am made her a hero to the LGBT commu- nity, but another seismic event a decade later would make her a hero to many millions more. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, the songwriter spoke openly about dealing with the devastat- ing disease. It was another chance to talk about a struggle in the hopes that her story could give hope to others. And then she made a bold choice on a public stage: She performed at the 2005 Grammys in a tribute to Janis Joplin, playing guitar with abandon while singing “Piece of My Heart.” She took the stage for the live performance just two weeks after a round of chemo treatments. She wore a dapper rock-star jacket and jeans—and no hair. With no wig or hat to conceal the toll of her can- cer journey, Etheridge simply smiled a living-my-best-life smile as she knocked the song out of the arena, right into the stratosphere. To say it made an impact is an understatement. People still talk about those three electric minutes, all these years later. Now 15 years cancer-free, Etheridge says she hears from fans who are fighting cancer “all the time, at every show. I get people who are stage-four, they’re dying, and then people who have just started going through it, and people who have survived for 10 years or one year or whatever it is. … I cherish that there are people who think, ‘If Melissa went through it, I can go through it.’ To be that sort of inspiration to someone, that’s a blessing. I’m very grateful. I always understand that it’s my journey, but the choices I make are reflected out into the world.” Just as she channeled her experienc- es of growing up lesbian in her music, PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTO COURTESY OF CONCORD MEDIA; THIS PAGE: RUSSELL JENKINS/RAVINIA 12 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 17 – JUNE 30, 2019