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

"I felt like we'd played Ireland through the violence, and it had been worth it. This would be, too."

Janis - who shot to fame as a 15-year-old with the controversial song Society's Child about inter-racial relationships - added: "I gave my band the choice of coming with me, or being replaced for the one tour.

"They all came. It was a great group.

"Our drummer, Arti Dixson, was a black Baptists. Our guitarist, Scott Zito, was an Italian Catholic. The bass player, John Crowder, was a Protestant from the Midwest. And Stan Schnier, my tour manager, was a Jew, same as me."

Once in Israel, Janis was shocked to learn of a kidnap threat. She became suspicious when her tour guide, David, slept on the sofa in her hotel suite.

"Yes, he was qualified as a guide, and part of his job was to make sure I saw as much of the country as possible between shows and press," she wrote.

"The other part of his job was bodyguard. He'd recently been bodyguard to David Ben-Gurion and was now looking after people like me."

He told Janis - who had been welcomed to Israel with the headline 'Local Girl Makes Good': "There have been some threats, kidnapping and the like. Only a few American artists have come here, and of those, not many Jews.

"You'd be high profile, worth a lot of publicity, and a lot of money. Wherever we go, there will be people watching you, keeping you safe. And I'm sticking to your side like glue."

Janis described her weeks in Israel as "fantastic". She said: "Even if I had only an hour free, he (David) knew something interesting to see."

Janis, born Janis Fink in 1951, describes her parents as "atheists, as were many Jewish immigrants and their children.

"Somehow, in throwing away the need to keep kosher and study Torah, they had also become 'free thinkers'.

"But like most Jewish atheists, they were also fervently Jewish. We might have been atheists but we believed in Judaism."

One of Janis' most famous songs is Tattoo from 1993's album Breaking Silence about the Holocaust.

She revealed: "One night I went to Bluebird and watched a young man from the hill county, Lance Cowan, sing a song about the Holocaust.

"I was chagrined. Here I was, a Jew, and though I'd always wanted to write about the death camps, I'd been scared I didn't have the chops for such a huge subject.

"Now some kid with no personal investment had gone and written a good song about them.

"It made me feel small. It made me feel like a coward. I grabbed my napkin and jotted down two lines: 'Her new name was tattooed to her wrist; it was longer than the old one'."

When the Jewish Telegraph spoke to Janis in 2003, she said that Tattoo received a better reaction in the south of America, "especially amongst black people".

We interviewed Janis just weeks after she married her partner Patricia Snyder.

Society's Child is released by Tarcher Penguin on Monday. The Best of Janis Ian: The Autobiography Collection is also released on CD to tie in with the book.