Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler celebrated the opening of a second Janie’s House, a facility in Memphis, Tennessee, for girls who have been abused or neglected. The Grammy-winning singer, known for tying scarves around his microphone stand, attended a “scarf-cutting” ceremony Monday, Feb. 4 at the house he helped fund.
“This does my heart and my soul good,” Tyler said at the opening. “This is real.”
A press release announcing the opening reveals that the house is located on an 82-acre Youth Villages campus in Bartlett, which will have enough space for 14 women and girls at a time and dozens annually. The 3,900-square foot House also offers access to 24-hour medical care and therapeutic support, with an outdoor living space overlooking a scenic lake and inspirational murals and quotes chosen by Tyler himself.
The house and its name were inspired by Aerosmith’s 1989 hit, “Janie’s Got a Gun,” written by Tyler and bassist Tom Hamilton. The song is about a young girl who uses drugs to mask the pain of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father.
Tyler, 70, said he was exposed to the realities of young victims of abuse whom he met at a treatment center.
“While I was there, all the girls I met had been abused either physically, mentally or verbally, or at least 90 percent of them all,” Tyler said in an interview. “So when I got out of there, I laid it all on Janie. I said, what are you going to do?”
The first Janie’s House opened in 2017 just outside of Atlanta and a third home is slated to open in Las Vegas later this year.
By: Maytinee Kramer
