Forever Young   

Jane Scott, beloved octogenarian rock critic at Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, retires.

The woman known as the "World's Oldest Teenager" surprises Cleveland colleagues and fans by retiring in April as a rock critic at the Plain Dealer, a month before her 83rd birthday.

Jane Scott, with her trademark blond hair and red glasses, developed a style of interviewing and reviewing over the last 38 years that endeared her to rock stars and made her a celebrity in northeast Ohio. She announced her retirement at a luncheon celebrating her 50th anniversary at the paper, saying she just felt it was time.

"If you liked music and you lived in Cleveland, Jane was the writer in the paper you read," says John Soeder, 34, the Plain Dealer's pop music critic and a local who grew up on Scott's reviews and weekly columns about upcoming shows. "It's not really a concert until Jane shows up.... Heads turn. People say, 'There's Jane Scott.' "

Scott, once a society writer, began her career as a rock critic at age 45, after she covered the Beatles' 1964 Cleveland debut while she was editor of the Plain Dealer's teen page. In the early years, she wrote for the teenage reader. "Often her technique would be to interview fans who were at the shows," Soeder says. "You would get five or six different voices in one 12- or 15-inch story." And, he says, she always managed to get backstage.

"If you want to write for yourself," Scott says, "go write a diary. I am the eyes and ears of the people who can't get there or can't afford it."

Janis Joplin "whirled backstage like an overweight butterfly. Thick, elbow-length hair, black velvet bellbottoms and an incredible black sequin cape.... There's a bottle labeled 'Southern Comfort' on a back table and she takes a swig, twirls around the floor, blows on the bottle," Scott wrote in October 1968.

In more recent years, she's stood her ground in mosh pits, preferring always to be right up front. She likes punk but isn't crazy about techno.

"I think rock has to keep changing," Scott says. "Do you want the same thing all the time?"

Scott's approach to stars completely disarmed them, Soeder says. A couple of years ago, both were interviewing Billy Joel after he had declared his intention to abandon pop music for classical. "I sat there with my notebook and asked a bunch of fussy questions," Soeder recalls. "At some point, Jane leaned in on the conversation, and the first thing she said was, 'How's your daughter doing? What's her name?' He went from being the rock star to the proud father talking about his kid."

That technique and the "very fair shake" Soeder says she gave performances has made fans of many of Scott's subjects. Bruce Springsteen, Lyle Lovett and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are some who have dedicated songs to her from the stage. She's sat on Lou Reed's lap. Ray Davies and Sammy Hagar asked Soeder to give her their regards when they heard he was from Cleveland.

Scott giggles when she tells her war stories, like the one about being with Jimi Hendrix when he paid $8,000 cash for a blue Corvette.

"It was a wonderful job," she says. "It was my baby. That's why it's hard to give it up."