Jeannette Sears

Jeannette Sears, born October 20, 1947, is a song lyricist and author. Collaborating with her husband, musician Pete Sears, and occasionally Craig Chaquico, she penned the lyrics for many of the most popular songs of the original Jefferson Starship during their heyday. Three of these songs were among the first MTV music videos to be put in heavy rotation: "Winds of Change", "Stranger", and "Be My Lady". She is currently writing lyrics for the band, Moonalice, and the song “Kick It Open” (co-written with Pete Sears) was produced by T-Bone Burnett on the CD entitled MoonAlice. She has most recently completed a novel about a female rock star: A Light Rain of Grace.
Personal life
Jeannette and Pete met in 1971 at John Cipollina’s house, and began their relationship as a songwriting team. "Fading Lady Light" was the first of their collaborations to be recorded. Jeannette moved to England with Pete in 1973, when he was recording Rod Stewart’s Smiler album. They returned to California in 1974 when Pete joined Jefferson Starship, and in 1975, they were married in Mill Valley, CA. The Sears/Sears collaboration worked well for them, Pete writing the music and Jeannette, the words. They have two children, Dylan (age 33) and Natalie (age28), as well as daughter-in-law, Danielle Bertoni-Sears, and soon to be son-in-law, Jeff Sullivan.
Activism
In the 1980s, Jeannette wrote the lyrics for a concept album by Pete Sears, Watchfire. All the lyrics were about environmental and social justice issues, particularly pertaining to Central America. She collaborated with Mimi Farina on one of the song lyrics: "Let The Dove Fly Free".
Watchfire featured many musicians who wanted to be part of the project. Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, David Grisman, Mimi Farina, Babatunde Olatunji, Holly Near, John Cipollina, David Hayes, and others. One of the songs, "Guatemala", was turned into a music video directed by Emmy Award winning filmmaker, Ray Telles. Many human rights organizations used the video as a fundraiser to support their work, including Amnesty International (which is still using it in 2011), Oxfam, and Earth Island Institute, and the Canadian MTV Much Music aired the video. Jerry Garcia and the Rex Foundation funded the making of Guatemala, which was essentially a prayer for peace in that war-ravaged country.
Jeannette and Pete became active with numerous Central American relief organizations all through the eighties, working on benefits and immediate relief to refugees. In the late 1980s they spearheaded a radio drive in the San Francisco Bay area to raise food and clothing for refugees fleeing the ravages of civil war in Guatemala and El Salvador. In 1988, Pete and Jeannette received awards from the California Institute of Integral Studies for ongoing humanitarian contributions to the Bay Area community. From 2008 to 2010, Jeannette and Pete hosted an Iraqi student in their home from The Iraqi Student Project. They remain active in supporting the organization that provides free higher education and room and board to young Iraqi war refugees.
http://iraqistudentproject.org/node/75
Mentoring: Jeannette is a songwriting mentor for The Capitol City Young Writers. She was a featured speaker and gave a seminar on lyrics for social change at their conference in July, 2010. http://www.capitolcityyoungwriters.org/Writers__Conference.html
Current life
Jeannette’s passion for social justice shows up in her first novel, A Light Rain Of Grace, currently being represented by the Worley Shoemaker Literary Agency. It is the story of a female rock singer who marries a musician from El Salvador in the seventies, and tangles with the notorious death squads in the eighties. The novel is half sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, and half political thriller. It is an authentic look at a rock star’s life outside the spotlight.
She continues to contribute lyrics for the band Moonalice.

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