Versatile Singer Revels in Near Freedom : Pop music: Holly Near has done well with the no-compromise, no-category approach to her music. The author and activist will be at the Coach House tonight.

Holly Near is known primarily as the guiding spirit of women’s music, a singing proponent of gay and lesbian rights who has survived on her own terms. In fact, the versatile singer-songwriter has worked at enough different, often simultaneous careers to fill numerous lifetimes.

Actor, author, activist, teacher, producer, record company president--Near has filled many, many roles, and her music career has been equally diverse. She has performed in a number of different styles since her 1973 debut album, following her artistic whim rather than being directed by the flow of popular tastes or the dictates of major labels.

“I wish that we lived in a world that made more room for a multifaceted personality,” Near, who plays the Coach House tonight, said in a recent phone interview. “In the commercial-music world, you’re supposed to be a country singer, a folk singer, a jazz singer, a cabaret singer, and I’ve never done well fitting into that. I’m all of those things, and I don’t want to have to choose one over the other.

“Aside from the homophobia, that’s maybe the other reason I’ve had difficulty fitting into the mainstream,” she said. “I haven’t been easy to categorize and promote, I have too much fun singing different kinds of music. But I actually discovered that I could make a living and have a career without a PR department and someone saying, ‘You’ve got to pick.’ ”

Near has managed to do quite well. She has sold a total of more than 1 million units of her 16 albums, all on her own label, Redwood Records, and in the process has become recognized as a valued spokeswoman for the lesbian community and other activist factions. She has won a roomful of awards and honors over the years, including being named one of Ms. magazine’s Women of the Year for 1985.

Near, 45, grew up on a Northern California ranch, the daughter of politically progressive parents who were active in the labor movement of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

“ ‘Oh, those crazy Nears’ is how people kind of spoke about us,” Near recalled. “But my parents were so charming that people liked them anyway. I learned from them how to have opinions, but have them in a way that there was laughter, kindness and room for discussion.”

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Near attended UCLA and worked in summer stock in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and became a reasonably successful actress. Her credits from the period include appearances in the television shows “All in the Family,” “Room 222,” “The Mod Squad” and “The Partridge Family,” and such films as “Slaughterhouse Five” and “The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart.”

Near blew more than a few minds some years later when she revealed in her autobiography, “Fire in the Rain . . . Singer in the Storm” that she had had a brief affair with her “Magic Garden” co-star Don Johnson.

“It was one of those reckless, teen-age love-generation things,” she said with a chuckle. “We were both lost in trying to grow up and figure out who we were. But actually, I’ve run into him a couple times since then, and he’s been very, very sweet and friendly. He was doing ‘Miami Vice’ and I was doing a NOW convention in Miami, and he said hello and sent flowers to my room.”

“Fire in the Rain . . .” had a second life as a stage production that Near wrote and performed in when it was staged in 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. An album of the same name with songs from the show was released in 1993 and is Near’s most recent release. She said she is enjoying touring without the added responsibility of a new album to promote.

Although real recognition as an actress seemed imminent in the early ‘70s, Near found that she preferred music as her main creative outlet. In 1972, she founded Redwood Records to release her highly personal, political albums. Coming out as a lesbian in 1976, she became an early light in the women’s music movement and an inspirational figure to her peers.

“I was actually kind of a latecomer; there were women singing songs about their lives way before I came along,” she said. “But before they were called performers of women’s music, they were called anonymous. There was Alix Dobkin and Meg Christian, there was the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective and the Chicago Women’s Liberation Band. I came about six or seven years after all this began in the basements of homes, very clandestinely at first.”

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In those early years, Near said she drew resistance to her message of sexual tolerance from all sides.

“When I first came out as a lesbian, the left hadn’t caught up to gay politics,” she said. “There was still a kind of a hangover from an old party line that said homosexuality was part of the fall of the empire, a sign of decadence. But the women’s movement helped people see that this was an inappropriate analysis, and they’ve come out a wiser, more sensitive group of people.”

As tensions eased over the years, even some mainstream entertainers began to acknowledge their sexual orientation publicly.

“Well, it’s not as easy as all that,” said Near. “They’ve come out very slowly and gracefully, if you actually look at it. But I don’t think they could have done it any differently and still be accepted by the mainstream. It’s not that easy and automatically accepted yet. They’re very brave, and they are exceptions rather than the rule. I almost feel a twinge of maternal tenderness when I see these people come out, because I was part of it, and I know how difficult it is.”

As for Near, she’s happy with the relatively small but lovingly devoted following she has earned over the years. She refuses to make overtures toward mass acceptance if that means compromising either her political ideals or her musical creativity.

“Life’s too short to spend it knocking on doors that aren’t easily opened,” she said. “The only reason to try to be part of the mainstream is to reach a larger audience, and I think there’s a lot of people out there who would like what I do. On that level, I think it’s very sad. I wish there was somehow a way to be invited into it that was accessible and not too scary.”

* Holly Near performs tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $17.50. (714) 496-8930.