Janis Joplin's may be the saddest story in rock biography. The kind of girl that parents and teachers feel compelled to buoy with "... Just you wait, you'll blossom when you turn 16... Get to college... Find a guy...", the scars of high school rejec...more Janis Joplin's may be the saddest story in rock biography. The kind of girl that parents and teachers feel compelled to buoy with "... Just you wait, you'll blossom when you turn 16... Get to college... Find a guy...", the scars of high school rejection, like those of her adolescent acne, were too-deep wounds in the soft core of her self confidence. Port Arthur, Texas might have wished for a different star, but Joplin was it, influenced by rowdy, across-the-border Louisiana blues and possessed of a gravelly voice and wishful themes encased kernel-like in grinding, shattering on-stage performances. Repel-attract did a revolving door number on Joplin and Texas until June, 1966, when she took off for San Francisco, and even death didn't bring her back home. In California and at Chet Helms urging, Joplin joined Big Brother and took a two-year ride as lead singer and rock concert regular, turning in a stupendous performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. In '68, she went solo with her Kozmic Blues Band, and she was working on a second album with Full Tilt Boogie when she overdosed on heroin in her L.A. hotel room on October 4, 1970. One can't sum Joplin by saying "the good die young," for she wasn't good in the sin vs. pure sense; she was lost, searching, primal and private. One can't lump her into a triumvirate with fellow fallen Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, for the noun implies control by three equals, and those three couldn't control themselves or their lives. Janis Joplin wore herself inside-out and finally down....less
Peter Albin,
Big Brother and the Holding Company,
David LaFlamme
|
