![]() Was she self-destructive in both her pursuit of sex and her turned-inward lifestyle? "She defined men sexually, as she defined herself, and then went at her one-night stands and sometimes orgies under the cover of a liberated style of life. Sometimes, though, she could be surprisingly beautiful. She had a cackle like no one else in rock. (Remember how she just dissolves into it at the end of "Mercedes Benz" on her last album, as though everything, not just the ditty, but life itself, were so damn absurd?) Janis Joplin had an incredible cackle. Of the fifths of Southern Comfort carried onstage. You think of that sweaty and sometimes porcine face. Someone in whom there seemed so much need, which somehow she transformed to our need. Someone who could sing up every song any truck driver ever knew. You think of Janis Joplin, whose music is so redolent of the '60s, and what comes to mind? A woman who could bellow and cry and stamp and then turn around and go achingly tender. No, far better to have them in our minds now as smashed idols, as icons of their separate fiery moments. Christopher Reeve decided life had to go onĬan you picture James Dean, can you imagine Janis Joplin, grown old and wheezy and boring, trying to deliver clever patter on late-night talk shows? Horrid image.Using her most-polished croon, Janis breaks into fellow Texan Dale Evans’ cowgirl classic, “Happy Trails,” ending with “Happy birthday, John!” and that crazy cackle of : Style Live: Style: Style Showcase But what she left behind – her music and her legacy – have enriched generations.Ī hidden track on The Pearl Sessions finds Janis and her band singing to John Lennon in honor of his thirtieth birthday on October 9. Her decision to shoot heroin during a break from the recording sessions, tragically, took her away from us. Nicknamed “Pearl” by her Full-Tilt band mates, Janis spent her final days doing what she loved, and as Rothchild later told her sister, Laura Joplin, “She was a singer, full of song, totally immersed in the magic of that moment of creativity – she was at one.” Janis never settled she kept striving for the next musical step. Just four days before her death, she told New York radio DJ Howard Smith, “You are only as much as you settle for.” With surplus vocal talent, intellect, and artistry, Janis fearlessly lived by the philosophy “Get It While You Can,” also the title of the gut-wrenching final track on Pearl. In concert, she transformed into a shamanic force of nature in the studio, working with longtime Doors producer Paul Rothchild, she helped steer the ship. ![]() She loved her manager Albert Grossman, a wheeler-dealer who’d handled Bob Dylan, and she adored her audiences, whom she addressed onstage – from the Fillmore East to Newport to Woodstock – like they were old friends. She enjoyed a good book, even backstage at Detroit’s psychedelic Grande Ballroom, and scintillating conversation with the likes of director Paul Morrissey, sphinx-like Andy Warhol and singer-songwriter Tim Buckley at the legendary Manhattan watering hole, Max’s Kansas City. Janis always had a larger-than-life image that inspired girls like me, but as Elliott Landy’s photographs testify, she was multifaceted. A decade later, I was living in New York City, playing in bands and writing about music. But between seeing a colorfully garbed and articulate Janis on The Dick Cavett Show in June 1970, and hearing that bittersweet road song, in January 1971, my eyes – and ears – were opened by this singular woman with a magnificent voice. ![]() I was a 14-year-old growing up in North Carolina when Janis’ posthumous Number One single, “Me and Bobby McGee,” became a staple on AM radio. ![]()
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