When music legend Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Los Angeles on Oct. 4, 1970, one of the brightest lights in the then-short history of rock ‘n’ roll was forever dimmed. At a mere 27 years of age, Joplin had only been famous for about three years, thanks to her charismatically unbridled performances and a powerfully unrivaled singing voice.
A native of Port Arthur, Texas, where she graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1960, Joplin built a legacy as a defining artist of her generation and of rock history that has seemingly skyrocketed with each passing year. Having died at the same age as fellow tragic icons Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, Joplin could easily be seen as the unwitting recipient of a dreadful hand dealt to her by fame’s unforgiving dealer.
But in Janis: Her Life and Music, a new book by noted author and music journalist Holly George-Warren, the personal darkness that brought Joplin to her demise in that motel room is revealed to have been fully active long before the world heard her voice in the late 1960s.
“I tried to show in my book that she wasn’t a victim,” George-Warren says over the phone. “Because of her death at age 27, she’s been painted as a victim by some, but she took life by the horns, with gusto. Twenty-seven is very young, and she still had some developing to do emotionally, and there was some maturation that never happened. She made some bad decisions that endangered her health that kept her from living long enough to try and repair her health.”
Given that Joplin’s place in the rock ‘n’ roll Mount Olympus has long been secured, a number of books, documentaries and resources looking back on Joplin’s life are available to fans and students of rock history. But for the Grammy-nominated, best-selling author George-Warren, who has written recent books on Woodstock and Alex Chilton, the late lead singer of Big Star, the Joplin library shelf was somehow still lacking.
The headline-grabbing years of musical fame following the 1967 Summer of Love had been widely captured, but what about the years before Joplin’s flash of fame?
“Of course, I’ve been a fan of Janis for a long time,” George-Warren says. “But I realized I didn’t know much about her journey as a musician. From the other books I had read, it seemed like she just sprung onto the stage fully formed. I was fascinated by how this girl, growing up in late ‘40s and ‘50s Port Arthur, discovered the blues.”
Joplin’s journey began in Port Arthur. And it’s made clear in the book that no matter where she would travel to and live in her later years, whether it be San Francisco, Austin or New York, her hometown roots were ever-present, for better or worse.
Joplin’s father, Seth, was an avid reader and a devoted classical music lover, and he detested rock ‘n’ roll. He was also an atheist, paired with Dorothy, a Christian wife in a predominantly churchgoing town. Janis saw her father as an intriguing maverick in a world where nestling into a herd didn’t feel right. Both parents wanted their oldest daughter to be unique, to be her own person. Seth and Dorothy both encouraged artistic pursuits, especially Janis’ early work in drawing and painting. But, in the final two years of Janis’ high school years, she was more self-made outcast than eccentric artist.
That uninhibited flash of pre-adulthood mental and spiritual independence led her to fall in love with the music of Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, when her classmates were into the early rock of Bill Haley and the Comets.
“I think her parents had a real, ‘Oh, no, I’ve created a monster’ type of feeling by opening Janis up to a world of ideas,” George-Warren says. “So many of the ideas she latched onto and talked openly about went against the moral code in a town that was restrictive and not in any way permissive.”
Although the outspoken student was more than willing to stand out from the more straight-laced crowd, Joplin wasn’t a stranger to involving herself with a number of typical school-age interests. As a junior and senior at Thomas Jefferson High, Joplin had already been active in a number of extracurricular pursuits, including the slide rule club and Future Teachers of America.
None of that kept her from being bullied and mocked at an alarming rate throughout her final high school years, the author recounts. The school jocks, including former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson, would make fun of her funky bohemian style, oft-disheveled appearance and less-than-supermodel looks. Some classmates would also spread lies about an alleged indiscriminate sex life she didn’t have.
A decade later, Joplin would often stretch the truth of her high school ostracization in interviews, as well as embellish on the more contentious elements of her relationship with her parents, George-Warren says. It was her way of owning her past, even if it meant some of the details weren’t completely true. She was a savvy rock star, fueled by not only the need for unconditional acceptance, but by a desire to forcibly stand out.
“She was very good at presenting a persona,” the author says. “She was badly mistreated by other students in high school, but overall I think it was for a shorter period of time than she led many journalists to believe. She created a wild-woman persona who partied and was sexually out there. She was a storyteller who knew how she wanted to be presented on stage.”
The influential mark Joplin made on the artists around her before her death and the ever-evident impact of her contributions on generations of musicians who have since followed is unassailable. She spoke the way only she could speak, loved whom she felt the desire to love and believed in the things her gut directed her to. Joplin never gave up wanting to be warmly adored by everyone, though she never conceded her birthright of individuality in order to do so.
“She really was such a true Texan,” George-Warren says. “She came from a long line of frontier people, cowboys and cowgirls. It was in her genetic makeup. These types of people are always pushing though the odds that are in front of them.”
By Holly George-Warren
(Simon & Schuster, 400 pages, $28.99)