Janis Joplin was, moreover, a dazzling star, a rare pearl. A unique voice. And a personality as strange as it is endearing. Tribute
Janis exploded in two afternoons, June 17 and 18, 1967, at the festival Music, Love and Flowers from Monterey. His manager, Chet Helmsthe current : “One day, in Texas, I heard a chicken named Janis Joplin singing. A lot has happened since that hitchhiking trip to the West Coast. I am very proud to present to you today the result of three or four years of work: Big Brother and the Holding Company! »
Original hippies, incredibly long hair down to the elbows, flowered shirts, striped pants, absolute coolness, they attack “Down on Me” where Janis, in jeans, tears up, her facial features convulsed by her cosmic blues, then “ Combination of the Two”, a freak rock tour de force that she sings with the guitarist Sam Andrewwhile James Gurley, with her magical necklace of pearls, feathers, shells and pierced stones connected by a leather strap, delivers an incredible solo. Their guitars are not perfectly tuned, but that contributes to the strange saturated sound that is theirs. In San Francisco, feeling takes precedence over technique.
“Capricorn, tragic, but so alive, of blues, of soul, of alcohol, of dope, of desire, of sex. »
When they concluded with “Ball and Chain”, unleashed, she stunned the audience, who had just watched with open mouths an eight-minute tornado: no one has ever heard a girl – Janis is not a woman , she is too immature, too playful and insecure for that – singing like this, hissing, meowing, pleading, raging, with so much energy, passion and commitment. Capricorn, tragic, but so alive, of blues, of soul, of alcohol, of drugs, of desire, of sex. She’s on fire.
Until then, she was the singer the group had hired: she has just become its star. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, immediately made advances towards him. And gets the group to be rescheduled the next day for three titles so that it can be filmed. Galvanized, Janis ensures, before letting go completely in “Ball and Chain” like the day before, a tigress performance in her beige mesh and sequined pinafore-trousers ensemble, tapping her feet with her openwork pink mules with small heels, making her fall the trinkets that beat his chest. Her wool outfit leaves her nipples sticking out for everyone to see (she doesn’t know the existence of bras).
After bowing in tears of nervous exhaustion at the end of her incredibly intense performance, she stoops to quickly pick up her pearls and trots backstage like a pony to find her beloved young German shepherd, George. Ravi Shankar is blown. Monterey Pop will make him a star.
“The power she releases when she sings is not an expression of it: on the contrary, it is that of her suffering, her solitude, her distress. »
Beatnik girl
Much more than Grace Slick in Jefferson Airplane, with whom she posed for a famous poster which respectively baptized the hippie goddesses “Ice” and “Fire”, Janis stands out from Big Brother: she is a real frontwoman. Yet she is so tormented, so bad about herself. Vulnerable. Exceptionally, probably for the cameras, she applied foundation, which paradoxically brings out even more the acne marks on her pockmarked face. If only the glory that awaits her could fill her existential void, heal her narcissistic wounds, her raw heart and her body too easily offered… The power she releases when she sings is not the expression: on the contrary, it is that of his suffering, his solitude, his distress.
Texan, tomboy but excellent student, Janis Lyn Joplin discovered as a teenager, in Port Arthur, the blues of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Lead Belly, Big Mama Thornton, and saw herself ostracized for her unattractive physique and her beatnik girl style. She sang and played autoharp at the University of Austin with the Waller Creek Boys, folk and blues as Odetta.
During her first trip to San Francisco, at age 20, she performed with the future Airplane soloist, Jorma Kaukonen – the legendary Typewriter Tape bears witness to this. Speed ​​freak, cadaverous, she returns to Texas and enrolls in anthropology. But San Francisco is calling and the bass player Peter Albin enlisted her in Big Brother after she had raised around sixty dollars – quite a sum! – passing the hat to the Coffee Gallery.
