Janis Joplin: The Legend of the Blues and Her Escape from Solitude
On Thursday, the International Documentary Film Festival on Music and Culture Beat Filt Festival begins. Among others will show the film "Janis: The Little Girl Is Sad" about the fate of the rock icon Janis Joplin. Four albums, three groups and death in the fateful 27 years. Although the singer’s dependence on alcohol and drugs has been discussed for several decades, few people managed to get closer to Janice’s personal history: instead, Joplin’s name has become a common noun, personifying the 60s rebels. Alice Taezhnaya tells what is behind this image.
Joplin died from an accidental heroin overdose in the fall of 1970 — that same night, several more people died from a large dose of an unexpectedly pure drug that they brought to Los Angeles. Her latest album, titled "The Pearl" by the singer Pearl's alter ego, for three months after Joplin's death held out on top of the Billboard chart. After nearly half a century, her records continue to sell successfully: the tragic ending, as is often the case, has added demand to its undeniable achievements. A few dozen songs with a voice bursting into the sky are all that remains as a message from a generation of smart and courageous women from the second half of the 60s.
"Women are losers, and men always seem to be winners," Janice will sing and tell journalists more than once in response to a frequent question about the status of the only female rock star. It was not easy for the entire Beat generation and the following hippies, but today it is obvious how masculine was the culture of light-hearted riders and wild-hearted musicians. "I don't give a fuck" was accepted with a bang from the guys, but quite differently perceived from the mouth of the girl. Of the writers of that time, we still have hundreds of male names, and a few — female ones: you could have been considered a talented dunce, but no one wanted to live with the stigma of a whore, which often accompanied the girl’s independent life in subcultural circles. That is why riding cars with guys in another state, spending the night together, playing in a group where you are the only girl, with a pure heart could only those who were used to bad reputation.
The first group of Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, was a boyish gang in which Janice was her own board. They were equally alien to both aggressive muzhlanstvo and girlish sobs of wandering fanatics. Speaking in the bars of San Francisco, Janice looked like a stray cat, ready to release its claws: prickly and twitching. It was the first group in which she felt appropriate that she became her support and the cause of her impressive performance at the Monterey festival in 1967 - after which Janice was worn. And how was it not to wear? Young, in a gold jumpsuit, singing like a wild bird, dancing and screaming blues, squeezing herself into the public - she was white, but not Niko, not Grace Slick, and not Marianne Faithfull. Hearts are a fiery motor.
"Why do so few girls do what you do?" - the host of the evening American TV show Dick Kavett asks his guest, Janis Joplin, who clearly likes him with his extravagant manner, habit of joking about everything and a wide smile. "Few of them come to mind to delve into the music, and not just to soar on their tops," says Janice with her hair disheveled, obviously not prepared answers, in a relaxed position in which her neighbors sit down who come in for tea.
In her immediacy there is work for the public: here I am, a simple girl from Texas, I say what I think. Janice always smiles when she hears approval and applause in response to the replicas of the "ordinary girl". But even more in this attitude of a personal relationship: the singer chose to be herself, without apologizing for her appearance, her tastes and opinions. Joplin was a living proof that a talented woman to whom one cannot ignore was not necessarily canonical beauty with a Hollywood smile, exploiting her appearance and sexual appeal.
"This is my blood, this is what I sing - what else can I do?" - Janice says with every cry and a flash. Whether it will be other people's songs "Summertime" or "Bobbie McGee", we will hear in them not just a singer and an interpreter, but a living person with persistent requests for love and unconditional acceptance. Stay, do not leave, spend this evening with me, spend all my life with me, I am really waiting for you. The cry, in the sense in which this word was used by the beatniks, the roar into emptiness and the hope of escaping from the loneliness that Joplin spoke about in almost every interview, can plow anyone who has turned her songs on to full volume. It is customary to talk about rebellion as a narcissistic game, but in the case of Janice, we are definitely talking about a vulnerable, anxious and confused person, whom we wanted to hear at the stadiums, but avoided in our own home.
In the famous movie about rock'n'roll times “Almost Famous,” filmed in the director’s real teenage history, there’s a classic phrase of an older sister who talks to her mother because of any little thing, from dating a guy to listening to the plastic of Simon & Garfunkel. “I’m a“ Yes ”, she will tell her mother and, when she’s finished school, will be led back to adulthood, forgetting about the parental home as a nightmare. Something similar Janice could say to her parents, with whom she did not find understanding since adolescence.
The end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s in racist and sexist Texas is not a pound of raisins: for girls it’s better to have fun with the girls, after the lessons - home, no “Negro music” and dubious companies. Mother Janice hoped that her daughter would become a school teacher and marry a nice guy. At some point, the singer even tries to realize this uncharacteristic scenario: get engaged to a guy in a suit and a diplomat, collect the hair in a high hair style and set a wedding date. There will be peace at home, but not for long: the groom will just disappear from the radar, so there will be no wedding. Joplin will return to San Francisco - a city where she performs a lot, communicates with like-minded people and sits on the speeds, losing weight dangerously to 40 kilograms. Then friends chipped in on a ticket for Janice to Texas, but they quickly wanted to get back from Rehab with their parents: San Francisco is life interrupted on stage and amongst its own, and Texas is a farmer's hell.
In the early fourteen years, Jenise with overweight and acne became a household name for her school. At that time, it was only possible to drive far away from provincial sadists by car to Louisiana’s friends — for the blues, “black bars” and talking about freedom. The phrase that the blues is "when a good man is bad," instantly sunk into her soul. During these trips it called him "nigger lover" and it has a reputation for affordable and desperate girl, ready to have sex with anyone, because it is "too scary" though, of course, these rumors have not been, and share the truth.
To live in the era of Marilyn Monroe is a test for any woman with a look that is far from a doll one. After Monroe there will be Twiggy and Jane Birkin - already different, but the same unattainable standards of beauty for a Texan girl with large facial features, unruly hair and an unmodeled figure. Janice was one of the first who refused to wear a bra in college and became for those around her that “terrible feminist” whose scare stories still exist. When school times seemed to have passed and life began from scratch, at the University of Austin, one of the student fraternities chose Joplin "the scariest guy on campus." A childhood friend will say later to the camera that Janice has never seen such a crushed one.
A few months before his death, Joplin decides to visit his family in Port Arthur, where she will be met by the same thing: former classmates, who have flared, feathers and Janice songs, and parents who believe that their little feet have gone the wrong way. "With their mockery, they survived me from school, from the city, and even from the state," janice jokes in an interview, laughing nervously. Journalists feel a voice tremor and instantly react: "Did you go to the prom?" “They didn’t invite me,” Joplin replies and starts nervously tugging at his head. In the history of idols there were many triumphal trips of stars to his home - to take the same Elvis or James Dean. But Janice’s arrival at Port Arthur was not the long-awaited arrival of a sex symbol, but the sudden return of the white crow, the strange girl with whom no one wanted to draw closer. There was no house as it was, and it means that there is nowhere to return.
"I make love with 27 thousand people at a concert, and then return to my loneliness," is the reality in which the singer lived for almost the entire time of the tour and recordings. All had couples, but Janice, despite several short novels, usually spent the night alone. What can she tell about the relationship? "Men always promise more than they are willing to give." "Love is a losing game," as Amy Winehouse, who ended the life just as quickly, would sing decades later. “I don’t want to sleep alone” and the eternal slander of “baby, baby, baby” oozes out of half of her songs about living alone with myself, where someone else’s manifestation of affection and care is the only light for which one should wait for a new day.
Janice was happy as a child to good reviews, ovations, letters from fans: in her smiles during interviews and speeches, that gratitude to the audience, which her contemporaries did not show, is striking. Crumble a guitar, send the audience away - this she could not and never did. The dose after each concert as a reward for good work, a naive hope for strong genetics, despite several overdoses, and the confidence of every abusive person that he knows his measure, all this does not happen from scratch. You can talk about the heroine, which the singer threw several times, about the hobbies liqueur Southern Comfort, but "Piece of My Heart" or "All of Loneliness" put an end to the charges of Janice in intemperance. When someone screams about love, it’s impossible to point out that these are not just songs.
"Freedom is just one more word, which means there is nothing to lose," comes from the posthumous album of Janis Joplin in a song about love that was interrupted not by her will. In this song there is an aching longing for the beatnic journey and the glorious Bobby, with whom it was so good to sing in chorus and lie down next to each other. "I will give all of mine tomorrow for just one yesterday," Joplin sang about the best times that she felt in the arms of those who took her as she was. “It's easy to be the smartest and look at the life of Janis Joplin as a story that would end badly anyway. But I can easily see her elderly, happy and herbal story about youth right now,” says one of Janice's friends in an interview.
In the death of Joplin, there are indeed more offensive non-coincidences and unpleasant accidents: many people got into school, many lived for years with a broken heart and were with their parents on knives - and they survived. Another thing is to be a pioneer and live with an open-minded soul when you are vulnerable, unsure of yourself, you hear from your own family "it would be better if you never came into the world." You can leave Texas, but it’s not so easy for a sad little girl to get out of this hell. She never got out, but remained in history the way she once found herself: impetuous, strong-willed and vital, who showed several generations of women how to sing and breathe with all their might.
Photo: Disarming Films and THIRTEEN Production LLC's American Masters
