Holly George-Warren - Janis: Her Life and Music

ALSO BY HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN

A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton

Public Cowboy #1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

The Road to Woodstock (with Michael Lang)

Grateful Dead 365

Punk 365

The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to Americas Women of the West

Cowboy: How Hollywood Invented the Wild West

Its Not Only Rock n Roll (with Jenny Boyd)

John Varvatos: Rock in Fashion (with John Varvatos)

How the West Was Worn: A History of Western Wear (with Michelle Freedman)

Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music

Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll

The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (editor)

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: The First 25 Years (editor)

Bonnaroo: What, Which, This, That, the Other (editor)

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (coeditor)

Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey (coeditor)

The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (coeditor)

Farm Aid: A Song for America (coeditor)

The Rolling Stone Album Guide (coeditor)

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2019 by Holly George-Warren

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2019

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Lauren Peters-Collaer

Jacket photograph Bob Seidemann

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-4767-9310-8

ISBN 978-1-4767-9312-2 (ebook)

For Robert Burke Warren, my soul mate, and Jack Warren, my inspiration

Dont compromise yourself. Its all youve got.

JANIS JOPLIN

I ts a steamy September night in Nashville, and Ruby Boots is tearing it up onstage at the Basement East, thrashing her electric guitar and belting Janis Joplins Piece of My Heart. The 2018 edition of the six-day Americanafest, an annual music conference and festival, is honoring albums from 1968, and Big Brother and the Holding Companys breakthrough, Cheap Thrills, has made the cut. Boots, born Bex Chilcott in Perth, Australia, fell in love with Janiss music as a kid growing up on the other side of the world, the irresistible, aching soul in Janiss voice undiminished by time, distance, and even mortality. As when Janis herself unleashed this tune fifty years ago, the crowdwired into its raw but fearless humanitypushes toward the stage.

At the Americana Honors & Music Awards Show held at the Ryman Auditorium (former home of the Grand Ole Opry), numerous Janis acolytes take the stage: singer-songwriter-activist Rosanne Cash, a Janis fan since her teens, wins the Free Speech in Music Award; Alberta, Canada, native k. d. lang, who went public as a lesbian in the 1980s, gets the Trailblazer Award. Formidable singers Brandi Carlile, Margo Price, and Courtney Marie Andrewsall nominees for various honorssignal Janiss influence in their blazing performances.

Prior to Janis Joplins all too brief time in the spotlight, these artists would have been hard pressed to find a female role model to compare with the beatnik from Port Arthur, Texas. The mix of confident musicianship, brash sexuality, and natural exuberance, locked together to produce Americas first female rock star, changed everything. As such, Janis still holds sway over multiple generations, artists of countless genres, across the gender spectrum. And although her bookishness, sharp intellect, and deep desire for home with the requisite white picket fence were not at the forefront of the identity she crafted for her fans, those parts of her also informed her every move.

The same could be said of her pioneering instincts. While Janiss era is largely considered a time of release from the strictures of the 1950s, rock was, in fact, almost exclusively a boys club, and Janis suffered appalling sexism, from both the mainstream and counterculture press, and cold, occasionally cruel dismissiveness from industry pros. Yet she blazed on. Through force of will and unprecedented talent, she showed how rock could include unapologetic women musicians, writers, and fans. Feminist Ellen Willis, a New Yorker music critic in the 1960s, called Janis the only sixties culture hero to make visible and public womens experience of the quest for individual liberation. Patti Smith, Blondies Debbie Harry, Cyndi Lauper, Chrissie Hynde, the B-52s Kate Pierson, and Hearts Ann and Nancy Wilson are among the artists who experienced Janis firsthand. They began to breathe in the possibility of their own futures. When Stevie Nicks was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in March 2019, she said that playing on a bill with Janis in the 1960s transformed her: Her connection with the audience was so incredible that I said, I want to do what she did.

Through her influence and her own enduring work, Janis Joplin remains at the core of our music and culture. As we look back at pivotal moments in 1960s rock history, she is usually there: the Monterey Pop Festival; the vibrant Haight-Ashbury scene in San Francisco; the streets, clubs, and studios of gritty New York City; Woodstock. Shes been feted at museum exhibitions and the subject of theater productions and films. Her first solo album, the eclectic, daring departure I Got Dem Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, sounds as fresh today as upon its 1969 release. Her Monterey Pop performance, documented by filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, still brings wild applause from a new generation of audiences at screenings, and with YouTube views in the millions and counting.

When Janis hit the Monterey stage in June 1967, few outside San Francisco knew her name. What is this girl all about? Monterey coproducer Lou Adler wondered. Where did she come from, looking like that and leading this all-male band? Offering a clue, Haight-Ashbury impresario Chet Helms introduced her onstage: Three or four years ago, on one of my perennial hitchhikes across the country, I ran into a chick from Texas by the name of Janis Joplin, he told the unsuspecting crowd. I heard her sing, and Janis and I hitchhiked to the West Coast. A lot of things have gone down since, but it gives me a lot of pride today to present the finished product: Big Brother and the Holding Company!

Janiss astonishing performance that day would change her lifeand the future of popular music. By the time the five-song set ended with her dramatic reinvention of R&B/blues singer Willie Mae Thorntons Ball and Chain, thousands of mind-blown fansand hundreds of dazzled journalistsknew her name and fervently spread the news. Her emotion-drenched vocal style took hold upon other developing singers; Led Zeppelins Robert Plant among them. Young women who saw her onstage at the Avalon Ballroom or Bill Grahams Fillmore venues still recall the experience: It was like she was singing to or for them, telling their stories, feeling their pain, emboldening them, and absolving them of shame. Janis was a walking live nerve capable of surfacing feelings that most people couldnt or wouldnt, and she was willing to endure the toll it took on her.