01/20/2025
Remembering Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970)
Multi-dimensional women aren’t always treated with a lot of nuance and Joplin is an obvious example. As the singer Cat Power said of her childhood icon in 2015: “At the time, I don’t think there was any female that was really that free on stage, that loving, that open.” Yet, off stage, her complexities meant she never quite found peace in a world that required her to fit a particular mould. She was fiercely independent but craved acceptance from her family; she was opinionated but worried about causing offence; she was a nonconformist but was desperate to belong.
For Dave Getz, Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company bandmate, the musicianship of Joplin is too often overlooked amid these contradictions. Take her elemental voice: something she tirelessly tended to. “She was very serious as a singer, and she did evolve as a singer”.
Over the years, we’ve tended to focus instead on Joplin’s psychology, her pain and rejection – something that is all too common when it comes to discussing female artists, Getz argues. She might not have been in control of some aspects of her personal life, but the same can’t be said for her approach to music. According to Elliot Mazer, who did the mixing for Joplin and Big Brother’s 1968 album Cheap Thrills: “For two weeks, only Janis, myself, and the engineer would stay from two in the afternoon until seven in the evening,” he told her biographer. “Anything about her just having a good time and not working was just bullsh*t.” Michael pays tribute to his parents when it comes to this work ethic: “They taught her how to take care of herself. We grew up in hurricane country, so we were always prepared.”
Source: Kat Lister / The Guardian
Photo: Roger Crump/Popperfoto/Popperfoto
