Janis Joplin: myth, legend and tragedy of the great lady of rock

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Janis Joplin it was like necessary lipstick at a time when the “drugsex and rock and roll” triad were screaming no always leaves the woman on the side of the groupies. This free and chaotic, vulnerable, defenseless, pathological figure emerges.

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Janis entered the Caballeros locker room in Negra Vernaci best style (in another category), and dedicated herself to blending with the more honest of the genre in times long before Coldplay’s health: it bursts.

He sang, as they say, with “soul”. He spat out the words like olive pits. Had Robert Plant curlers, wore dresses dye tie in hippie style and wore round glasses like John Lennon.

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She entered eternity like the Mona Lisa of rock. She was as excessive in music as Gena Rowlands was in film. For her, the normal was the unusual: she was described as “a beast” through and through.

She slept with three men at once, burned hypodermic needles and sang the blues like no one else. He had even less interest in life than Sid Vicious. For her, dying young seemed like a mission. He was born on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, United States.

Right now I would have turned 80.

From the time when rock left exquisite corpses and even tastier graves of glory. Unlike today, which has become a culture where one sees aging well. And its logical consequence: to live. Much.

Take note: guitarist Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, founder of the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the great Janis, Jim Morrison of the Doors and Kurt Cobain, leader of Nirvana, not to mention the charming Amy Winehouse. The famous and tragic end with a common denominator: 27 years. There should be an anthology about it.

It was his heartbreaking voice crybaby or were his excesses followed by death? How did Janis Joplin become a legend? For some, he sang as if “tomorrow” was a dirty word.

The few deny the icon saying that it had the voice of a wounded cetacean. Mashed potato They called her “the typical white girl who sings like black”implying that the successful white rockers were nothing more than a quirky product of another skin pigmentation.

In her heyday, in February 1968, Janis moved to New York to stay a cursed dive: the Chelsea Hotel. There, in her lipstick, she wrote on the wall: “The world’s largest sex object.”

She was referring to herself, of course, and that she had been a self-centered teenager, with marked complexes about the tiny size of her breasts. The truth is that to date no one in their right mind has managed to establish a reliable statistic about their relationships.

At Monterrey he crossed the bed of Jimi Hendrix. Continuing with the letter “J” it is known that he had an on and off relationship with Jim Morrison. The band members of him? Everyone. Kris Kristofferson and Leonard Cohen also appear in Janis’ foil list.

It is a legend that he slept (or sat) with each of the passengers in a carriage. Who was high on heroin and speed. Who drank whiskey like mineral water. Clearly, it was not easy to get to “Queen of Rock”.

His electric metal voice began to reflect dirty and messy performances. They advised him to switch from his beloved Southern Comfort whiskey to bourbon to finally settle for vodka, a “less scratchy” distillate for his punished pharynx.

There are biographies that try to explain his addiction to sex, among other addictions, with pity and decorum, justifying a stormy adolescence and a toxic future. He was born in 1943 in Port Arthur, a piece of land belonging to the most Christian of Texas, the Middle West they call it, deep America.

Escape from that city was vital, imperative. He felt worse than Manuel Puig in General Villegas. What’s more, surrounded by jeans, those fierce-eyed people who live with their mom. The girl liked the blues, sex, freedom. He was expelled. He hitchhiked inspired by on the roadby Jack Kerouac and landed in San Francisco in the early 60s.

He joined a band, Big Brother & The Holding Company, with a psychedelic backing track, where Joplin was the lead singer.

your album cheap thrills (1968) is considered one of his masterpieces. It is the last work in which Joplin participated as a vocalist of the group.

Three days after its release, it went gold, and around one million copies were sold in the first month. In 2003, Cheap Thrills was ranked number 338 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Although he hid it very discreetly, it was known that he was gay. Curious: someone free like Janis Joplin who struggles to keep her true sexuality quiet?

One of his “partners” was Kim Chappell, who came from a more sensitive relationship and home with Joan Baez.

Another of his known lovers was called Peggy Caserta. His 30-second walk with Janis is a snippet of that we can see in the movie Woodstock. Peggy wrote: “I never saw Janis as a gay girl. She was straight. I’m gay and lived a gay lifestyle even then.”

October 3, 1970 turned out to be a propitious and serene, almost happy day in the recording studio. To continue, Janis went out drinking and got drunk. According to a coroner’s study, died in the early morning of October 4 of a heroin overdose.

She was 27 years old and was found lying in a room at the Landmark Motor Hotel. It happened just a couple of weeks after the tragic death of Jimi Hendrix.

CJL extension

Source: Clarin

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