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Loading... Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplinby Myra Friedman
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Let me start by saying Janis is my hero..my idol. Not because of her choices in her drug use but because she was "herself". This book was an awesome look into her life and it was believable as it comes from someone who was close to her and there in friendship and business matters. Having said all that it was written way to formally for me. I loved what I was being told but the words left me trying to figure out what exactly was being said. I am a pretty intelligent person and mostly was able to figure out the writing style, however, when I'm reading I don't want to be in a classroom...studying. And that is what this book felt like. A textbook look at her life. Love Janis...Loved the insight I was given from the author...Hated the way I was given it. Buried Alive is a moving and disturbing account of Janis Joplin's life. Written by her publicist, who knew Janis well, this book definitely shines a spotlight on Janis' erratic behavior and personality. I was somewhat disappointed that the author glossed over Woodstock and Janis' participation there. However, it was well written and filled with personal observations and experiences with Janis as she traveled to stardom. no reviews | add a review
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Electrifying, highly acclaimed, and intensely personal, this new and updated version of Myra Friedman's classic biography of Janis Joplin teems with dramatic insights into Joplin's genius and into the chaotic times that catapulted her to fame as the legendary queen of rock. It is a stunning panorama of the turbulent decade when Joplin's was the rallying voice of a generation that lost itself in her music and found itself in her words. From her small hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, from the intimate coffeehouses to the supercharged concert halls, from the glitter of worldwide fame to her tragic end in a Hollywood hotel, here is all the fire and anguish of an immortal, immensely talented, and troubled performer who devoured everything the rock scene had to offer in a fatal attempt to make peace with herself and her era. Yet, in an eloquent introduction recently written by the author, Joplin emerges from her "ugly duckling" childhood as a woman truly ahead of her time, an outrageous rebel, a defiant outcast and artist of incomparable authenticity who, almost in spite of herself, became to so many a symbol of triumph over adversity. This edition also contains an afterword detailing the whereabouts of a large and colorful cast of characters who were part of Joplin's life, as well as "We Remember Janis," a new chapter of poignant and affectionate anecdotes told by friends. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)782.42166092The arts Music Vocal music Secular Forms of vocal music Secular songs General principles and musical forms Song genres Rock songs History, geographic treatment, biography BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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It’s hard to understand how unique that trajectory was these days, when female pop stars with outlandish alter egos unfold their lives in real time in front of millions. But in the late 1960s Joplin was something new and special — a rock n’ roll wild hippie chick — and being hyped everywhere, especially in Rolling Stone magazine. She hyped herself as well, bending the truth to create her own legend. Other rock musicians have done this of course, like Jim Morrison (who famously said, on air in a TV interview, “My parents are dead” rather than outing his father as a Navy admiral then deployed in Vietnam) and more passively by Mick Jagger and Jimmy Hendrix, who were aware of but did not contest the image built for them by the press and their own publicists and managers. Unfairly, because of this self-hype as her alter ego “Pearl” Joplin is more often seen a symbol of the 1960s, rather than an artist in her own right.
Buried Alive was in fact written by a music publicist, Joplin’s own: Myra Friedman. Friedman worked for Joplin’s manager, the legendary Albert Grossman, who also managed Bob Dylan. Friedman had a background in music writing and so much of the bio read like liner notes for an album rather than a birth-to-death account of a musician’s life. This made it both perplexing and enjoyable to read. I kept looking for the journalistic markers that are standard for today’s biographers even as I enjoyed its style and freshness (it was published less than five years after Joplin’s death from a heroin overdose.) Since it was a new beast, one of the first bios of a 1960s rock star, it grasps at air a bit and carries too much of the writer’s own slant, but it was entertaining and illuminated the era in a way that later, more scholarly works could never do.
For example, in writing about hippie culture Friedman captures with honestly their ridiculousness and stunted speech, something which later writers, being actually of that generation, tend to overlook or glamorize (such as the Jim Morrison biographies No One Here Gets Out Alive and Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend – the latter of which had the writer trying too hard to convince us of Morrison’s talent as a poet, while he actually came off as having Tourette’s Syndrome.)
But however fresh it was, the book lacked the insights of today, particularly about Joplin’s drinking and alcohol addiction. And boy did she drink. One period toward the end of her life she started drinking pina coladas in the morning, screwdrivers for lunch, vodka and orange juice in various bars throughout the day, then a nap to recover from the binge so she could drink some more before going on stage, and then there was yet more drinking after the show. Joplin died at age 27 with her liver already damaged in spite of her legendary constitution. If she had not taken that fatal overdose, in a few more years she might have been forced to get help as her physical body deteriorated.
The author does make the point that no one thought much about addiction in the wild days of Haight Asbury. The “do your own thing” laissez-faire attitude of the counterculture was one of its crueler, more feral sides which is not much discussed today, and a major contributor to Joplin’s death. Interventions were unknown and seen as square. Real hippies shouldered on with their chemical enlightenments and expected others to do so, too.
Buried Alive was also one of the rare bios that had an actual style to the writing, one that was not cynical or kid glove. Here’s how the author punctures the Woodstock myth and cuts to its heart:
"Woodstock, everyone knew, was less a festival that a religious convocation. Its ceremonies were the assertions of lifestyle, and the lifestyle included a celebration of the mystical relationship between drugs and rock, with grass as the Holy Wafer. It was as if the dope that everyone was free to use in the absence of the law had been commandeered to take that very law’s place. No fences were there, no guards, no shower stalls. What ruled was the rock world’s Realpolitik: you are only as good as the number of joints you smoke, only as blessed as you are high. It was as if Woodstock was the ultimate declaration of dope, not as an incidental euphoriant, but as some kind of necessary virtue."
The 1979 Bette Midler movie vehicle The Rose, which grew out of a failed attempt at a Joplin biopic, cribbed a lot from Friedman’s bio and its novelization copied its style. I’m ashamed to admit I read that supremely trashy book multiple times, and for a while it influenced my teenage writing. Never did I think that one day I’d get to read the original.
Overall Buried Alive is an entertaining period piece for anyone interested in a contemporary account of the 1960s as they were lived, but it’s not the definitive biography, rather a resource for later biographers. As a plus: look in the book for one of the first mentions of a young Patti Smith, described by the author as a poet, in a scene in the Chelsea Hotel. ( )