Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin
by Ellis Amburn
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She came out of the swamps of the Texas-Louisiana border, wailing the blues as no one, black or white, before or after, has ever dared. She was the first rock star of the 1960s counterculture. She was a major fashion trendsetter in the back-to-the-roots movement that began in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and overtook the world. At the same time, she was locked in a doomed search for an increasingly elusive happiness in drugs and fame, sex and money, a. Compulsion of truly show more epic proportions that ultimately destroyed her. To those who knew and loved her intimately, she was Pearl. To an enthralled public, she was Janis Joplin, the greatest female singer in the history of rock and roll. Now, in PEARL, the most definitive biography of rock legend Janis Joplin ever published, bestselling author Ellis Amburn interviews scores of personalities both famous and unknown, travels to the places where Janis was born, lived, and died, And reveals facts about Janis' life and death that have remained in shadow, until now. Here is the real Janis Joplin - both the magic as well as the tragic - as she's never been seen or understood before. Leaving her past as the shy wallflower of Port Arthur, Texas, behind her, Janis followed the lure to San Francisco in 1966. Rocketing to prominence as the electrifying lead vocalist for Big Brother and the Holding Company, she invented her own brand of rock blues at the. Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom, later taking her musical gifts higher and wider to a nationwide audience eager to experience Janis as a powerful artist in her own right. Both her music and her life embodied the headlong, revolutionary spirit of the decade. Here is Janis Joplin in all her fascinating complexity, the performer and seeker, addict and alcoholic, at once timid and brash, cowering in inferiority one minute and abandoned to grandiose gestures the next. Though she. Could never sustain a love affair, she hurled herself from one relationship to another, from early liaisons with band members and road crew to serious encounters with Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kris Kristofferson, as well as many female lovers. Janis Joplin had more of everything - problems and passion, fame and disgrace, drugs and booze - and attained a super-stardom that, however brief, places her squarely in the first rank of rock immortals, beside Elvis Presley, the. Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and Bruce Springsteen. After two decades, she retains this status - a blazing example of one woman's enduring triumph. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Her life was even wilder and bluer than her music. Joplin's low self-esteem drove her to too much drink and too many drugs and too much sex with too many partners- both male and female. It seems there was nothing or no one she would not take into her body. People like Joplin are too much for me. Listening to her music is as close to her lifestyle as I'd like to come. She was very talented and also very, very sad.
Sex, drugs, and the blues. "I want to burn. I want to smolder." I've always loved her voice. Cheap Thrills was the first record I'd blast whenever my parents left the house.
Loved the singer, had a bit of trouble warming to the author of this Biography. It was okay.
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Author Information
7 Works 524 Members
Ellis Amburn was born in Texas on August 2, 1933. He graduated from Texas Christian University in 1954. He worked as a reporter-researcher at Newsweek before becoming a book editor at Putnam, where he edited John le Carré and Jack Kerouac. Amburn was also an editor-in-chief at Delacorte and William Morrow. He worked as a ghostwriter with show more Priscilla Presley, Shelley Winters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Sammy Davis, Jr. He wrote several biographies including Buddy Holly: A Biography, Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story, The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty, Subterranean Kerouac, and Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin. He died after a long illness on August 18, 2018 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Belongs to Publisher Series
Rainbow pocketboeken (218)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Pearl: Janis Joplin - obsessies en hartstochten
- Original title
- Pearl. The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin
- Original publication date
- 1992-09-01
- People/Characters
- Janis Joplin; Big Brother and the Holding Company; Sam Andrew; Dave Getz; Full Tilt Boogie Band; Jerry Garcia (show all 26); Peggy Caserta; Grateful Dead; Nick Gravenites; Albert Grossman; James Gurley; Nancy Gurley; Chet Helms; Howard Hesseman; Richard Hundgen; Kozmic Blues Band; Kris Kristofferson; Jim Langdon; Grant Lyons; Milan Melvin; Seth Morgan; Jim Morrison; Bobby Neuwirth; John Phillips; Dave Richards; Travis Rivers
- Important places
- Port Arthur, Texas, USA; San Francisco, California, USA
- Dedication
- To Al Lowman
Best Agent in the World - First words
- On a sweltering street corner in Port Arthur, Texas, hometown of Janis Joplin, the greatest female singer in the history of rock 'n' roll, I watch a construction crew demolish the twelve-story Goodhue Hotel, scene of Janis's ... (show all)last public appearance twenty years ago.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)That she achieved as much as she did, considering the burden of suffering she carried, makes her a shining example of the triumph of the human spirit.
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Music, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 782.42166 — Arts & recreation Music Vocal Music, Singing Secular forms of vocal music Songs General principles and musical forms Traditions of secular songs {genres} Rock songs
- LCC
- ML420 .J77 .A8 — Music Literature on music Literature on music History and criticism Biography
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 143
- Popularity
- 228,113
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.57)
- Languages
- Czech, Dutch, English, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 2
