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Her Life and Music
by Holly George-Warren
This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.
Janis Joplin's first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance.
Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn't all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn't, or wouldn't. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.
Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin's family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.
"George-Warren gives her subject a sensitive yet honest treatment, showing all dimensions of Joplin's life without minimizing her self-destructive side...A top-notch biography of one of the greatest performers to emerge from a brilliant era." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"George-Warren beautifully tells a moving story of a woman whose life and music inspired a generation." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This poignant and ultimately tragic account of an iconic performer is a must for Joplin fans, but anyone who enjoys a good biography will appreciate this exceptional work." - Library Journal
"I've been waiting for the right person to write the definitive biography of Janis Joplin! All fans should be grateful it's finally here. Janis lives and breathes freedom and soul, and Holly George-Warren captures that spirit perfectly." - Rosanne Cash
"By far and away the most comprehensive and best-researched Joplin biography. George-Warren constructs the "real" Joplin by building her life through letters, diaries, and countless interviews with associates...George-Warren understands that the evolution of Joplin's artistry is what matters most. Janis blossoms as she finds her voice onstage, and her act becomes something of great beauty. So too does George-Warren's book." - Charles R. Cross, New York Times bestselling author of Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix
"Joplin fans rejoice! Holly George-Warren's biography is a triumph of passionate scholarship, thus making me love Janis—with all her baffling and brilliant complexity—even more." - David Ritz, author of Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin
This information about Janis was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Holly George-Warren is a two-time Grammy nominee and the award-winning author of sixteen books, including the New York Times bestseller The Road to Woodstock (with Michael Lang) and the biographies Janis: Her Life and Music, A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, and Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry. She has written for a variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Entertainment Weekly. George-Warren teaches at the State University of New York in New Paltz.
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