Janis Ha

A critic once ranked Janis Joplin just behind Bob Dylan as a defining figure of her generation's mythology. How did a girl from a comfortable Texas home become one of the 1960s counterculture's most recognizable faces? Her parents were affectionate and encouraged her gift for art, yet the birth of a younger brother strained her closeness with her father, an independent-minded oil engineer and thinker. Her own nonconformity also put distance between her and her mother, who valued social conformity. Her rift with her parents, her rejection by high school classmates over her beatnik style and progressive views on race, and a false rumor that she was promiscuous all left her feeling like an outsider. She found belonging among a group of unconventional young men a year older, who valued her curiosity, her love of talk, and her pursuit of the blues.

At seventeen she left Port Arthur, still hungry for the approval of her parents and hometown, determined to show she was worthy of love. Two attempts at college ended in withdrawal. A move to California ended when heavy drug use pushed her back home. She came close to a conventional married life, but a second period on the West Coast launched the career that would make her the queen of rock and roll. Holly George-Warren's biography examines, in close detail, the tension between the commanding woman audiences hear in Joplin's songs and the young girl who simply wanted a home where she felt emotionally secure. That inner conflict fed her music and, in the end, took her life.