Janis Joplin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a distinctive voice. Joplin performed on four albums recorded between 1966 and 1970 – two as the lead singer of San Francisco's Big Brother and The Holding Company, and two released as a solo artist. Joplin was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

IT: Who is your new manager?

Z: Bennett Glotzer. He used to manage Procol Harum, Janis Joplin, Blood, Sweat & Tears.
IT: Is management a problem for you?

Z: It's a problem for the manager.

–From interview in IT, No7, 1977 March: Zappa

Frank Zappa is dead. The obituaries have been published. The ones I read were full of peculiar caveats and qualifications. Despite Zappa's this and despite Zappa's that, he was someone, well, relatively important, even quite, even very. A mass of contradictions, he was wise and he was foolish, conformist and outrageous, Italo-Armenio-Californian freak-businessman, condescended to by Cockneys, taken seriously by Czechs and the American State Department. I read, too, about cultists visiting the tomb of Jim Morrison in Pere Lachaise. I knew Jim Morrison slightly, saw a bit of him, not long before he blew a gasket getting into a hot bath. Most of the dead popstars courted their own deaths: Janis Joplin fallen down between her bed and the wall, stiffed by an overdose; Jimi Hendrix, supposedly suffocated by his vomit in narcotic swoon; Marc Bolan wrapped around a tree.

–Germaine Greer in Frank was the Real Thing living in a Nightmare

Further reading:
Janis Joplin