Monday, August 29, 2005
Laura Joplin celebrates rock icon sister
by Paul Liberatore
Laura Joplin shares memories of her older sister, Janis, at an appearance at Book Pasage in Corte Madera. Her biography, 'Love Janis,' was just reissued. (IJ photo/Alan Dep ) Meeting Laura Joplin for the first time can be a slightly unsettling experience.
It's not that she's the spitting image of her legendary sister, the famously self-destructive blues singer Janis Joplin, but the family resemblance is striking.
As a woman told her at Book Passage one night this week, "It's fun to look at you. It's like seeing what Janis would have looked like if she had lived."
Laura was in Marin, her sister's old stomping grounds, promoting the new trade paperback reissue of "Love, Janis," the 1992 biography she wrote using letters the flamboyant rock star wrote to her family, friends and lovers.
Laura is 57, about six years younger than Janis, who would have been 62 this past January, hard as that is to believe.
She has short blond hair in a boyish cut and clear blues eyes. For her Marin appearance, she wore dangly, leaf-shaped earrings, a beaded necklace and an artsy, copper-colored jacket over a black dress. She looks like she could be an artist or a poet.
An impressive woman with a master's degree in psychology and a doctorate in education, she is often incorrectly described as "a therapist." She is actually an educational consultant and executive coach, but spends a good deal of time managing the Joplin estate, which she calls "working for Janis." She lives in Chico with her husband, who books the musical acts at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Her 19-year-old daughter, Claire, is a college student.
Thirty-five years ago this fall, Janis Joplin, just 27 years old, was found dead of a heroin overdose in a Los Angeles hotel room, prematurely ending the fervid career of the most electrifying performer of her time.
My first inclination upon meeting Laura was to tell her how sorry I was about her sister's death, as if it had just happened. This, apparently, is not an unusual reaction. Someone once described Janis as frozen in time, forever young, "a firefly trapped in amber."
At Book Passage, a woman in the audience said, "I still remember the night Janis died. It still shocks me, seeing you and thinking about that. Janis embodied the '60s for me."
Laura may favor Janis in appearance, but she is the opposite side of the same coin in personality. Janis, the wild woman of rock 'n' roll, known for Southern Comfort and sexual promiscuity, humorously admits in one of her letters that "I've never even posed as someone well adjusted."
Laura, on the other hand, is measured, controlled, professionally accomplished. Speaking at Book Passage in a soft voice with a trace of Lone Star State drawl, she described the chaos of growing up in a small Texas town with a free spirit like Janis Joplin for an older sister.
"The yelling," she said in mock exasperation, then only half-jokingly added: "She made my life miserable. She made me a more introspective, quiet person." Laura looked up to her older sister, but concluded early on that competing with her "wasn't worth the frustration."
The Joplin girls and their younger brother, Michael, a glass blower living in Arizona, grew up in a literate, "child-centered" household.
Their parents, now deceased, were somewhat bewildered by Janis' sudden rock stardom, and her unconventional lifestyle was a source of endless worry for them, but there wasn't much they could do about it. "When she became famous, their awareness was that she was beyond their influence," Laura said.
She confessed that her parents weren't equipped emotionally to handle Janis' death. "You heard doors slamming internally," is how she described it.
Laura was in college when Janis died. She finished school, moved to Colorado and went through her own more wholesome period of alternative living, building log cabins.
Two decades ago, when she was at home, pregnant with her daughter, she began organizing Janis' papers and handling the business of the estate.
When she discovered the letters that Janis had left behind, she saw a way of writing a book that allowed her sister to speak for herself.
"It allows Janis to tell her own story in the moment," she explained. "You get a collage of who she was."
The original book was based on 25 letters. Since then more than 70 others have come to light. As a result, the new paperback is an even more complete picture of the singer.
There are innocent, excited letters from her early, scuffling years, when she and the members of her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, lived communally in a house in Lagunitas with the Grateful Dead as neighbors.
Later, after she has become a rock star, she writes about the satisfaction she feels with the lovely home she bought in a redwood canyon in Larkspur and her determination to control her drinking and kick heroin
Reading the book, you can see how Janis' life traced the trajectory of the hippie movement, from its idealistic beginnings in the Summer of Love to its disillusionment and descent into hard drugs and death at the end of the '60s.
"Janis is not just a story of herself," Laura said, "but also the story of the times."
The book is also an attempt to rehabilitate the negative image from Janis' sordid death. She was more than a troubled soul, but was also fun-loving, warm and open.
"When she died, she lost the ability to have ambiguity and complexity," Laura said. "She became an icon. I've decided that Janis has a second career as an icon."
On a more personal level for Laura, writing about Janis was part of her grieving process.
"I wanted to find out what had happened to the girl I knew," she said. "It was a wonderful cathartic process. By the end, I was able to listen to her music without any twinges of sadness. I could get back to saying, 'Gosh, she was great.'"
liberatore@marinij.com
©2005 by MediaNews Group
================================================
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
(courtesy of bob sarles music wire, bsarlesWire@aol.com) ¶ 8/29/2005 03:01:00 PM
by Paul Liberatore
Laura Joplin shares memories of her older sister, Janis, at an appearance at Book Pasage in Corte Madera. Her biography, 'Love Janis,' was just reissued. (IJ photo/Alan Dep ) Meeting Laura Joplin for the first time can be a slightly unsettling experience.
It's not that she's the spitting image of her legendary sister, the famously self-destructive blues singer Janis Joplin, but the family resemblance is striking.
As a woman told her at Book Passage one night this week, "It's fun to look at you. It's like seeing what Janis would have looked like if she had lived."
Laura was in Marin, her sister's old stomping grounds, promoting the new trade paperback reissue of "Love, Janis," the 1992 biography she wrote using letters the flamboyant rock star wrote to her family, friends and lovers.
Laura is 57, about six years younger than Janis, who would have been 62 this past January, hard as that is to believe.
She has short blond hair in a boyish cut and clear blues eyes. For her Marin appearance, she wore dangly, leaf-shaped earrings, a beaded necklace and an artsy, copper-colored jacket over a black dress. She looks like she could be an artist or a poet.
An impressive woman with a master's degree in psychology and a doctorate in education, she is often incorrectly described as "a therapist." She is actually an educational consultant and executive coach, but spends a good deal of time managing the Joplin estate, which she calls "working for Janis." She lives in Chico with her husband, who books the musical acts at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Her 19-year-old daughter, Claire, is a college student.
Thirty-five years ago this fall, Janis Joplin, just 27 years old, was found dead of a heroin overdose in a Los Angeles hotel room, prematurely ending the fervid career of the most electrifying performer of her time.
My first inclination upon meeting Laura was to tell her how sorry I was about her sister's death, as if it had just happened. This, apparently, is not an unusual reaction. Someone once described Janis as frozen in time, forever young, "a firefly trapped in amber."
At Book Passage, a woman in the audience said, "I still remember the night Janis died. It still shocks me, seeing you and thinking about that. Janis embodied the '60s for me."
Laura may favor Janis in appearance, but she is the opposite side of the same coin in personality. Janis, the wild woman of rock 'n' roll, known for Southern Comfort and sexual promiscuity, humorously admits in one of her letters that "I've never even posed as someone well adjusted."
Laura, on the other hand, is measured, controlled, professionally accomplished. Speaking at Book Passage in a soft voice with a trace of Lone Star State drawl, she described the chaos of growing up in a small Texas town with a free spirit like Janis Joplin for an older sister.
"The yelling," she said in mock exasperation, then only half-jokingly added: "She made my life miserable. She made me a more introspective, quiet person." Laura looked up to her older sister, but concluded early on that competing with her "wasn't worth the frustration."
The Joplin girls and their younger brother, Michael, a glass blower living in Arizona, grew up in a literate, "child-centered" household.
Their parents, now deceased, were somewhat bewildered by Janis' sudden rock stardom, and her unconventional lifestyle was a source of endless worry for them, but there wasn't much they could do about it. "When she became famous, their awareness was that she was beyond their influence," Laura said.
She confessed that her parents weren't equipped emotionally to handle Janis' death. "You heard doors slamming internally," is how she described it.
Laura was in college when Janis died. She finished school, moved to Colorado and went through her own more wholesome period of alternative living, building log cabins.
Two decades ago, when she was at home, pregnant with her daughter, she began organizing Janis' papers and handling the business of the estate.
When she discovered the letters that Janis had left behind, she saw a way of writing a book that allowed her sister to speak for herself.
"It allows Janis to tell her own story in the moment," she explained. "You get a collage of who she was."
The original book was based on 25 letters. Since then more than 70 others have come to light. As a result, the new paperback is an even more complete picture of the singer.
There are innocent, excited letters from her early, scuffling years, when she and the members of her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, lived communally in a house in Lagunitas with the Grateful Dead as neighbors.
Later, after she has become a rock star, she writes about the satisfaction she feels with the lovely home she bought in a redwood canyon in Larkspur and her determination to control her drinking and kick heroin
Reading the book, you can see how Janis' life traced the trajectory of the hippie movement, from its idealistic beginnings in the Summer of Love to its disillusionment and descent into hard drugs and death at the end of the '60s.
"Janis is not just a story of herself," Laura said, "but also the story of the times."
The book is also an attempt to rehabilitate the negative image from Janis' sordid death. She was more than a troubled soul, but was also fun-loving, warm and open.
"When she died, she lost the ability to have ambiguity and complexity," Laura said. "She became an icon. I've decided that Janis has a second career as an icon."
On a more personal level for Laura, writing about Janis was part of her grieving process.
"I wanted to find out what had happened to the girl I knew," she said. "It was a wonderful cathartic process. By the end, I was able to listen to her music without any twinges of sadness. I could get back to saying, 'Gosh, she was great.'"
liberatore@marinij.com
©2005 by MediaNews Group
================================================
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
(courtesy of bob sarles music wire, bsarlesWire@aol.com) ¶ 8/29/2005 03:01:00 PM
