What would she have become as an old woman? Would it still be iconic? But most importantly, could he ever really grow old? The open debate, in the US and beyond, about the fate of Janis Joplin: Today she would have been 80 years old. And instead she left us at 47, the first tenant (in another generation it would have been poor Amy Winehouse) of the famous and nefarious Club of 27, that of the Rock Martyrs, the Hendrixes and the Morrisons, to die in the process Age at which one usually begins to live, especially today. And forever inevitably young at heart. Like Janis, whose little play on what it would be like provides a wonderful opportunity to remember who she was. Possibly one of the most extraordinary voices of all time, a tiger capable of bringing personality to any song, even the most meager. And with just four albums, alone and with the lysergic accompaniment of her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, she went down in rock history forever.
But also a pioneer, an innovator, a woman who has established herself in a circus of rock ‘n’ roll, which until then (and even later) was dominated by men. And hippie, authentic hippie and not fashion, without barriers and prejudices: she is the daughter of the most reactionary Texas, white, who started singing the music of the black, the blues, when segregation was still a fact and a drama, especially in the southern states, where she came from. Janis was much and too much, clumsy and yet a sex symbol, bullied since childhood because of her forward-looking diversity and therefore strong and insecure at the same time. So insecure that unfortunately the usual resort to ghosts from the past (and comforting love with men and women who never blossomed into adult relationships) would be heroin. Much, much, enough to kill her in the desolate solitude of a Los Angeles motel on an October night in 1970. But perhaps, as Eric Burdon of the Animals would have said when he was remembering her, Janis died of a Janis overdose. Because it was so much, it was too much.
January 19, 2023 (change January 19, 2023 | 07:03)
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