Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin by Alice Echols
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fabulous read! Not only is it a great biography of Janis Joplin, but also—to use the author's phrasing—it is "a cultural history of the time in which she lived," which, to me, is more important. I came of age during the 1960s—not in the US, but certainly under the influence of American culture—and in my view Alice Echols's book offers the best "cultural history" of the Sixties of all similar books that I have read. No wonder: the author, an eminent history professor at USC, is considered an expert on the culture of that turbulent decade.

James Gurley, a musician quoted by the author, offers the following witty remark about the Sixties: "When you think of history, you think it was just like now, only then. But life was different then." Yes, really different! More different from any other decade than any other decade. As silly and as clichéd as it may sound, what another musician, Michael Bloomfield, said from the stage "This is our generation, man. All you people, man, all together, man, it's groovy. Dig yourselves 'coz it's really groovy..." gives an apt characterization of the revolution that turned the strait-laced Fifties into the Love Generation of the Sixties and culminated with the Summer of Love 1967. A New Man was born, all loving, all generous, permanently stoned, and living totally in the present without a care in the world about the past or the future, about politics, money, or jobs; the most important thing being the music, the music of love, the music of freedom.

And then there is Janis Joplin, one of the musical idols of my late teens, a genius of vocal art, by far the greatest female blues/rock singer of all time (if you don't believe me, listen to any of the live performances available on YouTube, for instance, songs like "Summertime", "Little Girl Blue", "Ball and Chain", "Maybe", etc.) The author narrates Joplin's tragically short life in minute detail, yet tactfully, avoiding cheap sensationalism characteristic of many other rock stars' biographies. Joplin's permanent struggle with the conflict between her powerful ambition and major insecurities leads to unfathomably heavy hard-drug use and, consequently, to her death. The author writes, "The world she moved in encouraged her addictions, with its commitment to living on the edge and beyond limits—its dedication to recklessness as a matter of principle. And Janis Joplin was that principle writ large."

In the words of the author, "[...] when Janis sang you could hear her awe and delight at breaking all the rules. In her music, I heard freedom, which was what she longed to communicate." In the presence of all human failings and weaknesses, that freedom carried the seeds of its own destruction.

In a sense, Janis Joplin's death symbolizes the death of the Love Generation. Ms. Echols writes, "America was transformed in the 1960s, but the exhilaration of changing the culture [...] was matched by shattering personal defeat. This is the hidden story of the decade, the underside of the counterculture."

This account of Janis Joplin's life is exhaustively referenced: over 70 pages of annotations. The expressive title of the book is a paraphrase of Bob Dylan's song lyrics.

View all my reviews