“Bye, Bye Baby”[1]
In October 1970, famed singer and performer Janis Joplin died in her hotel room of a heroin overdose.[2] Her death was the last in a series of events that pointed to the dark side of the hippie movement: the Manson murders, the concert at Altamont, the massacre at Kent State, the passing of Jimi Hendrix.[3] Dying at the young age of 27, Janis’s overdose seemed symbolic of a larger death that America experienced at the end of the Sixties—the death of the counterculture. Biographers of Janis labeled her the “darling of the counterculture,” calling her the “first counterculture pinup girl,” and said that her “entourage and the milieu it reflected was set operative in ambiance of common beliefs and values endemic to the counterculture mentality.”[4] Indeed, Janis’s no-holds-barred personality appeared to embody the liberated spirit and style of Sixties youth.
However, painting Joplin as the counterculture’s icon is slightly misguided. While it is true that Janis defied gender norms, experimented with drugs, and associated with the key musical acts of the era, her goals, music, and lifestyle did not exactly square with the overall counterculture ethos, or at least, that is, how that ethos is commonly remembered. The counterculture dictum to “turn on, tune in, drop out” did not quite capture Janis’s philosophy to “get it while you can.”[5] Rather than taking hallucinogenic drugs to expand the mind, Janis preferred taking hard drugs to numb the pain. Rather than psychedelic rock, Janis preferred blues and soul. Rather than dropping out, Janis wanted to make it big. For most people in the counterculture, it “was not cool to be ambitious,” but Janis yearned to be successful and famous.[6] She spoke frequently about wanting to prove her childhood bullies wrong, and she desperately craved acceptance from her parents. The counterculture values of rejecting one’s upbringing or achieving financial wealth did not apply to her—she ached for both recognition and stability. Despite her many sexual partners, she publicly toned down her lesbian relationships and expressed her desire to settle down with an “old man,” arguing: “Why can’t I be the kind of person who wants the house with the white picket fence?”[7]
Far from being the icon of the counterculture, Janis more accurately represented the dark side of the counterculture, or at least, its inherent contradictions. As rock critic Ellen Willis noted, Joplin’s career and life choices “reflected a conflict of values within the counterculture itself—a conflict that foreshadowed its imminent disintegration.”[8] When Janis died in 1970, many viewed her death as the symbol for the end of the Sixties dream. But a better interpretation is that the Sixties dream was never realized in the first place. For all the idealism of the hippie movement, beneath the surface always lurked various forms of hedonism, nihilism, and insecurity. If Janis is the ultimate counterculture figure, it is this dark side of the counterculture she represents, not the oft remembered peace and love and liberation that exists in popular memory.
“Looks Like Everybody in this Whole Round World Down on Me”[9]
Born into a middle-class family in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis—like many of her peers—felt a strong desire to escape the typical, suburban life. Her distaste for the kind of middle-America normality in which she was raised was not a formal critique of postwar society, but rather, it stemmed from her feeling of never fitting in, of being a constant outsider at school and at home. She suffered from acne and put on a lot of weight in her teen years, making her the target of constant ridicule and bullying from other students.[10] It comes as no surprise, then, that she began to hang with artist and musician types who listened to blues over pop, and influenced her desire to become a painter and a singer.
When Janis moved on to college, she embraced her outsider personality. The University of Texas college newspaper even ran a story about her titled “She Dares to Be Different!” that expressed awe by her propensity to walk around campus barefoot in blue jeans, and how she “carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes in case she gets the urge to break into song.”[11] While she never finished her studies, she did hook up with musicians in the Austin music scene, and they began singing folk tunes at local, working-class bars.[12]
Her style, her friends, and her music placed Joplin within the burgeoning counterculture movement. Still in the early stages, the group that would later be called “hippies” would draw upon the attitudes of the Beat poets, the ideals of the anti-war movement, and the quest for authenticity found in the folk revival.[13] In 1963, Janis hitchhiked to San Francisco with her friend Chet Helms, who would later be her band manager and promote the Summer of Love, the summer during 1967 when flower children descended upon the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco and when the hippie movement reached its peak.[14] It would be during this time in California that Janis would become associated with the counterculture and begin to indulge in its excesses.
Joplin started recording blues tracks with Helms, and by the end of the year, she had developed an intensely rebellious personality, including using drugs and drinking heavily. While she dabbled with the mind-bending, psychoactive substances of the counterculture, she did not prefer them, saying of her first LSD trip, “Shit, man, that ain’t dope!”[15] Rather, she acquired a liking for harder drugs: speed, heroin, and alcohol. For Janis, getting fucked up was not about expanding her consciousness, like so many of the flower children tried to do. Instead, Janis wanted to escape the misery of her daily existence, which was a life filled with pain over feeling ugly, unwanted, and out of place.[16]
Janis’s drug use and abrasive persona did not often bode well in social situations, even among fellow outcasts. As historian Alice Echols explained, “Janis’s don’t-mess-with-me armor left most people feeling exasperated rather than supportive or affirming,” noting that Janis’s friends said that she “fucked things up for herself right and left.”[17] And herein lies one of Joplin’s main tensions: she simultaneously wanted to be accepted for being different while also wanting to be seen by her family and childhood peers as no different from them. When these internal conflicts bubbled to the surface, Janis turned to ways to forget about these realities, whether it be drugs or a personality that could not be ignored.
By 1965, Janis’s drug use had gotten out of control, so she moved back home to Port Arthur in an attempt to rehabilitate. She traded her outlandish clothes and hair for a more traditional look, enrolled in college, and, most importantly, stopped abusing drugs and alcohol.[18] She also eschewed promiscuity and got engaged to Peter de Blanc, an IBM employee who she had met in California.[19] Janis began psychotherapy to address the emotional issues that contributed to her drug use, and she admitted wanting to be like her sister, who was seen by her parents as “the perfect daughter.”[20]
Yet, Janis’s time back home was short-lived, and by 1966, she was back in the San Francisco scene again. Even though her stay was brief, it revealed a significant part of Janis’s character, one that distinguished her from the classic counterculture archetype. Unlike the majority of the kids in the counterculture movement, Joplin yearned for a certain level of normality. Her escape from Port Arthur was less a rejection of parental values and more a desire to get away from the hurts she accumulated during her youth. As desperately as she tried, though, the reality was that Janis did not ultimately fit in with this kind of life. She never attained the respect from her childhood peers that she had hoped—not even after suffering through a disappointing high school reunion once she had become famous—and her parents never recognized her talents. As Janis said: “I didn’t have many friends, and I didn’t like the ones I had.”[21]
“I Need a Man to Love Me”[22]
“I love to go to parties, and I like to have a good time,” Janis sang, “But if it gets too pale after a while, honey, I start looking to find one good man.”[23] In high school, Joplin’s classmates teased her for her unattractive appearance and her lack of ability to get dates. As she grew older, Janis embraced her sexual nature, accumulating many lovers, both men and women. One friend noted that Janis “was always putting the make on people,” and that she refused to feel guilty about enjoying sex.[24] While many of her sexual relationships were heterosexual (as one friend said, Janis “went through men like Kleenex”), her long-term relationships were usually with women. However, Janis often downplayed her bisexuality, noting, “I’m not gay, but I’m not averse.”[25]
In addition to drugs and music, the counterculture is remembered for intensifying the sexual revolution. By 1960, the FDA had approved the birth control pill, allowing women more control over their bodies and more sexual freedom.[26] During this period, sexuality and gender roles became more liberalized, and women began to vocalize their discontent with society’s expectations of them. Most notably, two books from the early 1960s paved the way for this discourse: Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963). Friedan’s work demonstrated that suburban women were unsatisfied with their domestic roles, and Brown’s book encouraged women to be independent, both financially and sexually.[27] Both texts were pivotal in shifting the collective consciousness towards female liberation. The counterculture incorporated these shifts into its own movement by embracing sexual exploration and experimentation, celebrating the body, and advocating for “free love.”[28]
However, while the sexual revolution challenged some of these societal norms, it did little to expand the discussion on homosexuality, which was still considered deviant and even illegal in some states. The gay liberation movement did not take off until the end of the decade, when, in 1969, the Stonewall riots sparked greater public awareness to the issue.[29] In this way, Joplin’s downplaying of her bisexuality aligned more with the already established norms at the time. Even within the counterculture, most homosexuals remained in the closet.
But Janis’s sexuality was still not as revolutionary as it has been portrayed. While it is true that she openly slept with many people (even publicly bragging about how she slept with football star Joe Namath), her sexual encounters reflected her penchant for partying hard more than consciously changing norms for women.[30] She preferred being “one of the guys” more than making a statement about female social behavior. When asked about feminism, she dismissed the notion, saying of feminists that “it seemed like they hadn’t had a good time in months.”[31]
Joplin dressed as she wanted, slept with who she wanted, and behaved how she wanted. From this perspective, her actions pushed the boundaries for how women could act in mainstream society. And in this way, Janis’s sexuality lined up with the counterculture’s openness towards sexuality. However, while the counterculture helped open some doors in this regard, it would not be until the 1970s that liberation for women and the queer community would really make headway. Women were still seen as objects for men’s pleasure in much of the hippie scene, and gay behavior was still taboo. Viewed from this angle, Janis (and the counterculture, for that matter) did not revolutionize sex or women’s freedoms as expansively as is remembered.
“Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?”[32]
By 1966, Janis had hooked up with Big Brother & the Holding Company, the band with whom she would record her first two records. In 1967, the band performed frequently at counterculture venues, but it was really their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival that would make the band well known. Julius Karpen, the band’s manager, had an argument with D. A. Pennebaker, who was filming the festival for a documentary. Because of their fight, the band’s well-received performance had to be staged and re-filmed, with Pennebaker editing the footage to make it seem as if it was the live performance for the film.[33] It was also at this concert that the bad would meet Albert Grossman, one of the music industry’s most aggressive managers and promoters who would sign the band not long afterwards.
Musically speaking, Big Brother & the Holding Company was not a good band—it was their live performances that drew audiences. But Janis would always steal the show. Clearly she was the member with the talent and the charisma that people were drawn to. (Although, not everyone enjoyed her style. As some said at the time: “Aretha sang; Janis shrieked.”)[34] During the band’s recording of their album Cheap Thrills, Joplin controlled much of the production, and when the band toured, she was promoted as the leading act. That Janis became the star stirred resentment from the other band members, eventually leading to the band’s dissolution, and Janis would go solo by the start of 1969.[35]
Hippies claimed to reject the postwar consumerism they were raised in. The notion of “dropping out” meant, at least in theory, a repudiation of capitalist institutions. This youth culture supposedly cared about the music—not the fame, not the money. But Joplin did want both the fame and the money. She craved recognition for her talent (and also wanted to give the middle finger to her childhood bullies), but she also wanted to make enough money to have a nice house and a fancy car (Janis drove around in a psychedelic-painted Porsche).[36] Janis was aware of the contradiction between the counterculture’s supposed anti-consumerist ideals and her true desires: “We were mocking ourselves for grabbing at that brass ring,” she said, “but we grabbed all the same.”[37]
One could argue that Joplin’s desire for wealth and fame did not reflect the counterculture’s values. But the argument that the counterculture never actually had those values in the first place is just as valid. Big Brother & the Holding Company was just one of dozens of bands marketed directly to hippie youth. Music promoters like Grossman were businessmen first, largely responsible for engineering the youth culture’s tastes. The Monterey Pop Festival became the prototype for “the next billion-dollar business”—the music industry’s “shiny new jewel.”[38] The counterculture aesthetic thus became commodified: artists became music industry products, and festivals became vehicles for lining music industry executives’ pockets.[39] As rock critic Robert Christgau said of this era, “There are no hippies—they have disappeared in an avalanche of copy.”[40]
“Feelin’ Good Was Good Enough for Me”[41]
Janis did become rich and famous, amassing many friends and lovers along the way. But none of these realities healed her wounds. “Onstage I make love to twenty-five thousand people,” she said, “then I go home alone.”[42] Echols argued that “Janis’s alienation was more than a personal estrangement—it was the experience of a generation.”[43] But was this actually the case? Setting aside the fact that the counterculture only represented a small portion of the Baby Boomer generation, did Janis even fully represent the counterculture’s views?
Take the music, for instance. Psychedelic rock became the staple of the counterculture’s musical tastes. But Janis’s influences were Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Otis Redding, and Odetta.[44] She was, first and foremost, a blues singer. Also consider the drugs: LSD, mushrooms, and marijuana were the drugs of choice for Sixties hippies. These substances were intended to expand one’s mind and intensify one’s experiences. But Janis did not like these drugs. She preferred, to her demise, the hard stuff: heroin, speed, and, her favorite, Southern Comfort.[45] And then there are the social norms. The counterculture allegedly rejected the postwar suburban ideal, everything from the domestic roles of women to consumer culture. While Janis did explode gender norms by refusing to play by these rules, she ultimately yearned for a typical American life, even making a few failed attempts to make it a reality. In all these ways, Janis did not quite fit with the counterculture’s ethos.
However, considering that Janis is remembered as an icon of the counterculture, perhaps that memory actually says more about the counterculture than Janis herself. The phenomenon of acid-trip hippies only lasted for a brief moment before many of them turned to harder drugs, beginning in the Summer of Love and moving into the 1970s. The 1960s did see a loosening of sexual norms, but significant progress for women did not really get a strong footing until the 1970s as well. And no sooner than hippie culture made it into the media did big business find ways to market it and sell it right back to average Americans. Inasmuch as one could say that the counterculture was about “peace and music” (as the heavily advertised Woodstock posters claimed), the counterculture was also about partying hard, looking hip, and living excessively. When viewed from this perspective, Janis does seem to represent the counterculture—just more so, its darker side.
Whether or not Janis deserves to be the icon of the counterculture depends on how the counterculture is remembered. For many, though, Janis remains the poster child for this moment in time. But Janis never seemed to focus much on how she would be remembered anyway—she lived for the moment. As Janis sang in one of her last songs: “Time keeps movin’ on, friends they turn away. I keep movin’ on, but I never found out why I keep pushing so hard. The dream, I keep tryin’ to make it, right through another lonely day.”[46]
Footnotes:
[1] Big Brother & the Holding Company, “Bye, Bye Baby,” Big Brother & the Holding Company, produced by Bob Shad (San Francisco: Mainstream Records, 1967), song.
[2] Alice Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 299.
[3] David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 186–188, 232.
[4] Ellis Amburn, Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 73; Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 168; Myra Friedman, Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1992), 151.
[5] Janis Joplin, “Get It While You Can,” Pearl, produced by Paul A. Rothchild (Hollywood: Sunset Sound Recorders, 1971), song; Timothy Leary, Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era (New York: Putnam Books, 1990), 253.
[6] David Chiu, “A New Janis Joplin Biography Recasts the Legendary Singer as a Visionary, Not a Victim,” Forbes, October 21, 2019; Holly George-Warren, Janis: Her Life and Music (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), 194.
[7] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 36, 255.
[8] Ellen Willis, “Janis Joplin on Her Own Terms,” Rolling Stone, November 18, 1976.
[9] Big Brother & the Holding Company, “Down on Me,” Big Brother & the Holding Company, produced by Bob Shad (San Francisco: Mainstream Records, 1967), song.
[10] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 133.
[11] Pat Sharpe, “She Dares to Be Different,” The Daily Texan, July 27, 1962.
[12] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 42.
[13] James T. Patterson, The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 245.
[14] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 68.
[15] Ibid., 44.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., 61.
[18] Ibid., 91.
[19] Edward Willett, Janis Joplin: Take Another Little Piece of My Heart (Berkeley Heights: Enslow Publishers, 2008), 55.
[20] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 19.
[21] David Dalton, Piece of My Heart: A Portrait of Janis Joplin (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1991), 183.
[22] Big Brother & the Holding Company, “I Need a Man to Love,” Cheap Thrills, produced by John Simon (New York: Columbia Records, 1968), song.
[23] Janis Joplin, “One Good Man,” I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! produced by Gabriel Mekler (New York: Columbia Records, 1969), song.
[24] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 61.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Farber, The Age of Great Dreams, 184.
[27] See generally: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1962); Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963).
[28] David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution, an Unfettered History (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000), 101.
[29] Farber, The Age of Great Dreams, 259.
[30] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 201.
[31] Ibid., 306.
[32] Janis Joplin, “Mercedes Benz,” Pearl, produced by Paul A. Rothchild (Hollywood: Sunset Sound Recorders, 1971), song.
[33] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 166.
[34] Chester Pach, “Janis Joplin, the Counterculture, and the Summer of Love,” Lecture, Ohio University, November 7, 2019.
[35] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 197.
[36] Ibid., 187.
[37] Ibid., 167.
[38] Ibid., 184.
[39] Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), passim.
[40] Robert Christgau, Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music, 1967–1973 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973), 14.
[41] Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee,” Pearl, produced by Paul A. Rothchild (Hollywood: Sunset Sound Recorders, 1971), song.
[42] Echols, Scars of Sweet Paradise, 261.
[43] Ibid., xii.
[44] Ibid., 21, 48, 136.
[45] Ibid., 187.
[46] Janis Joplin, “Kozmic Blues,” I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! produced by Gabriel Mekler (New York: Columbia Records, 1969), song.
By Shalon van Tine