It
was a terrible one-two punch for rock & roll. Just sixteen days after the
death of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin also passed away. She was supposed to
record the vocals for Nick Gravenites’ “Buried Alive in the Blues” that day.
Instead, it was included on her posthumous album as an instrumental track. For
her songwriter friend, it was the cause of real heartbreak. It was also a bit
of a setback for Joplin herself, even though the album went platinum several
times over. Amy J. Berg chronicles the short, troubled life of the blues-rock
icon largely through her own words in Janis:
Little Girl Blue (trailer
here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
In
today’s texting world, it seems rather remarkable how often Joplin wrote
letters home to her parents and how forthright she was in her dispatches,
considering how drastically her values differed from her those of parents. Her
words are often heavy, in multiple ways. For a rebellious, musically inclined young
woman like Joplin, Port Arthur, Texas was a good town to be from—far from. For
a while, she felt somewhat more comfortable in Austin, but it was only San
Francisco that truly welcomed her. However, with that sense of belonging came
an introduction to hard drugs.
In
fact, her first stint in the City by the Bay did not work out so well, but when
she returned, she fell in with a band called Big Brother and the Holding
Company. They started to build quite a reputation, but it was Joplin that the
promoters and managers were really interested in.
Berg
talks to most of the surviving members of BBHC, as well as their contemporaries
like Bob Weir from the Dead, Kris Kristofferson, and Country Joe McDonald (but
strangely not Gravenites). Several speculate Joplin might have been happier and
healthier if she had not agreed to leave the band and take on the pressure of
leading her own band, with good reason. Frankly, if there is one thing Little Girl Blue has plenty of, its
regret.
Regardless,
the film works best when addressing Joplin’s music. Rather than present her as
an ecstatic blues shouter, Berg’s experts explain how she was learning to
master her voice like an instrument. The sequences involving the great lost
love of her life are also quite touching. However, the film gets downright
yucky when it suggests she had a sexual relationship with Dick Cavett, whose
coyness is truly nauseating. It makes you wish Joplin would rise from the dead
just to say it isn’t so.