41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Annoying moralizing on the part of the author, September 17, 2003
By A Customer
This book was AWFUL. It starts out like a regular biography, but about a quarter of the way through, the author, Ms. Myra Friedman, begins to inject too much of her own personal opinions, and before you know it, the whole thing turns into a rant about the evils of the Sixties. This book can't really be called a biography because it is filled with too many opinions and diagnosises and not enough objective facts.
I found the author's psychoanalytic approach to be overbearing, preachy, and frankly, passe. In portraying her subject, she mixes some smug sneers at rock culture with a shallow, psyche textbook description of Janis's supposed affection/rejection complex, free of any insight into the complicated consciousness of the '60s. The author writes that Joplin referred to her (Friedman) as a "Jewish mother." We can be assured the quote is accurate, given the tone throughout.
Nothing escapes her contempt, especially poor Janis, who is really hung out to dry in the book's latter sections by the author's overly righteous harangues, all very mean-spirited. She was her publicity girl for a couple of years starting in 1968, but maybe she should have put in for a transfer to another department if she hated the rock scene so much.
The author conveys an almost sadistic pleasure in pointing out her subject's weaknesses. In her version of events, Janis Joplin apparently had not one shred of redeemable qualities and was a weak, wretched human being on all counts. She writes that Janis was "no musician," an "amateur" during her entire time with Big Brother, not at all spontaneous with her phrasing, "contrived," emotionally "astigmatized," "infantile," "deplorably self centered," copied other people's fashion styles and had no original fashion style of her own,(!!?) and chose to sing the blues strictly because it was more "marketable." She describes the album Cheap Thrills as "abominable." (Quote: "And I personally thought Cheap Thrills abominable.") and that Big Brother and the Holding Company were "absurd, ludicrous, daffy, impossible, a violation of every musical standard I held dear, a minstrel show." She also believes that the many famous photos that were taken of Janis were products of her own "narcissism and self-hatred,"(?!) and that the Woodstock festival was simply an overrated, glorified celebration of drugs as the holy grail, (no mention of the musicians, just the drugs). She also asserts that Janis's bisexuality (and bisexuality in general), is the result of an unstable, "diffused" psyche as opposed to if Janis were strictly gay or straight, which would require her to be more "tidy" in her personality. And this bit of absurdity is Miss Friedman's psychiatric diagnosis on the Kozmic Blues band: "The unsettled, internal argument, the conflict for the primitive yearning and the desire for control, were reflected in the arrangements, the songs, the character of the sets. The tone was sluggish, imposing, massive and dismal." Her explanation for why Janis was so popular with her audiences? Because they were too stoned to know the difference!!
One wonders, what was such a conservative and humorless individual, negative about most aspects of rock n' roll, doing in the center of it? In interviewing two girls from the Haight, the one with a husband and children rates her approval while the one who discussed the creative potential of drug use in the early Sixties meets with her disapproval. She also is horrified and offended that Janis would ask her if she'd read "The Sensuous Woman," and takes issue with the tattoo party Janis threw, portraying the event as the height of debauchery even though she admits she didn't attend. Peggy Caserta, Joplin's lover and shooting partner, is dismissed as an insignificant acquaintance despite evidence to the contrary. The author also belittles Joplin for not following her request to promote a peace concert during an appearance on the Dick Cavett show. You can hardly picture Janis Joplin, a self-described, apolitical cynic from the Beatnik era, promoting a peace concert in deference to her publicist, or tearfully apologizing for not doing so afterward, as the author claims.
Another thing I noticed was that she misspells the obvious, such as: "Bobby McGee" is spelled "McGhee." She also insists on hyphenating Full Tilt Boogie Band, even though that was not the official spelling. For a biographer, she should know basic facts, such as that at the Monterey Pop festival, Janis wore the famous gold outfit at the Sunday performance, NOT Saturday. She should dot her I's and cross her T's if she wants to be definitive. And instead of analyzing Janis, she should psychoanalyze herself as to why she needed to write such a book and expose personal information from Janis's doctors and psychologists, not to mention betraying the anguished confidences that Janis allegedly made to her when she was having bad days. And after all this, she claims she did her job by protecting Janis against the "nastiness" of the press, a total joke given the contents of this book, especially in light of her statement that she thought the negative press was "valid"!!! Also, she claims that Janis asked her to write her biography and tell the truth about the drugs and "everything," yet she writes that Janis never, ever confided into her about her lesbian relationships, much less talked to her very much at all about her drug use. There is one good thing about this book that I will admit: Its exhaustive listing of bars and pubs frequented by Janis. So if ever you wanted to re-create your own Janis pub "crawl" in NY or L.A., this book is a good reference source.
Turning Janis Joplin into the poster child for everything that went wrong with the '60s does not really address the life and work of this artist. I frankly think the book's title more accurately describes what the author does to her subject, rather than what the subject did to herself.
To Myra Friedman: Next time, try just a little bit harder, to be nice.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Buried with Lies, October 22, 2002
One would expect better from an author who served as Janis's publicist during her career. But when you get beneath the eloquent literary tone of this book, what emerges is Friedman's sheer ignorance and misinterpretation of Janis as a person, her life, and especially her music.
Friedman openly admits her dislike of Big Brother and the Holding Company, comparing them to a minstrel show and describing the landmark album, "Cheap Thrills" as "abominable." Kozmic Blues fares no better; the author actually believes Janis was at her "most shrill" during a time in her career that is historically considered to be her peak year as a vocalist.
Worse though, is Friedman's insidious condemnation of Janis the person, which is why I laughed out loud when I read her token passage claiming that she loved Janis. If this book is her idea of love, I'd hate to be her friend, especially if I were no longer around to defend myself.
Excerpts like these shed light on Friedman's true feelings about Janis: " [She was] talking in that fake, godawful voice." "She was deplorably self-centered..." "She was egocentric, paranoic, megalomanic..." "It wasn't love as an adult knows it: no sharing, no interest, no commitment, no giving, none of those things at all." "[She] played the buffoon." "Janis' relationships were terribly narrow..." [She was] infantile.." "Janis's childness reflected a completely unrealistic view of the world..." etc, etc. And this is just the tip of a very negative iceberg. The author basically renders her subject unrecognizable, obscured in a mire of pseudo-psychoanalysis masquerading as the truth.
No, this in not a realistic shattering of the hippie ideal and romantic 60s mythology. This is the writing of someone who just didn't get it. Time and again, Friedman interprets Janis's innocuous, off-the-cuff comments as either vastly self congratulatory or pathetically self-deprecating, when in all probability, neither was the case. Janis was a quick wit who simply went over the head of Friedman, a woman who provides much proof of her ineptness as Janis's publicist while serving as manager Albert Grossman's flunky. She herself even admits that Janis's rise to fame had nothing to do with Grossman's publicity office. No coincidence that the Band and Bob Dylan fired Grossman shortly after Janis's death.
Additionally, this book is riddled with factual errors that fly in the face of its claim to be the definitive biography. Bobby McGee is spelled wrong in one instance; Full Tilt Boogie is hyphenated throughout; her time of birth is wrong; and most astonishingly, the discography is botched. Definitive? When I see blatant errors like these, I can only wonder what else she got wrong. Another amazing addendum to the Harmony edition of "Buried Alive" is Friedman's retraction of her original writings about Seth Morgan in previous editions (apparently she felt she had overstated his signficance), as well as the Joplin family's refusal to grant permission to reprint Janis's letters to her family and friends because they were unhappy with the book.
Thankfully, Laura Joplin's biography provides the necessary historical and cultural context that this book lacks. "Love, Janis" serves as a more reliable resource than "Buried Alive." Read "Buried Alive" with a grain of salt and take note of the author's obvious colored and very subjective agenda.
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