I recently acquired this book for our public high school library. Although this book has been favorably reviewed for high school students, I was wondering how her private life would be presented in this volume aimed at young adult readers. While it would receive a PG13 rating if it were a film, the main point of the book can be summarized in the following quote from the last chapter:
"Fame had nurtured and encouraged Janis's wild, over-the-top behavior. People loved when she swaggered onto the stage with a bottle of Southern Comfort or waxed lyrical about getting high. And, along the way, she became as hooked on adulation as she was on drugs and alcohol. It was the attention she craved all her life, from her lonely high school days to her spirited college days to her crazy days in San Francisco, speeding around town in her psychedelic Porsche. To feed her voracious need for more love and praise, she became ever more outrageous. She took greater and greater personal risks until, finally, sheer carelessness caught up with her..." (Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing, page 99).
Janis was an awesome blues singer. I saw her shortly after she joined Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1966. But her life went out of control, resulting in her untimely death. This books celebrates the music, while providing a cautionary tale for readers that "sex, drugs and rock and roll" can lead down a dark path to addiction, and in this case, eventually death.
For a young person wanting to better understand what Janis was all about, or to get a better understanding of the psychedelic music scene in the late Sixties, this volume does an amazing job of showing it as it was.
