Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin (19 January 1943 – 4 October 1970) was an American singer and songwriter.

Quotes

Music’s for grooving man, and music’s not for puttin’ yourself through bad changes, y’know? I mean, you don’t have to go take anybody’s shit, man, just to like music, y’know what I mean? You don’t. So... so if you’re getting’ more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about it man. Y’know, it’s just music. Music’s... music's s’posed to be different than that.
- Spoken on the live recording of "Piece Of My Heart" on "Cheap Thrills" (1968)

To sing blues, you've got to be able to, ... be willing to, feel things.
- Pop Chronicles: Show 52 - The Soul Reformation: Phase three, soul music at the summit. [Part 8], interview recorded 1968 July 13.

Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week. In MY week.
- On being shunted off the front page of Newsweek magazine by the late ex-President Dwight D. Eisenhower following his death; New Musical Express interview, (12 April 1969); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day, man.
- Comments on a performance of "Ball and Chain" Festival Express (1970)

I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)

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, whoaa.
- "Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler

Dawn has come at last,
Twenty-five years, honey just in one night, oh yeah.
Well, Im twenty-five years older now
So I know we can't be right
And Im no better, baby,
And I cant help you no more
Than I did when just a girl.
- "Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler

Aww, but it don't make no difference, baby, no, no,
And I know that I could always try.
It don't make no difference, baby, yeah,
I better hold it now,
I better need it, yeah,
Im gonna use it till the day I die, whoa.
- "Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler

Don't expect any answers, dear,
For I know that they don't come with age, no, no.
Well, ain't never gonna love you any better, babe.
And I'm never gonna love you right,
So you'd better take it now, and right now.
- "Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler

Oh! But it don't make no difference, babe, hey,
And I know that I could always try.
Theres a fire inside everyone of us,
You'd better need it now,
I got to hold it, yeah,
I better use it till the day I die.
- "Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler

Honey, I love to go to parties,
And I like to have a good time,
But if it gets too pale after a while
Honey and I start looking to find
One good man.
- "One Good Man"

One good man,
Oh ain’t much, honey ain’t much,
It’s only everything...
- "One Good Man"

An’ I don’t want much outa life,
I never wanted a mansion in the south.
I just-a want to find someone sincere
Who’d treat me like he talks,
One good man.
- "One Good Man"

Pearl (1971)

You say that it's over baby, Lord,
You say that it's over now,
But still you hang around me, come on,
Won't you move over.
- "Move Over" · Lyric video at YouTube

You know that I need a man, honey Lord,
You know that I need a man,
But when I ask you to you just tell me
That maybe you can.
- "Move Over"

Please don'tcha do it to me babe, no!
Please don'tcha do it to me baby,
Either take this love I offer
Or honey let me be.
- "Move Over"

Oh yeah, make up your mind, honey,
You're playing with me, hey hey hey,
Make up your mind, darling,
You're playing with me, come on now!
Now either be my loving man,
I said-a let me honey, let me be, yeah!
- "Move Over"

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
- "Mercedes Benz", co-written with Bob Neuwirth in 1970, inspired by the first line of a song by Michael McClure: "Come on, God, and buy me a Mercedes Benz."

Misattributed

Well, I’m gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
- "Piece of My Heart" (1968); though this song became well known because of her performances, and as one of her greatest hits, it was actually written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns · Live performance in Germany (1968)

You know you got it if it makes you feel good.
- "Piece of My Heart" (1968) written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free...
And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues.
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.
- "Me and Bobby McGee" another of her greatest hits, the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson, and first released as sung by Roger Miller

Work me Lord, work me Lord.
Please don't you leave me,
I feel so useless down here
With no one to love
Though I've looked everywhere
And I can't find me anybody to love,
To feel my care.
- "Work Me, Lord", from her album I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969) was written by her bandmate Nick Gravenites, whom she credits at the start of her famous performance of the song at the Woodstock Music Festival, as well as others, such as a live performance in Stockholm (1969)

Quotes about Joplin

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet
Giving me head on an unmade bed
While the limousines wait in the street.

And those were the reasons and that was New York.
I was running for the money and the flesh.
I was running for the money and the flesh
That was called love, for the workers in song
And it still is for those of us left.
- Leonard Cohen, lyrics common to both "Chelsea Hotel #1" (1972) and "Chelsea Hotel #2" (1974) · Chelsea Hotel #1 (19 April 1972 performance, with full lyrics ) & Chelsea Hotel #2 (18 December 2012 performance)

Ah, but you got away, didn't you baby
You just threw it all to the ground
You got away, they can’t pay you now
For making your sweet little sound, can they?
Making your sweet little sound on the jukebox
Making your sweet little sound on the jukebox
Making your sweet little sound on the radio
Making your sweet little sound.
- Leonard Cohen, "Chelsea Hotel #1" · Chelsea Hotel No. 1 (1972 performance)

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe
You just turned your back on the crowd
You got away, I never once heard you say
I need you, I don't need you
I need you, I don't need you
And all of that jiving around.
- Leonard Cohen, "Chelsea Hotel #2" · "Chelsea Hotel #2" Live

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were famous, your heart was a legend
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me you'd make an exception.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
We are ugly but we have the music."
- Leonard Cohen, "Chelsea Hotel #2"

Wow, that's heavy.
- "Mama" Cass Elliot, caught on camera mouthing this, listening to her at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Janis knew more than I did about "how it was", but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. On the various occasions when we were together, she seemed to be holding in something she thought I might not want to hear, like older people do when they hear kids they love saying with absolute youthful confidence, "Oh, that'll never happen to me." Sometimes you know you can't tell them how it is, they have to find out for themselves. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom.
Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough.
- Grace Slick, in Somebody to Love? : A Rock-and-Roll Memoir (1998) by Grace Slick and Andrea Cagan

A banker's daughter or a runaway girl,
A little lady or a honky-tonk Pearl
Has to find someplace in this world
Where she feels at home.

A banker's daughter is so hard to deceive
A little lady is so hard to please
Honky-tonk Pearl wears her heart on her sleeve,
And her heart will not grow cold.
- John Phillips, "Pearl", on the Mamas and the Papas album People Like Us (1971)

Here's a wish for a runaway girl;
Here's a prayer for honky-tonk Pearl —
Hope she finds someplace outta this world
Where she feels at home.
- John Phillips, "Pearl", on the album People Like Us (1971)

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" is as good an epitaph for the counterculture as any; we'll never know how-or if-Janis meant to go on from there. Janis Joplin's death, like that of a fighter in the ring, was not exactly an accident. Yet it's too easy to label it either suicide or murder, though it involved elements of both. Call it rather an inherent risk of the game she was playing, a game whose often frivolous rules both hid and revealed a deadly serious struggle. The form that struggle took was incomplete, shortsighted, egotistical, self-destructive. But survivors who give in to the temptation to feel superior to all that are in the end no better than those who romanticize it. Janis was not so much a victim as a casualty. The difference matters.
- Ellen Willis 1976 article in Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)

You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things.

External links

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Janis Joplin

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Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)