Janis and Taylor: Freedom Through Their Music

As passionate as Janis and Taylor are for their music, it’s no surprise that their lyrics often express their heartbreak for relationships lost.  I mean they are both free spirits. It’s hard to imagine either of them slowing down. How hard that must be to maintain a normal relationship? Their lovers must always feel secondary to their music.  

Janis most famous song – “Me and Bobby McGee” - was actually written by her lover at the time, Kris Kristofferson. It’s a song about discovering the world on your own terms.  There is a line the song about independence that goes like this: “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.”  What brought Janis and Kris together was what drove them apart.   They both wanted to be free, but they would never feel that way in a long-term relationship.

In the same way, Taylor’s best songs are the most painful.  As much as she dreams of enchanted love, she sings of crushing despair.  In “White Horse,” her lyrics probably approach Janis’s “Me and Bobby McGee” in the way they express the hope to be with a person, and then there is that moment when you know it’s never going to happen.  She sings, “Holding on The days drag on..Stupid girl…I should have known.. I should have known.” Man, all she wanted was the truth. 

When I listen to these songs, I think of one sad disappointment after another.  One’s driving off into the distance.  One dreams of riding off on a white horse.  Whatever are looking for, they’re never going to find it.  The only place to feel free and honest is in their music.

The Outsiders: Janis and Taylor, Defiant to the End

As young girls, both Janis and Taylor found themselves socially on the outside looking in, but that’s probably what pushed them both to songwriting.   They didn’t really fit into their high-school crowd.  They weren’t really followers.  They were free-spirits.  They were dreamers. 

Janis grew up in an affluent family in Port Arthur, Texas, but she ran away at age 17 because she felt like such an outcast.    While her high-school classmates were listening to Top 40 coming out of the AM radio, Janis was crazy for black blues legends like Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thorton, and Leadbelly.   In 1963, she landed in the psychedelic, drug-energized San Francisco music scene where she established her own unique sound as white blues queen and rock ‘n’roll mama. Janis  once said, "Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday....They are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can go no farther than from A to B, and they can make you feel like they told you the whole universe.”  

While Janis sought inspiration from the blues, Taylor’s songs often come straight out of her personal experience.  She writes about her her feelings, her dreams, and her heartbreaks.  Beginning  in middle school and continuing through high-school, Taylor didn’t have many friends or people to talk to.  She felt like an outsider looking in.  But all that misery and rejection pushed her towards songwriting.   She spilled her guts on paper.  Writing songs was like keeping a diary.  According to Taylor, she tries to write songs that people her age could relate to.  When she writes,  Taylor says she writes in real time.   She strives to be personal and honest..  In her songs, she shares the sadness and letdowns of her own relationships because she wants to let her fans know they are not alone: “Nobody ever lets me in/ I can still see you, this ain’t the best view/  On the outside looking in.” (from a song she wrote when she was twelve: “The Outside.”) 

 I read that both Janis and Taylor were often teased and bullied in high school. It’s like whatever makes you different at that age makes you somehow uncool.  At a certain point, they must have thought there was no chance to be part of the crowd.  I can only imagine their insecurities.  

Fortunately for them, music became their own form of therapy.  They may have not had anyone to talk to, but they were only a guitar away from saying something special.   Their music tells us it’s okay to stand apart. 

The Runaways: Janis and Taylor

In English 61, I'm writing my sixties research paper on Janis Joplin.  You can consider her a rock 'n' roll pioneer.  She was one of the first women performers to take center stage in the decade of the sixties.  You can say she paved the way for women rockers to follow - one of them, of course, being Taylor Swift.  Here, I compare their musical beginnings.

As soon as they possibly could, both Janis and Taylor left home to pursue their musical dreams on the big stage.  Janis ran away from home and fled to San Francisco.  Taylor took her family with her south to Nashville, Tennessee to become a star. In 1965, Janis found home in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.  This area was known as a mecca for young hippies.  Young people  dressed in bright colors, beads and feathers were coming in from all over the world, and they listened to loud, crazy psychedelic rock.  Janis jammed with the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish and the Jefferson Airplane.  Her rough and  raucous voice pushed the music to the edge.  “They loved to see her get crazy,” said Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish. “It was part of her image: the wild woman, the blues mama” (Angel 42).  At 14 years of age, Taylor had the talent to earn a songwriting contract with Sony/ATV Records. She was the youngest songwriter they had ever  hired. For Taylor, it was the double life:  during the day, she attended high school like any normal teenager, but at night she was writing songs with professionals two and three times her age. She was right there in the middle of it, that same place – Nashville, Tennessee – that had skyrocketed the careers of music’s biggest stars: Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Dolly Parton. Taylor was especially inspired by the young women that had come through town like Lee Ann Rimes and Shania Twain. Most of all, Taylor explained she loved these stars for  “We don’t care what you think” quirkiness (Spencer 16). While most teens spend their high school years finding themselves, both Janis and Taylor were clearly driven by their music.  As soon as they reached a certain age, there would be no waiting and hoping like the rest of us do.  The time for them to move was “now.”

                                    Works Cited 

Angel, Ann.  Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing. New York: Amulet Books,  2010. Print. 

Spencer, Liv.  Taylor Swift: Everyday is a Fairytale.  Ontario: EECW Press, 2010. Print.

Link Post - Five Things You Should Know about Janis Joplin - A Life Lived Much Too Fast

… So I can love, love, love him, I tell myself 

Well, I'm gonna try, just a little bit harder 

So I can't give, give, give, give him to nobody else. 

Well, I've been waiting for such a long time…

                                     -- Janis Joplin "Try (just a little bit harder)"

Dear Readers

In English 61, I'm developing a sixties research paper  I've chosen to write about the life and death of Janis Joplin. No one had ever seen anyone quite like her - before or since. I never knew much of her, but I do now.  Below I share important discoveries that I plan to use in my research paper.  At the end of each item, I've provided links for further reading. I hope you dig it as much as I do...

                                                         Hissie

1. Janis was bullied as a teenager – In the fifties and sixties there was so much pressure to look the same and act the same, but Janis was different. She wore her hair longer and her clothes darker.  I don’t think anyone knew what a hippie was back then, but Janis considered herself a beatnik.  The “beats” rejected conformity.  So did Janis. She loved to paint and sing.  The other kids in her all-white school didn’t like her attitude.  They hated anyone who didn’t act like they did. They called her by the N-word.

To read more about her struggles, click on "Janice Joplin Was Haunted by Self-Doubt"

2.  Her music was influenced by black blues singers -  In class, she often spoke up for integration of black and white children in public schools. In the sixties - before Martin Luther King - her teachers and classmates in Texas just didn't want to hear it.  Music became very important for her sanity. She identified with the blues.  She knew what it was like to feel sad and alone.   On week-ends Janet would pile into a car with friends to hear black musicians like Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Lead Belly in Lousiana. 

To find out more about black blues, click on Bessie Smith on Biography.com

3. In 1967, Janis broke through with Big Brother and the Holding Company – she became known as the Queen of Psychedelic Soul.  This came right about the time of the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Janis found herself right in the middle of her element.  Hippies.  Drugs.  Music.  She flew  her "Freak Flag" with pride. In Big Brother and the Holding Company, she found herself a future. She had the bold voice to match the band's instrumental genius. They took the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in June, and the world would never be the same. 

To read more about Janis, Jimi, and the Grateful Dead, please click on "Summer of Love."

4. Janis died of a heroin overdose at age 27 - On Youtube, you can see Janis appear with television talk-show host Dick Cavett shortly before her death  She looked good, she laughed a lot, and she sang up a rock 'n' roll storm.  After her death, Cavett said, "I think there were two Janises: There was the high school girl who desperately wanted acceptance and that character she created which was the tough-talking, tough drugging, drinking rock and roll star."  Upon her death, she joined the famed 27 club. Janis, you left us way too soon...

To read more about Janis's overdose, please click on "The Day Janis Joplin Died."

 5. Newly released documentary “Little Girl Blue” tells the story of her life -  We still can't get enough of her music.  Her record Pearl came out after her death.  It is still considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time. But, "Little Girl Blue" brings out more than the music. It shares a young woman's dream and ambition.  Janis's bold, raw voice paved the way for future female rockers.  She was the Love and Passion and Blues.  You could hear it in every note of each heartbreaking song.  

To read more about Janis's documentary, please click on "Janis: Little Girl Blue"

Link Post - The Soundtrack of My Bookshelves

When you read, do you ever tap your foot? Does music ever spark an idea in your head? Can you come up with a song or an artist that blends music and literature? Joyce Carol Oates wrote one of her most enduring works of short fiction after hearing Bob Dylan on the radio. 

Below, I go to my bookshelves - I choose artists and writers that bring music to my ears.  For each selection, I found an interesting quote.  Underneath each paragraph, I share a video.   

Here is my TOP FIVE cuts for The Soundtrack of My Bookshelves:

1. Lewis Carroll - I know him as the author of Alice in Wonderland. Did you know this book came from stories he invented to entertain a 10-year old girl?  Alice was her name, and she urged Lewis to write it all down.  The rest is literary history!   Maybe you've seen Johnny Depp in "Alice Through the Looking Glass."  Think psychedelic music: check out "White Rabbit" by the Jefferson Airplane.  Lewis Carroll rocks!

2. Frida Kahlo -  If there is one book on my shelves I read over and over, it has to be The Diary of Frida Kahlo.  It's an illustrated journal that Frida kept the last ten years of her life.  The publishers were able to reproduce her thoughts, poems, dreams, and plenty of her artwork.  For everything she writes in Spanish, there are pages of English translation.  You can read about the tremendous pain she endured through her life.  She has said in her life she has experienced two great tragedies: One was horrible trolley accident that crushed her spine; and the other was her husband and lover Diego Rivera who broke her heart.  Despite it all, she lived a life of love and magic.  She once said, "“Feet, what do I need them for If I have wings to fly.” Here is a little bit of passion from Salma Hayak's biopic Frida. The song is called "Alcoba Azul." 

3. Edward Hopper - I learned about Edward Hopper's most famous work Nighthawks in English class.  The painting expresses the anxiety and lonliness of drinking coffee in an all-night diner.  The customers look like they are trapped in a fishbowl.  Over the years, Hopper's work has captured the imagination of a wide array of artists, musicians, and writers. I am now into the Poetry of Solitude. This is a collection of poems that pay tribute to Edward Hopper.  Click on the following link to watch the mad poet himself, Tom Waits, play to the artistry of Edward Hopper: "Closing Time."

4.  Sylvia Plath -  When Sylvia was only eight years old, her first poem was published in the Boston Sunday Herald.  Before she even graduated from high school, her work appeared in Seventeen magazine.  At age 32 she joined a long line of suicidal poets - she tenderly tucked her two young children into bed and then went downstairs to the kitchen where she sealed off the doors with wet towels and stuck her head inside a gas oven.  She was found two hours later dead on the floor.  I've read of her mental illness from various biographies and her the novel The Bell Jar.  In English 009, I found out Sylvia was committed to the same mental hospital we read about in Girl, Interrupted.  She suffered from life-long bipolar disorder.  Country singer Ryan Adams wrote a tribute song to the famous poet's spirit: "Sylvia Plath."

5.  Ernest Hemingway -  At the beginning of  his writing career, Ernest was asked to choose between a secure, well-paid position on the Toronto Star; or the tenuous, uncertain dream of becoming a fiction writer.  He chose d-a-n-g-e-r. At age 19, he left his job as a newspaper reporter to volunteer as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in the Spanish Civil War.  For Hemingway, chasing death was the best training ground for a writer.    James Hetfield of Metallica agrees.  His song "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was inspired by a Hemingway novel of the same name. 

Like a Candle in the Wind: The Death of Marilyn Monroe

In Mr. Lewenstein's class, I'm researching the death of Marilyn Monroe for my "Back to the Future" sixties essay.  Below, I share the summary of a chapter I read in the book Tortured Artists.  We'll never know how things really ended.  The chief suspects for her murder were soon dead themselves.  Goodbye Norma Jeane... 

And it seems to me you lived your life / Like a candle in the wind

In Tortured Artists, we learn the sordid details of Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death.  When she first began living the life a Hollywood legend, she of all people probably knew she would soon become a dead one.   As a famous star, Marilyn lived her life under enormous scrutiny and criticism.  Drugs became an avenue of escape.  

Sadly, she already had a history of mental illness in her family.  The combination of  pressure,  drugs, and  anxiety took her down a dark road for which there was no return.   For example, at the age of four, Marilyn’s mother was placed in an asylum.  Marilyn grew up in an orphanage.  Later she found out her own grandmother had committed suicide.  She must have thought mental illness ran in her genes.  At age thirty six, when she felt herself losing her looks, she intensified her drug use.

   She didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know if she was Norma Jean or Marilyn.  The writer makes little comment about Marilyn’s suicide or murder.  Instead, the writing reinforces the image of Marilyn’s living a life underneath a microscope.  What may have pushed Marilyn to her death just may have been us – a public that didn’t want to see her grow old.

Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" in Girl, Interrupted

“No, no, no,” means “No, no, no…”  I guess Amy Winehouse really meant it this time.  In July of 2011, they carried her body out of her London apartment.  But, they weren’t taking her to Rehab…

Forensics revealed  she died of a drug overdose.  I nominate Amy Winehouse’s  “Rehab” song to appear on the Girl, Interrupted  soundtrack.  Amy and Susanna are soul “sistahs.”  Their Bipolar Disorders join them at the heart.

Many of the experts I’m reading say Amy lived a life in denial.  From the age of 13, she was hooked on drugs and alcohol but never really grasped the severity of her addiction.  She often admitted that she might be a little manic-depressive.  I mean, everyone has mood swings.  Right?   Her friends, her family, her father, they all pleaded with her go to rehab, but she would have none of it.  So here comes the line from her famous song:  "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no."  

Reading of Amy’s struggles is like reading Susanna Kaysen all over again.  Both of these young women evoked a sense of impending failure or doom, but like many bipolar people they also experienced these feelings of self-importance.  It’s like Amy  adopted her own stage persona.  Self-destructive, it’s who she is.  That’s what her fans wanted.  The catwoman make-up, the pin-up girl tattoos, the drug stories, and last but not least, all the craziness that came with. It’s probably combination of bipolar and drug addiction that did her in.  That’s a nasty cocktail.  Much in the same way, Susanna was also a Drama Queen. After swallowing 50 aspirin pills, she called up her boyfriend to let him know. Even though she was trying to kill herself, she still lived for the attention. 

I see a spiritual connection between Amy the rock star and Susanna from Girl, Interrupted.  When given the chance, they both choose to live in a “parallel universe.” Amy submits to the drug-addled rock star life: “I write songs because I’m (f-###)ed up in the head and need to get something good out of something bad.”  Susanna finds freedom and comfort inside a mental hospital.  She made sense out of her world through the writing of Girl, Interrupted.   

Here is a crazy meeting of the minds: In “Rehab,” Amy sings ” "I'd rather be at home with Ray" and "There's nothing you can teach me that I can't learn from Mr. Hathaway."  Ray, of course, is Ray Charles.  Mr Hathaway is the famous soul singer Donnie Hathaway. In these lyrics, Amy pays tribute to her idols.  Ironically, Ray Charles is also mentioned in Girl, Interrupted.     For at least a while, Ray’s “home” was McLean Hospital.  From the very same place, Susanna writes of Ray and Sylvia Plath:  “Did the hospital specialize in singers and poets,” she asks, “or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness…” To truly know the answer to that question, you would have to be crazy yourself.