Joplin's Spirit Eludes Detailed Narrative

 

SCARS OF SWEET PARADISE: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. Alice Echols. Metropolitan Books. 432 pages.

By RICHARD PACHTER


The only Janis Joplin songs on the radio these days are Me and Bobby McGee, and maybe Piece Of My Heart. But her image — larger than life — endures. Alice Echols' new biography of Joplin thoroughly examines her life and image, but the result is wholly unsatisfying.

Born in 1943 and raised in claustrophobic Port Arthur, Texas, Joplin grew into an "ugly duckling" teen. A vivacious, outgoing child ostracized by her classmates, who cruelly voted her "Ugliest Man On Campus," the preternaturally bright young woman became a social outcast. Purposely cultivating an unsavory reputation, she pushed the limits of propriety and parental authority by hanging with the town's lowlifes and beatniks until she escaped to college.

A self-professed folkie who gravitated to the music of Odetta and Leadbelly, Joplin barely attended classes, devoting all of her time to nearly nonstop partying and sexual explorations. She began singing at clubs and coffeehouses and nurtured her growing talent, which was sometimes fueled by copious amounts of legal and illegal substances

She dropped in and out of school, and attempted to live the conventional lifestyle of her parents a final time before abandoning any pretense of conformity. She explored Greenwich Village, but eventually settled in San Francisco just in time for the emergence of the hippies of Haight Ashbury.

In San Francisco, Joplin found a community that welcomed her as a kindred spirit. The burgeoning music scene was a hotbed of experimentation, socially, sexually and sometimes even musically. Bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Charlatans recognized Joplin's talent and outrageous character. She hung out -- and coupled -- with many of those involved. Country Joe McDonald had a relatively long-term relationship with her, and memorialized the singer in his song Janis, on his 1967 album Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die.

The Bay Area's "anything goes" attitude gave Joplin license to party even more. When she joined Big Brother and The Holding Company, a ragged hippie rock band, Joplin's astounding voice became its immediate focal point. Hailed as the Caucasian reincarnation of Bessie Smith and other black blues singers, Joplin and the band inked a typically exploitative contract with a smallish record label, quickly producing a low-fi album that was ignored by radio.

At the first (and only) Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, a now-legendary appearance by the group and its fiery vocalist attracted rabid attention from the music business. Bob Dylan's manager quickly displaced Big Brother's home-grown handler, and the rest of the band faded into the background, forever relegated to the role of Janis Joplin's first backup band. Columbia Records bought out their recording contract, and Big Brother made its real debut album under the tutelage of producer John Simon and engineer Elliot Mazer.

Though the album, dubbed Cheap Thrills, seemed like a live recording, all but one track — Ball and Chain — were cut in the studio. Simon and Mazer figured that the band's ragged playing would be more palatable if presented in a concert context, so they added fake audience tape-loops and canned applause, crafting a simulated live album.

Though the LP sold a million copies in its first month of release, Joplin was urged to abandon Big Brother by her manager, her record company and others. Subsequent musical accompaniment inarguably served her prodigious talents better. Big Brother recorded one album following her departure, before becoming a music history footnote.

Joplin's newfound celebrity and fortune enabled the acceleration of a Sybaritic lifestyle, as she made up for lost time. Her casual pansexual couplings, drug addictions, alcoholism and other passions undercut potential artistic and career growth. Echols lists many of Joplin's lovers, including Jets quarterback Joe Namath and musician Kris Kristofferson, who composed her posthumous hit, Me and Bobby McGee. But Janis felt lonely and unloved, despite the seemingly endless parade of short-term companions.

In October 1970, at the age of 27, she was found dead after an overdose of heroin, forming an immortal triumvirate of prematurely departed rock icons. Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix — Echols says Joplin had brief affairs with both — were dead within months of her.

Her enduring image as a red-hot mama and rock archetype inspired Bette Midler's film The Rose, which was originally touted as a Joplin biopic. Another Joplinesque movie is said to be under consideration, this one supposedly starring Melissa Etheridge, who says she draws inspiration from the late singer's bold life. Other women artists similarly express solidarity with Joplin's sexuality and legacy .

Echols' book is a sympathetic but nearly clinical exploration of Joplin's life. With ample research, including scores of interviews with friends, lovers and associates, it's clear that much earnest work went into this project, but the result is a scholarly tome, contrasting wildly with the subject's flamboyant life and work. The ferocious power of Janis Joplin hinted at here may be impossible to authentically convey in any non-aural medium.

Originally published March 14, 1999 in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Manly Pursuits: Boer-ing

Here's another one from the archives, assigned by Sun-Sentinel books editor, Chauncey "Definitely" Mabe.

Just discovered that this book is allegedly going to be turned into a movie called "The Colossus," directed by Sean Mathias and starring Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Ian McKellen and Colin Firth.



Prose is charming, but Boer War story is for the birds
By RICHARD PACHTER

Manly Pursuits. Ann Harries. Bloomsbury Publishing. 352 pages.

One of the biggest literary vanities, the one authors seem to get away with time after time, is the intermingling of fictional characters with real people; not merely the commonplace off-camera appearance of political leaders and cultural icons for texture, context and atmosphere, but actual interaction with past personages.

This is nothing new; Shakespeare's plays, of course, are populated with historical personages, and contemporary writers like erstwhile mystery-man Kinky Friedman routinely populates his potboilers with pals like Willie Nelson and Ratso Sloman.

So when South African author Ann Harries summons the personalities of Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, along with Cecil Rhodes, founder of the nation now known as Zimbabwe, it's hardly remarkable. And in this case, it is even less so.

Harries must have found it irresistible to resurrect these legends, weaving their doings into a story of her own. But other than Rhodes, they're bit players in the strange story of Francis Wills, an Oxford ornithologist who is lured by Rhodes to Africa in order to introduce English songbirds there in an attempt to save the colonist's life. On such silliness is Harries' story built.

Though her prose is charming and authentic-sounding, the preciousness of it all is vexing, as is Harries' conceit of naming her historical pastiche Manly Pursuits, with a lead character who is both effete and effeminate. One wonders if she's being ironic, man-hating or simply prosaic.

Regardless, the narrative ping-pongs between Francis Wills' childhood in mid-19th century England (with cameos by Charles Darwin and other contemporary celebs), and South Africa in 1899, on the eve of Rhodes' war with the Boers, to that point the chief colonizers of southern Africa.

Oscar Wilde comes and goes, much is made of Wills' childhood infirmities, and so on. Culminating in Wills' unhealthy fascination with a young girl, and a bungled effort at averting the inevitable war (which Rhodes interprets as a traitorous act), Harries' story inevitably ends with the disgraced protagonist's return to his homeland.

Unless Manly Pursuits was written in an arcane code, or is a symbolic tale in which the characters are intended as something other than what they appear, or is a bald-faced farce, one is left with the singularly unsatisfying residue of a highly skilled writer having expended her efforts for less than naught.

published June 13, 1999 in the Sun-Sentinel

Keith Moon

I'm a lifelong Who fan, having seen them at one of the first American shows in New York.

I've read just about everything about them I can get my hands on, so this review for the Sun-Sentinel in 1999 was a natural.



MOON: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend. Tony Fletcher. Spike. 608 pages.
BY RICHARD PACHTER

How many drummers in popular music ensembles are remembered 20 years after their deaths? How many are subjects of biographies, reminiscences and legends?

Now, when the majority of recorded percussion originates from computers instead of snares, tom-toms and cymbals, why does the abbreviated, brandy-soaked existence of a rock drummer matter? Tony Fletcher's massive new biography of Keith Moon, The Who's drummer, doesn't make much of a case for caring. It's strictly for fans with the stamina — and stomach — for this cautionary tale of success and excess.

A short, hyperactive child born into an otherwise unremarkable London working-class family in 1946, Moon impressed all with quick wits, brash manners and a profound inability to concentrate on schoolwork or other tasks. But when he discovered pop music and took up the drums as a teen, he also found himself.

After several short stints with semi-pro bands, he latched onto The Who — and completed them. They were an odd lot, even by early 1960s English rock standards. The guitarist was a pothead art student who regularly traded punches with the sullen singer, who was considered the group's sex symbol, but only by default. The bassist stood motionless at gigs as the others flew over the stage. Until Moon joined, the drum set was occupied by an older, incongruous — and clearly uncomfortable — gent. But Moon the Loon's histrionics were a better fit.

Moon's previous band, The Beachcombers, featured the young drummer's wild showmanship and attention-getting antics. Like Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa, the wild-eyed percussionist seized the spotlight. Moon could hardly bear it when the band went into a cover version of a current hit ballad, so he tossed his drum sticks, crossed his eyes, belched, pouted or crashed his cymbals for punctuation during soulful verses by the indefatigable crooner. The audience loved it.

Moon's audition for The Who is one of rock's great legends: He supposedly appeared at a gig in garish orange garb, hair bleached like a surfer's (or the London supposition thereof) and demanded the chance to sit in for their drummer, destroyed the drum set and was then hired on the spot. The tale's been told so many times that it's accepted as gospel. But author Fletcher insists that it's untrue. According to interviews with former bandmates and friends, Keith auditioned at a rehearsal hall and was offered the job a day or so later. Period. Fletcher also punctures other prevailing myths: Moon drove a car into a swimming pool on his 21st birthday; was banned from Holiday Inns for life; and even the drummer's purported year of birth (he was actually a year older).

Ample space is given to the claim that Moon was among the greatest rock 'n' roll drummers ever. Fletcher carefully makes the case. Though sonically dazzling, Moon never was a solid beat-keeper like Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Kenney Jones or other contemporaries. Indeed, Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham (another percussionist whose excesses hastened his premature demise) was far more proficient. But in The Who, Moon was almost a soloist — a lead instrumentalist — and no other drummer could do what he did, a fact proven by the inability of the aforementioned Jones to satisfactorily replace Moon after Keith's demise.

From London to L.A. and back to London, the ups-and-downs of Moon's life are recounted in painful detail. His outrageous sense of humor and flamboyant lifestyle provide entertaining anecdotes, but other than a few factual revelations, there's little new here. For hard-core Who fans, Fletcher's book is time well-spent. For others, an hour's documentary on VH1 will suffice.

published 2/24/99 in the Sun-Sentinel

John Irving

Though my old friend Don Lesser raved about his first novel, "Setting Free The Bears," it took another pal, Steve Rubin, to turn me on to the writing of John Irving.

I started with "Garp," and worked my way backward and forward, then stumbled over "Son of a Circus" and didn't finish it. But when "A Widow For One Year" came out, Chauncey Mabe at the Sun-Sentinel gave me an uncorrected manuscript and requested a review.
Irving is working on his next book, Last Night In Twisted River, scheduled to be published in 2009.

IRVING FLOUNDERS
COMPLEX TALE OF A WOMAN'S INVOLUTED LIFE NOT UP TO AUTHOR'S STANDARDS
By RICHARD PACHTER
published Sunday, May 3, 1998
A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR. John Irving. Random House. 608 pages.
The novels of John Irving have been popular successes and for the most part critical triumphs, despite their old-fashioned demands on readers' intelligence and literacy. Irving is rare among contemporary writers for declaring his intention of writing long books with multiple characters and story lines in the unfashionable tradition of Charles Dickens. He makes no concessions to the shortened attention spans of a public conditioned by television and movies.

A Widow for One Year marks both a departure from and a return to form (if not substance) for an author celebrating the 20th anniversary of The World According to Garp, his most celebrated novel. His last, A Son of the Circus (1995), sold moderately well and was kindly reviewed, but anecdotal evidence suggests it was not a hit with Irving's audience and does not seem to have won him many new fans.

Last year's collection of short stories, criticism and miscellanea, Saving Piggy Sneed, was weighted down by an interminably boring paean to collegiate wrestling, a fatal imbalance in so short an anthology.

The new novel exhibits Irving's expansive manner of spinning a tale that ranges through decades, hitting the major events in the lives of several characters. As always he foreshadows — if not telegraphs — many plot points, revealing perhaps too much information through chapter titles, as well as the title of the book. And he jumps around in time, as usual, which does create some extra interest: You may know what, but not quite how.

That kind of craft is hardly seamless, however, and Irving's trademark Single Horrific Violent Event, a feature of most of his works, occurs before the novel begins, though it is a critical defining element of the story.

When the story opens, Ruth Coe is 4 years old in 1958, born following the accidental death of her twin brothers, an event that catalyzes the disintegration of her parents' marriage. Her father, Ted Cole, is a serial adulterer and a successful author and illustrator of children's books. Marion, her mother, still numb from the death of her sons, is conducting an affair (arranged by Ted) with Eddie O'Hare, the father's 16-year-old assistant who resembles one of the dead boys. She is preparing to abandon husband, daughter and lover.

This affair is the defining element of Eddie's life. Later, as a moderately successful novelist, he recapitulates the older woman-younger man romantic motif endlessly, carrying a torch for Marion for the rest of his life.

Ruth becomes a writer, too, as are most of the characters, except for one who is her editor, and another, a reader who is a fan of all but one of the characters. So Irving writes about what he knows: writers, editors, readers — and as characters these are probably preferable to wrestlers.

After this set-up, the story moves 32 years forward, then ahead another five, to follow the fates of Ruth, Ted, Eddie and Marion.

While A Widow for One Year boasts the characteristic touchstones of Irving's best novels, it lacks the gravity and substance of Irving's better works. For example, in The World According to Garp, the inclusion of the title character's own writing works to marvelous effect. In this case, however, several passages composed of the writer-characters' "fiction'' bring the proceedings to a leaden halt.

Where A Widow for One Year most departs from the rest of Irving's oeuvre is in its characters, none of whom is very likable. They all have their reasons, of course, and loads of justifications for their motives, manners and actions, but any attraction this novel possesses is more a function of Irving's style rather than of any resonance arising from the characters and their situations. Irving has always featured complex, strong, even heroic women in his books, but Ruth Coe is the first female to take center stage as title character. Yet this is no cause for celebration, since she is set on a hapless and involuted path. Furthermore, the choice of title is puzzling, since the marriage it refers to is not nearly as significant as other events in Ruth's life.

The tale's inevitable conclusion elicits some strong emotions, but its willful sentimentality and cheapness is unmatched in any Irving novel.

Ultimately, A Widow for One Year is bound to disappoint those who have experienced the author's better novels, while new readers may wonder what all the fuss was about. They would best be directed to nearly any of Irving's earlier works.