Janis

Amy Berg's documentary charting the course that blues and rock singer Janis Joplin took from her childhood hometown of Port Arthur, Texas to San Francisco and then Los Angeles in the 1960s is filled with great clips and fantastic music (particularly the performance of the lesser-known "Little Girl Blue" shown at the conclusion). However, there's nothing here--not even the reading of letters Janis wrote home to her family--that will surprise anyone who has followed Joplin's career since her untimely demise in October 1970. Although she lived a wild, scattered but full-blooded life in her 27 years, Joplin's recording career was extremely brief (two albums, one with her first band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by a solo album, released posthumously). Janis as a human being was anything but predictable, and yet the myriad of documentaries chronicling her life and stardom all seem to cover the same territory, the sex-drugs-and-rock and roll high-life. Berg insulates Joplin here, as Joplin was insulated by the yes-men in her life who were trying to steer her career. We do not hear about the books Janis read (she was a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan), the movies she saw, how she felt about the war in Vietnam or the hippie movement or her second-rate (for her) performance at Woodstock. She is, of course, a tragic figure in popular music, but fleshing out that figure--giving us some surprising, intimate insights into her quirky personality--has yet to be achieved. **1/2 from ****

I will say up front that I am a fan of Janis Joplin and looked forward to seeing this (on the BBC) it details her life in chronological order from her days growing up in Port Arthur, Texas to her many incarnations with all of her bands including 'Big Brother and the Holding Company'.

There are interviews with friends, lovers and family. There is plenty of archive footage but only snippets of songs which includes the Monterey Pop appearance. Many songs are featured but the real reason here is to tell her story and her battles with drugs and alcohol and her of love of the blues, which she could sing so beautifully that even watching this I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

It is amazing how she managed to put so much emotion and passion into her music and it seems the people around it saw that in her too. Her firmament burnt for too short a time but while it did so it was also one of the brightest and most loved. I truly think this is a great tribute to Janis Joplin – not just the star but the person – highly recommended.

This documentary really brought me back to the 60s and 70s. It never ceases to amaze me how tough it is to be a creative artist, just think Brian Wilson or Amy Winehouse. We are introduced to Janis's early life and the many struggles she had to go through growing up. She leaves for California and finds her roots and her tribe with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The live performances really show the incredible rapport she had with her audience during a concert. Coming down from such a high must have been an insupportable task. Janis finds a true love during her time in Brazil which for her was very important. Her letters to her family and friends were filled with hope and optimism right up to her tragic death. Interviews with her various friends and colleagues all painted a picture of a very unique and spontaneous person. The world was truly inspired by a pure spirit.

Janis Joplin was sadly one of many rock stars to die young after overdosing on drugs. Unfortunately, this documentary is rather short on insight into who she was and why her life turned out the way it did. We're told she had a tough childhood, and then quickly, we're told how as a very young woman she ran away to San Francisco, became a singer and an addict, and nearly died. Yet all this is covered in just fifteen minutes; her career once famous fills out the rest of the programme, yet it might seem arguable that in a sense, the most important things in her life had already taken place before this began. There's also little discussion of her musical abilities; a lot about her personality and how she gave herself to her singing, but if her music doesn't move you, there's not a lot of dispassionate explanation here. A string of talking heads tell us how extraordinary, how full-of-life Janis was; but having watched them all, I still didn't feel like I knew her at all.

The recent documentary Amy, depicting singer Amy Winehouse's rise and fall at about the same age as Janis Joplin reminds me that all rockers are not the same, especially females. Janis: Little Girl Blue depicts Joplin as much more focused than Amy and much more in control of her own life. Except for in death, where both succumb to substance abuse, even the relatively more stable Amy.

This Janis doc does an effective job showing the arc of her brief life, from a country girl in Texas to the rocker who led the way for women in the industry and eventually the world. Why the eventual failure given her great fame and fortune? It's simple, really: She wanted to be loved, and not always finding that devotion, she could turn to music and drugs for support and fulfillment.

Along the way, the doc gives insight into what makes this blues mama run: In her own words she says ambition is the desire to be loved. She's not a "Cry Baby" about not getting the love she wanted from some of her friends and family; actually family members talk to us and appear to have supported her through it all.

Her straight-laced parents couldn't be expected to wholly embrace the counter-culture queen, who began innocently singing folk tunes in her early teens and ended singing blues that reminded one critic of "desperate mating calls." Professionally she gets plenty of love from the likes of Khris Kristofferson, whose Me & Bobby Magee was her best-selling single ever and band mate David Goetz, who observed that she turned into a caricature of the blues mama that the media had helped to create. Dick Cavett interviews her with an unusual affection different from his usually detached persona. At one point he can't remember if they were intimate—a nice touch of amnesia that doesn't belie a bit his attachment to her.

Janis: Little Girl Blue informs about Joplin's career from folk to hard blues, gives insight into the driving emotions of her ambition, and amply shows her singing talents that made her a child of Aretha Franklin and her own person.

A greatly satisfying bio of a great singer.