![]() ![]() Released 50 years ago in January, Janis Joplin’s posthumous album is a striking testimony of her ability to create beautiful things from the pain inflicted on her by the outside world-just like the formation of a pearl occurs as the oyster’s response to an external irritant. Pearl emerged as the alchemical result of these two opposite forces. Describing her as “a woman in the throes of shredding her inhibitions by displaying her pain,” Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin explain in America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s that not even fan adoration managed to shake off this sadness: “On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone” would remain one of her most famous quotes. “I’m lonely,” she would often say, voicing a sentiment that seemed to have been present throughout most of her life. It was literally too much pressure.” Adding to the downward spiral-or, one could argue, precipitating it-was Janis’s own emotional unfulfillment. “She drank more, did more drugs, acted out & got arrested. “This period really was Janis’ undoing,” an entry on this website confirms. Unfortunately, this realization also coincided with an acceleration of Janis’s descent into the abyss, her self-destruction becoming more and more visible not only to people around her but also to the public in general. After various attempts at finding a competent backing ensemble she truly related to-she had left Big Brother & the Holding Company in 1968, and the subsequent Kozmic Blues Band only lasted throughout 1969-Janis was ecstatic to have finally gathered a group of musicians that adequately understood her: “I can tell those cats what to do and they’ll do it!,” Alice Echols quotes her saying in the Scars of Sweet Paradise biography. ![]() In the summer of 1970, Janis Joplin went on the Festival Express tour with her newly assembled band Full Tilt Boogie, with which she would record her final studio album Pearl. Fifty years on, Janis Joplin‘s posthumous album remains a striking testimony of her ability to create beautiful things out of the pain the outside world inflicted on her ![]()
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