It's been said Janis Joplin was second only to Bob Dylan as the 'creator-recorder-embodiment of her generation's mythology'. But how did a middle-class girl from Texas become a '60s countercultural icon?
Janis' parents doted on her and promoted her early talent for art. But the arrival of a brother shattered the bond she had with her intellectual maverick of a father, an oil engineer. And her own maverick instincts alienated her from her socially conformist mother. That break with her parents, along with the rejection of her high school peers, who disapproved of her beatnik look and racially progressive views, and wrongly assumed she was sexually promiscuous, cemented her sense of herself as an outcast. She found her tribe with a group of offbeat young men a year ahead of her, who loved her intellectual curiosity, her passion for conversation, and her adventurous search for the blues. Although she never stopped craving the approval of her parents and hometown, she left Port Arthur at seventeen determined to prove she could be loved.
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