Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin was the skyrocket chick of the sixties the woman who broke into the boys club of rock and out of the stifling good-girl femininity of postwar America. With her incredible wall-of-sound vocals Joplin was the voice of a generation and when she ODd on heroin in October 1970 a generations dreams crashed and burned with her. Alice Echols pushes past the legary Joplin-the red-hot mama of her own invention-as well as the familiar portrait of the screwed-up star victimized by the era she symbolized to examine the roots of Joplins muscianship and explore a generations experiment with high-risk living and the terrible price it exacted.. A deeply affecting biography of one of Americas most brilliant and tormented stars Scars of Sweet Paradise is also a vivid and incisive cultural history of an era that changed the world for us all.