Joplin Quotes & Sayings

They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that's what I sounded like. You can't make up something that you don't feel. I didn't make it up. I just opened my mouth and it existed. — Janis Joplin

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I. — Janis Joplin

But she was in love, and love isn't about making sense. — Laura Joplin

I had a lot of hurts and confusions. You know, it's hard when you're a kid to be different. You're all full of things, and you don't know that it's about. — Janis Joplin

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards. — Janis Joplin

At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I'm gonna show 'em how to do it. — Janis Joplin

I'm just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that? — Janis Joplin

HENRY JOPLIN'S PRECEPT
Don't be friends with jerks. — R.J. Palacio

I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix. — Eddie Money

When I moved to L. A. with this little wimpy garage band, the first people we met were the Doors. Then we met Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. All of the people who died of excess were our big brothers and sisters. So I said to myself: How do you become a legend and enjoy it? The answer is to create a character as legendary as those guys and leave that character on the stage. — Alice Cooper

One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers. — Scott Joplin

When everything is together - the band, me, the audience, it's boss! It's just like magic. — Janis Joplin

I think that Stevie Nicks is one of the greats. Steve Nicks and Grace Slick and Janis Joplin have the real rock voices, to me. — Patti LuPone

When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it's the last minute of your life. — Janis Joplin

I remember the first time somebody played me Janis Joplin. My friend Donna put on Janis Joplin, and she said, 'You're like her.' At the time, I wasn't even a singer; I was a drummer. I just wanted to play the drums. — Sophie B. Hawkins

It was really special for Bass Pro Shops to take Tracker off the side and put Joplin, Missouri on there. They have helped me a lot this past week with putting together ways to raise money to help rebuild Joplin. It's my hometown. It was heartbreaking to see the tornado and see all the people that lost their homes and the ones that lost their lives. It is really special that Johnny let us put that on there. Hopefully we made some people proud tonight. — Jamie McMurray

Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw] the consequences, [screw] the implications of the actions, to hell with it all ... whatever happens as a result is better than the nothingness that is inevitable with silence. — Janis Joplin

You are what you settle for. — Janis Joplin

I think that there's a strong crossover in that Janis, studying the visual arts, was learning how to break it down into details and see how to get the expression that we wanted. And her visual art is emotionally expressive as her singing was. And, I think, when she switched over to singing, she already knew that it was something serious that you broke into pieces so she developed the ability to break it down and learn little riffs that she could throw in here and there. — Laura Joplin

The more you live, the less you die. — Janis Joplin

Don't you know that you're nothing more than a one night stand? — Janis Joplin

All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind. The bass was charging me. And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble. — Janis Joplin

I read a story about some old opera singer once, and when a guy asked her to marry him, she took him backstage after she had sung a real triumph, with all the people calling for her, asked, 'Do you think you could give me that?' That story hit me right, man. I know no guy ever made me feel as good as an audience. I'm really far into this now, really committed. Like, I don't think I'd go off the road for long now, for life with a guy no matter how good. Yeah, it's the truth. Scary thing to say though, isn't it? — Janis Joplin

You know you've got it, if it makes you feel good. — Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin didn't just sing a song, she took it over. She swallowed it whole, then sent it back through her gut and her heart. — Scott Simon

You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that. — Jon Bon Jovi

On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. — Janis Joplin

I don't think I sound like Janis Joplin. I'm a woman with a raspy voice. — Brittany Howard

Don't believe in ghosts but evidence points to the fact that the spirit of Janis Joplin puked all over your pad. — Kristen Ashley

She spent hours drawing on her own, trying to perfect her craft. And when she got into music, she had that same diligence in developing her own style as well as perfecting the craft of singing. I don't think that is part of the normal assumption of who sh — Laura Joplin

She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome. — John Green

I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I'm all over the place. — Hilary Duff

Never compromise yourself. You are all you've got. — Janis Joplin

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything. — Janis Joplin

The cult of celebrity in the '60s and '70s was really more reserved for movie stars or high socialites. Paparazzi didn't care about Janis Joplin. — Patti Smith

You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once? — Janis Joplin

I love being a star more than life itself. — Janis Joplin

I don't know what happened. I just exploded. I'd never sung like that before. I used to stand still and sing simple, but you can't sing like that in front of a rock band. You have to sing loud and move wild with all that in back of you. Now, I don't know how to perform any other way. — Janis Joplin

When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to begin to recognize me. — Scott Joplin

Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded "Me and Bobbby McGee" on ... Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes .. she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that ... — Sam Andrew

You can't stay in your home town and play because the two people will get tired of seeing you. — Janis Joplin

I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought. — Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin is singing with Big Brother in the Panhandle and almost everybody is high and it is a pretty nice Sunday afternoon. — Joan Didion

Hippies believe the world could be a better place. Beatniks believe things aren't going to get better and say the hell with it, stay stoned and have a good time. — Janis Joplin

I think I think too much. That's why I drink! — Janis Joplin

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn't start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not. — Janis Joplin

I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it — Janis Joplin

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind. — Patti Smith

To her audience, Janis Joplin has remained a symbol, artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity never derived from her musical ability, but from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours. — Jon Landau

I'd rather not sing than sing quiet. — Janis Joplin

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone. — Janis Joplin

I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins. — Janis Joplin

You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for — Janis Joplin

I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what soul is all about. — Janis Joplin

Let me see you do the 'rag time dance' ...
Turn left and do the 'Cake walk prance' ...
Turn the other way and do the 'Slow drag' ...
Now take your lady to the world's fair ( ... )
And do the 'rag time dance.' — Scott Joplin

Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl. — Janis Joplin

My father wouldn't get us a TV, he wouldn't allow a TV in the house. — Janis Joplin

My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag.' — Miranda Leek

We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pile of manure in the yard he destroyed his life. We care that Scott Joplin's music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own. — Alice Walker

I didn't want to look like anyone else - like Janis Joplin or Grace Slick. That's why I never went to any of the big designers. — Stevie Nicks

The music began, and it was one of those life-changing moments. I saw an artist, Janis Joplin. She was exhilarating. She was vibrating. And she was like no other artist that I had ever seen before ... It struck me that hard. Maybe the word is epiphany, when you get that special sensation. — Clive Davis

Watching artists like Joplin perform, I felt that tingle down my spine; I experienced the wonders of a cultural and musical revolution. — Clive Davis

People hear a powerful female singer in a rock and roll band, and they say, 'Janis Joplin.' I think people just make that comparison because it's easy. But I don't think I sound like her at all. — Brittany Howard

Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself. — Janis Joplin

All any girl really wants is just love and a man. But what man can put up with a rock-n-roll star? — Janis Joplin

I can't talk about my singing; I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of? — Janis Joplin

I know about Woodstock probably as much as your average person who is over 30, where I'd know Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead. — Demetri Martin

History has a way of coming back to you. In the case of Janis Joplin appearing at the festival in 1968, her performance affected the life of a Bostonian who is now a member of the Newport Festivals Foundation Board of Directors. Ward Mooney was so affected and emotionally involved in Janis' performance at Newport, that when he heard the festival was going nonprofit, he knew wanted to become a part. Janis was beautiful, gracious and respectful, and the power of her Newport performance continues to live on. — George Wein

Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the blame.
But when she was dying
Lord, we let her down.
There's no use cryin'
It can't help her now.

The party's all over
Drink up and go home.
It's too late to love her
And leave her alone.

Just say she was someone
Lord, so far from home
Whose life was so lonesome
She died all alone
Who dreamed pretty dreams
That never came true
Lord, why was she born
So black and blue?
Oh, why was she born
So black and blue?

Epitaph (Black And Blue)
Written by: Kris Kristofferson
Note: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin. — Kris Kristofferson

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable. — Janis Joplin

To be true to myself, to be the person that was on the inside of me, and not play games. That's what I'm trying to do mostly in the whole world, is not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else. — Janis Joplin

The older the grapes, sweeter the wine. — Janis Joplin

By the time my first solo record came out, I was making a handsome living as a record producer. I had worked with the Band, Janis Joplin and all of these other artists in the Albert Grossman organization. So as my so-called solo career evolved, I never felt pressure that I had to come back and top when I might've done before. — Todd Rundgren

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf

To this day, there's nobody, nobody that sounds like Janice Joplin. — Clive Davis

Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person. — B.B. King

Coyote: A small canid (Canis latrans) native to western North America that is closely related to the American wolf and whose cry has often been compared to that of Sippie Wallace and Janis Joplin, amongst others. — Sherman Alexie

You better not compromise yourself, it's all you've got. — Janis Joplin

Nicky Egan has the finesse of Bonnie Raitt merged with the primal force of Janis Joplin. It is a rare combination. Her passion is a joy to behold - and her talent is undeniable. She belongs in any conversation about great contemporary female soul singers. If you're up for a revelatory evening, then put her high on your list. — Steve Morse

What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians ... All publication s masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article ... That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music ... Joplin ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often players lost the effect entirely by playing too fast. — Scott Joplin

I'm part of an industry that everybody wants to be a part of. I do hang out with a lot of sort of powerful, interesting people like Bella Freud or Jay Joplin or Tracey Emin. I'm part of that group of people. Brit artists who are doing things. That's what I do. Some of them happen to be aristocrats. — Duncan Roy

The intensity with which Janis Joplin sings, you simply can't find a singer like that. It's almost scary the amount of emotion and energy and passion she puts into her performance. — Michael Wadleigh

It's hard to be free but when it works, it's worth it! — Janis Joplin

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. — Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin has one of the most distinguished female voices of the decade. It is a voice that has been aged in Southern Comfort and cured with Kahlua and milk. It is a voice that cuts you like a razor, but you can still hear the innocence in it, a claim to purity that soars out of the garbage of her throat, carrying evil harmonies. — Al Aronowitz

When I got hoarse, the manager would say, 'Drink this. Joplin used to drink this,' and I used to say, 'Joplin? Joplin's dead. — Cyndi Lauper

I think no-one was surprised to hear that Janis Joplin was dead. She seemed to be living up all of her energy that she had to give in just a few years. Now you listen to covers of her songs by various women, and it's pale in comparison. — Michael Wadleigh

You're only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody's dishwasher that's their own f***ing problem. If you don't settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you'll end up anything you want to be. — Janis Joplin

The late, great Janis Joplin could drink ten men under the table, then sing loud enough to shake the teeth out of their head. — Shawn Amos

What we've had to do is learn to control success, put it in perspective, and not lose the essence of what we're doing - the music. — Janis Joplin

Marching onward, marching onward
Marching to that lovely tune
Marching onward, marching onward
Happy as a bird in June

Sliding onward, sliding onward
Listen to that rag
Hop and skip now do that slow, oh
Do that slow drag

Dance slowly, prance slowly
Now you hear that pretty rag
Dance slowly, prance slowly
Now you do the real slow drag

Waltz slowly, waltz slowly
Listen to the ragtime
Hop and skip
Now do the slow, oh, do the slow drag — Scott Joplin

Nikki Lamborn has the best female rock voice since Janis Joplin and I know what I'm talking about, I knew Janis. — Roger Daltrey

Purity of action guided Janis's behavior. If she was going to be good, she was very, very good. If she was going to be bad, she let all the stops out. Anything less than full commitment to an idea of activity was 'hypocritical', the worst adjective anyone could hurl at another. — Laura Joplin

To be honest, I've made a game out of trying to live through my James Dean, Janis Joplin, Freddie Prinze, Jim Morrison period, those demons that we all have that we're either successful or not at making work for us rather than destroy us. — Patrick Swayze

We weren't very professional; she could have gone to almost any town and put together a smoother ensemble, but we were pioneers, and professional musicians probably wouldn't have come up with what we did ... professional musicians probably wouldn't have given Janis Joplin the space to be herself, which was probably our greatest gift to her — Sam Andrew

If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time. — Janis Joplin

When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills. — Janis Joplin

He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union. It wasn't John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance - that job fell on the shoulders of a Jewish carpenter. — Glenn Beck

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? — Janis Joplin

I remember my mom dressed like Janis Joplin. — Bryan White