The Joplin siblings sold considerable song rights and life rights to Sony Pictures during the 1990s, and so relinquished any significant control over their sister’s cinematic portrayal. One thing that would boost Joplin’s 21st-century profile is a feature film. “At this point I think someone else can do this better than we can,” she said. Joplin said, the seismic shifts in the post-digital music industry demand an expertise she and her brother (who lives in Tucson) lack. Running her sister’s estate “was not something I intended to do, and certainly not something you can get a lot of training in.”Īnd now, Ms. Joplin said from her home in Paradise, Calif. “I had an incredible amount of grief over Janis’s death,” Ms. Laura Joplin was 21 when her sister died and 27 when she and her brother stepped in for their aging parents to run the family business. How would they know what it was like?”Īmong the less-considered ramifications of rock star deaths are the mismatched partnerships left in their wakes as grieving families struggle to make sense of careers they didn’t choose. “They thought we brought her into a room and shot her full of heroin. “They thought we murdered Janis, not to put too fine a point on it,” Mr. Joplin described the partnership now as “cordial.” The Joplin and Big Brother camps have often been less than friendly. Getz, Sam Andrew and Peter Albin) and the estates of Joplin and the guitarist James Gurley, who died last year. Profits from the two albums Joplin made with Big Brother, notably “Cheap Thrills” and its hit single “Piece of My Heart,” are split among the three surviving band members (Mr. Jampol’s presence might provide a new avenue of communication between the singer’s family and her old band mates. Jampol about the estate’s initial opposition to “Can’t Be the Only One,” he was told that a “new” Joplin-penned song, even without her vocals, would be squandered on such a small-scale project. Jampol emphasized his intention to expand the Joplin enterprise while honoring the singer’s “authenticity.” In choosing projects, he said, “the first question we ask is, Will this stand proudly next to Monterey Pop and ‘Me and Bobby McGee?’ ” Jampol said the Joplin estate would next year co-produce “One Night With Janis,” a touring theatrical production of Joplin songs. Jampol, a producer of this year’s Doors documentary, “When You’re Strange,” is also working with Spitfire Pictures on a feature-length Joplin documentary, with access to rarely seen footage shot by Joplin’s road manager John Byrne Cooke. Jampol has an ambitious blueprint to end what he calls Joplin’s “fallow period.” Working closely with the Joplins, he has sketched a one- to three-year business plan that includes Made for Pearl, a Joplin-inspired line of jewelry, accessories and clothing based on items worn by the singer at least two books (a follow-up to Laura Joplin’s 1992 “Love, Janis” and a critical appreciation) vinyl collector editions of her albums two reproductions of her Gibson Hummingbird guitar an iPhone app allowing custom mixes of Joplin songs and the tour of the Strange Kozmic Experience exhibition of Joplin, Hendrix and Morrison memorabilia, now at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. His firm, Jampol Artist Management in Los Angeles, handles the estates of the Doors frontman Jim Morrison, the country rocker Gram Parsons, the reggae legend Peter Tosh and the ’80s funk star Rick James. Yet “Can’t Be the Only One” is one of the few projects coinciding with the 40th anniversary of her passing. Joplin died of a heroin overdose at 27, alone in a Los Angeles motel room in the early morning hours of Oct. Getz sought legal advice, and he was assured of his rights as the song’s co-author, he said. Anything involving the Joplin estate has to go through us.’ ” Not for the first time throughout an often contentious four-decade relationship with the Joplin family, Mr. Getz immediately heard from Joplin’s heirs: “I got an e-mail saying, ‘You can’t do this. Getz had 500 copies of the CD made, selling them through iTunes and other Internet sites.Īs he expected, Mr. Getz, still drumming with Big Brother, released “Can’t Be the Only One,” the first solo album of his career, which includes two versions of the bluesy title song. Within days, Joplin gathered her band mates in a room at the Chelsea Hotel and announced that she was going solo. The song, “Can’t Be the Only One,” with words by Joplin and music by Mr. IN the late summer of 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company had nearly finished recording “Cheap Thrills” when Janis Joplin, the band’s singer, slipped the drummer Dave Getz a set of lyrics she’d handwritten to accompany a piano riff he had been practicing.
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