On the Road with Janis Joplin Audiobook

Quotes

• “Janis Joplin was absolutely a barnstormer and a complete groundbreaker. She wasn’t just a great woman in rock—at the time she was the woman in rock. Janis really created this whole world of possibility for women in music: without Janis Joplin, there would be no Melissa Etheridge. Without Janis, there would be no Chrissie Hynde, no Gwen Stefani.”

  — Rosanne Cash, multiple Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter

• “When John Bryne Cooke…witnessed it all: her breakup with her Big Brother and the Holding Company band; her European tour; her appearance at Woodstock; and even her tenth high school reunion in Port Arthur, Texas. In this memoir, he writes about his close association with a woman performer who wanted to live as much as she could.”

  — Barnes&Noble.com, editorial review

• “As someone who worked for and also befriended Joplin, Cooke has a unique perspective, writing both about his own experiences on the road and painting a picture that covers the full spectrum of Joplin’s personality as an artist and a person, as well as the world she lived in. An accomplished musician himself, Cooke is able to write about Joplin’s music with not only the critical precision of an expert but also the unmitigated joy of a peer who knows exactly how amazing her talent as a singer and performer really was…Though it only covers the last three of her twenty-seven years, all these factors combine with Cooke’s insider perspective to make this the most thorough exploration written about Joplin’s life.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “Cooke provides an intimate, affectionate look back at his time with Janis in his newest book. Joplin is a legend and it is all too easy to forget that legends are also people of their times and environments. Cooke’s book is a valuable insight into the performer as a living, breathing person, with her own all-too-human strengths and vulnerabilities. The author may be one of the few people left in the world with that kind of perspective on her, so it’s a good thing that he is a gifted writer, letting Joplin’s vivaciousness and intensity shine throughout the work. Verdict: Rock music fans will love reading this up-close view of Joplin. The end of the book feels like losing her all over again.”

  — Library Journal

• “A memoir of the author’s time working for the spellbinding Janis Joplin. Most of the action in former road manager Cooke’s narrative takes place in venues like Monterey, the Chelsea Hotel and the Haight, but it’s when Joplin is at home in the Lone Star State, among straights and squares and beehive-haired classmates, that Cooke’s account takes off…Joplin emerges as someone we all might like to have known.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “[Janis Joplin] perfectly expressed the feelings and yearnings of the girls of the electric generation—to be all woman, yet equal with men; to be free, yet a slave to real love; to [reject] every outdated convention, and yet get back to the basics of life.”

  — Lillian Roxon, noted Australian journalist, music critic, author, and “mother of rock”

• “Cooke’s pleasing voice, while not compelling, is well suited for these ruminative chronicles. They make clear that artists like Joplin were thoroughly devoted to their art and love of music.”

  — AudioFile