Songwriter and friend Johanna Hall speaks on the debt we owe the rock goddess, Janis Joplin on Esquire.com.

EXCERPT: “Janis Joplin is getting a Forever stamp. She’d have liked that, with her fierce ambition, her fear of being forgotten, and the creative striving that drove her brief career. She set an example for all the powerful, complicated performers who came after her, who were unafraid to unleash their talent into the world and didn’t fit into a ready-made mold. Janis certainly didn’t fit the image of the pretty girl singer. Instead she roared on stage at Woodstock 45 years ago this month, expressing deep hunger and psychic pain in an extravagant performance that catapulted her into the national consciousness.”

Read the full article here: http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a23761/janis-joplin-2014/