My Favorite Dead Rock Star – Janis Joplin
Women in rock, a subject always fascinating and when we talk about dead rock stars, we very often enter a world of glamor on the outside and rottenness on the inside, drug abuse, ecstasy followed by deep depression, orgies and hard work that consumes everything.
One of the most tragic life stories is that of Janis Joplin. Born in 1947 in Port Arthur, TX, she was found dead just 27 years later in a motel room near the Los Angeles recording studio where she was recording her latest album.
“On stage, I make love to 25,000 people and then I go home alone” – Janis Joplin
His posthumous version of Kris Kristoffersen’s Me And Bobby McGee went to No. 1 on the US charts, and the Pearl album, which contains Bobby McGee, Mercedes Benz, an acapella recording of the first take, and Buried Alive. In The Blues, which remained pivotal due to Janis’s death, was Janis Joplin’s biggest hit.
Her previous release “Cheap Thrills”, recorded with “Big Brother And The Holding Company” gave us a deep insight into Joplin’s mind, her deep despair and unhappiness. “Piece Of My Heart,” “Ball and Chain,” and “Summertime” can give you goosebumps, especially if you’re already down. When Joplin moved to Los Angeles and joined the Holding Company, he soon started drinking and using drugs, and within a year or so she was ready for hospital and sanatorium treatment. Instead, she went out and put on one of the greatest live performances in rock history at the Monterey festival.
Joplin admitted more than once that her life had been deeply unhappy, but that she finally found a way out in singing. Shortly before her death, Janis was back in Port Arthur for a high school reunion, and when asked in an interview if she was popular in high school, she replied that her classmates “laughed at me outside of school.” class, out of town and out of state”
Janis Joplin has been an idol and figurehead of the gay movement since her death, even though she was not gay. But his deep desperation to “be different,” to not fit in, has been carried over into his music, thus making it an expression of the experiences of most gay people early in life.
About a month before she died, Joplin became engaged to Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old Berkley student, drug dealer, and poet. On October 4, 1971, she failed to show up at the recording studio and it was discovered that she had died of a heroin overdose.
What if Janis hadn’t died that day, would we have lost a great singer of happiness?