50 Years Ago Today, Janis Joplin Suddenly Dropped Us
She was a wild one, but some of us need the storm to feel safe. — Atticus
On October 4th, 1970, at the Landmark Motor Hotel (7047 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90028) in room 105, Janis Joplin suddenly stopped — she had done all her boundary-breaking three years shy of 30.
16 days earlier, in London, UK, Jimi Hendrix had died of an overdose. Janis was next, then on July 3rd, 1971, Jim Morrison met the same fate. All three “Js” were 27 when they die, and thus the 27 club is formed to be joined years later by Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
While there’s no shortage of misfit stories floating around — none come close to Janis Joplin’s story. Her story had a much heavier weight of pain, which became her trademark. As is often the case with artists who burn brightly for a short time, Janis, to do what she did, the memorizing performances, needed the pain, which came from never belonging.
The pain came early, from the worst fate that can befall an American teenager, being unpopular. “They laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state,” said Janis while speaking with Dick Cavett on June 25th, 1970, about attending her 10-year high school reunion. That’s what happened back then to those who were different, who didn’t conform — before trolling on the Internet anonymously shouting down anyone you disagreed with. In turn, Janis would go on to embody tolerance (You do you, I’ll do me.) and outspoken liberalism in its purest non-political sense coupled with unpolished feminism than was uncomfortable to many.
Janis didn’t lean on anyone, she didn’t play barbie or house, she didn’t pretend for the media. She was raw talent, with no artificial ingredients, no manufactured image. Rock n roll, especially in the 60s and 70s, is ugly. Janis wasn’t afraid to get “ugly” with it, and she was beautiful because of it. Besides being a phenomenal singer (Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had “a devastatingly original voice”) and a mesmerizing power onstage, Janis was a junkie, an alcoholic, and indiscriminately promiscuous — but she never apologized to the mob. Janis spoke her truth and was one of the very few who lived their truth, which unfortunately was a relentless descent to self-destruction.
Fans labeled Joplin as the “The Queen of Psychedelic Soul.” Friends called her merely “Pearl.” Janis complained she was “the Queen of Unrequited Love.” She once confided to soul singer-guitarist Bobby Womack that she used heroin because it could “bury her thoughts and deaden her from the world.”
Janis’s self-destructive behavior wasn’t ground-breaking — Billie Holiday created that movie long before — but hers was public, a freestyle living along the lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda — ‘that all-out, full-tilt, hell-bent way of living’, without the love.
Janis’s end was like this:
On Saturday, October 3rd, 1970, Janis was at Sunset Sound Recorders, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, working on her 4th album, Pearl. Around 11:00 pm, after a good day of recording, she and the band went to Barney’s Beanery, for some food and drinks. Janis had a couple of screwdrivers. When friends she was supposed to have been meeting didn’t show up, Janis drove her psychedelic Porsche to the Landmark Motor Hotel, north of Hollywood Boulevard, where she was staying in room 105. She asked the hotel clerk to break a five-dollar bill for the cigarette vending machine, bought a pack of Marlboro Reds, and went to her room.
The next day, Janis, usually on time, didn’t show for the scheduled recording session. She was expected to provide the vocal track for the instrumental track of the song “Buried Alive in the Blues.” Her producer, Paul Rothchild, became concerned and called John Cooke, who was Full Tilt Boogie’s road manager. Around 8:00 pm, John entered Janis’s room to find her on the floor dead from what would be a heroin overdose; the theory being the heroin was much more potent than Janis was used to. Janis Joplin’s time of death is estimated to be 1:40 am on Sunday, October 4th.
For some reason, people still see Joplin as a victim. I can’t agree with this judgment. Joplin was far from a victim. She was a fearless woman who took the bull by the horns and was aware of the risks in doing so — Janis knew what she was doing. She crashed an all-boys club to become a rock star, on her terms. Undeniably Janis was intelligent, sensitive, and alive to everything around her. Thus she was sensitive and alive to her own pain, which made her vulnerable. Before turning 30, Janis became one of the most influential artists in American music with all this internal turmoil. Sadly, the alchemy of heavy drug use and excessive drinking caught up with her early.
Janis Joplin sang with more than her voice. Her involvement was total; she told the world what was in her heart and had a genuine commitment to delivery. Watching Janis Joplin videos of her performing at times hurts. You want to cry because it’s all too beautiful and painful at once. She was just herself. Janis wanted people to respond to her. She received attention, lots of attention, but not the acceptance she desperately wanted.
The cruel irony is Janis needed the pain Port Arthur conservatism, coupled with the judgment offered to those deemed not to belong, to sing heart-wrenching blues the way she did.
As years passed, people realized there’s be only one Janis Joplin. Judgment of her became much kinder than she was ever to herself. Rightfully she’s been called “the best white blues singer in American musical history” and “the greatest female singer in the history of rock ’n’ roll.”
Then some say as if to appear they’re in the loop, that neither her voice nor her health could stand the demands she made upon them, on stage and off. In an interview, when asked about her pedal-to-the-metal lifestyle, Janis answered: “Maybe I won’t last as long as other singers, but I think you can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.” Somehow, in a way, I cannot explain, Janis Joplin factures you.
Just as Janis Joplin was starting on a runway getting everyone high, she suddenly dropped everyone.
Afterward:
On Tuesday, January 12th, 1971, Pearl was released. In the US, the album goes to #1, as does the single “Me and Bobby McGee.” “Buried Alive in The Blues” is left on as an instrumental, and “Mercedes Benz,” a song Joplin recorded acapella on her last night alive on a whim, is included.
