Janis Joplin: The life of the rock legend
A look at the life of an icon who revolutionized rock music.
Feminine icon of the Summer of Love and member of the 27 Club, Janis Joplin stamped the music industry with her rebellious attitude and tremendous husky voice. Let’s look back into the short and turbulent life of the woman who became a rock legend.
Translated by Justine Vos
Getty Images1/7Texas childhood
Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19th, in Port Arthur, Texas. She had a quiet Upper Middle-Class childhood - her father worked in petrol - going to church with her parents and two siblings. Things started to change during her high school and later university years. Showing a keen interest in the arts and defending the black cause, Janice didn’t fit into the usual slots and was rejected by her peers. The fact she had bad acne and was somewhat overweight didn’t help. She was even named “Ugliest guy on campus” during her short spree at The University of Texas in Austin. Needless to say that she got her own back at the height of her career in 1970 when she attended a school reunion.
Getty Images2/7An artist with a tortured mind
Mistreated by her classmates, Janis Joplin grew up in a constant rage. Yet her rebellious stance hid a kind-hearted soul: "People expect Janis Joplin to be a tough bitch, and say I start talking to them like a lonely little girl - that's not in their image of me - they don't see it." After leaving home at 17, in 1963, she started singing in Houston coffee shops. Three years later, she set out alone and hitchhiked to San Francisco, beatnik capital of the world. While singing in bars, she improved her voice and pitch revealing the hoarse, husky tones that made her famous. Janis Joplin expressed herself through her songs. Repressed feelings, rage, solitude, and failure were mixed into lyrics and her strong vocal performances. At the age of 23, Joplin had become the quintessential woman of the liberated 60s: Sex, drugs, alcohol, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Getty Images3/7Short but sweet success
June 4th, 1966. The day Janis Joplin’s career took a leap. Scouted by producer Chet Helms, she joined the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and The Holding Company. In June of the following year, the band’s performance at the Monterey Festival, birthplace of the Flower Power movement, was a triumph. The audience was awestruck by Joplin’s incredible, possessed performance and husky voice. "It's a supreme emotional and physical experience," she said at the time. After the concert, Big Brother were offered a contract with Columbia Records and released the album Cheap Thrills in August 1968. But Janis Joplin’s heart was no longer in it. She left the band at the end of that year and set up Kozmic Blues Band, whose vibes were a mix of funk, blues, soul, and pop. On August 16th, 1969, Janis Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band performed at Woodstock. Back to her old addictions, the singer used a mix of cocaine and alcohol to calm her nerves. The explosive cocktail brought on a poor performance. So much so that Joplin asked the festival’s organizers to leave it out of the video. The Kozmic Blues Band split in December 1969 and Joplin set up the Full Tilt Boogie Band in early 1970. While recording the first album, Pearl, she suffered from a cocaine overdose in a Los Angeles hotel. She was 27. The height of her career lasted 4 years, yet Joplin’s music still makes its mark today.
Getty Images4/7The 27 Club
In October 1970, Janis Joplin died from an overdose at the age of 27. “Drinks are on Pearl”, she’d written in a will a few days before her death, leaving $2 500 for a post-mortem party in her honor. Her friend Jimi Hendrix had succumbed three weeks earlier. Both musicians entered the legendary realms of the 27 Club, the posthumous group of rock legends who died suddenly at the height of their brief career. “Live fast, die young” could be the motto of members Alan Wilson, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson, and later Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse. If the 1967 Summer of Love marked the beginning of the Flower Power movement, the Monterey Festival also revealed three music legends Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding (deceased at the age of 26). An unfortunate coincidence that has reinforced the myth.
Getty Images5/7Hippie chick
Though more beatnik than hippie, Janis Joplin nevertheless became a key figure of the Summer of Love. Her conventional childhood appearance changing into a freer, natural style. Her face puffy from regular alcohol and drug consumption, her hair wild and unkempt. She wore round glasses and feather boas mixing precious materials like silk and satin with costume jewelry and toy rings. Flared jeans, embroidered jackets, loose flowing dresses… She was the iconic hippie chick. As was her attitude. Joplin would drink her favorite liquor on stage and insult the public in a state of inebriation with copious “Motherfuckers”. "I just want to feel as much as I can,", she said, "it's what soul is all about."
Getty Images6/7A true artist
As a child, Janis Joplin loved to draw, and grew up thinking she’d be a painter. She portrayed her family, sketched strangers… Galleries still showcase nowadays her studies and silkscreen prints. Music came later, in her teen years when she developed a passion for rhythm and blues and the likes of Big Mama Thornton. That’s when she discovered how powerful her voice could be: a strong and direct way of expressing the melancholic thoughts she’d already written as poems, like the song One Good Man (1969). with her melancholy and sadness, Janis Joplin felt closer to the Beat Generation, a prior artistic movement. "Hippies believe the world could be a better place. Beatniks believe things aren’t going to get better and say the hell with it, stay stoned and have a good time." A good time, she certainly had. When she sang, on stage, her whole body would perform as if in a trance-like state. That’s what made her art. "I always wanted to be an artist," she stated, "whatever that was. Like other chicks wanted to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought."
Getty Images7/7A venerable source of inspiration
"Superstars just fade, but cultural heroines die-hard," wrote Rolling Stone magazine in October 1970. Even with a short career, Janis Joplin went down in music and marked American history forever. Upon announcement of her death, fans flocked to her house in Larkspur, north of San Francisco, replacing her mailbox with a "This is Temporary Hell" sign. Janis Joplin has inspired generations of artists such as Pink, Florence Welch, and Stevie Nicks. She helped women singers and musicians to find their place in an almost all-male 1960s industry. To this day, her albums and artworks continue to sell like hotcakes. In November 2013, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. Several biographies have also been published, including a controversial version in 1974 by ex-girlfriend and drug-addict Peggy Caserta. After a documentary released in 2015, there’s talk of a biopic for the big screen. Janis Joplin lives on. Watch this space.
