The cause of death was not immediately determined, but the police said she apparently died of an overdose of drugs. They said she had been dead for about two hours when she was found shortly after 10 P.M.
Miss Joplin was the second noted pop singer to die in less than three weeks. Jimi Hendrix, 27, died in London Sept. 18 after taking nine strong sleeping tablets.
Former lover Peggy Caserta said, “I saw her foot sticking out at the end of the bed. She was lying with cigarettes in one hand and change in the other. For years it bothered me. How could she have overdosed and then walked out to the lobby and walked back? I’ve overdosed, and you crumble on the floor like how they found Philip Seymour Hoffman. I let it go for years, but I always thought, ‘Something is wrong here.”
Joplin, who was wearing sandals with a “tiny hourglass heel,” had tripped on the room’s deep shag carpet, fallen and broken her nose, which led her to asphyxiate.
She would stand before her audience, microphone in hand, long red hair flailing, her raspy voice shrieking in rock mutations of black country blues. Pellets of sweat flew from her contorted face and glittered in the beam of footlights. Janis Joplin sang with more than her voice. Her involvement was total.
She lived that way, too. The girl from Port Arthur, Tex., who moved to stardom by way of the San Francisco rock upsurge, talked openly of the Southern Comfort she drank and of the joys of being inebriated. With the same abandon that she sang, she drove her Porsche through the hills of San Francisco, a fast looking car, decorated with psychedelic butterflies.
"When I get scared and worried," she said at the time, "I tell myself, 'Janis, just have a good time.' So I juice up real good and that's just what I have."
The day before, Janis met his trusty pusher George, which, before selling heroin to his customers, he always checks the quality. This time, however, George has not had time to do it: too many urgent requests to be processed. And then that the consignment of heroin had to be a supplier to the above suspicion. Yet, it seems that the drug that killed Janis is 40/50 times more powerful than the average, and that in those days in Los Angeles, will count another dozen overdose deaths.
Janis Lyn Joplin (Port Arthur, 19 gennaio 1943 – Hollywood, 4 ottober
1970). Joplin, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, was well known for her performing ability. Audiences and critics alike referred to her stage presence as "electric". Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold in the USA.
Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. She followed Creedence Clearwater Revival. Despite her reportedly not even knowing of the festival's existence until a few days earlier, the Woodstock promoters advertised her as a headliner. She thus became one of the main attractions of the historic concert. Her friend Peggy Caserta claims in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she had encouraged a reluctant Joplin to perform at Woodstock
"When you get too close to the fire," remarks Laura Joplin, Janis beloved younger sister, "ends that you burn. Some sides of its existence were excessive and extremely risky:
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