Janis Joplin (Happy 70th Birthday)

I was not a huge fan of the singer Janis Joplin until I heard her talking—not singing—talking.

Janis once said:  “On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.”  But that hardly describes her stage presence.  Set on stage, singing, and washed perhaps a bit too brightly by spotlights, Janis Joplin convulsed with energy.  Singing, she became a blend of rock-crusher and silk scarf—one moment belting out the whiskey blues the next wrapped around a microphone, breathlessly whispering. 

Spirited live performances propelled Janis Joplin to solid fame in the late 1960s.  She blazed there for several years as a premiere rock artist.  Then, on October 4, 1970 she died of a heroin overdose, a victim of the rock and roll curse of being the age of 27 and at the peak of popularity, just the same as Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Curt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.  At the time of her death Janis was putting the final touches on her Pearl recordings.  The album Pearl went platinum and held the number one spot on Billboard’s Top 200 for several weeks after release in January of 1971.

Janis cackled when she laughed.  She screeched.  She hid behind her frizzy mass of hair.  Sometimes the music of her back-up bands seemed to be punching her in the guts.  But underneath all of that—below the tie-dye and the hippie slang—resided a sweet and articulate young woman.

Dick Cavett, the talk show host, seemed to have an honest connection with Janis.  Watching her on his show is where I first came to really appreciate her.  After only a few seconds of watching her conversations with Cavett I realized that she was one of us: a real person underneath a lurid stage performer.  Underneath the loud clothing was a vulnerable high school outcast, a painter, a reader of books.  I fell for her as I watched her on that show.

“I’m one of those regular weird people,” as she once remarked.

Indeed. 

Yesterday would have been Janis Joplin’s 70^th birthday.

--Mitchell Hegman