Janis Joplin’s Life Offstage Was Filled With Pain And Tragedy

Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in January 1943. She started performing in her teenage years — and was quickly outcast by her peers. The children at her high school called call her names such as "pig," "freak," or "creep." She later stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought."

The band first caught national attention after Joplin’s mesmerizing performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. After signing to Columbia Records, their album Cheap Thrills reached pole position on the Billboard 200 a year later. But Joplin had even bigger aspirations, so she left the band to forge a solo career.

Her career, however, went from good to great. The press started to see Joplin as the lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and so it was little surprise that in 1969 Joplin assembled her very own backing group. With the Kozmic Blues Band, she released her solo debut album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

As a result, Joplin recruited another group of more versatile musicians, The Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her second and final solo album, Pearl. Produced by Paul Rothchild, the LP spawned several Joplin classics including “Get It While You Can” and “Mercedes Benz.” Sadly, she didn’t live long enough to see it hit the shelves.

In 1970 Joplin became a member of the notorious 27 Club when she passed away in her hotel room in Hollywood. The star, who had battled alcohol and drug abuse throughout her career, died of a heroin overdose. She was found at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and friend, John Byrne Cooke.

As early as 1962, her peers marked Joplin out as someone who was different from normal people. She briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin and a profile of her early life was printed in the campus newspaper, The Daily Texan. It was headlined "She Dares to be Different."

She left Texas for San Francisco in January 1963. She said she had to "get away" from Texas "because [her] head was in a much different place." But it was this first jaunt in San Francisco where, as we've heard, she had her first brush with the law.

Joplin’s friends were shocked at the impact her hedonistic lifestyle was having on her. They arranged a party for her to pay for her trip back to her parents’ home in Texas to recover. This was despite Joplin later telling Rolling Stone, "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had."

But any attempt at happiness was only short-lived. Joplin suffered heartbreak in 1965 when she was dumped by her fiancé Peter de Blanc. The couple had announced their engagement earlier that same year.

A year later Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company despite her previous reservations about pursuing a rock and roll career. Indeed, the star had regularly visited a therapist to discuss her fears of relapsing if she continued to perform.

Joplin initially stayed clean after moving back to San Francisco. She had banned the encouragement of her bandmates from Big Brother and the Holding Company to help her. And she made sure no needles were used in her apartment.

Inevitably Joplin’s drug abuse began to affect her performances on stage. She was visibly high during a duet with Tina Turner at a 1969 Rolling Stones gig at Madison Square Garden.

In 1970 Joplin revealed she would attempt to put her high school demons to rest by attending a ten-year class reunion. She told TV host Dick Cavett that her fellow students had previously “laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state.”

In August that same year, 1970, Joplin booked a room at Hollywood’s Landmark Motor Hotel while recording her last studio album. Sadly, she spent much of her stint there pleading with her on/off lover Peggy Caserta.

Caserta refused to give Joplin the heroin she craved. But the star managed to get her hands on the drug through Caserta’s dealer. Myra Friedman and Albert Grossman, Joplin’s publicist and her manager, respectively, later claimed they had no idea that the Landmark Motor Hotel Joplin was staying at was a drug haven.

Joplin also discovered during this period that her fiancé Seth Morgan had been spending time with other women. The star had met the 21-year-old, a student at UC Berkeley and cocaine dealer, just a few months previously.

Joplin was also left saddened by the fact that both Caserta and Morgan stood her up for a pre-arranged visit at the Landmark Hotel. Just two days later, John Cooke, the road manager for the Full Tilt Boogie Band, drove to the hotel to see Joplin.

Joplin’s death came just over two weeks after the passing of another same-aged rock idol, Jimi Hendrix. And four years later Caserta published a book, Going Down with Janis, detailing her experiences with the star.

Joplin’s life story formed the basis of 1979’s Bette Midler-starring The Rose. The star was also the subject of the late 1990s musical Love, Janis and the 2015 documentary biopic, Janis: Little Girl Blue. The singer posthumously received an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys ten years later.

For some songwriters, the music industry can be divided into two eras: BJ ("before Joni") and AF ("after Joni"). It's true that songwriters were forced to up their game the moment Joni hit the ground running.

Joni’s mother was Scottish and Irish, and her dad was both white and indigenous Norwegian. In any case, Joni’s family was mostly just Canadian, and her dad proved his dedication to Canada.

After the war, Joni — who was born Roberta Joan Anderson — moved with her family to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which is where the family finally settled down. Joni got her first taste of an "ordinary" family life.

You can see Joni's lifelong love for painting by taking an extra look at some of her album covers, which the star painted herself. She called herself a "painter derailed by circumstance."

Not all of Joni's teachers were so supportive. A piano teacher once “hit me across the knuckles with a ruler and said, 'Why would you want to play by ear when you could have the masters under your fingers?’” Mitchell once recalled.

Kratzmann, though, encouraged Joni to express her pent-up emotions on paper. And she had some complicated emotions to work through in addition to being the well-traveled child of a military man.

As she grew, Joni became more enamored with music. She started out by performing in nightclubs in her late teens, which is where she was first introduced to genres such as folk and jazz.

The years Joni spent as a struggling musician are the subject of many of Joni's songs, but it's the story behind the song "Little Green" that caught many fans off guard decades after she first wrote it.

Joni knew what she wanted, and it wasn't motherhood. And although performing in smoky nightclubs and busy coffeeshops wasn't ideal, it gave Joni the chance to test out some of her new material. Her songwriting was raw, personal, and unique. One man was particularly struck by Joni's unusual talents.

Before long, he and Joni were scouring the U.S. together in search of gigs, first as partners and then as husband and wife. But Joni's star was on the rise, and she wasn't satisfied being part of a duo.

The man was successful musician and songwriter David Crosby from Crosby, Stills & Nash. Putting his connections in the music industry to good use, he helped Joni put together her first album.

"Both Sides, Now", one of Joni's most famous songs, appeared on Clouds. She later explained the inspiration behind the song, saying, "I was up in a plane. I was reading a book (by Saul Bellow) called Henderson the Rain King.

For Clouds, Joni earned her first Grammy Award. After Clouds came Ladies of the Canyon and then Blue, the album many consider to be Joni's best. "By the time she did Blue, she was past me and running towards the horizon," Crosby said.

"At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses," Joni once said. "I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong."

"I thought with Graham and I, our relationship was very strong. I thought that it was the last one I'd have, and so I disappointed myself when that wasn't so, and that's why I was so sad at that time," Joni once told filmmaker Cameron Crowe in an interview.

Although folk artists like Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens were beloved by many, women in particular felt pulled to Joni's music. Her vulnerable lyrics and passionate vocals struck a chord with female music lovers, too.

Joni stills owns all of her music, which is a feat considering how often her songs have been covered by other artists, especially at the beginning of her career.

In 2013, Joni controversially stated that she didn't "want to get a posse against men. I'd rather go toe-to-toe; work it out." Although some people claimed that Joni's definition of feminism was based on stereotypes, others noted how it came from a career spent battling for recognition in a male-dominated industry.

She joked, “Like Dylan plugging in and going electric. Like, 'Does this mean we have to do this now?'" Mitchell recognized that the personal nature of her work left a large impact, but it took a while for her to see it.

Although Joni's next few albums — which included For the Roses, Court and Spark, and Hejira — were successful, her experimentations with jazz fusion didn't always go over well with critics or fans.

To make matters worse, her next album, Mingus, became her worst-performing album since her career began in the 1960s. Although Joni's fans respected her for her ability to grow and change as an artist, the jazz album was too strong a departure.

Still, Joni resented the lasting dislike people had for her more experimental albums. She said, “I always thought that folk music wasn't a good title for me, except it was a girl with a guitar, and therefore a folk singer, right?"

By the '90s, Joni's music had somewhat returned to its original folk roots with the album Turbulent Indigo. But by that point, fans started to notice a change in Joni's style that had nothing to do with jazz or pop music. Her once bird-like singing voice, which could hit notes some singers could only dream of, started to sound deep and gravelly.

Regardless, by the 2010s, Joni had more pressing health issues to contend with. Although she'd announced her retirement back in 2002, she'd still spent the 2000s writing music. So when news broke of a major health issue in 2015, her fans were understandably shocked.

David Crosby said that Joni even had to learn how to walk again. Of course, fans couldn't help but wonder if Joni would ever be able to pick up a guitar or write a lyric ever again. So imagine people's surprise when Joni arrived as a surprise guest and performer at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022.

"I wasn't sure I would be able to sing. I have no soprano left, just a low alto. The spirit moved me. I forgave myself for my lack of talent," Joni later said, as published by Rolling Stone. A hush fell over the audience as Joni started to perform live for the first time in nine years. The audience knew they were witnessing something special, not to mention incredibly rare.

"I was delighted and honored. It gave me the bug for it," Joni said of her Newport performance, and she later told Brandi Carlile, "I want to do another show. I want to play again."