Janis Joplin - Buried Alive in the Blues

The rock world was still in shock over the death of Jimi Hendrix, on that 4th of October 1970, when news arrived that the lifeless body of Janis Joplin had been found at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood, California. Fifteen days after the passing of the great guitarist, the most "blues" female voice in rock history fell silent too. The report by Dr. Noguchi, chief coroner of Los Angeles County, left no room for doubt: the American singer had died the day before, killed by a heroin overdose. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered over the ocean, along the coast of Marin County, facing the sea.

Thus ended, at just 27 years old, the restless existence of Janis Joplin. A life lived dangerously, amid drugs and alcohol, ever since, at barely twenty, she had fled her "hometown prison," as she called Port Arthur, Texas, the city where she was born on January 19, 1943. Her father worked at a tin-can factory, her mother was employed at a college. Overweight and with skin scarred by acne, Janis was a girl full of complexes, who sought refuge in music. So, at 17, she dropped out of college and ran away from home, to follow in the footsteps of her favorite musical idols: Odetta, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith.

She started out performing in country & western clubs in Houston and other Texas cities. As soon as she had enough money, she took a bus to California. It was the hippie era, and Janis became part of various communes, settling in San Francisco for a few years. By chance, she returned to Texas in early 1966, shortly before a friend of hers, Chet Helms, became the manager of a new rock band, "Big Brother and the Holding Company."

The band needed a female vocalist, and Helm thought of Janis. He contacted her and convinced her to return to San Francisco. The fusion of Joplin's abrasive voice with the band's rough acid-blues proved to be a winning combination. The group quickly became popular throughout the San Francisco area and was invited to play the Monterey rock festival in 1967. It was a triumphant performance, one Janis Joplin would repeat two years later, this time as a solo artist, at Woodstock.

Their debut album followed, titled simply with their name, Big Brother and the Holding Company. A series of concerts across the United States came next. Janis Joplin's performance in New York, in particular, thrilled the critics. The success convinced her to leave the band in 1968 to pursue a solo career, right after the release of their second album, Cheap Thrills, which featured an "acid" cover of George Gershwin's "Summertime", made unforgettable by Joplin's anguished delivery.

Meanwhile, the Texan singer had become one of the symbols of female rock, and, despite a figure far from that of a supermodel, even a sex symbol. Her wild sensuality made her the female counterpart of what Jim Morrison or Mick Jagger represented in those years. This was confirmed by an article that appeared in "The Village Voice": "While not conventionally beautiful, it can be said that Janis is a sex symbol in an unlikely package."

The group of musicians with whom Janis launched her solo career was called the "Kozmic Blues Band". With this band she recorded her first album for Columbia: I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama. Her life was at a turning point. Tired of love affairs with no future, she had finally found a man she truly loved. And after the criticism of her latest performances, she seemed to have decided to cut back on the excesses of an intoxicating but illusory existence. At the start of 1970, she formed a new group, the "Full-Tilt Boogie Band", with whom she created a masterpiece of an album, Pearl (the nickname her friends called her). Besides a cover of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee", the record included hits such as the driving "Get it while you can", the heartrending "Cry baby" and the humorous "Mercedes Benz", written by Joplin herself.

But before the album was released, came that tragic night in Hollywood. Perhaps that "fix" was meant to be the last one. Perhaps, with the heroin too, she had decided to end it all. But that night silenced her voice forever. A passionate, anguished voice that was at once rust and honey, fury and tenderness, blues melancholy and psychedelic fire. A singing style unique and inimitable in the whole history of rock. "She was an unsettling muse," writes rock critic Riccardo Bertoncelli, "a witch capable of enchanting audiences, the high priestess of an extreme form of rock with no distinction between stage persona and reality." A style that would become a clear point of reference for entire generations of vocalists, from Patti Smith to PJ Harvey, from Annie Lennox of Eurythmics to Skin of Skunk Anansie.

Janis Joplin, whose life will soon be the subject of the upcoming film "Piece of my heart", starring Brittany Murphy, won three gold records: the first with "Big Brother and the Holding Company" for the album "Cheap Thrills", the second as a solo artist for "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama", and the third, posthumously, with "Pearl". Thanks to Kris Kristofferson's song, "Me and Bobby McGee" even managed, after her death, to climb the singles chart, something she had never achieved while alive. Critics today unanimously consider her one of the finest white blues singers of all time. A few weeks before her death, she had bought the headstone for Bessie Smith's grave, her great muse and inspiration. And, as fate would have it, even her last song turned out to be a macabre prophecy: "Buried alive in the blues".

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