Imaginary Wish List: Janis Joplin
“Superstars just fade, but cultural heroines die hard” eulogised Rolling Stone after Janis Joplin died in October 1970 from a heroin overdose in her Los Angeles hotel room. This goes some way to showing the impact Joplin had on the music scene, and the wider cultural landscape, over her relatively short career. The famed rock, soul and blues singer was active for only eight years and her most famous hits were covers—Me and Bobby McGee, Piece of my Heart and Cry Baby, to name a few—but during that period, her voice, energy and charisma left a lasting mark to influence the likes of Stevie Nicks and Florence Welch, as well as Leonard Cohen (his song Chelsea Hotel No. 2 chronicles their brief romance in the hotel in 1968). The Texas-born star fell into drugs when she moved from Port Arthur to San Francisco in the early 1960s, leading her to move back to her hometown to get clean. During that period she saw a psychiatric social worker and explained that she couldn’t see a way to be a singer without the drugs. Returning to San Francisco in 1966 to join the band Big Brother and the Holding Company, she shot to fame, producing many of her greatest hits and performing at Woodstock, as well as with Jimi Hendrix (who died 16 days before her) and Joni Mitchell. Soon afterwards, Joplin relapsed, which led to her eventual death at just 27, sparking the infamous ‘27 Club’ of musicians who die at that age (Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and Jim Morrison are all members). Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on a list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004 and number 28 of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2008, and she remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States. In honour of her lasting legacy, here’s what we imagine Joplin might wear to sing on stage today.
