![]() ![]() She had died, as the coroner later noted from a heroin overdose that was exacerbated by alcohol. On October 4th 1970, Janis Joplin joined the ranks of the infamous 27 Club, when her road manager John Byrne Cooke discovered her body. It was her heroin usage that drove Neihaus away and ultimately paved the way to her own self-destruction. ![]() She was her own worst enemy and even though she played what is widely regarded as being one of the best sets of her career at Woodstock, and finally found some peace of mind when she traveled to South America and met the love of her life, David Neihaus there, by the time she finally returned to the United States, she started using heroin again. The one thing that she couldn’t alter and couldn’t change was who she was, and by the time she was in full recording swing with the band in 1969, Joplin was once again locked in the embrace of her former demons.Įxcept this time, the devil she so willingly sold her soul to was heroin, and as the Kozmik Blues Band entered the studio to begin recording, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmik Blues Again Mama! she was in the grip of an almost two hundred a day habit and the band had to fight tooth and nail to keep her clean enough to work on the record. While she enjoyed a brief stint as a solo artist during her first stay in San Francisco in 1965, it wasn’t until she returned to California to join Big Brother and The Holding Company in 1966 that Janis Joplin really began to make the children of the revolution sit up and take notice of who she was, and what she could do.Īfter fronting the band for nearly two years and recording two of their most successful albums with them, Big Brother And The Holding Company, which was released in 1967, and Cheap Thrills, which was recorded and released in 1968, Joplin left the band at the end of 1968, and put together a new backing band, the Kozmik Blues Band, to once again pursue her dreams of being a solo artist. Janis Joplin needed to live by her own rules and her refusal to conform to the conservative conventions of her home state that drove her to leave Texas and head to San Francisco the first time, and it was her impulsive longing for amphetamines that sent her back to the Lone Star state less than twelve months later. She took the “Live Fast, Die Young” Willard Motley ideology that so many musicians of her generation seemed to be obsessed with, far too literally and pushed her, mind, body, and her music to the absolute limit in order to be “good” every time she walked out on stage or into a recording studio.Ī wild and untamed spirit whose appetite for music and performing was just as voracious as her desire for narcotics, alcohol, sex and nudity – Joplin’s fierce intellect and desire to experience everything that life had to offer drove her every waking action and often led her to lose as many friends as she made throughout her tragically short life. She was an all-or-nothing singer whose life imitated her art. Janis Joplin didn’t know how to hold back, it wasn’t in her nature. The amazing legacy left to us in the form of Janis Joplin songs has made a life-altering impact on generations of people around the world – and to distil them down to a Top 10 list is no easy feat. I’d rather be good sometimes than holding back all the time – Janis Joplin ![]()
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