Did Janis Joplin bring tattoos to the mainstream?
How deep did her love of the Blues really go? And did the severe bullying she faced in
her home town ultimately lead to her untimely death? Keep watching to learn the truth.
Just a few days before her shocking death in 1970, Janis Joplin spent time in the studio
for what would become a very unexpected final recording: a performance of "Happy Birthday"
for none other than the Beatles' John Lennon. Accompanied by Full Tilt Boogie Band, Joplin's
rendition was one of several birthday greetings that were being mailed to Lennon in England.
Tragically, by the time Lennon received the recording, he had already learned of
Joplin's death. Making the recording even more bittersweet is the fact that Joplin
also included a spontaneous rendition of the classic song
"Happy Trails to You," a final farewell from one great to another.
Though her death was caused by a heroin overdose, Janis Joplin had also gained a reputation for
hard drinking. Her drink of choice? Southern Comfort. You could argue that no other brand
better capitalized on the whiskey-fueled blues of the Deep South to which Joplin gravitated.
As reporter after reporter mentioned Joplin's drink of choice in features and interviews with
the celebrated singer, she became a poster child for the spirits. She told Mike Jahn in 1968,
"I tell all the performers I meet to drink Southern Comfort because
it preserves their voices. It's just an excuse for my drinking."
In "Love, Janis," Joplin's sister Laura said that Janis was inspired to reach out
to Southern Comfort for a sponsorship deal. According to Laura, Janis said,
"I had the chick in my manager’s office photostat every goddamn clipping that ever
had me mentioning Southern Comfort, and I sent them to the company, and they sent me a whole
lotta money. How could anybody in their right mind want me for their image? Oh, man, that was
the best hustle I ever pulled - can you imagine getting paid for passing out for two years?"
"All of that talk about you and Southern Comfort, what's that all about?"
"It's really good when you’re gonna go on stage, it gives you that - When you,
right when you're going on, you need that kick."
Janis reportedly used Southern Comfort's money to buy her iconic Russian three-quarter-length
lynx coat, valued at $5,000. Paired with a matching hat,
these became the signature look the singer wore at the slightest threat of cold weather.
Janis Joplin nursed a lifelong affection for the blues singer Bessie Smith, who died
tragically in a car accident in 1937 and lay for more than 30 years in an unmarked grave.
At the time of her death, the Blues singer's family couldn't scrape together enough money
for a more fitting monument at the Mount Lawn Cemetery.
But in August of 1970, Joplin and Juanita Green, a registered nurse from Pennsylvania,
footed the bill to have a proper tombstone erected at the grave of "The Empress of the Blues."
Roughly 50 fans attended the tombstone placement ceremony where the slab featuring the inscription,
"The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing," enjoyed permanent placement.
While Joplin never met Smith personally, the similarities between the two performers
proved uncanny. Linda Gottfried, Joplin's friend and roommate, said in "Love, Janis"
that she believed Joplin to be the reincarnation of Smith,
from her foul mouth to her penchant for eccentric clothes and sexual experimentation.
The ultimate bad boy, Jim Morrison, encountered serious trouble when he got on the wrong side
of Janis Joplin. According to "Scars of Sweet Paradise," by Alice Echols,
their relationship started with a hefty dose of animal magnetism. Joplin's friend Linda Gravenites
recalled that in the fall of 1967, Joplin and Morrison hooked up after dinner out with their
bands and significant others. But the swinging indiscretion led to hate rather than love.
During a subsequent meeting at a party, Morrison and Joplin got into a violent altercation.
According to "On the Road With Janis Joplin," eyewitnesses later agreed that Morrison started
the trouble by insulting her during a game of pool. Actor Howard Hesseman claimed Morrison
got physical, grabbing her hair and smashing her face into a table. Whatever the case,
she left the room crying only to return with a bottle of booze. Without hesitation,
she brought the bottle crashing into the Doors' frontman's head. Accounts varied
as to whether she threw it or kept it in her hand. Either way, she knocked him unconscious.
In her book "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin," Joplin's
publicist Myra Friedman claimed Joplin boasted enthusiastically about clocking Morrisson.
Besides her Bessie Smith idolatry, Janis Joplin also devoured information about the lives of other
Blues greats like Billie Holiday. "Love, Janis" suggests that Joplin may have consciously or
unconsciously patterned her life after Holiday's hard drinking, hard living ways. Holiday famously
died at just 44 years of age from side effects caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
Smith and Holiday weren't her only Blues influences, though.
According to "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin," Grant Lyons introduced Joplin
to Leadbelly. Though she reportedly wasn't a big fan at first, the influence is clear,
with The New York Free Press declaring Joplin the "Voice of a Lady Leadbelly."
Before her musical career, Janis Joplin faced ridicule in her home state of Texas.
"Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin" argues that Janis Joplin's life changed
dramatically during the teenage years. Not only did she end up at odds with her parents,
but her freewheeling ways and obsession with art didn't win her many friends at school.
Coupled with physical changes, she had trouble conforming.
A childhood friend, Charlie Williams,
described Joplin's awkward entrance to Thomas Jefferson High School
"She'd been cute and all of a sudden she was ugly. It was like
her total self-respect had taken a broadside."
A painful adolescence gave way to a graceless early adult experience.
While studying art at the University of Texas at Austin, with 20,000 other students,
a fraternity had Joplin nominated for the "Ugliest Man on Campus."
This sealed the deal when it came to moving to the West Coast, which proved excellent for the
future psychedelic scene. But it didn't lessen the pain and heartbreak she carried with her.
Once on the "Dick Cavett Show," she had the following to say about her move from Texas:
"They laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of state."
As Joplin tried unsuccessfully to reconcile her stage persona with her hometown reputation,
she created a new identity which she could use to express herself..
She dubbed the wild public persona "Pearl." According to
"On the Road With Janis Joplin," Joplin used her Pearl personality to appear outgoing and
confident and also to hide a deep reservoir of insecurities she'd nursed since early childhood.
Just seven weeks before she died, Joplin attended her 10th high school reunion in Port Arthur,
Texas, and some say she never recovered from the event. Robert Rauschenberg, a fellow Port
Arthur local, later recounted that Joplin had competing needs, as she wanted approval, but
also wanted to show up those who had bullied her by showing off her fame and fortune.
"She wanted to rub it in, and on the other hand she wanted to be loved.'"
But as he astutely points out, these objectives proved mutually exclusive,
leaving her lonely and subsumed by old insecurities by the reunion's end.
Janis Joplin got her first big break while singing with the Bay Area-based band
Big Brother and the Holding Company. Although most people focus on Joplin's role in the group,
Big Brother and the Holding Company proved well ahead of their time, even before hiring the lady
singer who would eclipse them. They pioneered what the San Francisco Examiner refers to
as the "group's signature 'freak rock' sound," attributed primarily to guitarist James Gurley.
Their appearance at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival and release of the album
"Cheap Thrills" in 1968 launched the group into the stratosphere of psychedelic fame.
But according to "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin,"
the album's original title was actually "Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills," which Columbia Records
found too hot to handle. Fortunately for the record label, Joplin and Big Brother and the
Holding Company agreed to shorten the name of their break-out album to "Cheap Thrills."
Despite the name change, the album's success proved undeniable.
It has since been voted one of the best classic rock albums
in history by Rolling Stone and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Few musical events are more iconic than 1969's Woodstock concert. For those in attendance,
Janis Joplin took the stage in the wee hours of the morning.
Dressed head to toe in a tie-dyed velvet shirt and bell bottoms, Joplin proved one of the most
enthusiastically anticipated performers of the three-day weekend. Yet, some audience members
felt let down when she made her appearance without Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Instead, she performed backed by The Kozmic Blues band, which she had joined after leaving
Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1968. She left her breakout band at the
bidding of record executives, hoping the change would steer her music in the R&B direction.
Still, she gave fans at Woodstock at least some of what they wanted,
playing a few favorites from the "Cheap Thrills" album, including "Piece of My Heart."
"It was just time for each of us to start growing in other directions."
Over the past few decades, tattoos have become an acceptable way to
adorn both male and female bodies. But back in the mid-20th century,
tattooed women were still employed by circuses and freak shows. Their bodily
adornments represented a major taboo and were even illegal in certain parts of the country.
The status quo believed etched images communicated loose morals,
and skin art on women wouldn't start going mainstream until the 1960s and 1970s.
Even then, it remained primarily associated with counterculture figures such as Janis Joplin.
Never one to let the court of public opinion sway her decisions, Joplin visited famed tattoo artist
Lyle Tuttle in 1970 for a bit of ink, as reported by Inked Magazine. According to "Love, Janis,"
he decorated her outer wrist with a symbol that represented a "celebration of accepting life."
"There's a great cat in San Francisco that does these named Lyle Tuttle, who's
got them all over his body, he's just gorgeous."
She also had a miniature heart tattoo on her chest, which she referred to as, quote,
"just a little treat for the boys, like icing on the cake."
Chaos broke out at a Janis Joplin concert in Tampa, Florida, in 1969,
when the spirited singer was arrested for two counts of "vulgar and indecent
language" directed at police trying to control the crowd.
Joplin ended up booked at the police station just after midnight the following morning.
A reporter with the Tampa Tribune would later relate that the police officers at
Joplin's dressing room violated her constitutional rights by preventing her from making a statement.
Later, after arriving at the jail, she finally got to make a cheeky comment.
As quoted in "Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin," she stated,
"If I have to sit in jail, I would like it to be with the Rolling Stones."
Unfortunately, Mick Jagger and the rest of the boys never showed up.
After her untimely death in early October 1970,
Janis Joplin's body was cremated at the Westwood Village Mortuary in Southern California.
Following a private funeral with an intimate circle that included her parents and aunt on
October 7, an airplane took off over the Pacific Coast near Marin County to scatter her ashes.
Public reactions to her untimely passing varied greatly. For example,
in her hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, the local newspaper featured an obituary
emphasizing the fact she never performed in her hometown and didn't visit very often.
Others saw her death as a cautionary tale,
and a significant drop in heroin usage happened. The timing of her demise,
just 16 days after that of Jimi Hendrix, also inspired some fans and members of the
media to connect the two tragedies. The fact the performers were rumored to be romantically linked
only served to underscore the association. An editorial in The New York Times read,
"The king and the queen of the gloriously self-expressive music that came surging out
of the late sixties are dead, the victims, directly or indirectly,
of the very real physical excesses that were part of the world that surrounded them."
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