Janis Joplin: The singer who changed Stevie Nicks’ life forever
Two of classic rock’s most transcendental voices are undoubtedly Janis Joplin and Stevie Nicks. In the 1960s, Joplin was a uniquely soulful singer and a tour-de-force whose vocal power flew songs into outer space. Come the 1970s, the baton had been passed to Nicks, whose ethereal and tender vocals platformed a uniquely emotive yet cosmic style of storytelling.
Joplin’s music authentically represented herself. Unwavering and self-assured, she pressed on with her creative vision without a single shred of compromising spirit in her decision-making and forged a path for future female musicians to follow. During a 2011 interview with The Telegraph, Nicks explained the framework Joplin set out for following female artists like herself, “From Janis, I learned that to make it as a female musician in a man’s world is gonna be tough, and you need to keep your head held high,” she said.
While Joplin sadly died in 1970, five years prior to Nicks’ breakout on the self-titled 1975 Fleetwood Mac album, their paths did cross in the late ‘60s. Playing with Lindsey Buckingham in their then-band, Fritz, Nicks opened up for Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and experienced Joplin’s unflinching artistic attitude firsthand.
“It was a big huge show in San Francisco,” she explained during the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. “There was like 20 bands on; there was you, there were 15 more bands, and then there was Jimi Hendrix.” But when Nicks’ show ran over time, Joplin reportedly yelled at Nicks and co, ordering them off the stage in time for her show.
“Being yelled off the stage by Janis Joplin was one of the greatest honours of my life,” she later said, in an experience that surely crystallised the aforementioned lesson that toughness is indeed the key to success as a female in the ’60s music industry.
It was a proverbial elbow off stage that Nicks would come to revere, for what she saw on stage left an indelible mark of influence on her career.
“Janis Joplin had a connection with the audience that I had not seen before, and when she left the stage – I knew that a little bit of my destiny had changed. I would search to find that connection that I had seen between Janis and her audience. In a blink of an eye, she changed my life”.
While their musical approaches differed, authenticity was rooted at the heart of both of their performances. Nicks could not replicate Joplin’s powerful delivery, which elevated the song’s performance to stratospheric vocal heights. Instead, she weaved intricate stories of the human experience through transcendental imagery that captured audience adoration as Joplin did.
