Janis Joplin: A life in lyrics
Nobody sang like Janis Joplin. Born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1943, the American singer became one of the most famed artists of the hippie era, rocketing to fame for her impossibly gravelly mezzo-soprano vocals and ferocious, sexually-charged performances
The eldest of three children, Joplin endured an unhappy childhood but found comfort in the music of classic blues artists. These records were instrumental in informing Joplin’s decision to become a blues singer when she was still in high school. Regarded with suspicion by her classmates, Joplin embraced her outsider status, adopting the proto-hippie aesthetic of walking barefoot, Levi jeans and carrying an instrument — be it an acoustic guitar or an autoharp — at all times.
She eventually migrated, along with countless other disenfranchised American youths, to the west coast, where she was introduced to the nascent hippie scene, developing a fair few bad habits along the way — habits that eventually forced her to return home. She would later return to San Francisco to make her name with the Holding Company, eventually parting ways with the band to forge a solo career.
Over the next few years, she released hit singles such as ‘Piece of My Heart’, ‘Down On Me’, ‘Ball and Chain’ and ‘Mercedes Benz’, cementing herself as one of the era’s finest talents. It all came to a sudden end in 1970 when the singer died of an accidental heroin overdose at the age of 27.
Here, we’ll be tracing her astonishing life in six key lyrics.
Janis Joplin: A life in lyrics
‘What Good Can Drinkin’ Do?’ (1962)
“There’s a glass on the table, they say it’s gonna ease all my pain”
Joplin’s adolescence was far from pleasant. Unhappy at home and ostracised at school, she became friends with a group of local outcasts, one of who introduced her to the music of blues artists like Leadbelly, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
Empowered, Joplin started styling herself partly after her blues heroes and the Beat poets of the day. After developing a reputation as a proud outsider, she enrolled at the University of Texas, where she recorded her first original song, a blues number a la Rainey titled ‘What Good Can Drinkin’ Do?’, which she recorded on tape at the home of a fellow student.
‘Down On Me’ (1967)
“When you see a hand that’s held out toward you,
Give it some love, some day it may be you.
That’s why it looks like everybody in this whole round world
They’re down on me, yeah.”
In January 1963, Janis Joplin hitchhiked with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco, where she was introduced to future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and recorded a number of blues standards. During her time in San Francisco, Joplin became increasingly dependent on alcohol, methamphetamines and psychoactive drugs. In her first year, she was arrested for shoplifting and spent the next 24 months acquiring a reputation as an occasional heroin user.
Eventually, in May 1965, she was convinced to return to Texas by a friend who had noticed her regularly injecting methamphetamines. On returning to Port Arthur, Joplin decided to get clean, change her lifestyle and enrol at Lamar University, though she continued performing solo concerts in the local area. One of her few connections to life back in San Francisco was Peter de Blanc, whom she had met during her first stint in North Beach. The pair were engaged in the autumn of 1965, with de Blanc travelling West frequently.
‘Coo Coo’ (1967)
“Oh, the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, and she warbles when she flies”
On the recommendation of Chet Helms, Joplin returned to San Francisco in 1966 to become the vocalist of Big Brother and the Holding Company. The group was subsequently booked for the era-defining Monterey Pop Festival, where they performed two sets, the latter of which included a now-famous rendition of ‘Ball and Chain’, which introduced audiences to Joplin’s impressive blues vocals.
Following the band’s breakthrough appearance, Big Brother and the Holding Company released their debut album, which earned them four minor hits, ‘Call On Me’, ‘Coo Coo’ and renditions of ‘Down on Me’ and ‘Bye Bye Baby’, all of which featured Joplin on lead vocals. Joplin was on the rise, and it wasn’t long before Columbia Records came calling
‘Piece of My Heart’ (1968)
“And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I’ve had enough
But I’m gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough”
Joplin played an important role in the arrangement and production of the newly named Janis Joplin and the Holding Company’s first album for Columbia, Cheap Thrills. Hoping to capture the band’s live energy, producer John Simon recorded the band live but quickly found the Holding Company were prone to mistakes. Joplin, on the other hand, was able to deliver perfect take after perfect take and grew increasingly frustrated with her band’s sloppy performance.
In the end, the album produced one of Joplin’s most beloved hits, a cover of Emma Franklin’s ‘Piece of My Heart’. Released in tandem with the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the album Cheap Thrills cemented Joplin as an essential voice, selling over a million copies in the first month of its release. Suddenly, the girl who had been bullied for her looks in school was the emblem of modern female sexuality.
‘Kozmic Blues’ (1969)
“Don’t expect any answers, dear
For I know that they don’t come with age, no, no
I ain’t never gonna love you any better, babe
And I’m never gonna love you right”
Joplin decided to leave the Holding Company in 1969, forming a new backup group called the Kozmic Blues Band. The new outfit gave birth to a tighter R&B sound. Around this time, Joplin was supposedly spending at least $200 on heroin every day. Though she had led the way with Cheap Thrills, her main focus during the making of I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! was staying clean enough to record. Indeed, producer Gabriel Mekler even put her up at his house so that he could keep her away from drugs and her entourage of fellow users.
Later that year, Joplin and the band took the stage of Woodstock Festival at two in the morning to deliver one of the festival’s most memorable sets, performing a shakey version of the track that had made her such a sensation at Monterey, ‘Ball and Chain’
‘Mercedes Benz’ (1971)
“Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. So oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”
One of Joplin’s most affecting recordings’, ‘Mercedes Benz’, taken from the posthumous album Pearl, was the last recording the singer made before her death in 1970. During one of her last TV appearances in the June of that year, she told Dick Cavett that her schoolmates had “laughed me out of class, out of town and out of state” and that she’d been voted “Ugliest Man on Campus” by frat boys at the University of Texas.
Two months after attending her high school reunion, Joplin finished recording ‘Mercedes Benz’, which, true to form, she knocked off in a single take. The song had come to Joplin during a nighttime drive in Bobby Womack’s new car, during which she’d started singing the lines “oh lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.” On returning to the studio to lay down the track, she discovered her band had already departed but took to the mic anyway. Less than a week later she was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Hotel.
