How Old Was Janis Joplin When She Died? And Her Career Life Information!

By Sirjan Chetri Last updated Nov 25, 2022

Janis Lyn Joplin was a famous musician and singer from the United States. She was known for her electric stage presence and powerful mezzo-soprano vocals, which helped her become one of the most successful and well-known rock stars of her era.

She entered this world in the city of Port Arthur, Texas. Her parents hoped that she would become a teacher, but she had her heart set on becoming an artist.

Because of her acne, she was picked on mercilessly at school by other students. She suffered from anxiety attacks before each performance. She used to say things like, “Every night I make love to 250,000 people on stage, but then I go home alone.”

She also said things about herself like, “I was different; I read; I painted, and I didn’t hate black people.” Pearl, which she recorded after her death and released in 1971, was her most commercially successful album. Joplin was often compared to Elvis Presley in terms of her ability to enthral audiences, and many people felt that this comparison is accurate.

Mercedes-Benz was the very last song that she ever recorded. In 2011, Amy Winehouse also passed away at the age of 27 due to an overdose. Cremation was used to dispose of Joplin and Winehouse’s bodies.

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How Old Was Janis Joplin When She Died?

Her passing occurred on October 4th, 1970. She was only 27, but due to her drug use, she appeared to be much older than she actually was.

She died from an overdose of heroin, from which her manager and record company had been trying to keep her away in every way possible. However, she was upset that night because she felt lonely and abandoned by her friends, so she once again turned to drugs.

This led to her overdosing on heroin. Her manager and record company had been trying to keep her away from heroin. It turned out that there was some confusion. Janis had a hypersensitive nervous system.

However, despite their assurances, her friends did not pay her a visit that evening. Jimi Hendrix passed away two weeks before Janis Joplin did as well.

He, too, was 27 when he passed away due to the effects of drugs. Her heroine was of such poor quality that it was responsible for the deaths of a number of drug users around the same time. Janis attempted to get sober at rehab, but she repeatedly failed.

At the age of 27, she passed away in an empty hotel room. Her parents and two siblings were able to mourn her passing after she passed away.

Janis Joplin’s Career Life

Joplin developed a rebellious persona and modelled her style in part on the Beat poets and in part on the female blues heroines she admired. At the home of a fellow University of Texas student in December 1962, she taped her debut song, “What Good Can Drink Do.”

Janis Joplin left Texas in January 1963, hitchhiking to North Beach in San Francisco with her friend Chet Helms Just to get away,” she said, “because my head was in a much different place. Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards in 1964 while both were still residing in San Francisco.

One of the recordings also included Margareta Kaukonen typing in the background. The Typewriter Tape, a bootleg album that was released many years after Janis Joplin’s passing, featured seven songs from this session: “Typewriter Talk,” “Trouble in Mind,” “Kansas City Blues, “Hesitation Blues,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” and “Long Black Train Blues.”

Joplin was detained for shoplifting in San Francisco in 1963. Her drug use increased over the next two years, and she developed a reputation as a “speed freak” and sporadic heroin user.

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Throughout her career, she consumed a lot of alcohol, with Southern Comfort being her preferred alcoholic beverage. She also used other psychoactive drugs.

Joplin was persuaded to go back to Port Arthur in May 1965 by her friends in San Francisco who had noticed the negative effects of her frequent methamphetamine injections (they called her “skeletal” and “emaciated”).

Her friends organized a bus-fare party for her during that month, so she could travel back to Texas to visit her parents. Five years later, Joplin revealed the following about her first stay in San Francisco to Rolling Stone Magazine writer David Dalton: “I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t like the ones I had.

Joplin changed her lifestyle when she returned to Port Arthur in the spring of 1965 after her parents became aware of her 88-pound (40-kg) weight.

She abstained from drugs and alcohol, changed her hairstyle to a beehive, and enrolled at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas, where she chose to major in anthropology. In a 2016 interview, her sister Laura stated that during her time at Lamar, she majored in social work.

She commuted to Austin to perform solo vocals while attending Lamar University while playing acoustic guitar. She gave one of her performances at a local musicians’ benefit for the ailing Texas blues musician Mance Lipscomb.