Where Joplin spent her final night
Her body sandwiched between the side of the bed and the nightstand, Janis Joplin was found dead of an accidental heroine overdose on October 4, 1970 at what’s now the Highland Gardens Hotel. The soulful siren was 27 years old.
Raised middle-class, under the polluted skies of a Texas oil-refinery town called Port Arthur, Joplin felt like a total outsider growing up. Joplin biographer Alice Echols wrote that the rock icon once described Texas as a place that wasn’t for people as outrageous as she. It was also segregated, and Janis and her friends often escaped the racist and suffocating culture of their home state by hitting up the music scene in nearby Cajun Louisiana.
Info
Address 7047 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90028, +1 323.850.0536, www.highlandgardenshotel.com | Public Transport Red Line to Hollywood/Highland Station, then a .5-mile walk | Getting there Free on-site parking | Tip Stop by Barney’s Beanery (8447 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069), where Joplin and some of her band members went the night before she died.
Janis’s mother, Dorothy East, was probably her first musical influence. Known for her crystal-clear soprano voice, East won a college scholarship but ended up abandoning her dreams of being a singer and snagged a job at the department store Montgomery Ward. Once Janis was old enough, the two often sang together, until East underwent a thyroid operation, which ruined her vocal chords.
Janis went on to sing in church and received praise for her powerful voice. She excelled in school and even skipped second grade. Her self-esteem took a hard hit at 14 when she developed severe acne. Popular no longer, she made a bold choice to seize attention. She cut her school uniform skirt short and doffed the bobby socks in favor of “provocative” tights – just a taste of what was to come.
Joplin had emotions so big, she said to writer Nat Hentoff, “When you feel that much, you have super horrible downs … but … if I hold back, I’m no good now, and I’d rather be good sometimes than holding back all the time …”
Sleep in Room 105 where Joplin died. Write on the walls as other visitors do, paying homage to the forever young and complicated musician.
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