(ANSA) - ROME, OCTOBER 03 - That afternoon of October 4, 1970 Janis Joplin did not show up in the recording studio.
The phone in his room at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Los Angeles was ringing blank.
His famous psychedelic-painted Porsche was still in place in the parking lot.
The task of looking for her was entrusted to John ByrneCooke, photographer and his road manager: and so it was he who found the door, face down by the bed.
The autopsy carried out by the famous coroner Thomas Noguchi left no doubts: to crush the life of the most powerful female icon in the history of rock was an overdose of heroin.
Janis was the first female super rock star.
It was a friend of hers who gave her her first professional opportunity with Big Brother and the Holding Company: the sharp, hoarse voice, full of pain and longing for love, shocks audiences and critics: the performance at the Monterey Festival in 1967 announces to the world that she was born. a star.
In 1968 they released their second album with the band, "Cheap Thrills", with the cover illustrated by Robert Crumb, the genius of underground comic and some of the songs on which the legend of Janis is built: "Summertime", "Piece of my Heart" and "Ball andChain".
Despite having reached the top of the album charts, "Cheap Thrills" is the last album to be released with the band.
From that moment he began his solo career, unfortunately very short.
He will only have time to record "I GotDem Ol 'Kozmic Blues Again Mama!"
and to finish the recordings of "Pearl" (her nickname), which will be released posthumously in 1971.
Her death is linked to a series of coincidences: just before she died, having learned that Bessie Smith, the greatest blues singer in history and her idol, she was buried in a grave with an anonymous tombstone.
He bought a new one suitable for the character's build.
One of her latest songs is called "Buried Alive With The Blues", buried alive with the blues.
Janis died two weeks after Jimi Hendrix: both at 27, like Jim Morrison who will die less than a year later.
Also 27 years old.
They are the secular trinity of Club 27, the circle of artists who died prematurely at the same age that Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse tragically joined.
(HANDLE).