Janis Joplin did not show up in the recording studio that afternoon of October 4, 1970.
The phone in his room at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Los Angeles was ringing blank.
His famous psychedelic Porsche was still in place in the parking lot.
The task of looking for her was entrusted to John Byrne Cooke, photographer and his road manager: and so it was he who found her dead, face down next to the bed.
The autopsy performed by the famous coroner Thomas Noguchi left no doubt: the life of the most powerful female icon in rock history had been an overdose of heroin.
It is the tragic and premature end of the very intense and desperate existence of a girl who forever changed the role and image of women in the world of music, a universe at that time dominated by a ferocious machismo.
Janis was the first woman super rock star: it was not easy for her to make her way but certain situations die hard when you think that the latest, heavy, attack on show business machismo came a few months ago from Dua Lipa, global pop star who is only 25 years old.
Janis Joplin's life has been very hard since she was a young girl, when in high school in Forth Worth, Texas, where she was born on January 19, 1943, she was the victim of the most ferocious bullying: she was overweight and tormented by acne and the insults of her peers.
His only space of happiness was music, the Blues in particular.
Before finishing college, he hitchhiked to San Francisco, which will become "his city".
At that time Frisco, and in particular the Haight-Asbury district, was the capital of the hippy movement, a unique concentration of pacifism, musical and cultural ferment (in North Beach there were the Beat) and experimentation with substances.
Getting in touch with the world of music was inevitable: it was a friend of hers who gave her the first professional opportunity with Big Brother and the Holding Company: the sharp, hoarse voice, full of pain and desire for love, imbued with Bessie's blues Smith and Odetta or Etta James' Roaring Soul shocks audiences and critics: the performance at the 1967 Monterey festival announces to the world that a star is born.
In 1968 they released their second album with the band, "Cheap Thrills", with the cover illustrated by Robert Crumb, the genius of underground comics and some of the songs on which the legend of Janis is built: "Summertime", "Piece of my Heart "and" Ball and Chain ".
Despite reaching the top spot on the album chart, "Cheap Thrills" is the last album recorded with the band.
From that moment he began his solo career, unfortunately very short.
He will only have time to record "I Got Dem Ol 'Kozmic Blues Again Mama!"
and to finish the recordings of "Pearl" (his nickname), which will be released posthumously in 1971: here too there are legendary titles, starting with "Mercedes Benz" and especially "Me and Bobby McGee", a cover of a song by Kris Kristofferson which was the only single of his career to go to the top of the chart
To combine these points, a life devastated by heroin and Southern Comfort, by bad relationships and probably by never defeated fears and unfulfilled desires.
But also full of moments of unattainable music: Janis Joplin was simply a marvel, a girl who could bring the world of blues and soul to rock with absolute naturalness.
Due to her excesses on stage she was not always up to par: Woodstock, for example, was not one of her best performances.
It went on stage ten hours after the scheduled time: a time too long not to be filled with excessive consumption of heroin and alcohol.
Says Pete Townshend: "At Woodstock Janis didn't do her best performance probably because of alcohol and drugs. But even when she was not in shape she could be extraordinary."
As if regulated by synchronicity, his death is linked to a series of coincidences: shortly before he died, having learned that Bessie Smith, the greatest blues singer in history and his idol, was buried in a grave with an anonymous headstone. .
He bought a new one suited to the character's stature.
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.
He too at 27.
They are the secular trinity of Club 27, the circle of artists who died prematurely at the same age as Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse tragically joined.
What matters most is the extraordinary musical legacy left: it was Janis Joplin who paved the way for women of rock, who demonstrated that talent and emotional power can change the rules of the game.
An essential model for generations of artists.
But also proof that even a girl persecuted by bullies with music can learn to fly.