linguistic:paraphrasing
Legacy in the 1970s

Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the deaths of Canned Heat singer Alan Wilson a month earlier, and rock icon Jimi Hendrix 16 days earlier, both aged 27. All three musicians performed at the two biggest rock festivals of the 1960s: Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the " 27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience.

A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta's co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them.

According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973, a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered.

According to Joplin's biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality.

Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers.

The Mamas & the Papas ' song "Pearl" (1971), from their album People Like Us, was a tribute to Joplin. Leonard Cohen 's song " Chelsea Hotel#2 " (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia 's "Birdsong", from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina 's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her album Come from the Shadows (1972), was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg -penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols", such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). In her memoir Just Kids, Patti Smith mentions writing a song for Joplin and singing it to her one night at the Chelsea Hotel, where both were living at the time. The song, called "Lullaby (I Was Working Real Hard)", was never recorded by Joplin but eventually appeared on Smith's Live At The Bottom Line, a performance from 1975.

The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl —Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture—Female and earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film.