Woodstock
Joplin casually let her band know they’d be playing at Woodstock, treating it like any other show. However, the sight of the mammoth 400,000-strong crowd from her helicopter ride left her jittery. With a daunting ten-hour wait backstage, she and her intermittent groupie/lover, Peggy Caserta, sought solace in heroin and booze. By the time she staggered onto the stage at 2:00 am, Joplin was as drunk as a skunk.
Despite her voice being as rough as sandpaper and her dance moves barely passable, Janis Joplin managed to complete her set. The crowd, ravenous for more, roared for an encore, to which she responded with “Ball and Chain”. Pete Townshend, the renowned guitarist of The Who, observed this spectacle and later noted in his 2012 memoir: “She had been spellbinding at Monterey, but tonight, perhaps due to the lengthy delay and the copious amounts of alcohol and heroin she’d consumed, she was not at her peak. Yet, even a subpar Janis was a sight to behold.”