Video: 'Janis Joplin Final 24 Hours HD'
(Sunday, October 4, 1970, approximately 1:40 a.m. PDT) — American rock star Janis Joplin, ranked number 46 among the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time” by Rolling Stone magazine, died early this morning in her room at Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood.
In the late afternoon, producer Paul Rothchild had become concerned when Joplin, 27, failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session in which she was scheduled to provide the vocal track for the instrumental track of the song “Buried Alive in the Blues.”
Video: 'The Life and Career of Janis Joplin'
In the evening, Rothchild phoned the Landmark Motor Hotel and reached Full Tilt Boogie’s road manager, John Cooke, Joplin’s close friend, and asked him to search for her.
Cooke and two of his friends noticed her psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the hotel parking lot. Upon entering Joplin’s room (#105) at approximately 8:00 p.m. PDT, he found her dead on the floor beside her bed.
Video: 'The life and music of Janis Joplin'
Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol.
Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other Los Angeles heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer’s other customers during the same weekend as hers. Her death was ruled accidental.
Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, California, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean.
