Janis Joplin was a phenomenon of the underground. Burning bright and all too fast, the singer changed the face of music forever but never saw that fact come to fruition. Instead, her short yet incredibly impactful career was an upward climb as she worked and worked, trying to get to the top. Along the way, there were countless golden moments that the world remembers, one of them being Joplin’s last show.
She didn’t know it would be her last. On August 12th, 1970, Joplin was merely playing another show. As she put her all into attempting to break through in the music world, striving for years in several different groups before finally making it work as part of Big Brother and the Holding Company, gigging around America was simply part of her striving. Whether in Big Brother, in one of her other troupes or as a solo artist, Joplin was tireless in her motivation and inexhaustible in her love of performing.
By 1970, she was a mainstay of the live circuit. Following a performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, Joplin’s voice caught attention for its might and emotion. From then on, she established herself as a cornerstone of the countercultural scene. After performing at Woodstock and releasing two albums with Big Brother, she was a cult figure whom those who knew and loved her and those who didn’t yet would surely learn from it. It was building slowly but surely. It seemed like Joplin merely needed to step on stage and open her mouth to turn a crowd into a sea of fans, as a voice like that is captivating in an instant.
For her final show, the audience was stadium-sized for a performance at Harvard Stadium in Boston. But, in keeping with the various tales of Joplin’s chaotic lifestyle and the fact that nothing in her career ever ran smoothly, the show was a mess.
With the Full Tilt Boogie Band, the group landed in Boston only for their equipment to be swiftly stolen. While 40,000 people waited, eager to see the troupe and hear Joplin’s infamous belting voice, they could’ve had a riot on their hands. Instead, they played it off, acting like everything was fine as the audience waited and waited as the band attempted to devise a backup plan. The announcer confirmed that Joplin was there and waiting, sending the crowd into a frenzy while the singer was actually hiding under the stage, waiting while the team attempted to cobble together enough makeshift gear to make the show work.
“Janis was underneath. And she had a bottle of Southern Comfort, and she was just in a world of her own there,” Kevin McElroy remembered of the show. “She just was doing what she wanted to do in the moment. After another hour-and-a-half or so—it was really quite a delay—she literally burst onto the stage. It was just electric.”
When the band finally made it to the stage, Joplin’s final performance went down in history. It was the artist at her best, performing an eight-track tour of her favourite songs, whether that be her band’s own originals or covers from other artists like George Gershwin’s standard ‘Summertime’ or a doo-wop pop track from The Chantels.
It was proof that, had she lived longer, Joplin’s star would have only kept on rising once her record Pearl had entered the world, with the cult of fans swelling and swelling to this stadium scale with no sign of slowing had she been there to entertain them.
The setlist of Janis Joplin’s final show:
- ‘Tell Daddy’ – Clarence Carter cover
- ‘Half Moon’
- ‘Mercedes Benz’
- ‘My Baby’ – Garnet Mimms cover
- ‘Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)’
- ‘Maybe’ – The Chantels cover
- ‘Summertime’ – George Gershwin cover
- ‘That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll’
