Why was Janis Joplin called ‘Pearl’?

When becoming a rock star, there’s normally a facade that comes before anything else. Not everyone can claim to actually be aliens like David Bowie or turn themselves into a completely different act like The Beatles did with Sgt Pepper, but no one’s going to pay attention to anyone doing a fine job as an amateur musician by any stretch. It was about the heart that was put into every single track, and after Janis Joplin got her foot in the door, ‘Pearl’ became the alter ego that she needed to reach iconic status.

Because before she was even a bluesy belter, Joplin had already started off at the bottom of the musical food chain. After being ridiculed at her school for most of her life, her first stint in Big Brother and the Holding Company was her chance to inhabit every single harsh reality she dealt with in life and throw it right back at the audience.

From the minute that she sang ‘Piece of My Heart’, it wasn’t like she was trying to assault the audience with her singing. She had lived a full life facing massive detractors, and when she talked about taking another little piece of her away, it was practically a statement of determination. You can take anything from her, but she will still hold her head up high.

Once Joplin broke free from Big Brother, her second stint as a singer on I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! fell on deaf ears, with most people wanting to hear the same old schtick from her all over again. But Joplin was an artist, and she started to adopt the name ‘Pearl’ in an attempt to run away from the name she had built for herself.

When did Pearl arrive?

In the late 1960s, Joplin eventually explained her reasoning for moving beyond her birth name, saying, “That was a pretty heavy time for me. It was really important, you know, whether people were going to accept me or not. I’m tired of being Janis, call me Pearl.” While it wasn’t necessarily a ‘Ziggy Stardust’ transformation or anything, her eventual posthumous album allowed her to unlock pieces of herself no one knew were there.

She could still sing her heart out on tracks like ‘Cry Baby’ and ‘Mercedes Benz’, but as for ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, listeners were treated to the sensitive side of Joplin. Underneath all of that barfly power was an emotionally frail woman who was still trying to find her place in the world, and it’s heartbreaking to know that people didn’t realise it until she passed away.

Then again, the choice to name the album Pearl was the perfect way of reintroducing Joplin back into the world. Even amid grief, everyone who worked with her knew that she would want to be remembered for the person that she turned out to be rather than the woman who kept getting put in her place.

In fact, ‘Pearl’ may have been all too fitting a moniker for Joplin to give herself. She already had most of the music world in the palm of her hand, but just as a pearl comes out of an oyster, people got to experience the raw beauty that she created when going through her final hours.

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