Janis

On Oct. 4, 1970, the rock ’n’ roll manager John Byrne Cooke walked into a Hollywood hotel apartment and found Janis Joplin on the floor.

She had died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

Three years earlier and 300 miles up the coast, at the Monterey Pop Festival, Ms. Joplin became a star when she sang the blues to a mature crowd that she’d found intimidating, compared with her usual audience of “teeny-boppers.”

“When they stood up and started dancing, it was like everybody in the world could dig us,” she said. “It was really a thrilling thing.”

Ms. Joplin was known as a rebel. A headline in her college newspaper shouted, “She Dares to Be Different!” Despite that image, she craved approval from teenagers and adults alike — even her parents.

“She got a kick out of playing the bad girl, but she wasn’t a bad girl,” said a friend from her childhood in Port Arthur, Tex.

Many explanations have been offered for Ms. Joplin’s self-destruction. Mr. Cookesaid that she felt like a failure as a solo artist.

Her vulnerability, though, is captured in a remark she made herself.

“Onstage, I make love to 25,000 different people,” she once said. “Then I go home alone.”