In Her Final Interview, Janis Joplin Laid Bare The Pain Of Being Misunderstood

A native from the small oil town of Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin knew a thing or two about not fitting in. The hippie girl from the Texas-Louisiana border town left the Deep South behind and moved to San Francisco, California, to find her voice. But it turned out that, even in the cradle of the '60s counterculture movement, she would not always be fully understood. To Joplin, that became all the more clear in interviews. She often walked away feeling misquoted and misjudged, something she expressed (ironically) in her final TV interview. 

Appearing on "The Dick Cavett Show" on August 3, 1970, almost exactly two months before Joplin's tragic death from a drug overdose, the "Piece of My Heart" singer used humor to convey her message when the talk show host asked her if she had problems giving interviews. "Well, other than having to do them when you don't feel like it and other than having to talk to someone who doesn't seem to understand what you're saying, consequently, the words coming out a little stranger than you meant them — no," she replied, drawing laughter from the audience.

While her sit-down with Cavett was her final TV appearance, Joplin gave a phone interview to Howard Smith of The Village Voice on September 30, just four days before the "Me and Bobby McGee" hitmaker became one of the unfortunate members of The 27 Club. In it, Joplin revealed how, beneath the jewelry, feather boas, and layers of colorful clothing, she concealed a profound fear of being disliked. 

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For someone who so brazenly embraced her authenticity, Janis Joplin harbored intense fears of rejection. It was a visceral feeling that overpowered her rational mind. When Rolling Stone ran a critical article about her, for instance, she was devastated. "Even though I know that those are just a**holes that don't know what they're talking about ... I should be able to beat through that. But in my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn't like me. You know, it's silly," she told Howard Smith in the phone interview (via Blank on Blank).

Perhaps Joplin's fear of rejection was rooted in childhood. The kids of Southeast Texas weren't kind to her. "They laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state," she explained, according to author Ellis Amburn in her 1992 biography, "Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin." When she received the invite to her high school reunion in September 1970, Joplin decided to attend. Even though Joplin died before turning 30, she had enough time to become a living rock legend. "I'm going to show up with bells and feathers," she told reporters, as recalled by Amburn. "And I'm gonna say, 'Remember me, man?' What are you doing? Still pumping gas?'"

The Thomas Jefferson High School reunion ended up being Joplin's last public appearance, marking a full-circle moment. The music icon left Port Arthur in search of the acceptance it had denied her, only to write her name in its history. Joplin is now a big source of pride in Port Arthur. If what she wanted was to her hometown's admiration, she achieved it.