Janis Joplin:

[caption id="attachment_198" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image source: freshindependence.com[/caption] Janis Lyn Joplin, ( Born : January 19, 1943 ) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lead vocalist of the psychedelic acid-rock band Big Brother. She was celebrated for her prevailing vocals during a male-dominated rock era and was a spellbinding contradiction, overriding and intensely vulnerable, loud yet shy, stylized and undeviating, unconquerable and masochistic. Growing up, the "Me and Bobby McGee" hitmaker was , by her own account , “the most despondently unhappy high school female in Texas”. She enjoyed whiskey and heroin; the latter eventually leading to her premature death. Joplin performed at the Woodstock Festival after indulging in several shots of heroin. In 1970, she cleaned up her act and remained drug free for a short time, but her unshakeable habit reappeared. Janis Joplin died from an apparent heroin overdose in October 1970. Joplin was aged 27.