Disturbing Details Found In Janis Joplin's Autopsy Report

Janis Joplin's transformed into the hard-living soulful blues-rock singer she is remembered as after getting out of the small Texas town of Port Arthur where she grew up and was regularly ridiculed by other teens, who called her names like "pig" and threw pennies at her, according to Texas Monthly. Joplin went to her ten-year high school reunion in 1970 just a couple of months before she died, telling a reporter that it was to "see all those kids who are still working in gas stations and driving dry cleaning trucks while I'm making $50,000 a night," Texas Monthly reported. She said she went to the reunion "just to jam it up their asses."

Joplin may have been rejected by the mainstream kids in her hometown, but she found a group of like-minded male friends while she still lived in Port Arthur, according to Biography, which would become somewhat of a precursor to the rest of her short life, when as a woman in rock 'n' roll, she navigated a world dominated by men and was often surrounded by them, partying and being sexually adventurous in ways that were atypical of most women at that time. 

According to what filmmaker Amy Berg, who directed Janis: Little Girl Blue, told The Guardian, "She was the first lady of rock 'n' roll, yet she did not have a role model."