Janis Joplin's last concert: Harvard Stadium, Boston, August 12, 1970

About the artist

Janis Joplin was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas^[1][2]. She finished high school there in 1960, enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1962 and sang bluegrass gigs around town. She moved to San Francisco in 1963 and began recording. After a stretch back in Texas, she returned to San Francisco in 1966 to audition for Big Brother and the Holding Company, and played her first show with them at the Avalon Ballroom on June 10 that year^[1].

The Monterey Pop Festival on June 17 and 18, 1967, made her name; her second-day set was filmed for the documentary Monterey Pop. That November the band signed with manager Albert Grossman, who soon brought them to Columbia. Cheap Thrills, released on August 12, 1968, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in October and sold nearly a million copies that year^[1]. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame names its "Piece of My Heart" as the song that made her famous; "Ball & Chain" is on the same record^[3].

She announced in September 1968 that she was leaving Big Brother and played her last show with them on December 7. Her new Kozmic Blues Band debuted at Winterland in San Francisco on March 20, 1969, and she sang at Woodstock at 2 a.m. on August 17^[1]. The Hall of Fame traces how her music widened with each band, from garage-style psychedelia to soul and R&B, and on to torch songs and country ballads^[3].

Why this was the last show

The Kozmic Blues Band split in January 1970. Her next group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, played its first show in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 12^[1]. It was a Canadian five-piece: John Till on guitar, Richard Bell on piano, Ken Pearson on organ, Clark Pierson on drums and Brad Campbell on bass^[4]. From June 28 to July 4 they joined the Festival Express tour across Canada^[1].

On August 3, Joplin appeared on The Dick Cavett Show^[5]. Harvard Stadium came nine days later. Charles Giuliano, who covered the show for the Boston Herald Traveler, later wrote that it was the end of her tour with the Canadian band^[4].

No one called it a farewell. The Harvard date had been announced in June as one stop in a summer concert series^[6]. Two days after the show, on August 14, Joplin went home to Port Arthur for her tenth high school reunion^[1].

In September she started recording Pearl at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, known for his work with the Doors^[7][8][9]. The Full Tilt Boogie Band, her touring group, played on the sessions^[4][9]. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the album was nearly finished in September, and a fall tour with the band was planned after a vacation^[7].

On October 1 she recorded "Mercedes Benz" a cappella in a single take. It was the last song she recorded^[9]. On October 3 she listened to the backing track for "Buried Alive in the Blues" at Sunset Sound; her vocal was scheduled for the next day^[1][7].

Joplin died in Los Angeles on October 4, 1970, at the age of 27^[2][1]. The coroner's office announced that an autopsy showed she had died of a drug overdose^[10], and Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled it an accidental overdose^[7]. The fall tour never happened, and Harvard Stadium on August 12 stood as her last public performance^[1][11]. As Jared Gendron, who later acquired photographs of the night, told Boston.com in 2015, it was just another concert that happened to be the last^[12].

What is known about the day

Harvard Stadium belongs to Harvard University. In the summer of 1970, Boston's Summerthing arts festival and the Schaefer brewery planned 18 concerts there, the first time the university had lent the stadium for a full series. Tickets were $2, and although the stadium held more than 35,000, each show was limited to 10,000 seats. Joplin was announced for August 12, alongside the Grateful Dead and the Supremes. By late June, after some concertgoers caused trouble in Harvard Square on their way out of an earlier show, Cambridge officials were already voicing opposition^[6].

It was a hot day, cooling only to the high 70s Fahrenheit by sunset. Ed Symkus, an Emerson College student working security in a red T-shirt with a white peace sign, recalls that the sound equipment set up in the stadium's south end zone was stolen that afternoon. Replacement speakers and amps did not arrive until evening, after which the two opening acts, Gas Mask and Eagle, played. The crowd grew restless, and the emcee, WMEX DJ Bud Ballou, kept telling them that Joplin was there and that the delay was not her fault^[13].

Kevin McElroy, who was in the audience, remembers waiting about an hour and a half^[11][12]. Richard Harris, then 16, gave up after about three hours and left with his sister, who had the car. Walking to the parking lot, they heard a roar and then music behind them^[5]. Seats had been set out on the field^[11], and estimates of the crowd vary: about 33,000^[13], 35,000^[4], or an estimated 40,000^[11].

According to Giuliano's review in the Herald Traveler, Joplin arrived backstage around 7:30 p.m. and grew impatient with the delays^[4]. She waited underneath the open-scaffolding stage^[11]. Management placed about six guards on the stage itself, with orders to protect her^[13].

At about 10:30 p.m. the band and Joplin pushed past Ballou and took the stage^[13]. McElroy, sitting near the front, says she "burst onto the stage" and that it was "just electric"^[11]. Giuliano noted her outfit: tie-dyed, wine-red velvet pants, a black lace blouse, a gold-thread vest and a feather dangling from her hair. "Let's go, come on toots," she told the band^[4].

She opened with a hard-charging version of Etta James's "Tell Mama," followed by John Hall's "Half Moon." Between songs she told the crowd she was tired of the social, political and religious setup. Then came "Mercedes Benz," sung mostly a cappella and new to everyone there^[13].

After "My Baby," she introduced "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" with a story about her San Francisco days; in Giuliano's account, she told herself she had to try a little harder, and the song followed from there^[4]. Symkus counts "Try" and the next song, "Maybe," as the low points of the night, but writes that the crowd's enthusiasm never faded, even for songs it did not know^[13]. People shouted for "Ball and Chain"; Giuliano writes that she offered "Piece of My Heart" and "Maybe" instead. Of her raspy "Summertime," he praised the phrasing^[4], and Symkus remembers the audience loving it^[13].

What came last is unclear. The song list Giuliano published in 2019 ends with "Full Tilt," after "Summertime"^[4]. Far Out names "That's Rock 'n' Roll" as the closer^[14]. Symkus was told the show ended with "Piece of My Heart" but does not remember hearing it^[13], while American Songwriter says "Piece of My Heart" was not played^[15]. Boston.com puts the count at eight songs^[12]. Symkus describes the show as a half hour plus^[13], and American Songwriter gives about 30 minutes^[15].

By 11:30, Giuliano wrote, Joplin had left with a police escort. The crowd walked peacefully over the bridge to Harvard Square, past a heavy police presence^[4]. McElroy remembers nothing unusual about it, just a terrific night^[12].

What the show left behind

Three of the songs she sang that night, "Half Moon," "My Baby" and "Mercedes Benz," ended up on Pearl^[13][16]. "Mercedes Benz" was new that year; Joplin and Bob Neuwirth came up with it at a bar in Port Chester, New York. Neuwirth told the Wall Street Journal it was like a sea shanty, that Joplin came up with the words for the first verse and that he wrote them down on bar napkins^[8]. The song the Harvard crowd first heard almost unaccompanied was the one she recorded, again a cappella, on October 1^[13][9].

Pearl came out on January 11, 1971^[1]. From February 27 it spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, her only No. 1 album. "Me and Bobby McGee," written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, topped the Hot 100 in March. "Buried Alive in the Blues" was left as an instrumental: she died before recording the vocal, and the band chose not to replace it. Rolling Stone later placed Pearl at No. 259 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, calling it the solo album finally worthy of her voice^[9]. PBS notes that "Me and Bobby McGee" remains her best-selling single^[1].

The Harvard Stadium show itself, as Boston.com put it in 2015, remains poorly documented^[12]. What survives best are photographs taken from the crowd. Peter Warrack, a Liverpool-born amateur photographer, shot nearly a full roll of black-and-white film from near the front with a telephoto lens, 24 close-ups in all. He died in 2008, and his roughly 15,000 photographs sat in binders in McElroy's home until a company acquired the collection in 2015, restored the images from the negatives and made them public^[11][12].

The Canadian tour of two months earlier did make it to film. Footage from an unfinished documentary was assembled into Festival Express, released in 2004^[17][18]. Video Librarian's review notes that it includes Joplin's "Cry Baby" and "Tell Mama," filmed two months before her death^[18].

In August 2020, fifty years on, Boston outlets looked back. The Boston Globe ran Symkus's memories of working security that night^[13], and on WBUR, Harris described still regretting the show he missed^[5]. The Harvard Crimson, in a 2014 piece on the stadium's history, recalled it as the place where Joplin gave her final live performance^[19].

Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 12, 1995^[1]; Melissa Etheridge, who inducted her, said that to her fans she was a goddess^[3]. Rolling Stone ranked her No. 46 among the 50 greatest artists of all time in 2004, and she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005^[1].

A show that started hours late on borrowed equipment, ran barely half an hour and still has no agreed final song remains the last night Janis Joplin sang for an audience.