JANIS JOPLIN

How are you out there? You feeling OK?” It’s two o’clock on a Sunday morning but 400,000 people – tired, hungry and mud-slicked from two days of camping in woefully ill-equipped conditions – roar back. With her wiry hair, wreath of beaded necklaces and tie-dyed bell-bottoms, the woman on stage could easily pass for one of them. Until she begins to sing.

Launching into a rendition of “Try”, Janis Joplin’s Texan-tinged drawl – more pronounced than usual thanks to a lengthy backstage wait and a steady supply of drugs and alcohol – transforms into a primordial wail of power and vulnerability. Shaking and dancing in a show more akin to an exorcism, her ramshackle demeanour metamorphoses the minute the band strikes up; her body a conduit for the music. Still, the voice that launched her career just two years earlier at the Monterey Pop Festival wasn’t at its finest. In fact, the Woodstock performance was subpar