Janis Joplin were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the notional '27 Club'.) Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice", music columnist Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering
Janis Joplin and deeply vulnerable", and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman, titled "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin" (1973), was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, "Going Down With Janis" (1974), attracted a lot of attention, with its provocative title referring to her performing oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin, in September 1970. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew would later describe Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a