Janis Joplin afternoon, October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session in which she was scheduled to provide the vocal track for the already-existing instrumental track of the song "Buried Alive in the Blues." In the evening, Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause
Janis Joplin later left the studio and went out for drinks at the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. After midnight, she drove him and a male fan back to the Landmark. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to the biography by Myra Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. On Sunday