Janis Joplin Offers Fans a Piece of Her Heart

N E W  Y O R K, March 6 -- "Take it," shrieked Janice Joplin, the bell-bottomed, bangle-clad Queen of Rock, "take another li'l piece-of-my heart now baby," before collapsing into one of her gut-wrenching, gravelly "uhhh-uh, uhhhh-uh, uhhhh-uhs."

And what a tormented piece-of-heart that was. At 27 years old, the singer died of a heroin overdose at a Los Angeles motel. Outside of the burning lyrics that fused 1960s rock rebelliousness with the soul of country blues, Joplin left little in writing.

But love letters sold at auction on March 1 at Manhattan's Swann Galleries offered bidders a piece of Joplin's heart. Of the 64 letters that went on the block, 48 were sold, for a total of $109,710.

The letters were written to her then-boyfriend, Peter de Blanc, over the summer and autumn of 1965 when Joplin, already a veteran of the cafés and hootenannies of San Francisco and New York City, returned home to Austin, Texas, to "refocus."

Written in a neat, precise hand on a variety of paper sheaves, the letters were penned exactly a year before she headed to San Francisco — and fame and destruction.

Although there are early signs of the demons that would haunt her, for the most, the letters are the sort of self-indulgent ramblings you would expect of a 22-year-old.

These included a searing nine-page self-examination that fetched a record $9,200.

A Diary for a Lover

"It's like her diary, written to her lover," said Swann President Nicholas Lowry. "It's not poetry, it's just a 22-year-old girl writing to her lover."

This particular 22-year-old though, had a penchant for shrieking over her father's classical LPs, had experimented with bourbon and barbiturates, and had already slept with innumerable men and numerable women.

Lowry was unwilling to let on just how the letters landed at his gallery, but they did go on the block before, on the auction Web site eBay, where an unidentified seller asked for $250,000 for all 64 letters — a price that got no takers.