Peggy Caserta, Former Lover of Janis Joplin, Lifeless at 84

Peggy Caserta, a pal and onetime lover of Janis Joplin who wrote a couple of memoirs concerning the singer and their courting, died at 84 on Thursday, Nov. 21. Caserta’s demise used to be reported by way of Cut-off date, who, in keeping with Caserta’s e-book writer, mentioned the writer died of “herbal reasons at her cabin at the Tillamook River” in Oregon.

In 1973, Caserta, a fixture of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene the place she befriended Joplin and the Thankful Lifeless, revealed the e-book Going Down With Janis, which detailed her friendship and eventual romance with the Nineteen Sixties rock & roll singer. In line with the e-book, they each slept in combination and were given prime. Later, alternatively, Caserta would declare the memoir used to be written by way of her co-author and that she handiest contributed to gas a drug dependancy.

“I didn’t write that smut about Janis,” she instructed Rolling Stone in 2018. “I might by no means communicate like that about our shut affiliation. However I misplaced keep an eye on as a result of I used to be strung out and making terrible choices.” That very same yr, she mentioned that simply considering of Going Down With Janis made her need to use medicine. “I’m no longer going to make excuses for the use of, as a result of a drug addict in reality wishes no excuse, however each time that I assumed I may just get blank or attempted to get blank, I might take into accounts that e-book, and all I’d need to do is numb out once more,” Caserta instructed Vulture. “Not anything excellent got here of it. I hate that e-book.”

Caserta tried to set the file immediately with any other memoir, 2018’s I Ran Into Some Hassle. The e-book additionally integrated some wild claims, maximum significantly Caserta’s principle that Joplin didn’t die from a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1970. Fairly, she mentioned the “Me and Bobby McGee” vocalist tripped, broke her nostril at the nightstand, and asphyxiated on her blood. “I noticed her foot protruding on the finish of the mattress,” Caserta instructed RS. “She used to be mendacity with cigarettes in a single hand and alter within the different. For years it troubled me. How may just she have overdosed after which walked out to the foyer and walked again. … I let it opt for years, however I at all times concept, ‘One thing is flawed right here.’”

Regardless of Caserta’s repudiation of Going Down With Janis, the e-book has continuously been cited as essential some of the LGBTQ neighborhood for how it depicted Joplin’s sexuality. For her phase, Caserta mentioned Joplin used to be bisexual. “She used to be amusing and outspoken and uninhibited,” she instructed RS in 2018. “I at all times concept she used to be lovely, however she used to be regarded as no longer lovely, and a large number of ladies concept, ‘I’ve an opportunity too.’”