Janis Joplin’s Last TV Performance & Interview: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

The best celebri­ty inter­view­ers have the abil­i­ty to show us how the stars are not like us at all—not only because of the entourages, wardrobes, and bank accounts, but because of the tal­ent for which we revere them —and also how they’re kind of just like us after all: shar­ing the same inse­cu­ri­ties, fears, doubts, for­get­ful­ness, con­fu­sion, etc. They are, that is to say, real human beings.

Like no oth­er inter­view­er on net­work tele­vi­sion before or since, Dick Cavett could draw all of this out of his guests: both their cre­ativ­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. What seemed like sil­ly chit chat was a dis­arm­ing cam­ou­flage for inci­sive ques­tions he let casu­al­ly slip through the ban­ter.

“Cavett’s prime-time show famous­ly fea­tured a who’s who of rock stars that both per­formed and sat for loose, freeform con­ver­sa­tions,” writes Jam­base, “which brought the ethos of the hip­pie gen­er­a­tion to the homes of mil­lions.” Amongst his many rock star guests, he devel­oped a spe­cial bond with Janis Joplin who sat down with him on August 3, 1970 for her appear­ance on his show and what would turn out to be her final tele­vised per­for­mance and inter­view.

Joplin belts out “My Baby” and “Half Moon,” which you can see in her full appear­ance above, with an intro­duc­tion by Cavett. Then after both songs, she walks over the couch to hang out with the host, who greets with her warm­ly with, “Very nice to see you, my lit­tle song­bird.” Cavett poked fun at his guests, but he did­n’t talk down or kiss up. Most every­one who sat down with him found his dry wit and can­dor refresh­ing.

Joplin, who admits she doesn’t like doing inter­views, “seems total­ly at ease dur­ing this con­ver­sa­tion,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock points out, “a wide-rang­ing but infor­mal chat that touch­es on every­thing from her feel­ings regard­ing con­cert riots to whether or not she ever water­skis.” She is poised through­out and throws Cavett off-guard with her dead­pan humor.

They play off each oth­er in a charm­ing exchange that doesn’t go near­ly as deep as her final inter­view with the Vil­lage Voice’s Howard Smith four days before her death that Octo­ber, but which cap­tures Joplin’s thought­ful, easy­go­ing per­son­al­i­ty beau­ti­ful­ly. Cavett lat­er cred­it­ed Joplin for send­ing so many oth­er major rock stars his way after her first appear­ance on his show in 1968.

“She had done oth­er tele­vi­sion she didn’t like very much,” he remem­bered in 2016 on PBS’s Amer­i­can Mas­ters. “She told peo­ple, ‘it’s okay to do his show, he’s not a drea­ry fig­ure.’” Nei­ther, despite her trag­ic sto­ry, was Janis Joplin. “At once inse­cure yet full of con­vic­tion, opin­ion­at­ed yet con­cerned about offend­ing, fierce yet ten­der­heart­ed,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings; she was, as mil­lions of Cavett’s view­ers were delight­ed to dis­cov­er, a “com­plex per­son brim­ming with the sort of inner con­tra­dic­tions that make us human.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Break­through Per­for­mance at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val: “One of the Great Con­cert Per­for­mances of all Time” (1967)

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness