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Peggy Caserta remembers the moment when Janis Joplin became Pearl.
I never liked the name Peggy, and wanted to be more floozy, you know?
Somewhere along the line, Janis started talking about changing her name to Pearl.
One morning, we got up at the Chelsea after a night of debauching, Caserta tells me.
We laughed and laughed that morning, two young, silly, southern girls …
Going Down With Janishas, over the decades, become a sort of cult phenomenon.
I sold out for drug money, and Ive lived in the shadow of it for 40-some-odd years.
That book scandalized my family.
My mother and father were devastated.
I lost my friends.
I was so embarrassed that I just dropped out.
I was so horrified by it and my parents were … oh, God, they were heartbroken.
Nothing good came of it.
I hate that book.
What I hate about who theythinkI am is that most of them believe I wrote that smut.
I read an article online just recently and it mentioned me as Janis Joplins friend.
Somebody responded, The skank that wroteGoing Down With Janisis no friend of hers.
That hurts a lot.
Even after all these years?Its been awful.
I sometimes just wanted so badly to scream out and say, I didnt write that trash.
I wasnt responsible for her using or her dying.
Its just too much.
Years later, I had gotten clean and started trying to live straight.
This was in 2005 she was in her 80s.
I felt grounded, and knew I should start writing again.
People have said, Thank you so much, it changed my life.
I never even said that we were lovers, in the lesbian sense.
I never believed that, nor did I really want that.
You say you dont believe Janis was gay.I never saw Janis as a gay girl.
Im gay, and lived a gay lifestyle even then.
Well, lets investigate this a bit.
How can you not love somebody that clearly digs you that much?
We never said I love you, ever.
And she loved that we were both southern girls.
You write in the new book about the blame youve taken for Janiss death.
Im wondering, did the distrust of you among Joplins entourage and management start before she died?
And Janiss inner circle knew that I didnt turn her on to heroin.
I wasnt the catalyst for that.
But Iwasher dope-shooting pal, and theres no question about that.
So I understand their position she was their livelihood.
They saw me as somebody that was playing very dangerously with her, and I understand that.
But I didnt start it.
I never saw a needle outside a doctors office until I met her.
She overdosed that night, alone at the Landmark hotel in Hollywood …She didnt overdose.
It never occurred to me that he wasnt going to show up.
He later claimed that it never occurred to him that I wasnt going to be there.
What he did was miss his plane because he was fucking someone else.
Janis had been clean, though how clean I dont know.
She just happened to walk out to get cigarettes and ran into George in the Landmark lobby.
That started her thinking about it, and she came up to my room to get high.
Circumstances have to line up or the storm doesnt come.
The Gulf waters have to get hot when the winds are coming, and then theres a hurricane.
I dont believe that she was through with heroin by any means.
Thats a pretty delicate sobriety if all you have to do is see the connection to start using again.
We were shooting dope and we were making out and they didnt like either one.
I was so easy to blame, but I wasnt the only one using heroin with her.
Two of the guys from Big Brother and the Holding Company were shooting with her long before I was.
I think the gay thing just tipped the scale to where I got more flack for it all.
Sam certainly shot as much dope with her as I did.
It has to be the gay thing.
Going Down With Janisbecame a sort of touchstone for gay and lesbian people who read it back then.
Did you feel any support there?
Theres never been a gay girl ever that Ive met who blamed me.
They just say, God, what was it like knowing her?
Looking back after all these years, do you have any sense of regret?Of course I do.
I wish that Seth had been there that last night.
Or that I had been there.
Or that we both had been there.
I wish George hadnt entered the lobby and I wish she hadnt chosen that moment to get cigarettes.
So regrets, yes, of course, the regrets we all have that welosther.
Some people say, Oh, we lost her so young.
Well, for me, I regret that we lost her at all.
I figured wed be friends forever.
I regret that I wasnt there that night when she tripped and fell.
I could have picked her up.
What happened that night?
When I got to the Landmark, the room wasnt taped off yet.
Noguchi was there, two or three police.
Paul Rothchild, her producer, I think was there.
Kris Kristofferson was there.
Seth was there, John Cooke was there.
They were all gathered around outside her room, and I walked over to them.
I didnt want to go in her room because I didnt want to see her dead.
But the coroner wanted to talk to me, and so I looked in.
She was lying on the floor, elongated, and thats not what happens when you shoot an overdose.
You dont stand up and then lie down straight to die.
Back then, the rugs were shag carpets, and at the Landmark it wasoldshag carpet.
She hit her head on the night table and broke her nose.
I figure the blood backed up in her throat and cut off her air supply.
Im sure the fact that she had heroin and other things in her system didnt help her any.
Maybe if she hadnt been loaded and on something, she might have been able to struggle up.
But she tripped and fell, honey.
Im positive of it.
Let me think of how I want to say this.
So what difference would it make if …
I mean, does it bring comfort to you in any way to believe that it wasnt an overdose?
What Im trying to get at, and not doing it very well …Yeah, you are.
Im getting what youre saying.
Why would it matter to me whether or not she tripped or whether or not she overdosed?
She would not have been in that position on the floor.
She definitely did not shoot an overdose.
She got up and walked to the lobby and got change.
It just does not compute.
You know, Peggy, this brings up a subject we havent really touched on.
Would you identify these pictures?
Forty-five years is a long time to want to correct your story.I was hiding for those first 25 years.
Later, social media brought it all back to life.
And Id think,Oh my God.
I got on the phone and said, Now you listen to me.
Dont call my mother anymore.
And if Janis wanted to talk to me, she would come tomein a dream, not you.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
