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Joplin s death by heroin overdose in October 1970 came less than a month after the death of Jimi Hendrix; Jim Morrison would join them within two years. Together, they would form a triumvirate within the dead-rock-star pantheon. J o p l i n place in death-sandwiched between the baddest boys of 1960s rock-appropriately mirrors her place in life. Rock critic Ellen Willis places Joplin second only to Bob Dylan in importance as a creator/recorder/embodiment of her generation s history and mythology and calls her the only woman to achieve that kind of stature in what was basically a male club, the only Sixties culture hero to make visible and public women s quest for individual liberation, which was very different from men s