Peggy Caserta, whose candid 1973 biography of Janis Joplin revealed the singer’s romantic relationship with the author, died of natural causes Nov. 21, 2025, in Oregon. She was 84.
The book, titled Going Down With Janis, was considered controversial at the time of publication due to the public’s lack of awareness of Joplin—who died Oct. 4, 1970, in Los Angeles, of a drug overdose—having had a same-sex relationship. (At that time, memoirs describing same-sex relationships were rare in the publishing world.)
Some of Joplin’s friends and associates denied at the time that Joplin and Caserta had had a physical relationship, although over time it has come to be accepted that the two were indeed, for some time, lovers.
Caserta’s death was announced to the website Deadline.com by Nancy Cleary, described by that site as “her friend and the publisher at Wyatt-MacKenzie, the publishing house that in 2018 released I Ran Into Some Trouble, Caserta’s second book of memoirs that revisited much of the events of the first.”
Related: Joplin, remembered by her friends and peers
According to the Deadline obituary, a character based on Caserta was inserted into the 1979 film The Rose, which starred Bette Midler as a Joplin-like performer.
Peggy Louise Caserta was born on Sept. 12, 1940, outside New Orleans. She lived in several locations, including Texas, where her friends included a young Lee Harvey Oswald, who later assassinated President John. F. Kennedy. After living for some time in New York City, Caserta moved again, this time to San Francisco, where she opened a ‘hippie boutique,” Mnasidika, according to Deadline. She provided clothing for the city’s rock bands, and befriended Joplin, who was living on the same block in the city’s Haight-Ashbury district.
Says the Deadline article, “Despite their closeness, neither, in those long-ago days, ever described the other as lover or girlfriend, and indeed, according to Caserta, Joplin never verbally identified as lesbian, although Caserta certainly was not Joplin’s first female lover. Well into her old age, Caserta would have difficulty labeling what, exactly, she shared with Joplin, perhaps stuck in an era when labels for same-sex love were often elusive.” Their relationship lasted four years, until Joplin’s death.
Listen: Joplin was recording her best-selling album, Pearl, at the time of her death. Her version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” from that album, reached #1.
Caserta later said that some people held her responsible for Joplin’s death, as she was supposed to spend that night with the singer but did not make it to Los Angeles in time. She also disavowed Going Down With Janis, claiming that it was “exploitative” and “full of errors” although her name was on the book’s cover as its author. She also said that she regretted the hurt caused to family and friends by the graphic descriptions of sexual activity in the story.
Caserta admitted that she took maintained a heroin habit for many years, finally kicking the drug when she returned to New Orleans from California in 2005 to care for her elderly mother.
Watch: Peggy Caserta can be seen in this video montage of Joplin (with Big Brother and the Holding Company) performing “Summertime” in 1967
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