On the Road with Janis Joplin (14 page)

To this end, he suggests some radical options. How about if Sam plays bass? (Unsaid, but Sam feels it is implied: because he can’t play guitar.) How about if Peter plays guitar? (Which he used to do before he took up the bass, and which he still plays on a couple of songs.) Possible remedies are discussed, hashed over, and ultimately rejected by the band.
The only conclusion that comes out of the meeting is a clear understanding that Big Brother had better learn quickly to produce better results in a studio.

That effort commences at once. Between our weekend forays into the heartland, the band works under professional conditions in Columbia’s New York studios.

The producer, John Simon, is represented by Albert Grossman, as is Elliot Mazer, who will co-produce the album. Albert has chosen Simon to oversee Big Brother’s record for Columbia without consulting the band. Simon produced the hit single “Red Rubber Ball” for the Cyrkle, he has worked with jazzman Charles Lloyd, and he produced and wrote the arrangements for Leonard Cohen’s first album.

Simon yields to Big Brother’s wish to record “live” in the studio—all playing at the same time in the same room, although this method creates technical difficulties. There is “bleed,” each microphone picking up not only the voice or instrument it’s placed in front of, but the other voices and instruments as well. This makes it difficult, or impossible, to overdub a given voice or instrument to correct errors and improve a track.

Despite this concession, there is friction between Simon and the band from the outset. John is a musician himself, a pianist and composer, very much of the educated and disciplined school. He shows little curiosity about the colorful band of California eccentrics who have generated such interest since the Monterey Pop Festival. The band members feel that Simon is standoffish, sometimes condescending. Dave Getz finds it impossible to talk to him. Sam doesn’t get along with him much better. Janis feels that Simon rebuffs her attempts to strike up a dialogue. Peter Albin is alone in believing
there is potential for a good relationship with Simon, if they stick with it.

Since Monterey, Pennebaker has kept an eye out for another chance to film Janis. He has in mind that he might make a
Dont Look Back
–style film about her. He expresses interest in filming a recording session. He clears it with Albert, I clear it with the band, and I serve again as Penny’s soundman. What his inquisitive camera perceives is an omen. Just as a microphone captures onstage mistakes that become glaring in playback, the camera often sees in a scene what the real-life participants miss. Penny’s philosophy of documentary film trusts the ability of the camera’s impartial eye to ferret out the truth. In Columbia’s New York Studio E, it perceives that John Simon is out of sync with these free spirits from San Francisco.

On the day we’re filming, Janis arrives after the others. The boys are jamming on a tune that isn’t one of their regular songs, a spontaneous jam. Janis skips around the studio, dancing to the music. When the tune ends, she says, “You wanna hear how shitty some people can be?” and she launches into a story about this guy she just met, the guitar player for the Animals, who are in town. The guy was busted for dope a while ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was released on bail. He was supposed to fly out this week for his trial, but the Animals’ manager told him not to go. Then, without telling the guy, they wired to England for another guitar player to
replace him when they fired him, which they did yesterday. And now they want him to play with the band tonight because the new guy isn’t here yet!

Janis lays out the whole story in a literal minute. “I’ve never heard of anyone being treated so shabbily!” she says. “And he’s not even mad, and I’m
furious
!” She’s righteously incensed, but her delivery of the last line recognizes that it has the potential to be funny. No one laughs.

Throughout Janis’s rap, John Simon is leaning on the studio piano, uninvolved. He looks exhausted, or maybe exasperated. Without moving or saying a word, he projects an aura of indifference masking annoyance. When Janis delivers her closing line, he says, “Let’s do ‘Summertime.’”

Sam Andrew has arranged the Gershwin classic with guitar arpeggios that begin slowly, then ripple nimbly through an introduction that doesn’t reveal the identity of the song until Janis opens her mouth and sings the first word: “Summertime . . .”

James plays in a lower register. Together, the two guitars weave around Janis’s high, breathy rendition to create a wholly original interpretation of the song. Gershwin would have smiled. If there’s one song in Big Brother’s repertoire that should engage John Simon and win his approval, this is it.

The first take is a little ragged. The band listens to it in the control room, then returns to the studio. They debate whether to continue working on “Summertime” until it’s done, or include another song in this evening’s session. Janis wants to work until “Summertime” is in the can, however long it takes. The clock on the wall of the studio says 9:30. Dave Getz says let’s work on it until twelve and move on to something else if we haven’t got it by then.

Penny moves his camera from one participant in the discussion to another. I stay out of his way and aim the mike at whoever’s talking. John Simon makes no effort to guide the conversation or get the band focused on the work at hand. Once again, he’s off to one side, disconnected, waiting.

The only record producer I’ve spent much time with in a studio is Paul Rothchild. He produced the Charles River Valley Boys’ first album when he found out we didn’t have one. Paul was working for a Boston-area record distributor at the time. He came into the Club 47, heard us play, and said he’d like to handle our record. We don’t have a record, we told him. Paul came back a week later and said he’d like to help us make one. That was the start of his career as a producer. He made our record on his own label and later sold it to Prestige Records in New Jersey as part of a deal that got him a job as A&R (artists and repertory) man for the label. Before long he moved on to Jac Holzman’s Elektra Records in New York. In short order
Paul produced a string of successful folk albums for Elektra, and he was instrumental in Elektra’s decision to become the first folk label to expand into recording electrified music. He has produced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Doors.

In the midsixties, when I was in New York, I would check in with Paul and visit the Elektra studio if he was working with someone interesting. Without giving it much thought, until now, I have absorbed Paul’s manner in the studio as the model for how a record producer does his job. He guides the proceedings so gently, most of the time, that it would take a stranger a while to figure out who’s running the show. Paul understands musicians and gives them a lot of free rein. He wants them to be comfortable. He laughs with them, smokes pot with them, orders out for burgers with them, but he never lets the musicians forget that they’re in the studio to get some work done. However relaxed and gregarious he may be at any given moment, Paul is aware of the job at hand and he is guiding those present toward that goal. He is the captain of the ship.

Paul is not a musician. He can barely carry a tune. But he loves music and he has an uncanny ability to communicate with musicians who run the gamut from highly verbal to effectively mute. Paul can express musical concepts and suggestions so articulately that singer after singer and band after band have produced under his guidance definitive performances of their music, albums that stand up to repeated listening and enhance the artists’ reputations. In the studio, everything he does is focused on making the best possible recording with these musicians in this time and place.

I gain new respect for the effectiveness of Paul’s methods when I see Janis and the boys working with John Simon. From my viewpoint, this ship is caught in irons, with no one at the helm. Each time I visit the studio, John and the band are struggling. Despite the “live” setup, Janis and the boys find it hard to capture on tape the freewheeling sound and the exhilaration—the magic—that they generate in concert.

The work is frustrating and tiring. They need a break, something to give them a boost, and they get it. A week after the disappointing weekend in Detroit, Janis and the boys play in New York again, on the opening night of Bill Graham’s Fillmore East.

A few people in New York who care about rock music have urged Graham to open an operation in the city. Bill has resisted. San Francisco keeps him busy. He doesn’t want to fail in his hometown but he was finally persuaded to come take a look. He saw Big Brother’s show at the Anderson. The drab state of the theater and the indifference of the promoter to the music was just what it took to knock him off the fence. Anyone who knew Bill could see the wheels begin to spin: What this town needs is somebody to do it
right
!

Across Second Avenue from the Anderson is the Village Theater, formerly a 2,400-seat Loews movie house, and, like the Anderson, a Yiddish theater before that. A few rock shows have been put on in the Village Theater, but there was no regular operation. Graham bought the Village, with Albert Grossman and his new partner, Bert Block, putting up the capital as silent partners. Bill will run the show. Between Big Brother’s February 17 appearance at the Anderson and the eighth of March, Bill and his crew have completely refurbished the old movie house and rechristened it Fillmore East. The theater’s new technical director is Chip Monck, a lighting designer who illuminated the Newport Folk Festivals and who has moved into rock show lighting.
Together, Graham and Monck have pulled off a miracle. It’s still a sit-down theater, but it has the welcoming atmosphere, and some of the ambiance, of the San Francisco ballrooms.

Big Brother headlines the opening night, with Albert King, Tim Buckley, and a San Francisco–style light show rounding out the bill.
The manager of the Anderson prints counterfeit tickets to Bill’s show and gives them away on the street, but he fails in his effort to sabotage the party. The line at Fillmore East stretches around the block.

The show presents the kind of stylistic mix—Tim Buckley’s folk rock, Big Brother’s acid rock, and Albert King’s polished blues—that Graham is known for in San Francisco. Janis and the boys are happy to be working for Graham again in front of an appreciative audience. Big Brother rocks and Janis wows the fans.
Among Graham’s ushers, clad in an orange jumpsuit, is Robert Mapplethorpe, just twenty-one, already an artist, not yet a photographer, utterly unknown, at this time living in impoverished bohemian bliss in Brooklyn with the equally artistic and unknown Patti Smith. Mapplethorpe came to work looking forward to hearing Tim Buckley, but he returns home late at night to announce to Smith that he has seen someone new, someone who is going to make it big. Her name is Janis Joplin.

Fillmore East’s opening night generates a lot of press and more good reviews for Big Brother.
Variety
covers the show, as well as
Billboard
,
Cashbox
, and
Record World
.

Good reviews are always good news, but they are too often a double-edged sword for Big Brother. Once again, the press and the public focus most of their attention on Janis. It’s her vocals, her dynamism onstage, that knock everyone out. Once again Robert Shelton proves to be the exception by singling out the band for praise in the
Times
. Mostly, the boys get mixed notices. Some reviewers, and some acquaintances unaware of the San Francisco music scene’s philosophy, the ethic embraced by the founding bands, have suggested Janis get better musicians.

Janis is loyal to Big Brother. They took her in and gave her a chance. The performances that won over the San Francisco fans and earned the great reviews at Monterey were all given with Big Brother behind her. And that’s the problem. Many observers see Big Brother
behind
her. They don’t give Sam’s vocals, and Peter’s and
James’s, and the band’s unique sound, due credit for the success Janis and Big Brother have earned.

If enough people tell you how great you are and in the same breath suggest that your fellow band members don’t measure up, it’s understandable that you may begin to wonder if maybe they’re right.