On the Road with Janis Joplin (23 page)

Outside the stage door, there is a secure area where the band’s limos are parked during the show. The boys in the band have made their escape in one limo, some of them on foot, but the crush of fans beyond the gate are waiting for a glimpse of Janis. The crowd shows no signs of diminishing, so eventually Bobby and Janis and I and at least six other people cram into the back of the other limo, Janis on Bobby’s lap. The driver noses carefully through the crowd and gains the street. “
I’m so excited!” Janis exults, but she catches herself. “Dylan didn’t ever do that,” she says to Bobby. “I’m not cool enough, huh? He didn’t ever get—happy. I’m ecstatic and screaming.” She waves to a trio of pretty boys peering at the limo’s tinted windows. “So long, boys,” she says. “Oh, my God.” Her eye for a pretty boy is ever vigilant.

As in each of the other cities on the European tour, Janis’s first stop after the show is the hotel, where she takes her leave and goes to her room. The purpose of these postconcert retreats is to get high before she sets off for late-night recreation in public. Since we’ve been on the road with the new band, the routine is more regular, more predictable. If the show went badly, getting high is her consolation. Tonight, as after the other European concerts, it’s a reward, a celebration.

The party is in Janis’s room. It’s a suite, actually. We’re in London for four nights and Janis has indulged herself by taking a suite for herself and Linda, where they can entertain royally.

I don’t join the party, because I have a date. On our first day back in London I made a beeline for the flea market and the stall where I discovered the tiger-claw belt. The minute we left England I knew I had to have it. But I hesitated, and I lost. The belt is gone. Still there,
however, is a blond American named Nancy, tending the stall next door. I struck up an acquaintance with her before, and I renew it now with an invitation to the concert. I can’t escort her, but I stop by her seat and say hello before the show, and we’ve arranged to meet at the hotel afterward.

We entertain ourselves in my room, with drinks and a late supper from room service, and it is well after the event that I learn we almost lost Sam in the early hours of the morning.

In Janis’s suite, the presence of old friends from San Francisco fuels the festive feeling. Bob Seidemann is a San Francisco photographer who knew the boys in Big Brother before Janis joined the band. He took the photo of Big Brother, including Janis, that Albert Grossman’s office used for publicity. Bob has taken a nude portrait of Janis—the only nude portrait of Janis—with her hands chastely folded over her pubic area, which he has refused to exploit for profit. Also on hand is Stanley Mouse, one of the creators and the foremost practitioner of the psychedelic rock-and-roll poster style that defined the Fillmore and the Avalon ballroom scene and has spread as far and wide as acid rock. Eric Clapton is among the celebrants as well. See!—he really was there.

Seidemann hears Janis’s voice announce from the bathroom, “Oh, I really got off. I really got off.” A short time later, Seidemann peers into the bathroom and what he sees is Sam, in the bathtub, fully dressed, with a girl clad only in panties sitting astride him. Seidemann takes in the fact that Sam is blue and his eyes are closed. And now Janis and Linda Gravenites are bending over Sam, and Seidemann understands that Sam has OD’d.

Seidemann would do anything to help Sam, but three women are ministering to him and there is something else that needs to be done. Seidemann takes Clapton aside and says, “Eric, get out. A guy in the other room’s OD’d.” If things go badly, no one wants to read in tomorrow’s newspapers that Clapton was at the scene of a drug overdose. Clapton splits, and Seidemann gets to work clearing the suite.

It seems to take forever—fifteen minutes to shove the geeks and yahoos and hangers-on out the door—and when they’re gone Seidemann returns to the bathroom, where those who know and care for Sam are apparently trying to keep him cold and awake. Which he isn’t yet, but there are flickers of returning consciousness.

There’s talk of calling a doctor. Seidemann puts a stop to that. He has been in England long enough to know that nobody calls doctors for OD’ing junkies, because calling doctors means the police will show up as well.

Eventually Sam comes out of it, because of—or in spite of—the efforts of Janis and Linda and the nearly naked girl, whose name is Susie Creamcheese. Of course it is.

Back in the U.S.A.

APR. 25, 1969:
Springfield, Mass.

APR. 26:
MIT, Cambridge, Mass. (1
P.M.
)

APR. 26:
Brown University, Providence, R.I. (8:30
P.M.
)

APR. 27:
Rochester, N.Y.

MAY 2:
Onondaga War Memorial Auditorium, Syracuse, N.Y.

MAY 3:
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

MAY 4:
University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.

MAY 9:
Cleveland Convention Center, Cleveland, Ohio

MAY 10:
Cobo Hall, Detroit

MAY 11:
Veterans Memorial Music Hall, Columbus, Ohio

O
N
A
PRIL
24 we land in Boston and keep right on following the sun along the Mass Pike to Springfield, where we have twenty-four hours to rest and recuperate before the gig. We are a cosmopolitan crew, fresh from European triumphs. Springfield is a manufacturing city in decline, unworthy of our attention, but Janis and the band deign to play for the younger residents, to give them hope.

The next day we have two shows fifty miles apart. The first is at
MIT in Cambridge, with a 1:00
P.M.
start, followed by an evening show in Providence, at Brown University. This is a bit of a scramble for Mark and George, no sweat for me and Janis and the band. At Brown, probably half the audience are RISD students, but this time no fetching girls fondle me as I check the sound from the back of the hall.

We’re coasting on the European high, but Syracuse, Rochester, and Cleveland can’t hold a candle to Paris, Copenhagen and London. The cohesion Janis and the band found in Europe begins to dissipate. Janis repairs to her hotel room each night after the gig, sometimes with Richard, sometimes alone. Linda Gravenites decided at the last minute to stay in London to make clothes for the English rockers. Some of the Rolling Stones were among her potential customers. Linda’s real reason is that she can’t bear to be around Janis so long as Janis is in thrall to heroin.

Back in New York, between gigs,
Janis and Sam get word that Nancy Gurley, James’s wife, has died of an overdose. James and Nancy went camping in Sonoma County. They brought along some smack to get high in the country. When James woke up in the morning, Nancy was dead at his side. James is being charged with second-degree murder, because he shot her up. Janis and Sam’s reaction to the news is to score and get high.

Janis’s next reaction is to call Bob Gordon to ask his help in finding an attorney to defend James.
She will contribute to the legal fees, and this help will prove decisive in keeping James out of jail.

We fly out of New York to tour the Midwest. This spring, the hyped-up expectations of the audiences, together with the still-growing disdain for authority that characterizes the youth “movement” as a whole, increasingly threaten concert security. The kids want in, whether there are tickets or not, whether they can afford them or not. Controlling entries at a municipal auditorium is one thing, but as the weather warms and the concerts move out into stadiums, parks and racetracks, the temptations to gate-crashers are
often irresistible. If enough frustrated fans want to see a show, it takes more than some snow fence and a few rent-a-cops to keep them out.

For the first time, I’m dealing with security as an essential part of the arrangements for every concert. Janis is now so well known that her appearances bring the threat that the ticketless hordes will try to come over the fence or through the back door. A riot at a Janis Joplin concert means bad publicity for Janis and future loss of income, if promoters become reluctant to book her. It means present loss of income too. Janis’s fees this year are almost always based on a guarantee versus a percentage. Every nimble kid who jumps the fence is money lost. If the show is sold out, we couldn’t care less, because Janis will be paid based on the sold-out seat count, but even so, gate-crashers create resentment among the paying guests and provoke confrontations with the police and rent-a-cops.

In concert halls and auditoriums, there are ways to protect the stage. Is there an orchestra pit? Can it be open during the performance, creating a waterless moat between the audience and the stage? In outdoor settings, a fenced no-man’s-land in front of the stage can help. When we arrive at a gig, I talk with the security staff and police. I tell them we know they’re on our side. I tell them our preferred method for dealing with fans who make it onto the stage is to take them through the wings and let them back into the audience if they will go peacefully. If not, out the back door. These kids pay all our salaries; they deserve to be treated with care, even if they make trouble.

When security breaks down and the stage is mobbed, the power cords to the stage monitors often get kicked loose. Janis hates it when she can’t hear herself. After a few incidents where equipment is damaged or stolen, or where Janis is assaulted in midsong by an especially ardent fan, she is willing for the most part to do what she can to keep the crowd under control. She still urges the audience to get up and dance, but at the same time she asks them to keep off the stage.

Some of the city cops and rent-a-cops belong to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s Silent Majority. To them, the culture of rock and roll and dope-smoking hippies is a symptom of the world gone to the dogs, and nothing will straighten out a faggot hippie quicker than a billy club upside the head. More often, the security men’s occasional overreactions are prompted less by repressed fascist rage than by fear. At one show where a few enthusiastic fans gain the stage, I arrive in the wings just in time to stop an aging rent-a-cop, a former policeman, from using his billy club on a cowering kid who is maybe all of seventeen. “Hold it!” I shout, and my voice carries enough authority to freeze the old man. I put myself between him and the kid. The rent-a-cop’s hand is shaking as he puts his club back in its belt loop. He has never seen anything like a Janis Joplin show before. He doesn’t know what to make of it or what the fans might do if they reach the stage en masse. He is as frightened as the kid.

Aside from a few such adrenaline-provoking moments, life on the road follows the familiar routine. There are good days, bad days, and boring days. Within a couple of weeks after our return, the elevating unity the band experienced in Europe is gone. There are spats among the musicians and times when Janis is pushy or demanding or just plain unpleasant to any and all of them. More often, her commitment to good company and good times gives her enough energy to keep the band, despite its interpersonal and musical problems, from degenerating into a group of strangers with no common bonds.

The band member who requires the most maintenance during the intramural upsets is Luis Gasca. Quick to take offense, his frequent reaction to some real or imagined slight is to throw a fit and threaten to quit the band. I played with Mongo Santamaria, man, I don’t need this shit! Each time, I take him aside and talk him down. We have a record coming up, and a summer tour. You want to be on the record, right?

On May 12, we fly from Ohio to San Francisco for five weeks’ vacation. Janis and the band, still unnamed, have been on the road for three months straight.

—

T
HERE IS A
letdown from the routine of being on the road and in the company of others who are working together in the same enterprise, but there are compensations too. In the familiar comfort of my North Beach apartment, I sleep well. Apart from time on the phone to make a few arrangements for the summer tour, I am free, for the moment, from the demands of road managing. I put a bunch of paychecks into the bank. I go to the Committee, I have dinner with Mimi, I visit friends in Berkeley—where I find the city on the verge of something like a revolution. The local hippies have occupied a vacant lot, a rectangle of grass and foliage that’s owned by the University of California. The lot is near Telegraph Avenue, the Berkeley equivalent of Haight Street. The hippies have christened the lot People’s Park. They have planted trees, created a garden. At night, they gather around campfires. It’s a tribal gathering place.

The UC regents are taking a dog-in-the-manger attitude: We’re not using it, but you can’t either. On my third day home, Berkeley police use shotguns and tear gas to break up a demonstration in support of People’s Park. An onlooker is wounded. Governor Ronald Reagan mobilizes the National Guard and gives a bogus justification for cops beating kids. A policeman is only human, Reagan says on TV. If you call him obscene names, he’ll sometimes react just as anyone would.
Wrong
, Ronnie. A policeman doesn’t get to react just like some right-wing hardhat. A policeman represents the state, and the state represents the law. The state doesn’t get to mete out summary beatings in response to verbal abuse. Even if some hippie calls a cop a motherfucking pig, the cop doesn’t get to pound on the kid with a truncheon.

Four days later the wounded onlooker dies. When a memorial gathering masses on the UC campus, a helicopter drops tear gas on the crowd while National Guard troops prevent the demonstrators from escaping into the city streets. Seen on the evening news, there’s an uncomfortable similarity between the Berkeley footage and the
preceding report from Vietnam, where the American troop level is now well over half a million.

The next day, I drive through Berkeley with a friend, filming cops and National Guard troops from my car. It’s sunny and warm. Springtime in California. Under normal circumstances, a perfect day to stroll up Telegraph Avenue and through the campus. Today, the massed forces of uniformed men in blue and olive-drab uniforms, the cruising convoys of cop cars and National Guard jeeps, turn the familiar streets into something surreal, like a set for a dystopian movie. On Telegraph Avenue, where hippies sell beads and God’s eyes and tie-dyed T-shirts in normal times, I see hanging from a second-story window a sheet that evokes the Soviet Union’s brutal suppression of Czechoslovakia’s peaceful revolution just a year ago. On the sheet, the occupants have painted, “Welcome to Prague.”

For a ninety-minute break from Ronald Reagan’s California, I go to see
Monterey Pop
, which has opened in San Francisco while we were away. The film was originally planned as a television special on ABC, but ABC took a look and took a pass, so Pennebaker and the festival organizers decided to release it in theaters. Documentaries rarely do well theatrically, but Penny had success with
Dont Look Back
that he hopes to repeat. At the Presidio Theater, where
Dont Look Back
had a successful run, the audience loves
Monterey Pop
. For me, it brings back memories of the screening in John and Michelle Phillips’s Bel Air mansion, when the glow of the Summer of Love was still warm in memory. What strikes me now are the cutaways to the faces in the audience and the people strolling the fairgrounds, so young and bright and open, full of hope and joy. With the traumas of 1968 behind us and the National Guard occupying Berkeley, the idea that music, love, and flowers might truly change the world seems impossibly naïve.

Newsweek
is on the stands with Janis on the cover for a story on the rebirth of the blues in pop music. The article does a creditable job
of tracing the origins of the blues from the early recordings of Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson to the best current practitioners. It places Janis at the center of a blues revival, in company with B. B. and Albert King, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter, and Big Mama Thornton herself, whose “Ball and Chain” was Janis’s ticket to fame. The article doesn’t mention Big Brother or Janis’s new band.

Soon after our return to San Francisco, Mark Braunstein announces that he’s quitting. He’s had enough of the road. With Big Brother, it was fun. With this band it isn’t.

—

I
N THE MIDDLE
of June, we convene in Los Angeles to make a record. Columbia wants an album that demonstrates Janis’s new sounds to the fans who made
Cheap Thrills
a bestseller.

George Ostrow is in charge of the equipment now. His new assistant is Vince Mitchell, as long and lean as George, his dark hair often in a ponytail.

We have less than two weeks in the studio before a gig in Denver on the way to another eastern tour. The pressure is on, and we have new drummers to break in, first one, then another. After our final concert of the spring tour, in Columbus, Ohio, Roy Markowitz flew home to New York and decided not to return. In his stead there is Lonnie Castille, a tall, genial guy who lasts about a week, to be replaced by Maury Baker, who is shorter, with longer hair.

The producer Albert has chosen to guide this album is Gabriel Mekler. Mekler arrived in L.A. a few years ago, knowing almost nothing about pop music. He lucked into a job at Lou Adler’s Dunhill Records, where he produced Steppenwolf’s debut album last year. The story is, he gave the group its name. This short pedigree in music producing arouses the interest of Janis’s musicians.

Janis has decided that this time around she is going to get along with her record producer come hell or high water. She sets out to win Gabriel to her side, and she succeeds. From the outset, he is solicitous of her and always listens to what she has to say. It wouldn’t be accurate to say they become friends. What Janis is after is a working relationship in which she feels recognized rather than neglected, and she achieves this with Gabriel.

In contrast, he treats the band members as if they don’t exist. Snooky feels that Gabriel doesn’t have the first clue about black music or the hybrid sound Janis and the band have been working to create. Terry Clements musters his verbal skills to communicate with Gabriel about the horns and the arrangements, but Gabriel doesn’t show much interest in what Terry has to say. Terry gets the impression that Gabriel has his own idea about what Janis’s new band should have been and isn’t willing to deal with what it is.