On the Road with Janis Joplin (33 page)

I would gladly extend my reservation in this particular Holiday Inn indefinitely, trusting room service to keep us fed, but I’m a road manager and Janis has a gig later today in San Diego. When I leave Austin, I’m in love.

After our smooching on the red-eye, and what Margaret told me, I wonder if Janis is maybe a little jealous, but she hasn’t forgotten her resolution not to get involved with anyone on her payroll. On our flight to San Diego, she makes a point of letting me know she approves of Margaret. After all, I’ve had the good sense to fall for a Texas girl.

A week later, Janis receives in the mail a photograph of Kenneth Threadgill leaning against the bar at Threadgill’s. On the back, he has written “Threadgill’s, 7/15/70, to Janis from Kenneth Threadgill.” In the photo, he’s wearing a plain white apron and around his neck is the lei that Janis gave him at the Jubilee.

That Old Gang of Mine

JULY 11, 1970:
Sports Arena, San Diego

JULY 12:
Exposition Hall, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose

JULY 17:
Albuquerque, N.M.

AUG. 1:
Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Queens, N.Y.—RAINED OUT

AUG. 2:
Forest Hills Tennis Stadium—played rain date

AUG. 3:
The Dick Cavett Show
, NYC

AUG. 5:
Ravinia Park, Highland Park, Ill.

AUG. 6:
Peace Festival, Shea Stadium, Queens, N.Y.

AUG. 8:
Capitol Theater, Port Chester, N.Y.

AUG. 11:
Garden State Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J.

AUG. 12:
Harvard Stadium, Cambridge, Mass.

B
EFORE
J
ANIS AND
I left the Full Tilt boys to bake on the sands of Waikiki, I put George Ostrow and Vince Mitchell in charge of getting everyone on the plane to San Diego. We were in touch once by phone while I was in Austin, but it’s a relief to arrive at the San Diego Sports Arena and find everything in place. The Full Tilt band is here, the equipment is set up, everybody’s ready to boogie.

The promoter, Jim Pagni, has been running rock concerts in San Diego since Janis and Big Brother played here. He has his act together, so I can devote some of my attention to a task that Albert has given me: The time to record Janis with the Full Tilt Boogie Band is drawing near, and Albert and Janis have chosen Paul Rothchild to produce the record. If—it’s a big if—if Paul and Janis agree that they can work together. Janis’s failure to form comfortable working relationships with her previous record producers has vexed both Janis and Albert. This time around they want to assure true compatibility—insofar as that’s possible—before they set foot in the studio.

When Albert tells me that Paul is in line to produce Janis, I wonder why he didn’t think of Paul sooner. I wonder why
I
didn’t think of Paul sooner. Paul is an independent producer now. He can work for any label. Albert says Janis thought of it. She remembers Paul from his effort to create a blues band around her and Taj Mahal and Al Wilson back in 1966. She remembers that Paul liked her singing.

Albert is aware of my friendship with Paul. He is asking me to act as an intermediary, to use that friendship to connect, or reconnect, Paul and Janis. He knows I can’t determine the outcome, but he hopes I can smooth the way. I told him I’ll do whatever I can.

In San Diego, that’s not much. The other band on the program is Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Nick Gravenites on lead vocals, so it’s a reunion with old friends. Paul gets to hear Janis live with Full Tilt. He likes what he hears, but backstage, before and after, there are too many distractions and not enough time for him to do more than exchange a few words with Janis.

The next day we fly up to San Francisco, and we go straight from the airport to San Jose for an evening concert there with the Joy of Cooking. We’ve been on the road for more than six weeks. Janis and I are fresh from Austin, where neither of us got enough sleep. Janis wants to get home to her house in Larkspur and sleep the clock around, if that’s what it takes to revive her, but even in this condition, powered by Full Tilt Boogie, she musters the energy to put on a
first-class show at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. “
I haven’t had so much fun since the first year with Big Brother!” she shouts as she takes the stage.

It’s late when we all get home. Paul stays with me in my Powell Street pad. In the morning, we’re groggy and Paul is concerned. He’s been around Janis for two days and he has no idea if they can communicate on the level that will be necessary if they’re going to make a record together.

Paul is convinced that Janis is an even better singer than either the world or she herself knows. His goal is to introduce her to the truly great singer inside her and to get that singer on tape for the first time. To do that, they will have to bond like soulmates. He reveals these concerns over a late breakfast, and the need to help him connect with Janis takes on new meaning for me. This isn’t just another job for Paul. He wants to take Janis to the next level.

I’m apprehensive about calling Janis this morning. We had a passing spat about something or other before we left the concert last night, but the minute Janis answers the phone, my worries go out the window. Everything is sunshine and roses. Janis is happy to be home and all is right with the world. Come up to the house anytime, she says. And bring a bottle of rum.

By the time we get ourselves across the Golden Gate to Larkspur, it’s afternoon. Janis gives Paul the nickel tour of the house and we go out to the long, narrow deck, where we sit in the filtered light of sunshine peeking through the redwoods. There is a short period of halting conversation as Janis and Paul size each other up. Both prefer to approach the matter at hand obliquely. Nobody’s saying, Well, do you think we can work together? but everybody knows why we’re here.

Janis, ever the gracious hostess, remembers the bottle of rum we delivered into Lyndall’s hands upon arrival. While in Hawaii, Janis learned how to make piña coladas from the bartender at the Hilton on Waikiki, and she is eager to demonstrate this new skill. She disappears into the kitchen and comes back a few minutes later with a
pitcher and four glasses. The drinks go down easily. They’re like tropical milk shakes. Nothing to it, Janis says. Pineapple juice and coconut cream and rum whipped up in the blender with ice. She brings out her Gibson Hummingbird and sings “Bobby McGee” for Paul. Before long, it’s time for another pitcher of piña coladas.

The conversation is rolling nonstop. Nothing about making records, nothing about business. The doorbell rings and Lyndall conducts Shel Silverstein out to the deck. Just dropping by to say howdy. If we needed another catalyst, beyond the jolly milk shakes, to move the gathering toward unrestrained merriment, Shel fills the bill. He writes and draws cartoons for
Playboy
, he’s a poet, a composer, a songwriter—hell, he’s got more talents than our favorite jack-of-all-hipness, Bob Neuwirth. Shel wrote “A Boy Named Sue” for Johnny Cash, and “The Unicorn,” which gave the Irish Rovers their biggest hit. He’s currently working on the music for a film about the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, which will star Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. (Shel’s songs, sung by Waylon, will survive the Hollywood process, but Kris is replaced by Mick Jagger.)

Shel gets right in the spirit of the piña coladas. He picks up Janis’s guitar and plays a couple of raucous tunes of his own creation, and we laugh until we ache.

When we run out of rum, we adjourn to Sausalito to drink dinner at the No Name Bar, where we find ourselves seated next to an exceptionally tall fellow who looks as if he may dwell somewhere deep in the redwoods, emerging only to have a meal and a drink in town on special occasions. He is clad in leather garments, apparently of his own making, and he has a few leather hats on his table. Paul asks him, “Do you make those hats, man?” He says, “Yeah, I make ’em.” “Well, can we see some?” He stands up, which takes a while—he’s got to be seven feet tall—and he goes outside to his car and comes back with a knapsack full of headgear.

Paul takes an interest in a leather visor that would be great for playing poker under a bare lightbulb. We’re all trying hats on,
including Janis. I’m taken by a kind of a hippie hat with a flat brim and a low crown. If the brim was rolled a little, it might look sort of Western, like those low-crown cowboy hats in Western TV shows from the fifties, which bore no resemblance to anything anyone ever wore in the Old West. I roll the brim, and it promises to hold the roll. I put the hat on, and everybody says, Boy, that looks great. Janis gets the idea that she’ll buy it for me. At first I’m reluctant to accept this generous impulse because I’m not sure I can become a hat person. I know I can’t accept the gift and never wear it. But Janis has her heart set on buying me this hat and she pays the guy as I examine the hat inside and out. I find no maker’s mark, so I say “Hey, man, do you have a pen?” He has just the thing, a Rapidograph with indelible ink. “Put your mark on it,” I ask him. “Would you do that?”

He makes his mark, a backward R joined with a frontward B, like a Western brand. His name is Robert Bruce, locally known as Giant Man. When he’s done, I pass the pen to Janis. “You can give me the hat, but you gotta sign it.”

Janis turns the hat in her hand, figuring out what she wants to write. She sets it on the table and goes to work on the brim behind the crown. She writes carefully, bending over her work, the same way she lettered “WITH LOVE” on the plank that held the model of the Festival Express train. I expect her to write “Love, Janis,” or something like that, but when she hands it to me I see that she has written, “To John, with love from Pearl.” There’s a heart next to “love” and half a dozen x’d kisses after “Pearl.”

The next morning, over an even later breakfast than the day before, Paul is thoughtful. He and Janis never did talk business during our hours of carousing. I wonder if he still harbors doubts about his ability to work with her, but he puts my mind to rest.

“John, I learned something wonderful yesterday,” he says, dead serious.

“What’s that?”

“Janis Joplin is a
very
smart woman.”

Paul reveals his delight in this discovery. He is confident that Janis’s articulate intelligence will enable them to communicate, and communication is the key: If the lines of communication are open, if they share a common language and skill in expressing it, everything else is possible.

—

W
ITH THE CONNECTION
to Janis established, Paul sets in motion a campaign he has been planning since Albert first spoke with him about producing Janis’s next album. Paul thinks the technology, the engineers, and the union requirements at Columbia Records studios are outmoded. He thinks the whole mind-set at Columbia lags behind where rock recording should be in the 1970s. If he has to work within those limitations, he doesn’t believe he can make a record that will sound the way Janis’s next album ought to sound.

Paul has a plan, a way to prove to Columbia Records that he’s right. Albert supports Paul’s idea and they overcome the first hurdle when Columbia president Clive Davis agrees to let Paul record two demos with Janis and Full Tilt, one at Columbia’s L.A. studio, where some of
Cheap Thrills
and all of the Kozmic Blues album were recorded, and another at Sunset Sound, the independent studio where Paul wants to record with Janis.

The third week in July, after a gig in Albuquerque, we’re in L.A. making the demos. The Hollywood Landmark is full up and we stay at the Tropicana, a motel on Santa Monica Boulevard that’s long been a favorite stopping place for musicians and artists of the middling ranks. It’s seedier than the Landmark, more exposed. Someone has
called it L.A.’s answer to the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Any resemblance is definitely not architectural. The Tropicana is stamped out of the two-story-stucco California mold, but like the Chelsea, the Tropicana has its attractions. It houses Duke’s Coffee Shop, which serves the best burgers in Hollywood, and it’s just a block or two from Elektra Records’ L.A. studio, where I can drop in to visit with Fritz Richmond.

Paul knows that to prove his point he has to make the best possible recording in the Columbia studio. He is convinced that even the best possible recording won’t be the kind of sound he wants—and Columbia should want—for Janis. Any trickery, any fudging to make the Columbia demo sound bad, will invalidate the exercise. Janis understands this. When she stands at the mike, she sings as if this is her next record for real.

The members of Full Tilt Boogie, except for Brad Campbell, have very little experience in the studio. It takes time to establish working relationships with each member of a band, to discern their individual modes of communication, more time than Paul has in making these demos. But the Full Tilt boys are good musicians, and above all, they’re willing. They hang on Paul’s every word and on each take they do their damnedest. Their inexperience will affect both sessions equally, so it doesn’t tilt the outcome.

When Janis shows an interest in the technical aspects of the recording, Paul explains what’s going on and how it affects the sound. He keeps her involved every step of the way. Even as he makes the crucial demos, Paul is expanding the relationship, laying the foundation for their work together.

When we move from Columbia’s studio to Sunset Sound, a Columbia engineer sits in the back of the control room doing nothing, featherbedding. It’s part of the deal.

In her downtime, Janis has a reunion with Kris Kristofferson, who is in town. One morning when we gather in the Tropicana parking lot to head for the studio, Janis is fully dressed and ready to go to
work, complete with pink and purple feathers in her hair. Kris is barefoot and shirtless, left to lock up her room when he heads out for wherever he’s going next.

With the dueling demos in the can, we fly east for a flurry of gigs. We play the tennis stadium at Forest Hills for a crowd of fifteen thousand. Janis appears on
The Dick Cavett Show
again and gives John Fisher’s Love Limousine service a big pitch. We play a rock festival in Highland Park, Illinois, north of Chicago. We play a peace festival at Shea Stadium that Peter Yarrow puts together for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hiroshima A-bomb. Last year, in the ’69 World Series, the Mets lost the first game, then swept the next four, clinching their first world championship on the same field where Janis and Full Tilt Boogie are now rocking and rolling for peace. When it comes to the notion that sports provide appropriate metaphors for every detail of American life, I’m a skeptic, but I like the idea that although Janis failed in her first outing with a new band, she’s now on her way to clinching a championship of her own.