On the Road with Janis Joplin (36 page)

On September 18, Jimi Hendrix dies in London of a drug overdose—his girlfriend’s sleeping pills, apparently, too many taken accidentally, because he didn’t know how strong they were. As with any death like this there’s a shadow of suspicion that it might be accidentally on purpose.

Is this what triggers Janis to put aside her caution and her pride in controlling her most dangerous habit? When Janis and Sam
Andrew heard Nancy Gurley was dead from an OD, their first reaction was to get high. Is it before the news of Jimi’s death, or after, that I find Janis by the pool on another evening? What I see in her face this time gives me a chill. Like Sam, Janis can’t hide the telltale signs when she’s on smack. Her eyes say “I’m stoned” like a flashing neon sign. The pupils are sharp and cold, and there’s a gossamer mask over her face that cloaks her emotions. She retreats inside, hiding, hoping you won’t notice what’s so plain to see. But I see it, and she sees my disappointment. It’s just for now, she says. Drinking to moderate her boredom affects her performance in the studio. A little smack helps her maintain the high she needs for the long hours, the take after take of the same song. This is her excuse.

I’ve heard this rationale before. The junkie logic doesn’t convince me for a New York minute, but you can’t tell anybody what to do. You can only tell her how you feel. I tell Janis how happy I’ve been since she quit. I tell her how it makes me feel to see her high. I tell her I love her.

Most days, Janis displays the same energy she’s had all summer. And she is planning for the future. She’s serious enough about marrying Seth Morgan to consult Bob Gordon about a prenuptial agreement. This is simple prudence, but it also reflects Janis’s lingering fear of being ripped off. Whether she inquires about the extent of Seth’s resources isn’t something I think to ask at the time. It’s possible that his exceed hers. He’s an heir to the Ivory Soap fortune. Be that as it may, Bob Gordon recommends and draws up an agreement that will exempt Janis’s income from being considered part of community property under California law.

The recording doesn’t stop on weekends. The schedule may get a little lighter, but the pressure from Columbia to get the album done is humming in the background.

Since I played music aboard the Festival Express and in Austin with Janis after Threadgill’s Jubilee, I’ve been feeling it’s time to find
myself a new guitar to replace the one that was stolen last year out of the Chelsea Hotel. I’ve put out the word among my friends in L.A., and someone tells me that a music store in Huntington Beach has a prewar D-18 (“prewar,” talking about Martin guitars, means made before the Second World War). I hop in the Volvo. Down 101 to the 110 to the 405 to Huntington Beach. The guy at the store says no, we haven’t had any used Martins in a while, but I think there’s a store in Hollywood that’s got one. He makes the call. Yup, he’s got a D-18. Back up the 405 to the 110 to the 101, and I end up, two hours after I set out, on Sunset Boulevard less than ten blocks from the Landmark. But the trip is worth it. The D-18 is five years old. It’s been cracked and repaired. But when I strum an E chord, I know it’s a winner.

There’s a range of tonal qualities in top-quality acoustic guitars, Martins as much as any other brand. The tone depends on the wood, the age, how much the guitar has been played, and other, intangible factors that make every guitar different. When you pick up a guitar for the first time and play a chord, the first impression can be decisive—good, bad or indifferent. On this Martin, the E chord rings like bells, and I trust my first impression. I shell out three hundred dollars and I take it back to the Landmark. It was worth running down to Huntington Beach and back to get this guitar.

A few days later, on Sunday, I’m in my room in the afternoon, talking with an old friend from Cambridge, Dave Barry. Dave is a talented guitar and piano player and he has taken up songwriting since he’s been living in L.A. He has written a song he wants Janis to hear and he has talked to her about it. He plays it for me on my new Martin. He was supposed to meet Janis at the Troubadour last night, but she lingered at Barney’s Beanery and they missed connecting. Dave has come to the Landmark today hoping to see Janis before she goes to the studio. We’ve tried her room, but got no answer.

The phone rings. It’s Paul Rothchild, calling from the studio. Janis was supposed to be there an hour ago. It’s not like her to be late. Paul tried her room and got the same result I did. I tell him I’ll have a look around.

Before we leave my room, the phone rings again. This time it’s Seth. He’s flying down to Burbank this afternoon. He can’t reach Janis. She’s supposed to meet him at the airport or send someone to get him.

Around the pool and the patio there is no sign of Janis. We run into Vince Mitchell and Phil Badella. The Full Tilt boys took the Boogie Wagon to the studio. Can they hitch a ride with me? I figure we might as well go to the studio and see if Janis shows up there.

The four of us pile into my Volvo in the Landmark’s underground garage. When I pull out onto the short driveway that curves past the Landmark’s entrance, I see that Janis’s Porsche is parked there. Above the Porsche, there’s a light in Janis’s window.

Janis, as is her custom, has taken a single room with a kitchenette in the front building, down the hallway from the hotel lobby. Why she would pick a room overlooking Franklin Avenue, with the morning and afternoon rush-hour traffic, instead of on the back side, facing the courtyard and the pool, is beyond me, but it’s her choice.

It is a little past sunset, only just dark enough now that Janis might turn on a light in the south-facing room. Maybe she was out somewhere and got back to the hotel in the last few minutes. Maybe she forgot she’s supposed to be at the studio.

I back up into the garage so the car isn’t blocking the driveway. Wait here, I tell the guys.

As I pass through the lobby, I stop at the desk and get a key to Janis’s room from Jack Hagy, the manager. A couple of times since we’ve been here, I’ve gone to her room to get something she forgot and wants down at the studio. I can’t say just why I get the key now. I think Janis is in her room, so why do I need it? What if she’s in the shower? Some such idea may pass through my head, but mostly I’m
saving time. If I knock and she doesn’t answer I’ll have to come back for the key.

When I open the door to room 105, there’s no one there. That’s the feeling I have even as I see Janis lying on the floor beside the bed. Before I touch the unnatural flesh I know that this is only the vessel. The spirit has departed.

Cry, Baby

I
HAVE NO
frame of reference for this. It’s like a scene from a Raymond Chandler novel: a body found in a Los Angeles hotel room. Seeing it this way helps to remove it one step from being real. I have no doubt that it’s real, but it helps, and I can accept the paradox.

Janis is lying in an awkward position, her head and shoulder wedged against the bed and the bedside table. In her hand, there are four dollar bills and two quarters. On the side table, there’s a pack of Marlboros.

The story is obvious to an interested observer: She got change for a five, bought cigarettes for fifty cents from the machine in the lobby, came back to the room, sat down, and keeled over before she could light one. She was sitting on the bed and pitched over sideways. There’s dried blood on her face where her head struck the corner of the bedside table.

Janis has added a few touches to personalize the place—scarves draped over the lamps to soften the light. Nothing is in disarray, nothing out of the ordinary. The bed is made.

There’s no reason to think this is a crime scene, but that isn’t my
call. I know the rules. Don’t disturb anything. Using the sides of my fingers against the edge of the drawer pull, I open the top drawer of the bureau. Right there, in the first place I think to look, in plain view, there’s a hypodermic needle and a spoon. Her works. I close the drawer. Nothing in the other drawers but clothes.

I stand still for a few moments, aware of my breathing, aware of the sound of cars passing on Franklin Avenue, of the silence in the room, the emptiness. In this moment, I am the only one who knows. I don’t want to carry this weight alone. I feel an urgency that I need to resist. It’s up to me to put the knowledge out into the world, but this is something I have to do very carefully.

I leave the room, lock the door behind me. I keep the key. I go down to the garage by the back stairs so I won’t pass through the lobby. I get in the Volvo and start the engine. Without saying a word, I park in the same place where the car was parked when Vince and Phil and Dave and I came down to the garage. Before I knew. The boys think this is strange, and it is. I turn off the engine and I tell them Janis is dead.

I want someone else to see her and the room exactly as I have seen them, so I ask Vince Mitchell to come upstairs with me. Dave Barry asks if he can come too. He’s writing freelance articles these days, and this is private. I don’t want Dave the writer to see Janis as she is now. I don’t want him to write about her like this. Sorry, I say.

Vince and I go into the room. He looks around, takes it all in. Maybe I was hoping it would be different, the room normal, Janis gone, or there to welcome us. With Vince, I confirm the reality. We leave, and again I make sure the door is locked.

I tell Vince and Phil and Dave that I have to plan as best I can how to tell the people who were important to Janis so they will hear it from me, before the news gets out. For a short time it will be possible to control it, but only for a very short time. We’ll have to notify the police, and the coroner. Once the authorities know, there will be no stopping it.

We go to my room and I call Bob Gordon first. He’s home from work at the Beverly Hills law firm where he is a partner. He’s in the shower, his wife, Gail, says. She’ll have him call me back. I can’t sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. I have other calls to make. I tell Gail I have to speak with Bob now. She doesn’t pick up the fraught undercurrents in my voice and finally I have to say it’s a matter of life and death. Just death, really, but the clichéd phrase comes more naturally. Bob comes on the phone—I picture him dripping wet with a towel wrapped around his waist, because he’s not the kind of person who would come to the phone naked. I tell him, and I feel just a little better. Sharing the awful knowledge helps, minutely. I wait while he struggles to recover his composure.

Bob shifts into lawyer mode. He says he’ll notify the police. He’ll come to the hotel and call them from here, so he’ll be here when they arrive. That gives us a little time.

I phone Albert next, in Bearsville. “Oh, no,” he says, and all the breath goes out of him. Janis’s parents are next on the list I’m making in my head. It’s past seven in L.A., after nine
P.M.
in Texas. Will Albert call her parents? He’s uncertain, fearful, rattled to the core. I’ve never heard him so—disrupted. Would you mind doing it? he asks. What can I say? No? I say I will. But I can’t put off telling Paul and the boys in the band for long, and I can’t give them this news over the phone. When Bob Gordon gets to the hotel, I’ll go to the studio, but I’ll call Janis’s parents before I leave. Albert agrees to the order of events I’m making up as I talk. I get the feeling he’ll agree to anything I say right now. He’s not going to help me plan how to do this. For now, Albert is incapable of handling anything beyond his grief.

Bob Gordon makes record time from Brentwood to the Landmark in his Porsche. I take him to Janis’s room. We look, I show him the works, we leave. Together, we tell Jack Hagy, the manager. Bob has called his brother-in-law, a doctor, who arrives minutes after Bob. I give Janis’s room key to Bob and leave them to deal with the police.

From this point forward, the news is going to get out and no one
will be able to control it. My need to get to the studio, to be with Paul and the Full Tilt boys, is visceral, like hunger, but I promised Albert I would call Janis’s parents.

I would like to put off this call forever. I wake Janis’s father out of a sound sleep in Port Arthur and I give him a few moments to shake off the cobwebs. Then I say, “There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. Janis is dead.” Seth Joplin’s first reaction is the same as Albert’s. “Oh, no.” He makes the same sound Albert made as his breath leaves him, taking with it a measure of his life.

Bennett Glotzer has been in L.A. for the past couple of weeks. He and Janis were in touch often during the summer tour. He has spent time in the studio, had drinks and meals with Janis. I call his hotel. He’s not there. In these days, you leave messages with the hotel operator, so I leave a message that reveals nothing amiss, asking him to come to the Landmark.

Phil and Vince have kept close to me. We’re bonded in shock, staving off our own grief. They will come with me to the studio. Dave Barry knows he doesn’t belong in this coterie of Janis’s intimates, so he takes his leave. When he’s gone, I can’t remember if I cautioned him again about keeping the knowledge to himself. The only way I can hold myself together is to focus on one thing at a time. Right now, getting to the studio is the urgent necessity.

I park in the little lot behind Sunset Sound. Phil and Vince and I come in through the back door. When we enter the studio I see the smiles, the excitement in the eyes, the pride in the work they’re doing, and I don’t want to say the words that will wipe all that away, because I know the bright, clean, unscarred feelings Paul and the Full Tilt boys have at this moment about the album, and about Janis, will never return.

I take Paul into the hall and I tell him first. Janis is dead. Paul staggers and reaches out to steady himself against the wall. I tell him what little I know. When he recovers sufficiently, Paul asks Phil Macy, the engineer, to step out of the control room so I can tell the band in
private. While the boys are absorbing the shock, Paul tells Macy we’re quitting work early.

We go in caravan to the Landmark—my Volvo, Paul’s Porsche, and the Boogie Wagon.

The police have arrived, and men from the county coroner’s office. They are considerate and discreet.

Seth Morgan has taken a cab from the airport. He looks stunned and lost.

Bennett Glotzer is here. I tell him I found Janis’s works and left them where they were. Should I have taken them? “Are you fucking crazy?” he says. “That’s a felony. You’re disturbing evidence.” Bennett was with Janis last night after work, he says. They had a couple of drinks at Barney’s Beanery. Janis had only two because she had to record the next day. He took note of her restraint.

By now the news is out, racing through the grapevine like a jolt of bad acid. The notion that I could contain it even for an hour or two was a fantasy. Everyone who knows finds the knowledge unbearable and has to share it.

The time remaining to reach Janis’s closest friends, and ours, before they hear it by radio or television or telephone is very short. Who have I forgotten? Everyone. I should have called the boys in Big Brother, Sam Andrew first of all, but my need to get to the studio postponed that thought. My phone rings and it’s Lyndall, Janis’s roommate. She’s alone in the house in Larkspur, crying, distraught, almost incoherent. I try to calm her and fail. I tell her I’ll send someone to be with her. I call Peter Berg in Berkeley. He knows Lyndall, and yes, he’ll drive across the Bay to keep her company.

From now on, it’s all damage control. I’m on the phone nonstop. People come in and out of the room. When it gets late enough, when the rest of the country is past midnight and the phone lines fall silent, we huddle together in one of the big suites, anesthetized by alcohol and sorrow. Somewhere before dawn there are a few hours of fitful sleep.

On Monday morning, the phone in my suite rings and rings.
There is no call waiting, no voice mail; you get a busy signal or the phone rings and I answer. The people who get through have won an electronic roulette. John Phillips is one. I haven’t seen him since Big Brother and I saw
Monterey Pop
at John and Michelle’s mansion in Bel Air. John is genuinely wounded by the news and concerned for those who were close to Janis. He knows there is nothing he can do, but he offers all the same and his sincerity comforts me. My father calls. I haven’t thought to phone my parents, so they read the news in the
New York Times
. I phone my mother.

Today is my thirtieth birthday.

At some point I talk with Jack Hagy, the manager. He tells me that early Sunday morning, about one
A.M.
, Janis said hello to the night clerk as she passed through the lobby on the way to her room. She returned a short time later to get change for the cigarette machine. This confirms the story the change and the cigarettes told me. Some things are just as they appear to be.

Albert is on the first plane from New York. I have never seen him so stricken. He is bereft. Lyndall flew down last night.

Kris Kristofferson was at the Big Sur Folk Festival, held in the fall this year. He got back to L.A. late yesterday, as the news was breaking. Today he’s at the Landmark.

The gathering this evening is a select group, the core of intimates who have known and worked with Janis. Kris, the band, Paul, Seth, Lyndall, Albert, Bennett, a few more. Linda Gravenites is here. She hasn’t seen Janis since she moved out of the house in Larkspur after Janis got back from Rio. The day before Janis died, Linda had a sudden impulse to come to L.A. She flew down, connected with a mutual friend of hers and Janis’s, and was making plans to come to the Landmark yesterday to see Janis when she heard that Janis had died.

I have brought my movie projector to L.A., and my editing setup, so I can work on my films while I’m here. I set up my projector and show the movies of Janis and Big Brother, Janis and Kozmic Blues. There she is, alive and well, giving it everything she’s got.

Later on, my new guitar is in play. Shared music offers solace.

In a quiet moment, Seth Morgan is riven with guilt. He knew Janis was using, even before we came to L.A. During the summer, she dabbled. After all, she had quit, hadn’t she? She was clean for months. Which proved she could do it. So why not give herself a little reward when she felt like it? The paradoxical circularity of an addict’s reasoning is self-fulfilling. A couple of weeks ago Janis called Seth and begged him to make her stop. I can’t do this for you, he said. She begged him to spend more time in L.A. If only, he says. . . .

This prompts my own hindsight. If only I had done more, been a better friend . . . Paul Rothchild puts a quick end to this line of self-indulgence. “We’re all guilty, John,” he says.

We console ourselves by clinging together and doing the things that have to be done, as friends continue to arrive.

Bob Neuwirth was in Nashville when he got the news, visiting Norman Blake, a flat-picker and multi-instrumentalist who is a member of the band on Johnny Cash’s network TV show. When Bob came into the Blakes’ kitchen on Monday morning, Norman’s wife, Nancy, was making biscuits. She said, “Bobby, I have some terrible news for you.” She heard it on the radio.

Bob arrives in L.A. on Tuesday.

I take a phone call from Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County coroner. Noguchi became nationally known when he performed the autopsy on Bobby Kennedy two years ago. Noguchi is speaking with as many of Janis’s friends and associates as he can reach, assembling a “psychological profile.” I answer his questions and add to his list of essential names. He is a dispassionate investigator, looking for any indication that Janis might deliberately have taken her own life, and finds none. His verdict will be death by accidental overdose.

Janis’s family arrives from Texas. Mrs. Joplin’s sister lives in L.A. The family holds a service to which none of us is invited. Albert and Bennett Glotzer are permitted to attend, but no one else from the
musical side of Janis’s life, the part that meant more to her than anything else. We are the people who killed their daughter. We represent San Francisco, where Janis’s nonconformist outlook made her welcome, where she was no longer the outcast, the misunderstood. Where her talent made her a local phenomenon, then a star. In the Joplins’ eyes, we are the world of rock and roll that destroyed her. This is the feeling I project on them, but I may be unfair. Later, Bennett tells me the Joplins blamed no one but themselves.

In any event, we will have a memorial of our own. Bob Gordon tells me that Janis left $2,500 in her will for her friends to have a wake. That’s the word she used, and she intended the liveliest kind of wake. She wanted her friends to have a party and drink to her memory. She signed the updated will on Friday.
*
Bob had also prepared the premarital agreement that would protect Janis’s copyrights and royalties. Janis took a copy with her for Seth to sign.