On the Road With Janis Joplin (9780698154711) Read online

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  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2014 by John Byrne Cooke.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-15471-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cooke, John Byrne.

  On the road with Janis Joplin / John Byrne Cooke. — First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-425-27411-8 (hardcover)

  1. Joplin, Janis. 2. Joplin, Janis—Performances. 3. Rock musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  ML420.J77C66 2014

  782.42166092—dc23

  [B]

  2014034647

  FIRST EDITION: November 2014

  Cover and endpaper photographs © John Byrne Cooke.

  Cover and endpaper design by Diana Kolsky.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  Jacket poster lyrics are from “As Good as You’ve Been to This World” written by Nick Gravenites.

  Most Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.

  For details, write: [email protected].

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  For Janis

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  The Bands

  CHAPTER ONE | If You’re Going to San Francisco

  CHAPTER TWO | California Dreamin’

  CHAPTER THREE | It Happened in Monterey

  CHAPTER FOUR | More Pretty Girls Than One

  CHAPTER FIVE | Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay

  CHAPTER SIX | Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar

  CHAPTER SEVEN | Hit the Road, Jack

  CHAPTER EIGHT | Hooray for Hollywood

  CHAPTER NINE | New York, New York

  CHAPTER TEN | What a Wonderful Town

  CHAPTER ELEVEN | Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

  CHAPTER TWELVE | Cheap Thrills

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Downtown Nowhere

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Memphis, Tennessee

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN | On the Road Again

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN | The Grand Tour

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Back in the U.S.A.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Half a Million Strong

  CHAPTER NINETEEN | Little Girl Blue

  Brazilian Interlude: Manha de Carnival

  CHAPTER TWENTY | The Great Tequila Boogie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Full Tilt Boogie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Riding That Train

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | T for Texas

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | That Old Gang of Mine

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | A Woman Left Lonely

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Cry, Baby

  Memories

  Photos

  Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SO MANY PEOPLE have helped in so many ways to bring this book, at long last, into the light of day, that I approach the task of acknowledging them with the certain knowledge that I will forget one or more whose names should be recognized here. I ask your forgiveness at the outset for any omissions, and I promise to rectify them when I can.

  Laura and Michael Joplin, Janis’s sister and brother, have shepherded Janis’s legacy through the years with care and love. They have supported the use of my photographs and films of Janis in many projects, and I am grateful for their support for this one. Jeff Jampol, the manager of Janis’s estate, has been similarly supportive; he has preserved and enhanced Janis’s legacy through a variety of creative projects and he provided valuable assistance and advice in moving this book along the path to publication.

  Candace Lake, my agent and friend for almost four decades, guided the effort to find a home for this book, and provided the vital link that helped us arrive at Anthony Mattero, of Foundry Literary + Media, who expertly planned the final steps that led us to Berkley Books. Their support and friendship is ongoing, and deeply appreciated.

  Authors do not choose their editors. I have been very fortunate in the editors who have chosen to work with me, never more so than in the case of my present editor, Denise Silvestro. Her encouragement, advice, and innovative solutions to every vexing question have improved this book in ways I never imagined possible. Denise’s assistant, Allison Janice, labored valiantly over the source notes and performed countless other chores without ever making me feel that any other books or authors needed a minute of her time. Managing editor Michelle Kasper kept the book on schedule. She and many others at Berkley Books and Penguin Random House have made me feel very lucky to be with this publisher.

  Stacy Kreuzmann Quinn and Nancy Reid, of Acid Test Productions, who published Janis Joplin: A Performance Diary, encouraged me to tell my own story of these years and provided helpful suggestions and insights.

  Earl Crabb and David Swift scanned research pages and early drafts of this book into my computer before I knew anything about scanning. Earl has contributed so many hours of computer diagnosis, problem-solving and advice over the course of thirty years that I can never adequately repay him, but I will try my best to channel Albert Grossman and pick up the check anytime we break bread together.

  Many of Janis’s friends and mine, among them many of the people who knew Janis best during her years of national and international touring, contributed their insights and knowledge by agreeing to sit down for recorded conversations with me. Excerpts in the book are credited as “Author interview with,” but these were truly conversations that followed wherever the pathways of memory took us, rather than a prepared list of questions, although I had those too. None of these contributors were more consistently helpful than Sam Andrew, of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Bob Neuwirth. Dave Getz and Peter Albin, the other surviving members of Big Brother, also deserve special mention. Thanks also to Mark Braunstein; Kozmic Blues Band members Brad Campbell, Terry Clements, Snooky Flowers, Richard Kermode, and John Till; Full Tilt Boogie members Richard Bell, Ken Pearson, and Clark Pierson; and Committee members Alan Myerson (director), Howard Hesseman, Carl Gottlieb, and Garry Goodrow.

  I would like to write individual words of thanks
to all the others who helped me, but in order that the reader can move along a little sooner to Janis’s story, I list them here with my heartfelt thanks to each: Dave Barry, Peter Berg, Barbara Carroll, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Lyndall Erb, Mimi Fariña, Barry Feinstein, John Fisher, Dave and Vera-Mae Fredrickson, Charlie Frizzell, Ralph J. Gleason, Bennett Glotzer, Bob (Robert E.) Gordon, Allison Caine Gottlieb, Bill Graham, Linda Gravenites, Nick Gravenites, Debbie Green, Sally Grossman, Robert L. Jones, Al Kooper, Jon McIntire, Milan Melvin, Margaret Moore, Seth Morgan, Geoff Muldaur, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, Frazer Pennebaker, Peter Pilafian, Fritz Richmond, Paul Rothchild, Rock Scully, Bob Seidemann, and Mary Works.

  Thanks to one and all, and God bless us, every one.

  —

  PETER ALBIN, DAVE Getz, and Sam Andrew continue to perform music together as Big Brother and the Holding Company, and in other combinations. Robert Altman, D. A. Pennebaker, and Bob Seidemann generously contributed photographs that are included in this book. Mary Works’s film The Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon beautifully chronicles the origins of the San Francisco rock-and-roll ballroom scene in the midsixties. You can follow their activities and see their work at these websites:

  Official Janis Joplin website: janisjoplin.com

  Big Brother and the Holding Company: bbhc.com

  Robert Altman Photography: altmanphoto.com

  Pennebaker-Hegedus Films: phfilms.com

  Bob Seidemann Photography: bobseidemann.com

  Mary Works: reddogsaloonfilm.com/Red_Dog_Saloon_Film/Welcome.html

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A FRIEND OF mine likes to say that history is what you remember. Memories are fallible, of course. Our impressions of the past are subjective and selective. They summon up what we want it to be as well as what it was. In preparing to write this story I spoke with many people who experienced the same events I did, and many who were present at times and places where I was not. We all saw the sixties from different perspectives. For many of us, the friendships we formed in those years have proven to be lifelong; we share similar memories of the music and the seemingly unlimited possibilities that characterized the times.

  Aided by the recollections of others, this narrative relates my personal experience, focused through my memory and shaped according to my sensibilities. Any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone.

  John Byrne Cooke

  Jackson, Wyoming

  2014

  THE BANDS

  BIG BROTHER AND THE HOLDING COMPANY

  Janis Joplin—vocals and percussion

  Sam Andrew—guitar and vocals*

  James Gurley—guitar and vocals

  Peter Albin—bass, guitar and vocals

  Dave Getz—drums

  Road Crew

  Big Brother had no road manager until Albert Grossman managed the band.

  John Cooke—road manager

  Dave Richards—equipment

  Mark Braunstein—equipment

  George Ostrow—equipment

  Management

  Chet Helms (1965–1966)

  Julius Karpen (1966–1967)

  Albert Grossman (1967–)

  John Court—Albert’s partner (1967–1968)

  Bert Block—Albert’s partner (1968–1969)

  THE KOZMIC BLUES BAND

  Musicians playing each instrument are listed in the order in which they played with this band.

  Janis Joplin—vocals and percussion

  Sam Andrew—guitar and vocals

  John Till—guitar

  Brad Campbell—bass

  Roy Markowitz—drums

  Lonnie Castille—drums

  Maury Baker—drums

  Terry Clements—alto saxophone

  Snooky Flowers—baritone saxophone and vocals

  Marcus Doubleday—trumpet

  Terry Hensley—trumpet

  Luis Gasca—trumpet

  Dave Woodward—trumpet

  Bill King—organ

  Richard Kermode—organ

  Road Crew

  John Cooke—road manager (Dec. 1968–Oct. 1969)

  Joe Crowley—road manager (Oct.–Dec. 1969)

  Mark Braunstein—equipment

  George Ostrow—equipment

  Vince Mitchell—equipment

  Management

  Albert Grossman

  Bert Block—Albert’s partner (–1969)

  Bennett Glotzer—Albert’s partner (1969–)

  FULL TILT BOOGIE

  There were no changes in personnel during the life of this band.

  Janis Joplin—vocals and percussion

  John Till—guitar

  Brad Campbell—bass

  Ken Pearson—organ

  Richard Bell—electric piano

  Clark Pierson—drums

  Road Crew

  John Cooke—road manager

  George Ostrow—equipment

  Vince Mitchell—equipment

  Phil Badella—equipment

  Joel Kornoelje—equipment

  Management

  Albert Grossman

  Bennett Glotzer

  CHAPTER ONE

  If You’re Going to San Francisco

  November 30, 1967

  THE 707’S WHEELS touch down at San Francisco International Airport and with few regrets I leave behind the East, where my mother’s family has lived since they arrived on the New England coast aboard a vessel that followed in the wake of the Mayflower. There they landed and there, for the most part, they stayed, close by the Atlantic shore. In five hours I’ve covered what it took the emigrants of the nineteenth century’s great westward migration months of peril to travel. Like those earlier travelers, I’m casting off the old and hoping to find in California the magic pathway to the rest of my life.

  Go west, young man.

  In my case, it is Albert Grossman, not Horace Greeley, who points the way.

  The southwest wind is roiling the shallow waters off the airport runway, turning them muddy emerald. It has been a cold fall in the East. By comparison, the California air feels springlike as I cross the tarmac to the terminal. The hills that surround the Bay are greened by the rains that return to the coast with autumn. Autumn in the East forces the flora into retreat and quiescence. To an easterner, green hills in November signal rebirth ahead of its time, a resurrection that fills me with hope. The breeze carries the scent of growing things. Mixed with the jet fumes, I can smell salt water, and something more exotic—patchouli oil, maybe, or pot.

  Peter Albin greets me at the gate. We have talked on the phone in recent days, to discuss logistics (“My flight gets in at . . .” “I’ll pick you up and we’ll . . .”). I know Peter by sight because I saw him, back in June, at the Monterey International Pop Festival, standing his ground at stage right as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the band that knocked the audience back on its collective heel. Peter’s feet don’t move much when he plays the electric bass. His body sways to the beat, sometimes curling over the instrument to wring from it insistent riffs that propel the songs forward, sometimes standing bolt upright, his back arched, shaking the bass so the notes fly from the stage with that much more force.

  In the airport, face-to-face, Peter is friendly, open, welcoming. He moves with angular looseness and has a lopsided smile. At twenty-three, he’s the youngest in the band. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I have lived for the past nine years, Peter’s shoulder-length hair would earn him derisive shouts of “Hahvahd fairy!” from the townies, their ducktails rigid with Brylcreem. In SFO, he attracts surreptitious glances from the servicemen emplaning for Vietnam and the businessmen in their suits. It would surprise them to know that Peter is a junior executive, dressed for rock and roll. He is the member of Big Brother who signs the contracts, the
one who comes to pick up the guy dispatched from New York by Albert Grossman—creator of Peter, Paul and Mary, manager of Bob Dylan and a host of lesser folk luminaries—to oversee the band on the road. As the music of the counterculture has evolved from folk to folk-rock—the Mamas & the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield—to full-bore rock and roll, Albert has kept pace.

  When Peter’s car crests the rise where Highway 101 leaves South San Francisco behind and comes in view of the city proper, I see the white houses dancing up and down the hills and I feel at home. San Francisco is my favorite American city. I have been here often over the years, most recently in June, when I landed at SFO as part of D. A. Pennebaker’s film crew, on my way to Monterey for the Pop Festival, fired then, as now, with the sense of moving toward the promise of things to come, ready to do my part to make the promise come true.

  I have a family connection to the Bay Area, an uncle who is a professor of botany at UC Berkeley. When I drove across the country for the first time, in the summer after my sophomore year at Harvard, my uncle’s Berkeley home was my destination. In recent years, it is music that has brought me often to the cities by the Bay. From the first time I stepped into the Club 47 coffeehouse in Cambridge and heard Joan Baez sing, music has defined my friendships and my life. I discovered bluegrass music and became a member of Cambridge’s homegrown bluegrass and old-time band, the Charles River Valley Boys. In the spring of 1963 I drove across the country again, this time with two friends from Cambridge, and we discovered in Berkeley a folk community that was welcoming and familiar.

  In the folk music revival, Berkeley and Cambridge were united by enthusiasm for the traditional roots of American music, black and white, and the innovations that creative players could derive from those themes. Some of my Cambridge friends made the journey to California regularly. A few moved here. The kinship forged on the Cambridge-Berkeley axis was based on sharing the music and shunning competition. We believed ourselves to be quietly superior to what we saw as the more commercially oriented pickers in New York and L.A. Our image of the prototypical New York guitar player was a guy who turned toward the wall when he played his hottest licks, so you couldn’t see how he did it.