Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  Ikij, Janis Is Feeling Great

  ith the publication of the Sly & the Family Stone article, I had my first cover story under my oversized leather belt. By now, in the spring of 1970, I'd been at Rolling Stone for almost a year. I'd written about sixty articles, most of them short and published without a byline. Since we were cranking out four or five pieces each issue, it didn't look right to have the same names popping up on every page, so we often went without.

  One such story came about after I received a phone call from Janis Joplin one night in April. It was around midnight, and I was in the basement offices of a Chinatown newspaper. Perhaps I should explain.

  Having settled in at Rolling Stone, I was contacted by Gordon Lew, the publisher of East-West, the bilingual Chinese-American weekly. He needed to jazz up the English side of the paper, and wanted a more youthful perspective on Chinatown and other social issues. I came in with Exacto knives blazing, writing and editing articles and designing and laying out pages, working with next to no budget, charitable contributors, and artwork clipped out of other publications.

  With a full-time job, I could only give East-West one or two long nights a week.

  One of those nights, the phone rang. Ken Wong, an editor and columnist, answered, then turned to me. "It's Janis Joplin. It must be for you." I had called her a day or so before, and hadn't really expected an answer. She and Rolling Stone had a tumultuous relationship. Here she was, a San Franciscan by way of Port Arthur, Texas, and she couldn't get decent press from the one rock paper that should've been behind her. Instead, we'd run a review with the headline: "Janis Joplin: The Judy Garland of Rock?"

  She'd been reduced to tears by some of our articles, I was told. Now, having left her original band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, she had gotten a new group together and was ready to make an album.

  Despite the late hour, she'd tracked me down to this subterranean Chinatown office, and, perhaps because of the hour, she was in a great mood, raving not only about her new band and the music they were rehearsing, but also about her new tattoo and recent vacation.

  J A N I S J O P L I N HAS A NEW BAND TOGETHER, and, from all signs, has gotten herself together, too. In fact: "Man, I feel so fucking great that I thought I'd put a flower around my wrist." So she broke away from rehearsals with her new band at her home in Larkspur (in Marin County), went across the Golden Gate Bridge, and trucked down to a tattoo parlor near the Greyhound bus depot downtown to get herself a permanent bracelet.

  It's a beautiful tattoo, according to reports from girlfriends and Janis herself. It's a baroque bracelet of hearts and flowers, ending with a green, red, and yellow flower that falls from the lower wrist into the hand itself. `A lot of my Capricorn girlfriends have tattoos," Janis said. "It's fuckin' beautiful."

  (Janis actually got two tattoos, but she isn't saying where the other one is. Suffice it to say that it's a little heart laced near Janis' own.)

  As for the band: The new ensemble, replacing Main Squeeze (which was the remotely known name of the band that came after Big Brother left), has five members: two old; three new; some country; mostly blues. Staying on from Main Squeeze are Brad Campbell, bass, and John Till, who replaced Sam Andrews on guitar. New members are Richard Bell on piano, formerly of Ronnie Hawkins' band; Ken Pearson on organ (he worked on the Jesse Winchester LP); and Clark Pierson on drums. Janis found Pierson at the Galaxie, a North Beach titpub.

  They've been practicing at Janis' new home in Larkspur and, as Janis reports: "I'm super-gassed. They're fuckin' professionals," which is not to say, she emphasizes, that her previous backups were shitty.

  Without the brass section she had with Snooky Flowers and Main Squeeze, Janis is moving, she said, toward a country/ blues sound. "I'm very hesitant to use `country' as a label," she said. "It's more like pretty down blues, more down than R&B, with a little slide guitar. And we've got loud electric funky country blues."

  "The last time," Miss Joplin said, "it was really quick, getting a band together. "This time we're just playing and not worrying about dates."

  Before settling down into her new house, Janis had spent several weeks in South America, getting her head clogged and cleared at the same time. The clogging came in Rio de Janeiro, whose police make U.S. cops look like baby-sitters.

  "It's vicious, man. If you've got long hair they can drag you off and never let you out. `There's no judicial system at all there. The cops rape people, put dogs to guys' balls. And people think we've got it bad...."

  Up the Brazilian coast, Salvador was completely different. "No cops. In fact, there was nothing there, no entertainment. So it ended up for three nights with me and my friends going to this big whorehouse that had this four-piece band. And I sang with them."

  Janis Joplin is sounding and feeling good. "I've got my head back," she said.

  -May 28, 1970

  Rolling Stone

  The Jachson 5:

  THE MEN DON'T KNOW,

  BUT THE LITTLE GIRLS UNDERSTAND

  II of us at Rolling Stone had ranged widely in our musical tastes. We came from jazz and R&B, folk and country, pop and rock. The merging of all of these forms, and more, made perfect sense to us. Maybe it was the drugs, or the liberal times. Anything went, in music as well as in fashion, language, behavior, and politics.

  Perhaps, as one book about Rolling Stone noted, it was my background in radio that led to my diverse musical interests-in particular, that all-encompassing format known as Top 40. Perhaps it was my job of covering whatever we deemed to be the news. Whatever the reason, I was all over the musical map, ranging from Moby Grape to the gospel group that hit with "Oh, Happy Day," from fake Zombies to real supergroups like Crosby, Stills & Nash.

  In the issue covering the death of Janis Joplin, I interviewed one of the musicians who'd been working with her, the blues singer and composer Nick Gravenites. I also drove up to her house in Larkspur, in Marin County, to take a few notes and file a memo for whoever was writing the obituary. The report ran, intact, as the conclusion of our obituary. In the same issue, I profiled the great guitarist Ry Cooder, wrote news items about former Lovin' Spoonful John Sebastian, the Beach Boys, and Peter, Paul & Mary. I also tossed in a few hundred words on an attack Vice President Spiro Agnew had unleashed on the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit." The issue before, I'd profiled the underappreciated pop singer and songwriter Jackie DeShannon. The issue after, I had the cover with the greatly appreciated Grace Slick.

  It didn't matter whether my subject was "Oh, Happy Day," the gospel phenomenon from the Northern California State Youth Choir, or Grand Funk Railroad, or Paul Simon. If it was music, I could dig it. Which explains how I came to be assigned such acts as Three Dog Night and Bread, Olivia Newton-John and Neil Diamond. If other editors shied away from them as "too pop," too commercial, too weird, or too anything, I'd get the call.

  But, often as not, I'd make the call for myself, and at Rolling Stone I got a chance to put my affection for Motown music into words. The first pieces weren't so great-I had to write an obituary of Tammi Terrell in the spring of 1970, and I vaguely recall a short item headlined "Diana Ross's Dogs Offed." Things picked up with a report on one of Motown's finest groups, the Temptations, as they opened up the "Motown Sound" to include social commentary and outright protest.

  And then, just as soul music seemed set to boil over in anger, along came the Jackson 5. They broke through on Top 40 and R&B radio. As FM rock stations began to take note of these phenoms from Gary, Indiana, we began considering them at Rolling Stone. "Too pop," we said. "Too commercial."

  I knew I'd soon be packing to tour with the Jackson 5.

  THE TAXI D R I V E R kept the cab moving in straight lines, despite 50 mph winds. Street lamps and signs, strung across intersections, danced like diapers on a stormy clothesline. Welcome to Columbus, Ohio. The cabbie was in an obliging good mood, even stopping the meter at $2.80-the usual fare for a ride from Port Columbus airport to the Sheraton-to do a little sightse
eing, driving through the rich part of town, the high-rise senior citizens' apartment towers, and, a block away, the "colored section."

  "Here's where you can get a piece of tail for ten bucks," he explained, "anything you want." He slowed down as we passed the bars and grills-clean, actually, with the grime either covered by snow or blown away. "Here's where they had that riot a few years back," he said grimly. "I just thought you'd like to see this, since you're a writer and all." Silence. I brought up football, to get the talk going again, and his mind must've registered Kent State, or its aftermath, the disruptions at nearby Ohio State. He grunted and dismissed Ohio's high football ranking last season. We'd arrived at the hotel already anyway. He looked over his seat and explained how Ohio is regulated by the State Liquor Control. Stores are closed after 9, and it was past midnight. "If there's anything you want, I can get it for you. Or just ask any of the cab drivers. We'll be right here." Thanks, I said.

  "Oh," and he took out a billfold and flashed a color photo of a "colored" woman. "I can get this for you, too. She's a nice one."

  MAYOR RICHARD G O R D o N HATCHER takes his place before a lectern in the Council chambers of Gary, Indiana. The mayor is waiting for the film crew to get their lights placed, and for the buzz to die down a little. It is Jackson 5 Day this January 31st in Elbert Gary's little old city; in Music Man town, soul music rules. They were going to helicopter the Jackson 5 in and parade them to their old house at 23rd and Jackson Streets, and the mayor was going to rename the street "Jackson 5 Street" for the week, and even lay a cornerstone in front of the house where Joe and Kathy Jackson raised their family of nine.

  And then there'd be the ceremonies at City Hall. But snow, 40 mph winds, and zero-degree weather made it so that, all of a sudden, we're at City Hall. It had taken about ten minutes to fill the room, some two hundred Christmas-dressed kids towing parents and guardians up from the libraryish lobby into this high-ceilinged chamber. And now a dozen teenagers enter through a special door, to the tables the councilmen usually use for meetings. They sit in a neat row behind the mayor, in front of the Gary banner: CITY ON THE MOVE. City of steel-US Steel-and waterway transportation, and trucking, and rail; of a past of graft and corruption, and of plentiful black labor. And, now, a black mayor.

  The city emblem, on the flag and on the podium, is a bucket of hot metal being poured onto the globe, like gravy onto a mashed potato.

  Hatcher is running for re-election in this 5 5 percent black city; he is popular, but running hard, anyway, and the J-5 are here to help, with two benefit shows today and tonight. They were in Columbus for two shows the day before. They and the mayor are old buddies, according to all the stories in Soul magazine. The Jackson kids all played youth league baseball, and Hatcher, as a city official who loved kids, supported various teams. It was at a campaign benefit concert for candidate Hatcher-where the Jackson 5 performed-where Hatcher introduced the boys to Diana Ross; Diana rushed the word to Berry Gordy, and that's how Motown landed them and moved them into an immense home in the Hollywood hills, into the top hierarchy of soul, pop, and-if you must-bubblegum music.

  Mayor Hatcher takes just a minute to say why we're all here today, and the kids, straining away from mothers, brothers, and sisters, are cheering with each mention of the J-5. A three-second, high-pitched, fast-dipping YAAAyyy, just like at the concerts.

  "Behind me here are the winners of the Jackson 5 poster contest and essay contest," the Mayor says. "Each winning student will receive a prize that I am sure millions of young Americans would love to have. They will be able to have their pictures taken with the Jackson 5." Mayor Hatcher's even sounding like a Boss Soul DJ. A heartfelt OOOooohhh swells up and wafts up to the Mayor.

  There's real envy in these two hundred little faces.

  Just before the Jackson 5 walked in, the kids were angling for the best view from their pew-seats in the spectator section of the council room, sitting on patient parents' laps, standing, leaning against the back of the row in front, some of them with Instamatics poised. A couple of girls in the second row figure out I'm press, languorously taking up a couple of front-row spaces in the press pew, and there is a deluge of hellos to deliver to the J-5: Rebecca for Jermaine, Rochelle Williams and Sheryl for Michael, Sheryl also for Tito, and Margo for Marlon.

  The ones they love enter, dressed in suits and sports jackets, mod but moderately so, looking pretty much straight ahead to the Mayor.

  "Lookit them in their suits ...Oooh...."

  First, as promised, they take pictures of the brothers with the contest winners, and, just like in a high school assembly, the winners take turns introducing themselves and their schools. Partisan cheers go up as each one passes by. "...and I'm from Roosevelt High." "Right on!" They shake hands with each of the J-5. Tito and Michael exchange power shakes with some of the winners-the ones who offer their hands for that grip. They're at home. Their father, Joe Jackson, misty eyed at the heroes' reception, says a short thank-you. Another cheer; the kids consider him a hero, too. "Lay it on, Jackson, lay it on!"

  The Jackson 5 go through it all with consummate grace. They accept a flag that has flown atop the state capitol, a gift from a congressman. They get a plaque from Indiana University, for inspiring "hope for the young." Mayor Hatcher himself presents plaqued keys to his city, so proud, today, "that the Jackson 5 has carried the name of Gary throughout the country and the world, and made it a name to be proud of."

  Each of the Jackson 5 steps up for a few words. Tito sums it up: "We're glad to be home. There's no place like home."

  BACKSTAGE AT VETERAN MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM in Columbus, Ohio, maybe fifteen seconds before the call to go onstage, and Michael Jackson is making a request to Tito, who's diddling away on his electric guitar, still plugged into the portable amp. "Play Brenda and the Tabulations' song," he pleads. Tito, his serious face defiant beyond its 17 years, continues on the blues riff he's found, way down at the bottom of the neck. Jermaine, on bass, is playing along, singing in falsetto:

  It's a sha-a-ame...the way you hurt me,

  Sha-a-ame... ooh-ooh-ooh....

  Michael seems restless. He's posed with his brothers for the local black paper, and he's done his vocal exercises, hitting the high notes in little burps while Jermaine is matching him on bass guitar. Now he's hungry again as 9:30 P.M. approaches, and he asks Jack Nance, the road manager, for some food-especially a hot dog. Too late by a second; a man steps into the room and calls, "Let's go." Out in the corridor, you can hear cousins Ronnie Rancifer and Johnny Jackson on electric piano and drums driving into the first of a dozen repeating bars to introduce "Stand." Time to face four thousand shrieks, and there is this remarkable lack of tension. The Jackson 5 could be paperboys going off to do their routes. Before the first show, Michael poked around the dull, well-lit room in his stage outfit-part Afro sharp, part nursery school, orange top with little green turtles as the design, and a toga-style shoulder cape. He drummed sticks onto a copy of Rolling Stone on the table facing the mirror, pouring a steady rain of wood onto James Taylor's glaring face, until Marlon grabbed the magazine. He poked around some more; reminded cousin Ronnie to remember his cue list of songs; watched people come and go. He is not a center of attention.

  "Let's go," and by the time the cousins hit the "Stand" riff for the twelfth time, the Jackson 5 are up the ramp, past the columns of curtains and the first wave of screams, and lined up-tall Jackie in the center, Tito and Jermaine, behind their guitars, alongside, and Marlon and Michael on the wingtips. On a count, each puts one hand on the left hip, the other hand lightly cupping the right ear, and gets the right leg stomping, high step style-all, of course, in unison, until Michael breaks away to take the mike and put his own voice above the screams.

  ONE TALK WITH JOE JACKSON and you're sprung back two musical generations, back past the beginnings of rhythm and blues, to Chicago in 19 51, when bebop and blues were the music staples of the black man. In the forties, white musicians had turned jazz into a tepid "swing";
the answer, in the black urban areas, was "hard" bebop, mixing the hard-edged city blues style, reflecting the migration of Negroes to the North and Midwest, with the big band sound popular in the Southwest-in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Oklahoma.

  Joe Jackson was one of the migrant blacks, settling into a steel town to work and raise a family. He worked as a crane operator, "but I always wanted to be in entertainment." On weekends, he sang and played guitar with one of the many groups that called themselves the Falcons. "It was a local group out of Chicago, around 1951," he said. "We played mostly colleges and things-bars. It was a blues thing, which is what everybody was getting into."

  But he had to keep working to support his growing family. "The boys would listen to the things we were trying to do, at rehearsals, and there were always instruments laying around. If you're around something a lot, you're gonna take part in it." Soon, Mr. Jackson faded away from the Falcons scene and turned the house over to his sons' music. "We went overboard. My wife and I would fight, because I invested in new instruments that cost so much. When a woman's a good mother and finds all the money going into instruments, she doesn't like it."

  Things worked out, obviously. As Bob Jones, a publicist at Motown, explained, "The average black family living off a menial job can be as well off as a middle-class white family. You eat collard greens and chitlings, and you can take a penny and stretch it out."

  Papa Joe went out and scouted other groups, bringing back ideas on how to choreograph his sons. "It always looked good; the little ones on the side and the tall one in the center. And their voices blend well because of the family thing. There's a basic tone quality that's common to all of them."