by Laura Joplin
Laura, no news from you at all. How is school? How is your bugle section? How are you, the cats, the car? How do you like our record? Are you pleased w/my new occupation or do you secretly think I’m being a bit silly? Address all replies to Box 94, Lagunitas, Calif.
Dad, no news from you at all, so I presume you’re the same—entrenched in a tome of The History of Upper Slobbovia, from the First Great Invasion to the Civil War to End All Civil Wars, Vol. 1. If not so occupied, please advise . . .
All for now, will be thinking of you on Thanksgiving—and other days too of course.
Love XX
Janis
P.S. Mother, notice the stamps. Aren’t they pretty!?
When Big Brother was in Los Angeles to cut a professional record, Janis was courted by Bob Shad as the most marketable aspect of the group. Then she played nine holes of golf with Aunt Barbara! I know she crowed to Barbara, building up the grand future and the astounding promises from the hippie culture.
Time declared “The Younger Generation” to be their man of the year for 1966. The San Francisco music scene was getting national recognition. Time ran a piece on December 16, 1966, entitled “What Ever Happened to the Andrews Sisters?” The article talked about the numerous new rock groups that could be distinguished only by their “oddball names.” They listed twenty-six groups with such monikers as the Dirty Shames, the Swinging Saints, Sigmund and the Freudian Slips, the Virginia Woolves, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Janis pasted the article in her scrapbook.
In the December 19, 1966, issue of Newsweek, the scene was covered in an article called “The Nitty-Gritty Sound.” Peter Albin was quoted. “‘People are getting more into the nitty-gritty of emotional and personal life,’ says 22-year-old guitarist Peter Albin. ‘They’re expressing themselves through physical movement and this creates a real bond between the musicians and the audience.’”
Janis’s scene had now been validated by the source that our family trusted weekly: Time. Whether the tone was mocking or not, at least they were being noticed. They weren’t insignificant outsiders; they were becoming important.
Her sense of self had been changing. Janis had been slowly adding to the clothes she had brought with her from Texas. She emulated Nancy Gurley’s look of granny gowns—hand-me-down dresses redone into Earth Mother fashion. She took Pat Nichols’s passion for cheap spangled bracelets and loaded her arms with shiny metal. She was free of the disheveled look of her earlier Beat days. Now she cultivated a soft, feminine look that fit into local fashion. Photos of Janis captured her in tight pants and a T-shirt with a soft curl in her loose hair. She wore hats with dresses and boots. She was indistinguishable from the average hippie on the street.
December 1966
Dear Mother. . . .
Just a note to keep you informed. Played a “happening” at Stanford this weekend. It was held in Wilbur Hall, & called—A Happening in the Wilburness. Cute. They had a room featuring sensory awareness, a womb room, a jazz band, an old car that you could wail on w/sledge hammers, & a rock dance. Really fun.
Now about Christmas. The only thing that I can think of that I want is a good, all-round cookbook, Betty Crocker or Better Homes or any good one. Also could use a couple of pairs of tights—if they still sell them. Colors! Can’t think of anything else. Any hints from the rest of you? What do y’all want? Please rush me Mike’s shirt size, by the way. And what is this $20 check for? I think I can afford to buy everyone presents. I’m planning on spending Christmas in L.A. so Barbara suggests that you send my presents there.
My car suffered a tragic breakdown on the streets of Berkeley & is now parked in the alley behind the repair shop waiting for me to raise $75 (!!) Should have it as soon as we get paid for the Stanford job. But as my finances are tenuous, I think I’ll keep Daddy’s check to be sure I can get to L.A. After that, I’ll destroy it! After memorizing the contents of course. Actually I don’t think I’ll need it, but thanks anyway.
All for now, I guess . .
Love,
Janis
Will try & do something about the bank balance.
Big Brother had taped their first television show in November 1966. POW was a tribute to the new music, yet they were forced to lip-synch their songs. They bristled at having to present what they considered a false image to the viewer by pretending to be singing. Music was the means to “be,” and to commune directly, soul-to-soul, with others.
Buddhism had long been an influence on the Beat movement. The hippies looked outside their heritage for new ways of understanding the spiritual life. The new believers flailed away at the guiding principle of Western religions that God could be found only in a relationship with Jesus or his conduit, the pope. Hippies sought the Eastern ideal, that people could realize their identity with the Maker. “We are all one spirit,” their lives seemed to croon to the community. The hippies were living the clash of Eastern and Western cultures, with the American birthright of freedom of religion carried as the battle cry by yet another generation of alienated pioneers.
Instead of avoiding their emotions, hippies made music and forced their needs to emerge through sensory expansion. They developed new symbols in rock dances, uniting as one spiritual organism. Surely Americans had returned to their tribal roots. The shamans had arrived, carrying their message electronically.
“I found out what they want from me,” Janis said in 1967. “It’s my freedom of feeling. Big Brother can’t read music. We’re not dispassionate professionals, we’re passionate and sloppy!” The new reality could not be expressed in words, and Janis, especially, had the gift of using other means.
Through it all, the conclusion was that love was the ordering principle of human life. Love was being truly alive! Why should something so central be hidden and metered out in tiny doles? Hippiedom became an emotional finishing school. If love wasn’t sufficiently forthcoming at home, they would create a new love-based society. This generation saw no reason not to share love with all. Free love!
“Singing with Big Brother was the first time I was able to make my emotions work for me,” Janis explained. “I put everything I have into the songs. I think if I hadn’t gotten a chance to really sing like that, I would have destroyed myself.”
“I’m on an audience trip. I talk to the audience and look into their eyes. I need them and they need me,” Janis explained to interviewers. “There are a lot of good Christians putting the hippies down, but hippies are bringing the Christian ethic up-to-date. They believe in being good to people.”
So they equated free love with free sex. “I think Janis wanted to be seen as completely free,” said Pat Nichols, “so sexual lines shouldn’t matter. She had to live up to this free ideal.” John Cooke added, “Sex in the late 1960s? We thought we were throwing off invalid social shackles. Sex was a desire to make contact.” Bobby Neuwirth explained the twelve-step point of view: “Sex was used as a drug, a mood changer.”
Janis was becoming a celebrated princess in the Haight. She and some of her girlfriends used to walk around the neighborhood sweeping up attractive-looking men to bring back to Janis’s apartment for a party. They related to men as sex objects, much as they had seen men relate to women.
Janis wanted no more “Saturday night swindles,” using our father’s phrase to describe the big buildup to romance on that promising date, only to be disillusioned instead. She invoked the power of women’s romantic complaints in “Piece of My Heart”: “Didn’t I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can? . . . But I’m gonna show you, baby . . . Have another little piece of my heart now . . . if it makes you feel good.”
The songs got mixed up with her life when Peter de Blanc sent a few letters, trying to get back in touch. Only this time Janis didn’t offer him another piece of her heart. She and her girlfriends just talked about him as another of those “charming, gorgeous rats.”
Janis adapted the traditional spiritual “Down On Me.” “When you see a hand that’s held out
toward you / Give it some love, someday it may be you . . . / Believe in your brother, have faith in man / Help each other, honey, if you can / ’Cause it looks like everybody in this whole round world / Is down on me.” Not anymore. Now it was a collective group that seemed to say, “We’re down no more. Now we’re rising to claim our rightful role in society as the legitimate children. We’re banishing the adopted sons spouting one-sided truths that lead to hypocritical lives.”
Yes, the scene was growing. A sense of inevitable triumph was in the air. More people were hitting the road from towns and cities across-the country and heading to the Coast, where it was happening. Hard-core hippies were beginning to make money being hippies! The early residents set up shops for the suburban kids coming to the Haight to soak up the culture. They opened head shops and clothing stores, and the profits gave the owners a living and the $2.50 cover charge at the Avalon Ballroom.
Music was the unifying force in this revolution. Eagerly, Big Brother promoted their record to their audience. “Call your local radio station on October 10 and request ‘All Is Loneliness’ and ‘Blindman.’” The band hoped “that the San Francisco sound makes the national scene, and that San Francisco becomes the Liverpool of the United States,” reported a county newspaper.
The Mojo reporter asked, What happens if the record doesn’t click and the San Francisco scene just stays local? Janis replied, “Something’s gonna happen. It isn’t just gonna go on. Either we’re all gonna go broke and split up, or get rich and famous.” Dave Getz added, “The audience is getting bigger and bigger and if the audience keeps growing there’s really no limit to how big the thing could become, in this country.”
(The following letter was written to Janis’s aunt, Barbara Irwin, who lived in Los Angeles.)
December 1966
Dear Barbara. . . .
How ARE You?!! Fine, I hear. Also hear from Mother that Jean & Chuck are well, Mimi is well, & Donna has a boyfriend. Everything sounds under control. I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m a new-breed-swinger now, the idol of my generation, a rock-n-roll singer. Yes fans, yes, it’s true. I sing with Big Brother and the Holding Co. (!) and really enjoy it.
We’re playing a dance Dec. 18th at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Now we may stay on for a few days to do some recording—we don’t know yet, it depends on our A&R man, when he wants to do it—he’s in New York. And I’ve been trying to arrange things so I could be with y’all for Christmas. It depends on when & where our jobs are and also how my finances are. (Right now, things look rather bleak—I have Christmas presents to buy & a broken car needing $75 worth of work, doctor’s bills—$35 and only $65 on hand. Moan!) At any rate, if it can be arranged, I thought I’d stay w/you—if it’s alright—that’d be Sunday night (the 18th) for sure & later depending on plans. Okay? Write & tell me if you have conflicting plans.
Also, tell everyone so they can come to the dance if they want to. I can probably get people in free—and doncha wanta see me be a star? (How can I be a star & only have $65? Hmmm. . . . )
Write me & advise how this all sounds to you. . . . Address is P.O. Box 94, Lagunitas, Calif.
See you soon,
Love,
Janis
Janis loved Barbara’s company, but bristled at her insistence that she wear a bra when visiting. However, some things are worth the price, and Janis wore the bra to obtain the pleasure of Barbara’s company. Then she got even by blatantly taking it off as she crossed Barbara’s lawn and walked down the street. Barbara was a special friend for Janis, one worth the hassle of wearing undergarments. Yet Janis accommodated only so far, and made sure Barbara knew her limits.
The lines were being drawn, and not wearing a bra was only one of the important distinctions. On November 17, the police raided the Psychedelic Shop and Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Book Shop and made arrests based on sales of an allegedly pornographic book, The Love Book, a collection of poems by Lenore Kandel. The hippies adopted a line from J. D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye: “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”
The more divisive things got between traditional and nontraditional society, the better Janis’s life and career went. The band had plenty of work and Janis had lots of friends who loved to party. An invitation read, “Big Brother is holding a Christmas Party, Sunday December 25, 1966. Go to the Lagunitas grocery and park. A Big Brother bus will pick you up.” They played “a multi-dimensional experience of fun and good will, New Year’s Eve” at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. Just past her twenty-fourth birthday, on January 29, 1967, Janis played a gig called “Krishna Consciousness Comes West.” “Bring cushions, drums, bells, cymbals. Proceeds to opening of San Francisco Krishna Temple,” read the flyer. Big Brother played the Avalon regularly. They told a Mojo Navigator interviewer that they preferred the Avalon to the Fillmore. The audience was only eight hundred, compared to fifteen hundred at the Fillmore, and the sailors cruising for a pickup preferred the Fillmore.
January 1967
Dear Family. . . .
I bet you thought I’d forgotten all about you, eh? Sorry, but you have no idea how busy we’ve been. Really, for almost a month now. First down to LA. to record (we did 6 sides—all w/me featured. Next record released in January despite our rather inauspicious showing on the last. SIGH . . . ) then back here for a gig, down to L.A. for a gig, stayed w/Barbara, back up here just in time to start cooking for our mammoth party—then the party, then 2 more gigs, 3 days of intestinal flu & New Year’s. AAAAAGHH!! So, as I said—we’ve been busy. But that’s what really makes it fun, y’know. When we’re not working, being a singer isn’t very rewarding.
Enclosed—the best, so far, article on the “San Francisco scene” from Newsweek. Really good—they’ve got quotes from the top 4—the Airplane, the Dead, the Quicksilver, & Big Brother. Very good. Also enclosed—a scorecard from Barbara & my golf match. How about that! On one of those small courses that are short. You just use an iron & a putter. But I did pretty well for my first time. And it was fun. Had a nice stay in L.A. Didn’t get to see Mimi but I went over & saw Donna who reminds me so very much of Mimi—just like her, to me. Same mannerisms, everything.
Thanks for everything at Christmas. And sorry I couldn’t call, but people started coming for the party at 2 in the afternoon & I just couldn’t. The cook and anti-cook books are just perfect but my favorite is the candlestick—just lovely. Thanks so much. Also, thank you, Daddy for the $20—haven’t gotten it cashed yet but I will. I have $150 in debts now (doctor, car & union). So, it is greatly appreciated.
Tell Laura how cute I think she looks w/her short hairdo. I really like it that way—makes her look impish. And of course Mike looks debonair as usual. And, Mother, you really look good, too—didn’t look like you were suffering too much. And Daddy looked so nice next to that musty old pile of burning leaves—really takes a nice picture.
Speaking of pictures, a girl friend of mine is a photographer & did a whole bunch of things of me & I think they’re going to use one on a poster for the Family Dog! Gawd, I’m so excited! Also, from (which is a page of 1½” sq. photos) Mouse, who has a button machine, has made Janis Joplin buttons. Oh thrill of thrills—very rare, only the IN people have them, my dear. No name just a picture so you have to be in to know who the hell I am. But I dig it. FAME, FAME, heh, heh. . . .
Played a hippie party in Golden Gate Park yesterday—very nice. Co-sponsored by the Hell’s Angels who, at least in S.F., are really very nice. They have a different social code but it seems to be inner-directed and they don’t try & impose it on anyone.
Seem to be running out of ink, so I’ll close. Hope it won’t be so long till the next letter. . . .
LoveXXXX
Janis
On January 4, 1967, twenty thousand people came to the “Human Be-In, a gathering of the tribes” held on the polo field of Golden Gate Park. Music was provided by the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, and Dizzy Gillespie (one of the
first experimenters with LSD with Leary and Ginsberg). It was the beginning of a new cultural ritual, an answer to the question Kesey had asked when coming back from exile in Mexico: “What next?” It wasn’t just a dance or a concert; it was a community meeting and celebration. Guided meditations, chanting, poetry readings, and speeches were part of the forum.
Timothy Leary spoke to the gathering, expanding on the theme of his slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out”: “Turn on to the scene, tune in to what is happening, and drop out—of high school, college, graduate school, junior executive, senior executive—and follow me.” Leary was trying to form a psychedelic religion. Kesey wanted to hold a “Graduation Test,” signaling the next step after the acid test. The hippies refused to move on. They saw no reason to go beyond spreading the word about rock and roll, dances, drugs, and free love. The Buddha’s eight-fold path to total enlightenment may have been motivating Ginsberg and other elders in the movement, but the hippie on the street was not driven to go further.
They began perfecting the art form known as psychedelic rockand-roll dances, which would become San Francisco’s chief export, and bands paved the way by holding concerts and dances up and down the California coast.
Peter drove a ’56 Ford Galaxy station wagon to the gigs. It was big enough to hold everyone crammed in among their equipment. With an American flag on the side of the car, they attracted the attention of families on the road. As they sped along the coastal byways, kids surreptitiously flashed them the peace sign, risking the angry admonitions of their parents in order to make the connection.