Love, Janis

by Laura Joplin

  Speaking of the Haight-Ashbury, read the enclosed article from LOOK magazine. There’ve been lots of articles written about the scene here. Newsweek has had two & this new one. And even the Chronicle—they’ve all had articles with more understanding than the one in Time. As a matter of fact, I just plain quit reading it because of that article—not because I was mad. Because I was aware of how distorted they were & I figured they were probably that wrong about everything. I really am not social critic enough to know/discuss what is going on, but in answer to your question—Yes, they are our audience & we’re hoping they can turn on the rest of the country because then we’d be nationwide. We’d be the Monkees! Well, at any rate, a good article.

  Okay, on to news: For one thing, we’ve gotten a raise—the guys with wives were feeling constrained, so now we get $100 a week! Good heavens.

  Second in importance, I have a new apartment. Really fine!! Two big rooms, kitchen, bathroom & balcony. And I’m right across the street from the park! You can’t really understand living there with a yard, but here you can go 10–20 blocks without ever seeing a living plant and I just look out my window or step out on my balcony & I’ve got fresh air & trees & grass!! So wonderful, sigh. My new address is 123 Cole St., S.F. Still in the Haight-Ashbury. Have lots of plans for the place—two rooms need painting but I may just end up hanging stuff up on the walls. I’ve sort of got the front room fixed up now & it’s really nice to live in. SIGH! See what I mean about things going my way? Also, I have a boyfriend. Really nice. He’s head of Country Joe and the Fish, a band from Berkeley. Named Joe McDonald, he’s a Capricorn like me, & is 25 & so far we’re getting along fine. Everyone in the rock scene just thinks it’s the cutest thing they’ve ever seen. It is rather cute actually. Speaking of boyfriends, I’ve been hearing from Peter again. He’s written several letters. For some reason I get the feeling he’s planning on coming out here & is sort of putting out feelers.

  Next, guess what (special for Dad) I’ve done—I’ve quit smoking!!! Still want one now & then but it’s been about a month now. I felt it was just too hard on my voice. I’d been smoking for 10 yrs! I got a real bad cold & bronchitis & I just couldn’t smoke for about a week & when I got well, I refused to start again. I may break down but I hope not. This is really better for me.

  More news, George is really getting to be a fine dog. Learning things every day. Today he learned the hard way not to run across the street to the park by himself—he got hit by a car. But the vet said he wasn’t hurt very badly—bruised & scared. Poor thing, he’s just moping around with a very paranoid look on his face.

  I’m having a few clothes made for me now—had a beautiful dress made out of a madras bed spread & now she’s working on one out of green crepe with a very low V neckline. I’ve been making things out of leather lately. Made a beautiful blue & green Garbo hat & pair of green shoes.

  I’m also sending our new promo picture. Not very flattering of me but a very strong picture. Pretty good looking group, eh?

  Really enjoyed seeing the pictures of all of you. Looking beautiful, Mother. And Laura looks really cute! Is her dress white or silver? And I’ve never seen Mike look so charming. Must be the Big Brother T-shirt.

  Now, please let me know when you are coming. Oh, I have so many places to take you to & show you! But we’ll be working so let me know as soon as you can your plans. Well, I guess that’s it for now. Write me . . .

  LoveXXX

  Janis

  June 2, 1967, the Beatles released their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. From the bizarre cover to the new cosmic uniforms worn by the Beatles to the blatantly psychedelic music, the album forced the genre of rock music into the future.

  Ralph Gleason predicted in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The music capital of the world, starting Friday, will be the Monterey County Fairgrounds, not Nashville, not Tin Pan Alley and neither London nor Hollywood. The first annual Monterey International Pop Festival is bringing to the Fairgrounds Arena the greatest aggregation of popular song stars ever assembled in any one place for a weekend event. . . .” It was sold out at the time of his writing. Gleason was one of the most important rock critics who helped establish the San Francisco sound.

  The event was organized by John Phillips, one of the Mamas and the Papas, and Lou Adler, a Los Angeles record producer. They envisioned a nonprofit gathering where any money made would be distributed “for the betterment of pop music” by a board composed of musicians, including Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and Smokey Robinson. For two and a half days and more than twenty-five hours of music, the seven-thousand-seat arena was full of peace and love. More than forty thousand people attended, yet Saturday and Sunday, Frank Marinello, police chief, sent forty uniformed policemen home. They weren’t needed. “I’m beginning to like these hippies,” Philip Elwood of the San Francisco Examiner quoted him as saying.

  “Monterey was really clean. Everybody who slept there had tents. The cops were nice, and all the bands were in motels. There were no big crowds, no fighting your way through,” said Dave Getz.

  Much more than music was presented; it was high drama. Psychedelic movies played near a midway of booths selling food and paraphernalia. The Who smashed a guitar and Jimi Hendrix—appearing in a gold shirt and red pants, with fuchsia feathers around his neck—climaxed his appearance by burning his guitar. In his unpublished memoirs, Sam Andrew wrote, “One of the best things about Monterey was the audience. You cannot imagine how much easier it is to play for a large audience that is with you than for a small indifferent one. Playing for an audience that doesn’t dance or enjoy itself is like running uphill. But when everyone is together and especially when they dance and yell and scream, there is a great communion of effort and everything is lubricated. We were playing for our peers at Monterey and there was truly an absence of any kind of competitiveness or stress.”

  The organizers scheduled Big Brother for Saturday afternoon. “Big Brother performed a set that was a miracle,” Julius Karpen said. “It was not to be believed. The audience went wild, mind-blown.” Julius worked his way into the middle of the audience during the band’s performance, and had tears in his eyes, like a proud papa. “I’ve cleared the way for a miracle!” Big Brother played “Down On Me,” “Road Block,” and “Ball and Chain.” This performance was the one that sparked Mama Cass’s overwhelmed response to their sound and Janis’s voice. Mouth agape, her ears were in music lover’s heaven. Cass’s response was clearly captured by the film crew in the film Monterey Pop. The band’s performance, however, had not been filmed.

  “You mean they didn’t film that?” the band screamed at Julius after the set. Their manager had wanted to retain control. Julius was sick of promoters ripping off musicians. The Monterey promoters had offered the band nothing in return for the film rights, so he had refused. He made sure that during Big Brother’s performance, the cameras pointed to the ground.

  The promoters were furious with Julius’s refusal and went directly to the band. Albert Grossman, one of the more powerful personal managers of the day, may have influenced Big Brother to override Julius. Everyone knew that Big Brother’s performance had to be filmed because it was the pinnacle of the show. Finally, the five band members pressured Julius to allow a second set to be filmed. Reporters would talk about the qualities of the music as well as the uniqueness of Big Brother’s encore as evidence of their artistic triumph. The press didn’t realize that the main reason for the encore was to allow filming. They thought it was only because the band was so good. Nevertheless, the accidental encore helped to propel their acclaim.

  Even Mom heard about the performance. She immediately wired, “Congratulations on being first page Los Angeles Times Monterey Festival Report. Barbara sending us a copy.” The telegram was signed, “Your Port Arthur Fan Club.”

  Not only the family was lauding Janis, but most newspapers and magazines had picked up the story. Newsweek and Time wrote descriptions like the one that appeared in The B
erkeley Barb, saying, “Janis Joplin, of Big Brother, brought the house down belting out blues with her magnificent voice.” Scott Holtzman from the Houston Post wrote two columns mentioning Janis, both saying that she had been discovered in California but ignored when she played in Houston. She pasted both in her scrapbook. The band had been the hit of the festival, but Janis was being singled out as the star of the show. She had triumphed as a performer as well as the leader of a social movement. The “conspiracy of reality” that Jim Langdon described in Texas had become a national happening.

  Mainstream released four new singles by Big Brother between May 1967 and February 1968. “Down On Me” / “Call On Me” was the first, followed by “Bye Bye Baby” / “Intruder” in August 1967, “Women Is Losers” / “Light Is Faster than Sound” in November 1967, and the last, “Coo Coo” / “Last Time.” They put out an album of these pieces in August 1967 entitled Big Brother and the Holding Company. The band was furious. The material was old and the arrangements were outdated. Rather than presenting the group to the public, they felt Mainstream was merely capitalizing on the band’s Monterey recognition.

  Big Brother met Clive Davis of Columbia Records, who signed every act he could at the Monterey Pop Festival. Clive invited Big Brother’s manager, Julius Karpen, and their attorney, Bob Gordon, to the upcoming CBS convention in Hollywood, Florida. The big-time folks were courting the group, and this time they were prepared.

  Bob Gordon brought the band broad experience in the entertainment business. In Janis he received a giving friend who transformed him from being very conservative and uptight into a more relaxed uptight person. Janis’s life was changing, too. Julius had joined the band in January 1967, when they were earning four hundred dollars for a two-night weekend. By the end of 1967, they were pulling in twenty-five hundred dollars a night without having released a significant album. The business normally didn’t work that way! It could only have happened as part of a general revolution in the music business itself caused by a push for change from a new generation of listeners.

  ELEVEN

  AFTER THE MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL

  Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

  My friends all drive Porsches

  I must make amends

  Worked hard all my lifetime

  No help from my friends

  So, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

  —JANIS JOPLIN, BOBBY NEUWIRTH, AND MICHAEL MCCLURE, “Mercedes Benz”

  MONTEREY USHERED IN what became known as the Summer of Love. Some fifty thousand young people passed through San Francisco, attracted by the marching cries of love and acceptance cranked out in the press reports at an evergreater frequency. They came from cities, suburbs, and farms across the country, leaving homes and routines for the unknown and the promise of Haight-Ashbury.

  The Council for the Summer of Love had planned for the hordes. New gatherings were scheduled and the Diggers managed food and housing. They brought free soup to Panhandle Park every day at four P.M., served from large aluminum garbage cans. They ran a Free Store, with clothes and housewares. They got use of a free farm and were working on access to a five-hundred-room hotel. They were the epitome of American industriousness, the new pioneers making do with the resources of the city-grown wilderness.

  The Haight was also the source of an LSD epidemic that swept across the country to the extent that Time magazine recognized the problem by March 1966. Frothing tirades of fear were being sent over the press wires: “Guard your children against LSD!” Some people did have bad trips. In 1966, Dr. William Frosch, a psychiatrist at New York’s Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, testified before a Senate subcommittee studying LSD. Frosch reported statistics he’d developed that indicated that only seven people of every thousand taking LSD suffered an emotional breakdown, most probably those with a history of psychiatric problems. Incomplete reporting of Frosch’s findings, coupled with questionable anecdotal evidence, convinced the public that taking LSD commonly gave you an irreversible psychosis. The real kicker was a story about LSD causing chromosome breaks when the two were mixed in test tubes, an illogical corollary with actual use of the drug. Nevertheless, those seeking evidence grabbed it and roared.

  Stories in the press spoke of rape and murder under LSD’s influence, which was vastly different from the effect that was commonly reported in most research on the drug—benign contemplation. The problem was that though there was a vast body of research on the drug, there were few proven conclusions about it. Rather than rational conclusions, many press stories pitted the extremes against each other—psychotic insanity versus spiritual awakening.

  The furor over LSD was magnified by the changed characteristics of people in the movement. The kids who strolled into the Haight were no longer those drawn together after years of artistic struggle. Now they were young and unhappy rejects who needed someone to take them in hand. Drug dealing was no longer limited to sharing LSD; it turned into sinister ghetto hustling of anything people could be sold. The goal was no longer insight but merely sensory fun and games.

  Speed was readily available in spite of notices warning against the drug by elders in the community. STP, a new, longer-duration psychedelic, gave people terrifying three-day journeys into hell. San Francisco General Hospital was treating 750 bad trips a month. Pimps hustled the young travelers, using drugs to turn them into prostitutes. By the end of 1967, crime in the Haight ended its initial downward dip with the hippies and showed 17 murders, 100 rapes, and almost 3,000 burglaries.

  Heroin use cropped up all at once in the Haight. The residents were psychologically defenseless against it because their subculture rested on an outspoken assumption that being cool meant being high. Janis, James, and Sam all sampled the drug whenever they happened to run into any. None of them had sufficient money to use heroin more than that.

  It’s hard to accept heroin as a means to improve one’s mind, given the ample evidence of negative effects of its use. Yet, with some perspective, we can see that using a pill of some sort had become an accepted cultural practice. People quit trying to solve problems because they didn’t know how. Instead, they just wanted a quick fix, and the medical establishment had always been eager to provide help in the form of drugs.

  Women with hysterectomies and menopause symptoms were given tranquilizers to delete the symptoms. In the 1950s and 1960s, doctors readily prescribed tranquilizers and amphetamines to alter the feelings of their patients. They wanted to have something to give patients who gave them money and asked for help. Our society was on a search for the right drug, the better drug. Drug use was not symptomatic of a problem in hippie Camelot. It was a deep-rooted problem of our society that spawned the 1960s, and it was, regrettably, carried forward by the new innocents.

  In 1967, heroin was a drug in which Janis dabbled, but her drug of choice was still alcohol. She was developing a particular affinity for Southern Comfort, as much for its name as for its flavor. When Linda Gravenites made her a purse, Janis said, “Make it big enough for a book and a bottle.” Alcohol was part of the outlaw Texas culture. To hold your liquor was a point of pride and Janis learned to hold it well.

  Janis had wondered about drinking’s pitfalls and benefits for years. She summed it up in a song she wrote during her Austin years, “What Good Can Drinking Do?” Janis sang, “I drink all night / But the next day I still feel blue.”

  In spite of the pervasiveness of drugs in the hippie community, some people refused them. Peter Albin, within the band, didn’t indulge. In the spirit of “whatever turns you on,” his preference was respected by the fellows. But Janis lit into him with scoffing vengeance. She never did like anyone to question her actions, even if it was only by behaving in a different way. Perhaps his abstinence merely made her feel guilty about her overindulgence.

  Summer 1967

  Dear Mother—

  I do hope you remember me after all this while—what can I say? . . Wanted to send you these clippings—they’re from the
Examiner & Chronicle & mark a real shift. Since Monterey, all this has come about. Gleason has been plugging us & has used me as a description for a style (the inimitable Joplin style) & he never wrote about us before. Now we have 3 big record companies, Atlantic, Mercury, Columbia after us & prepared to pay $50,000–75,000 plus any privileges we want to sign w/them IF we can get out of our contract w/Mainstream. And we are trying! Lawyers & all kinds of show-biz stuff. We’ll see. Sure hope this doesn’t seriously impair our career. And so now we’re getting interviewed & my picture will be in Esquire, & Playboy (not the center fold-out but something about the festival) & Julius (our manager) said some lady from McCalls called & might use me in an article about “Young Women Breaking Down Barriers” or something like that. Oh, you saw the thing in TIME but you didn’t see Newsweek—it had a picture of me! I hope all this & my excitement doesn’t seem shallow to you, it really thrills me. Wow, I met 2 of the Rolling Stones, most of the Animals & they all (& these are big groups—well respected & rich, baby) & they say I’m the best they’ve ever heard! E Gad!! Ahhh . . . Well, anyway I’m ecstatic!! Also, watch for an ABC Special on the Monterey Festival—we’ll be in it. Gosh I can’t seem to find anything to talk about. This band is my whole life now. It is to all of us. I really am totally committed & I dig it. I’m quite proud of myself because I’m really trying. Before when I came out here I just wanted to hang out & be wild & have a good time but now that’s all secondary (I still want to have a good time you understand) but singing gives me so much satisfaction. Well, the recognition gives me a lot of satisfaction too I must admit. Well, to summarize, Big Brother is doing great & I just may be a “star” someday. You know, it’s funny—as it gets closer & more probable, being a star is really losing its meaning. But whatever it means, I’m ready!