by Laura Joplin
Now another topic, I still have George & I got a new kitten, no name yet, gray w/a little brown & white and very aggressive—when she’s hungry she follows me around and shrieks at me. George takes really good care of her—licks her, carries her around in his mouth & she in turn eats only dog food & chews on his bones. It’s a strange family, but it’s mine.
Chuck & Jean were up last week end & came by. Chuck has a goatee now which he says Barbara has been haranguing him to shave (she sounds like a real bitch of a mother-in-law). They came & saw us at the Circle Star Theater (review #5) & then went to a party afterwards. James Gurley’s sister-in-law was throwing a “Come-as-a-hippie” party and we were the guests of honor. We came as straight people. Anyway Jean & Chuck came, as hippies & had a great time. It was a gas.
HELLO to Mike and Laura hard at work at school! Hello, Hello, how’s things? Work hard! I love ya! Oh, say why don’t you two work on Mother to slightly alter your travel plans so you can stay here for Friday night & see us play somewhere. You see we work every week end & we’ll be working somewhere & you can all come to a dance & wear beads & see us & see a light show & be proud of me & I know you’d have a good time so work on it—okay?
And Mother, I really do like to hear from you, please write me even if I am not so good myself.
Well, look everybody, I just got home from rehearsal & I’m tired & I want to just sit & drink a beer. So I’ll close. Oh!! About your question—you’ll need coats, real coats, not heavy ones, but fairly substantial & I guess if you have room bring my linen & did I give my leather coat to Laura? If not, I think maybe I could use it. Well, byeXXXX
Janis
Drugs were everywhere in the Haight, but when the family visited Janis in August 1967, we didn’t know that. She was giddy with excitement, proudly showing off the Haight-Ashbury scene and her exalted status within it. We strolled the streets, with Janis pointing to favorite head shops, dress shops, ballrooms, and the attire of interesting people on the street. She couldn’t stop sharing her excitement over Paul McCartney’s recent visit to the neighborhood, that he had strolled the sidewalks right where we walked.
Then the new reality hit us square in the face as we entered her apartment. The gaily decorated hippie pad was complete with Indian madras bedspread on a bed serving as a couch. My eyes rested on the front wall, papered in countless copies of the personality poster of Janis, bare breast and all. “It hardly shows, Mother,” she chided in spite of no comment from either of the parents. “I’ll give Mike one if you’ll let him keep it,” she offered. Yes, things were really different.
Janis looked at my short navy-blue double-knit dress and asked, “Laura, don’t you have any long pants?” We were getting ready to go to the special concert at the Avalon. Big Brother wasn’t on the bill that night, but they had arranged for the band to play so that we could hear Janis. “No, why don’t you loan me some?” I replied. “It doesn’t matter,” she decided. Then she went ahead to the ballroom. We met her there.
We climbed the stairs. The tall, angular Chet Helms was taking money at the top, and Janis danced with glee, telling him we were her family. There was a feeling of importance associated with Chet waiving the admission charge and extending a gallant “Welcome.” Entering the dance hall, the overpowering sounds and cruising bodies stunned me. Though people were dancing, sitting, or milling, I remember it as being calm and still.
I felt like a stranger, as I was, set apart by my clothes and by not being stoned. The room was dark, but the lack of regular light was overpowered by the light show of moving colors and images on the wall. People sat immobile and stared, not necessarily at anything, just ahead. Their heads moved slowly. Their attention was consumed by the sense bombardment of the room. Big Brother performed a few tunes, working in synchronized fashion with the swirling lights to force the viewer’s attention into the present. I was awed by the whole experience, though the music was only a bit of it.
Michael went backstage with Janis, where he promptly tried to get someone to let him smoke a joint. Alas, even in this haven of freedom, no one would relent to his pleadings under Janis’s watchful eye. We didn’t stay long after Janis performed, not finding a way to relate to the scene. She must have asked, “Did you like it?” We must have said yes, because we would have never said no. Yet I am sure that after that experience, our parents ceased believing that they could influence her or that she would return to Texas and college. They came to be sure that she was okay. What they found was that things were so different, and Janis so internally successful, they could have no effect.
Outside the Avalon, Janis kept saying, “Isn’t it wonderful?” She asked, “Oh, can’t you see?” She stood, staring at us walking down the street, with the roar of the rock music pouring forth from the raised entrance to the ballroom. Caught between two worlds, she stood, perplexed, believing that we should like it. I think Janis realized then that we didn’t, and couldn’t, and probably weren’t going to see. How did we hug and kiss and say good-bye, knowing we loved her, yet were no longer a part of the world around her? I don’t know, but I remember we did.
Big Brother played the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 16. They hoped for a repeat of their triumph at the summer pop festival. The signs were good; local articles about the lineup featured photos of Janis. Big Brother was the closing act for Saturday afternoon, after B. B. King and T-Bone Walker. She was being noticed, but they couldn’t spell her name right, writing it as “Janice” instead of “Janis.”
Press after the festival gave Janis cover photos in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday supplement magazine. Ralph Gleason’s column gave her a three-inch photo with the caption “Wildly exciting singer.” The Los Angeles Free Press put four photos of Janis in their spread on the festival. She clearly had arrived.
By the fall of 1967, the band’s success had changed their attitude. No sooner had they started cooking toward the big time than they started asking Julius about money. “Are we rich yet, Julius? How do the books look?” “Don’t worry, I have the books under control, you don’t need to see them,” he answered.
“You deserve to be robbed blind and taken for every penny you’re worth if you keep a manager who won’t show you the books,” Peter’s Uncle Henry exclaimed. He struck the match that lit the fire under their collective action. “I’ll leave you the books and I’ll leave too,” Julius retorted, ending a relationship that had become untenable with the band’s new managerial needs.
It was a situation in which every party was right. Julius had accounted for all the money, but tracking it was a matter of wading through baskets of unanalyzed receipts. “We didn’t want to worry about it, but there were no books and it wasn’t under control,” laughed Dave Getz. Eventually, Julius explained, he worked with an accountant from Big Brother’s subsequent manager’s office and developed thorough accounting summaries.
Julius knew there were no accounting problems because he hadn’t done anything improper with the money. He felt hurt that the band questioned him. It was sixties ethics, and Julius was solidly within the sixties frame of mind.
Even without the questions raised by financial confusion, Big Brother had problems with Julius’s need to protect the band from the clutches of sponge-hungry promoters. From the band’s perspective, his demands were hindering the group’s ability to get gigs and exposure.
In 1967, after the difference of opinion over filming the Monterey Pop performance, another problem arose. Julius was negotiating with Bill Graham, the controversial and dominating influence in the San Francisco music scene. Julius said that Graham reneged on a verbal agreement giving the band a forty-five-minute set for a show to be televised in San Francisco. Graham sent a contract stating twenty-minute sets, and Julius flatly refused. Forty-five minutes or nothing, he said. More money made no difference to Julius. The band needed the time to excite the audience. The shorter sets wouldn’t allow for that. Julius wanted to protect Big Brother’s ability to make the right type of impress
ion.
Julius and Bill parleyed until the time Graham had planned to send an airplane to take the band from the Monterey Jazz Festival to the San Francisco show. Big Brother missed the show. It was overprotection, the band said. Julius quit but then un-quit on the silent drive back to the city. Their disagreement over money followed a few weeks later. That time there was no repairing the relationship. By the end of 1967, Julius Karpen was no longer with the band.
The band went manager shopping. At the Monterey Pop Festival, they had met Albert Grossman. They wanted to rekindle his interest in the band. Julius, in a final act of love for the band, called Grossman and asked him to consider managing them. Other people also recalled contacting him on the band’s behalf. Whoever called, it worked. Albert came to San Francisco to discuss the possibility.
Albert Grossman was a stocky, six-foot, imposing man known as “the bear.” He was rotund, but more bulky and thick than fat. His hair was prematurely gray, with a squirrely wave that he pulled back in what would have been a ponytail had it been longer.
He was a Chicago native, born into a family that valued education and security. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received a master’s degree in economic theory. Music, politics, and acting were also among his interests. He opened a folk nightclub called the Gate of Horn, which was very successful. Through it Albert got to know the business and entertainers, and developed a great ear for talent. He had an affinity for the blues because Chicago was a blues town.
Grossman made his reputation as a manager with Odetta. He eventually managed such blues artists as Michael Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Richie Havens, and Buddy Miles. He designed and managed the group Peter, Paul and Mary, hunting for two years for the right match of people to form his answer to the Kingston Trio. In Chicago he met Bob Dylan and spent months cultivating his trust before he began managing him as well. He was only interested in managing performers who had the potential to be concert and recording artists that earned top fees.
Grossman moved to New York, where he hung out in the Village. He was known to sing in a booming voice when he first came on the scene. He became part owner of a club called the Bitter End. By 1966, he preferred to sit quietly in the back of the Gaslight and hold court in quiet conversations at his usual table. He was a poker player who perfected the bluff. Silence and his imposing physique complemented the power that he obviously wielded thanks to the list of top acts he controlled. He never sought attention for himself, only the trappings of success that came with good business management.
When he agreed to manage Big Brother, Albert Grossman lived in a town house on Gramercy Park, an exclusive area tucked away between midtown and Greenwich Village on the East Side. The centerpiece of the area is a small, well-tended park that dates from 1831. The Gramercy Park neighborhood was especially prized for its privacy, a commodity Grossman valued. Albert lived alone in the city and had a catering service deliver his meals.
He also had a house in Bearsville, New York, near Woodstock, north of the city. It was an old stone house known as the Streibel place, to which he added a greenhouse and a sauna. It was picturesque, quiet, and pastoral, with the atmosphere of a country squire’s farm. Inside, everything was beautiful. Knickknacks packed the house, each with a museum-type label, showing they were collectibles indexed for tax purposes.
Grossman’s office in town was a posh spread in a new high rise that housed many music-related businesses. It was within walking distance of both RCA and CBS. There were at least fifteen rooms, all decorated in contemporary style. His personal office had huge windows and a mammoth desk with several cushy chairs for guests. Officious businesswomen ran the scene. A lot of people were in and out of the office. Sam Gordon ran Grossman’s music-publishing arm. Peter, Paul and Mary had their own private office for their solo manager. Grossman formed different partnerships on and off during his career. Some of the road managers worked in offices, planning their upcoming tours.
He seemed personally elusive, so that even if you knew him long, you might not have known him well. He used silence to imply he knew something he wasn’t saying. Sometimes he was deliberately vague; other times it was just a ploy to see what would happen. He developed eccentric mannerisms as part of his role, smoking a cigarette by holding it in a strange cradle of a curled thumb and overlapping forefinger.
Grossman could be arrogant and insolent in such a way that made others perceive him as sinister or overpowering. Some thought he was clearly full of his own self-importance. For many he was just a good businessman who managed the challenges of the industry without stooping to the vulgarities that others used. He did what needed to be done to make the business work for everyone, protecting his clients from the steamrolling corporate behemoths that dominated the industry. He was interested in money, but was by nature a connoisseur, selecting only the best performers for his agency.
Grossman was an excellent judge of talent, with a real knack for picking the wheat from the chaff. He had developed an ear from his years as a club owner. He was totally involved creatively and his advice was heeded because he had proven himself.
In 1959 Grossman became involved with George Wein, the promoter who had started the Newport Jazz Festivals in the 1950s. Together they planned the first Newport Folk Festival. In 1963 Bob Dylan arrived at the folk festival as an interesting underground performer. He left a star. Perhaps Albert saw the same thing happening again with Janis and Big Brother at Monterey.
Albert demonstrated his unique negotiating style when he met with Big Brother. Band members asked, “Will you guarantee us a yearly income?” “Name a figure,” he said. “Seventy-five thousand dollars,” someone said. “Make it a hundred thousand and I’ll put it in writing. If I can’t make you that, I’m in the wrong business.”
All right! The group had found someone who talked dream city as though it were a place he’d been for lunch. There were other discussions, but with that financial carrot, the band was mentally packing the business records, destination Albert Grossman Management, NYC.
Albert defined some of his conditions for working with Big Brother as well. “I won’t deal with anybody who’s into heroin,” he stated emphatically. “It has to do with people I’ve worked with in the past.” The band members shook their heads left to right, three of the five lying as they earnestly proclaimed they never touched the stuff. Since none had more than sampled the drug occasionally, I guess they felt they were being honest.
It wasn’t that Albert was against all drugs, just certain ones. When entertaining at Bearsville, he kept a tobacco jar filled with a special concoction of tobacco mixed with hash and wine. He always had marijuana, and cocaine of good quality. He was seen doing drugs only on social occasions, never at work, though he was known to go to the bathroom frequently during business meetings. At least some people thought emptying his bladder was not the goal.
Big Brother signed the contract with Albert on November 11, 1967. “Janis and I called him Uncle Albert,” recalled Linda Gravenites. “He was solid, as though he could take care of anything.” He was a man who wore spectacles that gave him the trustworthy look of Ben Franklin. With genuine affection, Janis cut out the portrait of the man on the Quaker Oats box and hung it on the kitchen wall. It looked just like Uncle Albert.
He never tried to manage Janis’s life, only her career. I am sure that she loved his approach to management. He was an enabler, letting her follow her artistic interests. Linda said that Janis saw him as a father figure. I wonder if Janis was creating a new core family for herself, with mother, father, and band-member siblings.
With Albert’s organization involved in her career, the whole scene became more professional. For one thing, Big Brother got a road manager. It was a somewhat new idea in music touring, but one that Albert’s office adopted earnestly. John Cooke had been a Harvard student and local Boston folk musician. He was ready for a change. While interviewing John for a job as a road manager. Albert let him choose among several acts who nee
ded the help. John quickly picked Big Brother because he wanted the excitement that surrounded the group. On December 1, he was whisked from the San Francisco airport to the band’s rehearsal.
The relationship between shy, patrician John and communal Big Brother was rocky before it fully engaged. “It’s a matter of life-style differences,” the band complained to Albert. John took the issue by the horns, calling a band meeting. “Look, man, if you want somebody whose hair is long, who just hangs around and smokes dope all the time, and carries the guitar cases, we can hire somebody to do that. But if you want somebody to do the job that I do, let’s try this a little longer.”
A few months later, driving between gigs in San Diego, John told the band members, “When I first took the job, I thought of staying for six months. But I like it and I like working with you.” Dave smiled. “We love you too, John.” Janis said, “You want a raise, right?” John laughed. “Well, now that you speak of it.” John Cooke was an important cog in the band’s new machinery, someone Janis could always rely on to get his job done and be a friend unchanged by the development of her career.
John handled the travel, pushed everyone to be on time, organized the equipment, and monitored the gate receipts at the still loosely run rock concerts. Big Brother played mostly in California in late 1967—Fresno, Turlock, Merced, and Huntington Beach, with the biggest gig at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Los Angeles.