Love, Janis

by Laura Joplin

  She sometimes lapsed into a needy-child routine, trying to force people to give her strokes. “Why don’t people support me?” she wailed to Nick Gravenites. “People go out of their way to help others!” He replied, “Maybe you haven’t asked them.” “You do it,” Janis urged Nick, because she was uncomfortable requesting help. “You ask for me.” So Nick called friends and they suggested some songs for Janis to sing. That tough image Janis had chosen could be difficult to penetrate. She seemed more likely to chew someone out than to ask for help.

  Janis needed what drug counselors call an intervention. An intervention should confront the user with the reality of what others see, of the changes that she may not notice in herself. Without knowing it, Linda Gravenites provided that experience for Janis.

  When Linda saw David Niehaus leave, she decided that Janis would never quit dope. Linda couldn’t live around heroin anymore. She was so close to Janis that she could tell her the truth. Sometimes Janis let herself hear it. Linda kept after her, talking about the heroin as the problem that it was. “Linda, you’re being like a Jewish mother! Just don’t talk about it,” Janis yelled at her. “If you can’t be quiet, just leave.” Linda said, “Okay, I’ll be gone tomorrow.” She moved out of the house the next day.

  Linda’s declaration that she was moving out because Janis was incapable of quitting dope was enough to get Janis to make the decision. Linda had challenged her, and Janis never let anyone say she couldn’t do something! She was still using heroin only on and off, so quitting at that point wasn’t as hard as it could have been later. She was able to stop.

  She took what help she could find, but found it hard to embrace the full psychiatric routine. Janis realized that heroin was an imposition on her life, and she wanted to quit. Did she pretend to herself that it was merely a bad drug that was the problem? The hippie belief in chemically based consciousness-raising was still in vogue. Did Janis buy that? The counselors she saw seemed to offer a remedy that denied the entire foundation and spirit of the sixties. Social-planner types with too little empathy is how John Cooke described her helpers.

  And yet a new strength was guiding Janis’s life, the power of a free mind. The nature of her artistry was changing. Her experience with Big Brother as a family band had made it difficult for her to adjust to the attitude of her second band as musicians for hire. With the third and newest group, Janis realized once again that the good vibes among them as people were essential. “Janis needed to love the people she worked with,” John Cooke explained. Knowing that, she had been able to choose appropriate people. They became her boys.

  Janis was becoming the vocalist that she had been telling people she could be. Throughout 1969 she gave interviews saying that she was learning to use her voice more, laying back and not pushing as much, yet getting the same effect. She used her power for emphasis. Janis also studied music, taking piano lessons to learn the theory behind what she knew only on an intuitive level. Nick Gravenites exclaimed, “Janis could sing a chord, three notes at once. How did she do that?” In his book The Story of Rock, Carl Belz wrote, “Unlike Big Brother, Full Tilt Boogie [her third band’s eventual name] did not compete with Joplin’s voice; instead, they let it range spontaneously, enriching it with a folk dignity that was its natural counterpart.”

  Equally vital was Janis’s growing awareness of the difference between her personal and professional selves. She was thinking about the life and career she had crafted for herself. She and Bobby Neuwirth, among others, had lengthy discussions about the “need to have a certain stage persona, as a mask, not a phony, just a distancing of your most intimate self. . . . You don’t have to give them all of you, just selected parts as appropriate.”

  In the converted garage studio in Janis’s home, the new band rehearsed. One day, as John Cooke explained to me, Janis had a whim to acquire a nickname. Tossing a few around, the guys settled on “Pearl.” Janis was trying to find a symbol for herself, to remember the “real” Janis. Her own name had become synonymous with her stage persona. “Pearl” was part of her attempt to be more of a singer and less of an entertainer.

  Pat Nichols said that Janis’s public and private selves were very different. “It wasn’t that she was more subdued, but her laughter was free, not forced. Her sense of humor was more subtle. She sounded more like a little girl than a hooker,” Pat finally exclaimed. She sighed and firmly explained that “Janis would have done as well without the persona of a loud-mouthed blatant hooker type.”

  Pat Nichols found Janis “a very spiritual person.” She said that Janis was “afraid to let others see that.” She didn’t just throw the I Ching, she read the whole book. Pat said that Janis also read Rosicrucian pamphlets. Ken Thompson, a spokesperson for the Rosicrucian study complex in San Francisco, explained that they aren’t a religion but a fraternity-type institution devoted to spiritual education. “Hippies were members,” he explained, “because they believed education was good for people. Rosicrucians believe in mind expansion through education. We talk about the God of our heart. . . .” Their main teaching organ is a correspondence course, with weekly meditations, exercises, and suggested readings. A fundamental belief is the equality of all sexes and races.

  A spiritual sense of personal responsibility tugged at Janis’s continued drug use. Pat said that quitting heroin was part of Janis’s inner recognition that she would have to get her karma together to achieve spiritual grace. Of course, Janis didn’t jump on the resolution. She said she was going to clean her act up later, putting it on hold, so to speak.

  One reason hippies came to rock concerts was to find themselves. Janis’s generation was more strongly moved by rock concerts than by any social or civic gathering. When the hippies collectively started their search for meaning, they turned to lesser known religions. They chose spiritual practices from other societies, drug-induced states, musical experiences, and an amalgamation of beliefs that constituted another way of viewing life.

  Beyond her respect for the soul of humanity, Janis questioned formalized religion. The cynicism of her high school days and the built-in cultural conditioning of science led Janis to complain about some religion-oriented people: “Arrgh! They’re believers!” Even when her former roommate had started meditating every day, Janis announced, “Linda, don’t get too holy on me.”

  Janis needed religion without the judgment, an affirmation of her validity as a feeling person. She needed a way to discover her true nature, not an institution that enforced guilt and fear of hell. She needed a place where people freely admitted their failure at being the people they wanted to be. She needed honesty and openness.

  Janis was ready to admit to the flaws in her life and be proud of her strength as well. She was forming a relationship with a new roommate, Lyndall Erb, who was trying to fill Linda Gravenites’s shoes. But she was more easygoing and malleable than Linda. The new band was coming together, and it felt good. Perhaps that made it possible for her to return to the past a bit. On April 4, 1970, Janis appeared onstage with Big Brother and the Holding Company. She sang backup on “Mr. Natural,” a song Sam Andrew wrote. She was still friends with the fellows in Big Brother, but there was a rift that had come from breaking the professional relationship. Their careers had not been doing as well as hers. It was strange that while the five of them were together, Janis got all the good reviews and the band got only negative press. When they put out an album without Janis, the reviews were great, but nobody cared. Their record didn’t sell. Sam Andrew recalled Janis musing in 1969, “Back in 1968, would Big Brother have considered giving me more money and bringing horn players into the band?” He told her that the band probably would have, but she hadn’t asked.

  In 1970, questions about the advisability of having left Big Brother were still playing in her mind. In April she was getting ready for the Full Tilt band to try its wings in public in May. Her anxiety over the uncertainty of the public’s response was very difficult to handle. Bobby Neuwirth, with his pal Kris Kristoffers
on, rose to the occasion. Kris had the charm and good looks that spelled Southern seduction. He was a Rhodes scholar with a gift for poetic lyrics, and was making a name for himself in the country-music scene.

  Bobby and Kris brought the perfect escape, a roaring alcoholic romp that became known as “The Great Tequila Boogie.” The partying started with Bobby and Kris in Greenwich Village. There was a whole night with Odetta, and then they carried it on out to the West Coast, landing at Janis’s house. Perhaps Kris reminded Janis of David Niehaus. He was strong, rugged, and extremely attractive, as well as intelligent and well educated. He could be soft and gentle, but also liked to bellow in alcoholic abandon, just as Janis was prone to do. The main difference was that the music scene wasn’t foreign to him. He was already working in it. While David couldn’t find a place for himself within her professional world, Kris envisioned his future along a similar path.

  They listened to Kris’s albums, one with his picture as a young man at the Newport Folk Festival. He looked like a scared young kid onstage. It actually was the first time he had played in front of an audience. Janis mused, “Boy, am I glad you didn’t look like this when I met you. I’d of never gone out with you.” Shocked, Kris replied, “That’s such a shallow way of looking at somebody, Janis.”

  Their first day of alcoholic revelry grew into three weeks of steadily downing tequila. “Janis drank them both under the table,” laughed Nick Gravenites. She banged on his door early one morning, bottle in hand, saying she’d brought some friends over to meet him. Nick asked, “Where are they?” She pointed to some distant spots down the road, which were walking laboriously and hanging on to each other. They were barely able to make the trek to the house. Janis was bright and chipper.

  Janis invited everyone to join the partying. She called Jerry Ragovoy, the composer of many of her most famous hits. She woke him up in the middle of the night with a telephone call, urging, “Come right over, we’re having a party.” He laughed to himself, responding, “It might take a few days. I live in New York, you know, Janis.” “That’s all right. The party will still be going on.”

  The Tequila Boogie culminated with a party at Janis’s house, fondly called the Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Party. Tuttle, with his tattooed torso, set up shop and provided body artwork as a party favor. There was more than one person who woke the next morning wondering how he had allowed himself to be so adorned. The partying was grand and Janis and Kris were close, but it was not a romance made to last. They were each drawn to the demands of their careers.

  It was debut time for the band. The group was tight and the music was good, but something was missing. “If only John Cooke were here,” Janis said to Bobby. “You want John Cooke? I’ll get you John Cooke,” Bobby chivalrously exclaimed as he headed for the telephone.

  It took some explaining. After all, the last time John had seen Janis she was excusing herself to go to the bathroom to shoot heroin. Her drug use had turned touring into a drag. Bobby just kept enthusing, “Hey, man, Janis is in great shape. You got to do this, and you got to see this new band!” John arrived five days before the tour started, and three days before the Tequila Boogie ended.

  Janis was ready to tour, but the weeks of tequila merriment had made an impression. She needed to reduce the drinking. The doctor she asked for help said that it was either all or nothing. Reducing one’s drinking wasn’t the prescribed treatment for a problem with liquor—the only proven remedy was total abstinence. She was in a quandary. She wanted to be clean, but not to go through the steps that would get her clean, such as not drinking at all. Going on tour was hardly an ideal alcohol-treatment method. She wasn’t ready to quit, so she decided to try to manage it alone. If she could do nothing else, she would abstain from drinking for a few hours before going onstage.

  Kicking off the tour was her engagement by the Hell’s Angels for a private party at Pepperland in San Rafael, California. It was a double bill with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The office hadn’t booked the date, Bennett Glotzer said. Janis had called Albert and told him she wanted to play there and he had concurred. “Albert, you’re nuts!” Bennett exclaimed.

  The Hell’s Angels seemed to be a good group for the debut of her new band because she could count on them to be an enthusiastic audience. After all, Janis always seemed to care more about whether the audience got off on the music than whether the band performed precisely. She wanted the local crowd to tell her the group was good. She also enjoyed playing a double bill with Big Brother.

  The Angels were a mind-blowing audience. A special kind of intensity seemed to hang in the darkened, smoke-filled room. It was reflected in the exhaustion Nick Gravenites felt when he stepped offstage, having sung with Big Brother for the opening act. He was barely able to walk, he was so drained. There was a surreal demand on the artists that night.

  Bennett, Albert, and others were there for the debut. Pepperland was full of drunk people in biker clothes. When it was Janis’s turn to go to the stage, her entourage walked up together. Bennett explained, “The band went to the stage first, and then I went, and then Janis. There was some woman who was the lady of a biker, and she asked Janis for her bottle. When Janis refused to share the liquor, the girl screamed, ‘When a Hell’s Angel asks you for something, you give it to them!’ They went down on the floor slugging, until Sweet William, who was chairman of the Oakland chapter of the Hell’s Angels, came over and stopped it. In a matter of minutes they pulled all the lunatics off and she went onstage. Janis said, ‘See, I told you it would be all right.’”

  The Angels took a special pride in caring for their musicians. As Clark Pierson was drumming intensely, an Angel said, “You look like you’re getting warm. Why don’t you take your shirt off?” Clark declined and kept on playing. A few minutes later, Clark realized the guy wasn’t asking him, he was telling him. He stopped playing and took his shirt off. The Angel carefully folded the shirt and placed it on a chair. The rest of the night, Clark’s private Angel protectively wiped the drummer’s brow as he played.

  The night was just plain bizarre. Some stories tell of a nude couple dancing, others about a couple making love onstage. When Janis finished playing, she understood the exhaustion that Nick had felt when he’d finished singing earlier. It was some way to start a tour.

  FIFTEEN

  FULL TILT TRIUMPH

  You know that I need a man

  You know that I need a man

  But when I ask you to, you just tell me

  That maybe you can

  —JANIS JOPLIN, “Move Over”

  THE SUMMER WAS A DREAM. She had more fun being straight,” related John Cooke. Janis initially planned an eight-week limit on the Full Tilt tour, based on her plan with Albert for two months on the road and two months off. The eight weeks began creeping out on both ends of the tour, until the total package was twelve weeks. She opened on May 29 in Gainesville, Florida.

  Her former Austin lover, Bill Killeen, lived in Gainesville. He had moved there to run a student humor magazine and later opened a head shop. Janis telephoned and together they planned a getaway at his thoroughbred horse farm in the country. Then business intervened. The New York office booked concerts for Jacksonville on May 30 and Miami on May 31. A private life was so difficult to maintain while she was on the road. Janis had a hard time turning down money, and the concerts meant income.

  The tour was a joyous departure from former ones. Janis was full of energy and enthusiasm. She had fun with the guys. In Maryland on June 19–20, waiting for the performance, she brought out a box of beads that she had brought from California. The whole band sat around stringing beads and talking, being friends.

  Maryland was a memorable concert for Janis because she started feeling ill toward the end of the show and couldn’t do an encore. The promoter brought a car around so that an ambulance wouldn’t cause a scene, and off they whisked her to the emergency room, with John Cooke following them at high speed. Janis lay on a gurney waiting patiently for help for f
orty-five minutes before a young intern diagnosed her problem. She had a pulled muscle.

  She made the most of the incident later on the June 1970 Dick Cavett Show. He asked her about tearing a muscle, and she replied, “Yeah, I sure did, somewhere down around Maryland.” The audience roared, catching her insinuation to a spot on her body and not the state. Janis knew how to play her image for all it was worth, but in private, she was changing in small but important ways. When someone who latched on to her group at some social gathering was grumbling angrily about the “pigs” abusing their power, Janis cut him short. “They’re cops, just people doing their job, honey. Don’t call them pigs, it just makes it worse.” When she first started touring with Big Brother, if a waitress was rude to them because of their attire and style, they often left without tipping. On the Full Tilt tour, a rude waitress might be left a $100 bill, as a way to change her attitude about hippies. Most important, her casual attitude toward sex was markedly different. No longer did Janis feel that having sex with a guy was a good way to get to know him. Now she told people she never slept with people she worked with.

  After five weeks of touring the East, Janis was off on a chartered-train trip across Canada, with no one on board but musicians who played concerts at stops along the way. It could hardly be better, especially since she received $75,000 for the three concerts and got to participate in a five-day party.