Love, Janis

by Laura Joplin

  Janis’s drinking started like most people’s, socially before the age of twenty-one. She was on the accepted path to maturity. She bought the medical profession’s belief in drugs as panaceas. She accepted the culture’s faith in chemical substances solving feeling problems. She agreed with the writers and cultural leaders of her day that the illegal drugs used by her group were little different from the legal ones used by the older generation.

  Janis was brave enough to face the inequities of life head-on. She spoke out against racial discrimination when it wasn’t popular to do so. She pursued a life bent on appeasing her gut-level desire to know the soul. She rejected any compromises like settling down into a suburban routine. Janis turned her back on her intellect as a means to awaken her emotional self, believing that what eluded her mentally, she might find in feelings. She zeroed in on the cultural weakness of her day—how to handle emotions. Our ordered society is so incredibly great with the mind and so inept in dealing with emotional discomfort.

  She tried to find a new way of living. She was appropriately named after the Roman god Janus, who ruled over endings and beginnings. Janus is depicted in profile, with two identical faces looking in opposite directions. January, my sister’s birth month, was named for Janus. Her whole life was intertwined with the mission of change and becoming.

  Janis tried valiantly to change herself, and so she helped many who sought emotional change in themselves. She was never one to let the old ways die silent, undisturbed deaths. She drove them over cliffs and hurled torrents of anger after them. Before her death, a new, calmer self was just visible in the thicket of her voluminous cynical diatribes. Her rebirth was still in labor when her death cut it short.

  The truth that she found was in her music. She gave up everything for it because she found nothing else like it. She found a new reality for herself while she was singing, and when she was tuned in to that power, she gave pure love to her audience.

  Her rapport with her audience taught her that love wasn’t about getting something from other people. The good feeling comes from giving—giving love. She struggled to apply that lesson to the rest of her life.

  She tried valiantly to relate to others past the veils of cultural conditioning. It was as if she followed the traditional Hindu greeting ritual where two people, upon meeting, place their hands on their chests, palms together, with fingertips pointing to their chins. In this way they signify, “The God in me greets the God in you.” Janis sang to the world from inside a tidal wave that swept her along and called itself a social revolution. Janis was one of the movement’s standard-bearers, crying against the “You just can’t do that!” rules.

  Janis sang: “There’s a fire inside of every one of us / You’re gonna need it now.” We can’t hold on to the ideas of past days; the 1960s blew them apart for us. We are changed. And still Janis’s songs encourage us. What we’ll find, we don’t know, but the urge to seek is ever compelling. We know, like Janis, that if we don’t seek, we’ll merely stagnate in empty social roles.

  Janis and the love generation showed us the importance of love as a guide. Janis and Big Brother called, “Come back and believe in my love/Come back and believe in the magic of love.” Janis’s music always seemed to go straight to the heart.

  She even answered the questions about how she would be described by future writers looking back on the 1960s. “What are they going to say about me,” Janis repeated the interviewer’s question, “a silly kid up there? I think it’s going to be that my music was when the black and white thing broke down, and black could dig what white sang, and white could dig what black sang . . . and it was all music, and get down to where it is supposed to be.”

  BECAUSE OF JANIS, Michael and I get together at least twice a year to deal with her business. It’s a funny reason for getting together. It’s much different, say, from joining for Thanksgiving dinner (which we also do). The work of wrestling with decisions has spilled over and brought us closer than I think we would have been otherwise. Family is an ongoing commitment in our lives.

  Once, we were in Tucson, at Michael’s house. With the aromas of bacon and coffee wafting through his adobe home, we were enjoying the morning quiet. Honk, honk, went a car horn, disturbing the silence. Later, another person repeated the maneuver, yelling loudly, “Janis was the greatest!”

  “It’s the Day of the Dead,” Michael explained to my quizzical expression. “Día de los muertos. It’s a day Mexicans remember their deceased loved ones. Fans of Janis’s have been driving by my house this day every year, since someone found out I lived here,” he continued.

  The celebration is so much more exuberant than those of Anglo-Saxon culture. This most Mexican of events is a time of respect, love, and enjoyment. Relatives honoring their dead do so actively, not just in quiet recollections. They might serve the honored person’s favorite meal, set a place for him or her at the table, or do a favorite activity of that person—for instance, tending a special tree in the yard.

  Like many Mexican holidays, special folk art developed to signify the Day of the Dead. Artists carve tiny little figures of people and paint them to look like skeletons. They place them in a scene that is expressive of the pleasures that the person found special during his or her life. The whole piece is often no bigger than six inches long.

  A setting for Janis would include a tiny human figure, painted white with black bones, dressed in her favorite clothes. Janis’s artist might put rose-colored glasses on her eyes and a sequined performing costume on her frame. There would be a skeleton rock band behind Janis, complete with tiny carved guitars and drums, and a crowd of skeleton fans dancing in front of the stage. I would put dozens of roses on the stage, a light show on the stage wall, and her lost dog, George, waiting in the wings. Surely that would be Janis’s favorite scene, to be savored on this most special of days, the day for remembering.

  The cars kept coming by Michael’s house, slowing significantly as they passed. Their shouted words warmed me with their blessings. She was not forgotten.

  A few months later, I was at home, working on a new boxed-set collection of Janis’s music. I was listening to each of her albums, one after the other, in a new sequence. Tunes from different time periods were mixed together.

  I listened intently to “Try” and “Piece of My Heart,” and thought back on the Day of the Dead, Janis’s fans, and the fun of a Janis concert. I listened on through “Work Me, Lord” and “Mercedes Benz,” drawn to sing along, defying her stereophonic voice to overshadow my real-life volume. My daughter and a friend ran in to check out this unmotherly behavior, two gleeful five-year-olds chanting, “Aunt Janis, rock and roll.” I raised my eyebrows, never missing a word of the melody, and started to dance, encouraging them to join the music.

  Jumping up and down, swaying, shaking our hair, twisting, strutting with our arms, we danced. We screamed along on “Summertime” and “Maybe,” and swayed and caught our breath on “A Woman Left Lonely.” We grooved together, watching each other’s eyes, smiling at the replies within on “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” On and on we went, tune after tune, until our feelings were exhausted. “Little Girl Blue” called us to each other, in one big kissing cuddle, with Janis the most hugged. We lay on the floor and listened to “I Need a Man to Love” and “Blindman,” and started to cry with “Me and Bobby McGee.”

  My beloved sister is remembered.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES

  I AM ETERNALLY INDEBTED to the many wonderful people who gave me their time and shared their hearts, memories, and insights. Both my work and my life have benefited from their willing gifts. Acknowledging and thanking individuals is inherently inadequate because of the intangible ideas and the feelings that can never be fully expressed.

  Feelings were a large part of writing this book—hearing about others’, uncovering my own, and resolving many of them. The Sedona Institute’s “Release” technique was instrumental in helping me deal with the emotional ups and
downs that come with writing a book like this. I am sure that I could not have completed this manuscript without taking the Phoenix-based workshop and video course.

  In the following paragraphs I want to acknowledge the individuals who provided information and my major written references for the appropriate chapters. Though many interviews and texts provided information useful in many chapters, I have listed names by area of primary contribution. I do so with the expectation that the reader will realize that information was often used generally, not just in a specific chapter.

  There are some people whose contributions were so broad that I want to acknowledge them here.

  First, I want to thank my mother, Dorothy Joplin, for her faith, trust, and help in my years of working on this project.

  Second, I want to thank my brother, Michael Joplin, for his constant support and continual help in putting the book together. In particular, Michael researched and helped select the photographs in the book.

  Third, I want to express my gratitude for my husband, Richard, and his support over the years it took me to put this book together. He also served as my computer expert, keeping our system functional and training me in how to use it.

  Fourth, I want to thank Robert Gordon, Janis’s attorney, for his quality, caring advice throughout the past twenty-two years.

  Fifth, I am grateful to Manny Fox for his steady attention and input as I wrote the book, especially in the early stages when the task seemed so daunting.

  Sixth, I am indebted to my many friends who have read through early drafts and given me much-needed feedback: Marilyn Green, Carolyn Koplin, Liz Kreider, Carolyn Manly, Rod and Marilyn Mitchell, Barbara Pollack, and Nancy Sparks. Special thanks to those who helped edit early drafts: Mae Chu, Laura Museo, and Marie Rallis.

  Seventh, I want to thank my editor, Doug Stumpf, and my production editor, Beth Pearson, at Villard Books. Doug’s attention, ideas, and faith, along with Beth’s prodding questions and focus on detail, helped immeasurably in turning a rough manuscript into the book I wanted it to be.

  Eighth, I want to acknowledge the special support and contribution of several of Janis’s friends:

  Jim Langdon and Dave Moriaty, who both encouraged me to write the book, feeling that a more complete story of Janis’s life needed to be told. I especially want to thank Dave for fact-checking the manuscript.

  John Cooke, who provided support, access to his files documenting the times, his brilliant memory, and a friendly willingness to talk whenever needed. Special thanks for his editorial comments on an early draft.

  Pat Nichols, whose sincerity and caring in providing information helped me understand many things.

  The members of Big Brother and the Holding Company—Sam Andrew, Peter Albin, Dave Getz, and James Gurley—who provided information and permission to use the lyrics published by their Cheap Thrills Music Company. Thanks also to Sam for his help in fact-checking the book.

  I want to apologize in advance for any oversights in acknowledging the time, information, and attention of anyone that I may have neglected to mention. No slight was intended.

  ONE: OCTOBER 1970

  Peggy Caserta, Dr. Henry Chu, John Cooke, Bob Gordon, Mimi Krohn, Pat Nichols. “Rock and Roll Woman,” by Michael Thomas, in The Age of Rock, Jonathan Eisen, ed., Vintage, New York, 1969.

  TWO: OUR ANCESTORS

  Ima Jo Bryant, Gerald East, Vern and Eva East, Bob and Eleanor Hanson, Grace Hanson, Lorena Hempell, J. Mike Joplin, Marjorie Joplin, Ellen Jopling, Mimi Krohn, Donna MacBride, Kate McDonald, Violet Merryman, Wilma Parnell, Pauline Webb.

  “The Ancestors of Henry Sherman Hanson,” a paper by James Hanson, 1991.

  “The English Ancestry of Hezekiah Hoar of Taunton, Massachusetts,” by Lyon J. Hoard; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Boston, January 1987.

  Generations: The History of America’s Future 1584–2069, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, Morrow, New York, 1991.

  A History of Women in America, by Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, Bantam Books, New York, 1978.

  “The Jopling-Joplin Family,” by Dorothy Eason, Fricks and Adams.

  Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans, by T. R. Fehrenbach, Collier, New York, 1985.

  “Memories of the Robert Ury Porter Home and Family,” a paper by Eleanor Porter McSpadden, 1970.

  The Oxford History of the American People, volumes I and II, by Samuel Eliot Morison, New American Library, New York, 1972.

  The Reformation, by Edith Simon and the editors of Time-Life Books, Time Inc., New York, 1966.

  A Religious History of the American People, by Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1972.

  Slavery and Freedom, by James Oakes, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1990.

  Texas: An Album of History, by James L. Haley, Doubleday, New York, 1985.

  Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, by Page Smith, Penguin, New York, 1982.

  THREE: JANIS’S CHILDHOOD

  Karleen Bennett, Kristen Bowen, Dorothy Joplin, Michael Joplin, Mimi Krohn, Roger and Jimmy Pryor, Dorothy Robyn, Jack Smith, Marilyn and Carolyn Thompson.

  Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, by Landon Y. Jones, Ballantine, New York, 1981.

  Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans, by T. R. Fehrenbach, Collier, New York, 1985.

  The Oxford History of the American People, volume I, by Samuel Eliot Morison, New American Library, New York, 1972.

  Port Arthur, sponsored by the writer’s program of the WPA in Texas, Anson Jones Press, 1940.

  Texas: An Album of History, by James L. Haley, Doubleday, New York, 1985.

  FOUR: ADOLESCENCE

  Karleen Bennett, Kristen Bowen, Adrian Haston, Jim Langdon, Grant Lyons, Sam Monroe, Dave Moriaty, Tary Owens, Jack Smith, Randy Tennant.

  Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, by Landon Y. Jones, Ballantine, New York, 1981.

  In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, by Carol Gilligan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982.

  In the New World: Growing Up with America 1960–1984, by Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1988.

  South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous, by John Broven, Pelican Publishing Co., Gretna, La., 1987.

  FIVE: COLLEGE AND THE VENICE BEAT SCENE

  All of the people and references in chapter 4, plus: Gloria Haston, Rae Logan, John Maynard, Dave McQueen, Patti Mock, Lionel Rolfe.

  In Search of Literary L.A., by Lionel Rolfe, California Classics Books, Los Angeles, 1991.

  Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, by June Rose, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1990.

  Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, by John Arthur Maynard, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 1991.

  SIX: AUSTIN, TEXAS

  Pat Brown, John Clay, Bill Helmer, Jack Jackson, Bill Killeen, Ted Klein, Jim Langdon, Rod and Marilyn Mitchell, Dave Moriaty, Gilbert Shelton, Powell St. John, and many of Janis’s friends from high school and college mentioned earlier.

  Special thanks to Dave Harman for researching the Austin music scene; Claude Matthews’s video on Kenneth Threadgill, Singing the Yodeling Blues; John Wheat and John Slate at the Barker Texas History Library at the University of Texas; and Texas Student Publications in Austin, Texas, for allowing us to use articles, photographs, and cartoons from the Ranger and The Summer Texan.

  A History of Underground Comics, by Mark James Estren, Ronin Publishing, Berkeley, 1989.

  In the New World: Growing Up with America 1960–1984, by Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1988.

  Screening the Blues: Aspects of the Blues Tradition, by Paul Oliver, Da Capo Press, New York, 1968.

  SEVEN: THE SAN FRANCISCO BEAT SCENE

  Peter Albin, Pat Brown, Nick Gravenites, Adrian and Gloria Haston, Chet Helms, Seth Joplin, Kenai, Jim Langdon, Rae Logan, Pat Nichols, Gilbert Shelton, Linda (Gottfried) Wauldron.
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br />   The Female Hero in American and British Literature, by Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, R. R. Bowker Co., New York, 1981.

  Ferlinghetti, by Barry Silesky, Warner Books, New York, 1990.

  Ginsberg, by Barry Miles, Harper Perennial, New York, 1989.

  Jack Kerouac, by Tom Clark, Paragon House, New York, 1984.

  EIGHT: HOME AGAIN

  Karleen Bennett, Adrian and Gloria Haston, Chet Helms, Patti Mock, Tary Owens, Jack Smith, Linda (Gottfried) Wauldron.

  Buried Alive, by Myra Friedman, William Morrow & Co., New York, 1973.

  The Story of Rock, by Carl Belz, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1969.

  NINE–FIFTEEN

  The remainder of the book deals with Janis’s life in the San Francisco rock-and-roll scene. Many people provided important information from this time period. I include their names here to note their contribution to the rest of the book. Peter Albin, Sam Andrew, Peggy Caserta, John Cooke, Dave Getz, Bob Gordon, Linda Gravenites, Nick Gravenites, James Gurley, Pat Nichols, Tary Owens, Richard Ryan. The following texts were resources for the period 1966 through 1970.

  The Age of Rock, Jonathan Eisen, ed., Vintage Books, New York, 1969.

  Buried Alive, by Myra Friedman, William Morrow & Co, New York, 1973.

  The Haight-Ashbury: A History, by Charles Perry, Vintage Books, New York, 1985.

  A History of Underground Comics, by Mark James Estren, Ronin Publishing, Inc., Berkeley, 1974.

  Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, by Fredric Dannen, Times Books, New York, 1990.

  Intoxication, by Ronald K. Siegel, Pocket Books, New York, 1989.

  Licit and Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and the editors of Consumer Reports, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1972.

  One More Saturday Night, by Sandy Troy, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1991.

  The Pharmer’s Almanac: A Training Manual on the Pharmacology of Psychoactive Drugs, by Anthony B. Radcliffe, Carol F. Sites, Peter A. Rush, and Joe Cruse, MAC Publishing, Denver, 1985.