On the Road with Janis Joplin

by John Byrne Cooke

  FEB. 14, 1969: SUNY, Albany

  FEB. 15: University of Vermont, Burlington

  FEB. 16: Toronto, Ontario

  FEB. 21: Colby College, Waterville, Maine

  FEB. 22: Clark University, Worcester, Mass.

  FEB. 23: Queens College, Flushing, N.Y.

  FEB. 28: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  MAR. 1: Duke University, Durham, N.C.

  MAR. 7: Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

  MAR. 9: Toledo, Ohio

  Janis gets a day to rest before we launch into a three-week itinerary that starts off in Albany, Burlington and Toronto, and ends up in North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio. It’s the hinterland tour again, except for Toronto. In the year that has passed since Janis traveled these regions with Big Brother, the kids have been growing their hair and buying funny clothes and trying to get hip.

  We rent two cars at each airport. I train a couple of the band members as follow-car drivers so we won’t lose half the band before we get to the hotel. Here’s the drill: Pretend there’s a fifty-foot rope between my lead car and the follow car. I know you’re back there, so you can follow me closer than you’d follow some stranger in traffic. If you need to stop, flash your headlights.

  Terry Clements is one of the better drivers. Sam is fine, but he doesn’t really want the responsibility. The proof that I haven’t got the follow-car driver adequately trained comes when I blow a front tire on an interstate off-ramp near Albany. My car jumps the curb and careens across the mowed lawn that landscapes the interchange until I can bring it to a stop, but the follow car never leaves the pavement. Once it’s clear that we’re all okay, the guys in the band tease the driver without mercy. You’re supposed to follow him, man!

  Monday to Thursday, most weeks, we’re in New York. For the trips to and from the airports, John Fisher brings a second limo.

  Not long after the band settles into the Chelsea Hotel, their number is expanded by the arrival of Snooky Flowers. Snooky has been playing sax with Mike Bloomfield and another Butterfield alumnus, Mark Naftalin, since Mike left the Electric Flag. Janis heard Snooky rehearsing with Bloomfield in San Francisco, and Snooky stopped by the synagogue to check out Janis’s new band. Until then, he had never heard Janis live, and her singing impressed him. The band did not. He figures he’s just the guy to whip them into shape.

  In the New York rehearsals, Snooky tries to exert an organizing influence. He has more experience than some of the others, and the ego to run rehearsals the way he thinks they should be run. It helps that he is the sole black member of the group. To Snooky’s way of thinking, Janis isn’t a rock-and-roll singer; she sings black music. She’s got the blues in her white soul, she wants a band with an R&B sound, and it takes a black man to run the band. “This is a horn band,” Snooky says. You gotta rehearse a horn band in a particular way. He’s a horn man himself, and his big baritone sax gives authority to the horn section that it lacked before.

  Nobody else in the group has a better idea how to run rehearsals, so Snooky is able to have some effect. He’s full of bluster, and he can talk your ears off when he gets wound up, but he is a gentle soul. He doesn’t do drugs and he preaches quietly to those who do, encouraging them to quit. He doesn’t see it as a strength that he is thoughtful, and capable of kindness, but these qualities emerge in time.

  If Janis would give Snooky her approval in front of the others, he might achieve more, but she is unsure how to handle this group that is so unlike Big Brother. When she tries to exert leadership herself, it often has a disruptive effect. She’ll start a rehearsal by saying, “We’re not leaving the studio until we get two new songs.” The musicians feel this isn’t how you approach working out new arrangements. Some are more willing than others to express their competing ideas—Snooky and Terry Clements among them. Some days there is more discussion, and shouting, than cooperative effort.

  The constant emphasis on rehearsing—first in San Francisco and now in New York—unsettles the musicians. It is presented as an urgent necessity, which it is, but in a way that conveys doubt that the band will ever be good enough.

  After a run up to Waterville, Maine, and Worcester, Massachusetts, we’re in New York on the last Sunday in February for a gig at Queens College, in Flushing, so we’re on hand to get the Sunday Times warm off the presses and read a piece on Janis in the magazine section.

  In the past year, Janis has been featured or mentioned in many of the nation’s top magazines and newspapers, but making the New York Times Magazine is a big deal. The writer is Michael Lydon, a Bay Area freelancer who interviewed Janis in San Francisco before we came east. When he asked her if it isn’t a little scary going out with a new band, she said, “Oh yeah, I’m scared. I think, ‘Oh, it’s so close, can I make it?’ If I fail, I’ll fail in front of the whole world. If I miss, I’ll never have a second chance on nothing. But I gotta risk it. I never hold back, man. I’m always on the outer limits of probability.” This is the clincher. It gives the lie to the small-minded theories about why she left Big Brother and who made the decision. It’s all in these four words: “I gotta risk it.”

  We play Northwestern University and get a rave review in the Chicago Tribune that acknowledges some criticism of the band in other quarters and refutes it. “Rumors had come from New York, where she debuted her new group a few weeks ago, that the band was not together,” the Tribune’s critic, Robb Baker, writes. “Either the rumors were wrong, or the band has been working night and day since then. From the first number onward, it was clear the exciting young blues-rock belter from Texas had a tight and beautiful group of musicians behind her that would complement her all the way.”

  In the recent gigs, there’s a noticeable difference in the band that I attribute to Snooky’s influence on the rehearsals and his presence in the group. The horn section is more confident, more assertive, and the rest of the band seems to be falling in step behind the brass.

  As we tour the boondocks, we become aware of changes in the attitude of our audiences that work against the spirit of celebration Janis tries to encourage. It’s the difference between the spirit of the kids who discovered the music on their own and those who are attracted to it because they have heard about the scene and the hippie dope-smoker dropout free-love lifestyle in the music media. Rock concerts aren’t celebrations of the counterculture anymore. They have joined the mainstream. In the spring of 1969, many of the kids are coming to the concerts because it’s the thing to do, rather than from any real devotion to the performers or the music.

  The effect of this evolution encourages neither undivided attention to the show nor a purely spontaneous response. Increasingly, Janis finds the audience’s expectations in conflict with her own. Nothing is more important to her than getting an honest response from the crowd, establishing a connection in which she and the fans are equal partners. If the communication is right, if there’s a little magic in the air, they’ll both get off. But increasingly the kids come expecting to get off every time, and they take less responsibility for helping to make it happen. They want it done for them. At the end of Janis’s set, the applause sometimes feels less like a celebration than a demand: Give us more.

  When Janis feels that the crowd lacks the willingness, the openness, she wants, she fights back in ways that only aggravate the problem. She delivers harangues between songs. Even in conventional theaters with seats, she wants the audience to dance in the aisles. She wants to feel their energy the way she felt it in the Fillmore and the Avalon with Big Brother. With the new band, she’s trying to tell the audience how to behave, how to respond to the music, and her outbursts embarrass the band.

  A weekend in mid-March is a logistical challenge. On Saturday morning, in New York, Janis and the band rehearse blocking for The Ed Sullivan Show at CBS-TV’s Studio 50. John Fisher has two cars waiting at the stage door. As soon as we’re done, we head to La Guardia and a f
light to Detroit for a concert that evening at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. So far, so good. The flight is on time.

  UM is like a remote province of California. These kids are hip. The UM campus has been a wellspring of student activism since the early ’60s and they are ready to hear Janis. Big Brother never played here. This is Janis’s first time in Ann Arbor, the students’ and faculty’s first chance to hear her. The reception is tumultuous, and the audience needs little urging to get up and dance. Janis is in her element, grinning, shouting, boogeying to the instrumental breaks. Okay! This is how it’s supposed to be.

  Afterward, we’re invited to a party. I am in a celebratory mood, but Janis heads off with a writer from Playboy in tow to see an old friend play harp in a black club and I have to get the band up early tomorrow because we have to be back in New York by midday for more blocking and rehearsals at the Ed Sullivan Theater. I head to bed early and urge the boys to do the same. This is something we absolutely must not fuck up. It’s The Ed Sullivan Show and it’s live TV.

  The band understands. There is a minimum of griping when I roust everybody at eight fifteen the next morning. Janis was up until the wee hours, but there is no bitching. Her oh-my-God-it’s-too-early act is the humorous one, all blowsy and bedraggled, hopping into the shotgun seat on the lead car, ready to go. We’re gonna be on Ed Sullivan! Can you dig it?

  The return flight gets us to Newark on time, but . . . there is no John Fisher waiting. We mill about on the sidewalk outside the terminal. . . . Finally John shows up—not in his limo, but coming out of the airport terminal on foot. Somehow he missed us when we trooped past him in the concourse. And now John discovers that he has locked his keys in the limo. Not to worry, he has a magnetic key holder under a fender . . . but all he finds is the magnet; the rivet rusted away and the key box gone. I’m on the verge of hailing taxis for the band when Snooky extracts a wire coat hanger from his clothes bag and jimmies a door lock on the long black Caddy.

  We’re late getting to the city, but at the Ed Sullivan Theater the rehearsals are running behind schedule and airtime is hours away. Whew. We’re going to be okay.

  It’s hard to overstate the importance of getting booked by Ed Sullivan. Anybody remember the Beatles? Five years ago, they landed in New York on a Friday in February. Two days later, on Sunday, they were on Ed Sullivan and they drew the biggest audience the show ever had. From that moment, the Fab Four were stars in America. Of course, they had some advance publicity. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” jumped into the American charts in January, reached number one on February 1, and held the top spot through the Beatles’ arrival, the Sullivan show, the month of February and most of March. In Cambridge, our first response was to laugh at the silly name, the “Beatles,” but when we heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” we sat up and took notice. Hey, man, listen to that harmony! Right there . . . I want to hold your hand! It’s the vocal harmonies I love most about bluegrass music, and the Beatles have taken harmony somewhere else.

  On the Sullivan show, Janis sings “Maybe,” a bluesy, gut-wrenching tune, one of the new songs in her repertoire. The band nails the arrangement and Janis nails the vocal.

  Janis knows things about the etiquette of The Ed Sullivan Show that I never imagined. When all the acts come onstage at the end of the show, Ed Sullivan takes Janis’s hand and he says, “Thank you.” Afterward, in John Fisher’s limo, on the way to Max’s Kansas City, Janis is beside herself. She bounces up and down so hard, the people on the street probably think some horny celebrities are getting it on behind the tinted windows. Did you see? she bubbles. He shook my hand! You ain’t nobody if he doesn’t shake your hand, daddy! And he did it! He shook my hand!

  Janis’s elation animates Max’s above the usual lively hubbub. The mix of artists, musicians, and free spirits who join the celebration includes Bob Neuwirth, who is often on hand to hang out with us when we’re in New York. Andy Warhol is here, and the painter Larry Rivers, a resident at the Chelsea. And where but Max’s would you see Tiny Tim and Salvador Dalí in the same room?

  The celebratory mood doesn’t last for long. The latest edition of Rolling Stone, just on the stands, has Paul Nelson’s review of the Fillmore East show in February, and it is not a rave. The cover story is titled “Janis: The Judy Garland of Rock?” Nelson didn’t like the band or Janis’s song list, with the exception of “Work Me, Lord,” Nick Gravenites’s gift to Janis for the new group. As he savages the band, Nelson observes that Janis apparently lacks “the essential self-protective distancing . . . the necessary degree of cynicism needed to survive an all media assault. . . .”

  We’re on a noon flight for San Francisco the day after the Sullivan show, which only brings Janis closer to the source of the criticism. Rolling Stone was founded and is still published in San Francisco. For the rock community, it’s the hometown newspaper, and Janis is booked for four days straight at Winterland and Fillmore West.

  MAR. 20–23, 1969: Winterland and Fillmore West

  MAR. 27: Sacramento

  MAR. 28: San Bernardino

  MAR. 29: San Diego

  The San Francisco audience, like the black audience in Memphis, is curious about the new band, but curiosity isn’t going to get Janis to the next level. Ralph Gleason, who got Big Brother on the bills at the Monterey Pop Festival and the Jazz Festival, who has supported and promoted Janis from her first days with the band, writes a scathing review in which he suggests that Janis should go back to Big Brother “if they’ll have her.” With no influential voices raised in support of the new group, it seems that Gleason reflects the prevailing mood in the city, and the loss of his support wounds Janis deeply.* San Francisco is the only place she has felt she truly belongs. If her adopted hometown rejects her, where can she ever feel at home again?

  “Lots of people don’t want their stars to change—they want the same thing that made them fall in love with the artist in the first place. But an artist has to change or they stagnate.”

  Jon McIntire, Grateful Dead management

  It helps to have something to look forward to. Three days after the Fillmore/Winterland weekend we’re packing again for a trio of California gigs—Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego—but we won’t see the Golden Gate again until the middle of May. While we were in the East, Albert put together a tour of Europe, with concerts booked in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and the Royal Albert Hall in London.

  Before we leave our hearts in San Francisco yet again, we acquire our third trumpet player. Terry Hensley has tired of the road, or doesn’t think this band is for him, or he’s been let go because Snooky doesn’t think he can cut it. Whatever the reason, it’s a big change. The new man, Luis Gasca, was with Woody Herman’s band at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967 when Janis and Big Brother played there, and he’s no slouch with a horn. He is short in stature but long on experience. He studied for two years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has toured and recorded with Perez Prado, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, and Mongo Santamaria. Luis did all that, and more, before serving for two years in the U.S. Army. He was in and out before Vietnam heated up, and back on the road.

  The motley makeup of Janis’s band may give Luis a moment’s pause, but he’s here for one reason: He wants to play with Janis Joplin, and Janis is heading for her first European tour. How can he turn it down?

  There is virtually no time for Luis to learn the tunes, but while we were in New York, Albert’s office recruited a Harvard-educated musician named Warren to write out the band’s arrangements, and Luis can read charts. The California gigs are as good as any in recent memory.

  On Monday afternoon, March 30, we’re at Los Angeles International Airport. Janis has invited Linda Gravenites along for companionship. We’re booked on Scandinavian Airlines, so our foreign experience begins when we board the 707 that will take us nonstop to Copenhagen, where we will change for Stockholm.
/>   CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Grand Tour

  THE GREAT CIRCLE route from Los Angeles to Copenhagen takes us over eastern Canada and the North Atlantic on a path that intersects the Arctic Circle. It’s a long flight, with plenty of time to sleep, but it’s interrupted, without much explanation before or after, when the captain tells us we’re going to make an unscheduled stop in Greenland.

  We land after dawn and get off the 707 to stretch our legs. Janis comes down the gangway in her fur coat and a pair of low-heeled golden sandals that would be more appropriate on the Sunset Strip. There are patches of snow and ice on the tarmac and the land around the airport is white, but on the last day of March it’s not the land of perpetual winter we might expect. Legend has it that Eric the Red called it Greenland to attract Viking settlement.

  The name of this place is Søndre Strømfjord. If there’s a town, we can’t see it. Outside the terminal there’s a signpost with signs that point hither and yon like arrows and give the distances in hours of flight time to places we know well, or will soon: Copenhagen and Los Angeles are near the top. Others point to London, Paris, and Frankfurt, with New York, Moscow, and Tokyo thrown in for good measure. Only the last two cities will not figure in our travels this year. The names are in English, maybe because the airport began as an American air base built here in 1941. At the top of the signpost, an arrow points to the North Pole, which is closer than all the other destinations, although it is only twenty minutes closer than London, as the jet flies. We are almost seven hours from Los Angeles, just over four to Copenhagen.

  We supplement the SAS in-flight service by having breakfast in the terminal. We are never told why this stop was necessary, but now we can say we’ve been to Greenland.

  With the stopover in Greenland and a change of planes in Copenhagen, we arrive at Stockholm—nine hours ahead of L.A.—in the late afternoon, with our internal clocks turned upside down. We find that Swedish hotels have single beds that are built for very tall people. The rooms are equipped with heavy drapes to black out the lingering light of the short summer nights. Sealed off, we manage to get enough sleep to begin the adjustment to a time zone east of Greenwich.