On the Road with Janis Joplin

by John Byrne Cooke

  At this very moment there are thousands of passengers airborne over America who have tanked up at the airport bar and had a double on board the plane before lunch, all of them more soused than Janis, but no amount of persuasion on my part or Stan’s can convince the Guardian of the Airways to fly the star of the show to the concert site. He’ll take the rest of us, he says. Fuck you, we tell him.

  We make our way by rent-a-car through crowded streets and unfamiliar byways, but that’s what road managers are for, and we’ve got two. Our combined efforts get us to the festival site just in time for Janis’s set. The natives are restless after long hours in the sun with too much beer and too few toilets. The collective mood is, Come on, man, I been sittin’ here all day. What else can you show me?

  Albert isn’t one to pester the road crew with his concerns, but he has given me a message about the opening weekend of the tour: Be cool in Florida, where the local newspapers may remind the fans (and the police) that Janis was busted for obscenity at a concert in Tampa back in November. Reaching an out-of-court settlement on that charge cost her a hefty legal fee.

  Before Janis goes onstage, I caution her against doing anything to offend the sensibilities of the Miami constabulary, in case they’re looking for an excuse to prove that they are just as vigilant as their Tampa colleagues. Just over a year ago, these same Miami cops busted Jim Morrison for public profanity, indecent exposure, public drunkenness, and incitement to riot when the Doors were here. Morrison’s trial is pending.

  Not to worry. Janis is a model of superstar decorum. She keeps the tequila bottle out of sight, she holds her tongue between songs, she makes the crowd forget the heat. Full Tilt is on a full boogie, and they bring the show to a rousing finale.

  —

  WE SETTLE INTO the One Fifth Avenue hotel in New York and at the end of the week we commence a relatively relaxed, two-gigs-a-weekend schedule. Following his custom, Albert sends us into the heartland to gear up the band on the road before presenting Janis and her new ensemble to the scrutiny of the rock press. In the Midwest, spring feels like summer. We play Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Kansas City. For the time being we are scrutinized only by David Dalton, a young journalist who will travel with us for several weeks to gather material for a piece on Janis that will appear in Rolling Stone too late to affect the initial judgments of her new band.

  Janis has warned Dalton at the outset, “I hope you jerkoffs at Rolling Stone aren’t going to demolish me like you did the last two times,” but Dalton isn’t here to do a hatchet job. He seems more interested in the multifaceted Janis than the star. He notes with interest that Janis has Nancy Mitford’s Zelda and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel in her carry-on bag.

  Albert’s prudence is wise but, as it turns out, unnecessary. Any rough edges in the music are smoothed out by Full Tilt’s steamroller energy and everyone’s good spirits. Janis and the band roll effortlessly through the first weeks of the tour. The Full Tilt boys are neither psycheholic nor alcodelic. Like most musicians, they tend to smoke a little weed or have a few drinks on occasion. The hanging out back in Marin expanded their concept of what having a few drinks entails, and for the first week or two the boys sometimes overflow their customary limits, but soon enough the postgig partying comes under control.

  In Full Tilt, Brad Campbell and John Till seem truly at home for the first time. They are the veterans, and they welcome the newcomers. From the beginning, the five of them form a cohesive unit not only musically but in the off-hours as well, something that never happened in the Kozmic Blues Band. Ken Pearson and Richard Bell give me more laughs than worries. Kenny is like a teddy bear, until he sits down at his organ. Richard is lean, with a dreamy smile that can lure you into mistaking him for a space case, but he’s paying attention all the time. He’s tied with Brad for best musician in the band, but no one is keeping score and everyone more than pulls his weight. John Till is often late checking out of a motel or getting to the gate in an airport, but he’s right there when it’s time to go onstage.

  Janis’s transparent delight in working with these boys makes all the more apparent what was lacking in the Kozmic Blues Band. There is love in some measure in all friendship. For Janis, a professional relationship that doesn’t become at least a middling friendship is one that she won’t bear for long. In Kozmic Blues, the reserves of love were inadequate. With Full Tilt Boogie, Janis has already created the closeness that’s essential to her happiness and success on the road. Nothing will ever be just like Big Brother, but with Full Tilt, it’s a family again.

  The mood of the tour reminds me of my first months with Big Brother: We are outward bound and the sky’s the limit. Even the routine gigs in inconsequential cities lack the tedious aspects that prompted Sam Andrew to write “Downtown Nowhere.” This is more like Downtown Everywhere—it’s summertime and the living is easy. After Miami, Janis plays no more festivals for a time, as she renews her acquaintance with municipal auditoriums and college gyms.

  In Louisville, the audience of four thousand can’t occupy a quarter of the seats in the huge Freedom Hall, but Janis revs up enough energy to fill the auditorium. For a time, it seems the security rent-a-cops may overdo their efforts at crowd control. Janis jumps down to dance with the kids in the front row and that gets everyone dancing. By the end of the show, they’re on the stage, and the hall manager has the lights on, but the festivities stay just shy of uncontrolled. Janis keeps the energy positive and the crowd in check.

  When we have been on the road for two weeks, Stan Rublowsky and I sharing the road manager’s duties, neither of us pushing Janis for a decision about which of us to keep, Janis asks me to sit with her on a flight back to New York. She says she wants me to handle the road show for as long as I’m willing to stay. I told her back in California that even if she chooses me I will probably leave her again after the summer tour. I remind her that Stan is willing to stay on the job indefinitely. Janis says what’s important is that she and I are friends. We have a history together, shared experience that includes both highs and lows. I tell her if it keeps on being this much fun, I may stay through the fall.

  We enjoy our reconfirmed partnership in silence for a time, but I have a bit of business to transact, now that I am officially back on the payroll. I worked with Kozmic Blues for a year without a raise, at $250 a week. I’ve been on the road now for a couple of weeks with no idea how much I’m being paid. I broach the matter of my salary and Janis doesn’t shy away. “How much do you want?”

  “How about four hundred a week?”

  “All right,” she says. This is the first time we have ever discussed the terms of my employment, just the two of us. Janis displays none of the old anxieties about being ripped off or not having enough money, which date back to her first days with Big Brother and complicated many of her dealings with partners and employees in the past.

  With that out of the way, Janis reveals a decision that surprises me: “I’m not going to make it with anyone that works for me,” she says. It’s too hard to keep the intimacy of sleeping with someone balanced with the demands of the employer-employee relationship, she says. I tell her I think keeping some professional distance is a good idea, but I realize she doesn’t really need and isn’t really seeking my approval. Janis has made this decision from the head, not the heart. She’s willing to deny herself the kind of transient romantic attachment with a guy in the band or one of the boys on the road crew that has offered her comfort in the past because she knows it’s the smart thing to do, for the greater good of her new band and for her career.

  “Something happened last year and I became a grownup. I always swore I would never become a grownup no matter how old I got, but I think it happened. No sense worrying about it. Just rock on through.”

  Janis Joplin

  Seeing the dramatic improvement in Janis’s health and her spirits is reward enough for coming back on the road, and I re
alize that road managing is a valuable resource. It’s my safety net. Writing the Fool of Paris script, I learned something about how to write screenplays and I want to learn more. Janis’s failure with Kozmic Blues made me quit the road. As a result, I may have found my own work. Talk about silver linings. Helping Janis now is a form of payback, a way of saying thanks.

  Janis is making decisions about the business side of her career as well. She discusses her investments with Albert, she tells me, and with the office accountant, Sy Rosen, a genial man who helped me get my American Express card. At long last, Janis believes that after the band and the travel expenses have been paid and Albert takes his cut, she will still have enough. More than she ever dreamed when she was just a hopeful hippie on Haight Street.

  As Janis opens a book to read, I marvel at what she has accomplished in the six months since we parted in New York. She has brought her formidable intelligence to bear on getting it right this time. She has examined the lessons to be learned from the failure of the Kozmic Blues Band. She took the lead role in assembling Full Tilt Boogie. If she was evading her responsibilities last year, she is embracing full responsibility now, not tentatively, but as if she’s been doing it this way all along. There’s no more deferring to men she thinks know more than she does, no more waiting for others to solve her problems.

  She has cleaned up her act.

  Stan Rublowsky departs with no ill will and the road crew takes on its final form for the summer tour. We are hauling our own PA system now, adequate for all but the biggest shows, and we have added two more equipment men to handle the load. George Ostrow and Vince Mitchell are augmented now by Phil Badella and Joel Kornoelje. The four of them are the California hippie wing of our little family. Driving the PA and stage equipment from gig to gig in a truck means that Albert’s office has to book the concerts no farther apart than a twelve-hour drive. Three to four hundred miles is about right. George and Vince got the equipment routine down solid with Kozmic Blues, and they come to me only rarely. For the most part, the equipment crew operates on its own and gets the job done.

  Besides the equipment truck, George and the boys are in charge of a brand-new, bright red International Travelall, which we immediately dub the Boogie Wagon. Albert’s idea is that Janis and I and the Full Tilt boys will use the Boogie Wagon instead of rental cars, thus saving some bucks, but the scheme contains a flaw. After each night’s gig the equipment men leave for the next city, driving the equipment truck and the Boogie Wagon. The band and I still have to get to the hotel and from the hotel to the airport. We often arrive at the next destination ahead of the road crew. So we continue to rent a car, which leaves the road crew with a great vehicle at their disposal once they’ve unloaded the truck into the concert hall. They soon discover that the Boogie Wagon can accommodate a promising number of groupies.

  The band is a road manager’s dream, almost always willing to follow direction. If I do something that puts somebody’s back up, I back off and become the peacemaker. My job is to keep them happy. It doesn’t hurt to say so when I have to soothe ruffled feathers.

  John Till and Brad Campbell are old hands, accustomed to my style. I have no idea what the new boys make of my role until one morning when Richard Bell breaks out laughing as he watches me get it together to check us out of a hotel. “What are you laughing at?” I want to know, too ready to take offense.

  “Nothing. It’s great! I never had anyone do all this for me before, is all.”

  Later on, I learn from the boys that Janis has laid down the law, warning them not to give me a hard time, but Richard’s appreciation is spontaneous and genuine. Clark and Kenny second the motion. In a few weeks, we have formed a benevolent cohesion that survives the occasional inevitable dustups on the rock-and-roll road.

  Janis and I are comrades in arms. I rarely have to do more than suggest that it would be nice if she could be in the motel lobby in five minutes for her to appear breathless in three, hair and feather boas flying, tripping along in her sashaying run, calling out, “I’m ready, John! I’m ready!” So I’m all the more surprised when she pulls one of her old tricks as the band gathers in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel to head out of town for a weekend’s gigs. (Janis prefers One Fifth Avenue, but it’s full up this week.) John Fisher’s limo is out front and we’re about to leave for La Guardia when Janis presents me with a sloe-eyed pretty boy who has spent the night in her bed. “We’ve got to drop him off in the East Village,” she announces.

  In my first weeks with Big Brother, I established it as the Eleventh Commandment that if anyone in the band needed to delay our progress toward a departing flight, that person had better let me know ahead of time. The East Village will take us half an hour out of our way, maybe more, depending on traffic. I always allow extra time to get to airports, but making the detour will cut it pretty fine. I launch into my prerecorded diatribe about no side trips that might make us miss a flight. Halfway through, Janis jumps in with some real heat of her own as the onlookers draw back to a safe distance.

  The volume escalates, and suddenly we reach an impasse. Janis sputters for a moment, then says, “I wouldn’t take this from anyone but you!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you!” I shoot back.

  We stand nose to nose. Janis cracks first. She grins, and we dissolve into laughter. Janis gives the pretty boy ten bucks and tells him to take a cab.

  This is the new Janis, who doesn’t have to defend her position with the last ounce of her energy. She is more comfortable in herself, more centered. She is the linchpin that holds Full Tilt Boogie together, onstage and off. She is the leader of the band. If the craziness of the road gets to one of the new guys, she lightens the moment with a joke, or says something that helps him cope, much as she cooled out John Till after his first month with the Kozmic Blues Band. Last year, Janis had a clause inserted in her contract rider that required she have a dressing room separate from the band’s, to give her some privacy and some distance from the intramural tensions in Kozmic Blues. That provision is still in force, but she spends little time alone now, except to change clothes. The rest of the time she is with the band.

  “She knew what she wanted. She knew ahead of time what you wanted, what you didn’t want, or what you thought you wanted. She had herself covered, she had everybody—she tried to cover everybody all the time.”

  Clark Pierson

  Shortly before we left California, Janis confided to us that she wanted a nickname, something that suggested a good-time woman. After some discussion it came down to “Rose” or “Pearl,” but there is no final decision until we are out on the road. Self-consciously, we try these monikers on for size. It isn’t long before Janis decides that “Rose” doesn’t suit her and “Pearl” she becomes, the name already taking on an identity separate from the public persona of Janis Joplin. It’s a way for her to appear among her friends in human form. It’s a private name, an intimate name, used for saying friendly things. We’ll say, “Knock ’em dead, Pearl,” before a show, or, “You’re lookin’ good, Pearl,” or “Hey, what’s the matter, Pearl?” But when the talk is about business, or when communications get strained, as they do on the road, even among family, it’s always Janis then, never Pearl.

  Later on, when the nickname appears in the press, some people perceive it as a gaudy label associated with Janis’s wild outfits and her most outrageous behavior. They’ll call out, “Hiya, Pearl!” on the street and Janis will cackle and wave back, loving it in a way, but she loves it most the way it’s used among her friends. It’s a name that tells her we love her.

  —

  IN ONE CONCERT after the next, Janis recaptures her audience without a fight. She controls them confidently, using between-song raps and stories to keep them on her wavelength or to lay a bit of philosophy on them. She has a new introduction to the Jerry Ragovoy tune, “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” which she has kept from the Kozmic Blue
s song list. It’s a story whose moral is that if you aren’t happy with where you’re at, if everyone around you seems to be getting more of the action than you are, you got to try harder. Wham! she jams her fist into the air, kicks out one leg, and the band starts the song with a punch that knocks the front row of the audience back ten feet.

  That kick gets her into trouble in College Park, Maryland. Midsong, Janis accentuates a beat with a good hard kick and pulls a muscle deep in her groin. She comes offstage at the end of the set, her face taut with pain. She asks me please to tell the audience that she can’t do an encore. The promoter calls an ambulance, and the band and I follow the flashing red lights through the late-night suburban streets at sixty plus to the nearest hospital, where Janis lies on a table in the emergency room for half an hour until a doctor finds time to examine her. He tells her she has pulled a muscle.

  She gets a good laugh out of this incident a few days later, on The Dick Cavett Show, which is now running five nights a week on ABC’s late-night schedule, opposite Johnny Carson. Janis has been invited to appear on other talk shows, but she accepts invitations only from Cavett, because she likes him and because, she says, he’s the only talk show host who actually listens to his guests.

  “I hear you tore a muscle somewhere near Maryland,” Cavett says, once the applause for Janis’s opening song has died down.

  Janis gives a breathy laugh. “It was a lot closer to home than that, baby.” The audience roars.

  When Cavett asks her to explain the opening song, “Move Over,” which Janis wrote, she says it’s the old story about getting a mule to move by holding out a carrot in front of him, dangling from the end of a stick. The woman is the mule, she says, while men are “constantly holding out something more than they can give.”