On the Road with Janis Joplin

by John Byrne Cooke

  In Michael Lydon’s article for the New York Times Magazine the year before, Lydon asked Janis about Port Arthur and she told him, “Man, those people hurt me. It makes me happy to know I’m making it and they’re back there, plumbers just like they were.” Home for the reunion, Janis is finding that confronting the actuality of the people she left behind is not as uplifting as contemplating it from afar.

  Most of her classmates look older than Janis, older than Bobby and John and me. It’s not just how they look, but how they act. There is something in their attitude. It’s as if the last time they had fun was in high school and they don’t expect to have fun ever again. Except for one young couple with a two-year-old boy in the mother’s arms who would look right in place in Golden Gate Park, Janis’s contemporaries seem to have accepted, in their late twenties, that what follows high school is middle age.

  Janis becomes more venturesome. She moves through the crowd, doesn’t find anyone she wants to talk to, and says let’s go get a drink. Three male classmates have latched onto her during her foray. They tag along when we head out into the heat of the day to find the nearest “membership club.” From the way these three hang on Janis’s every word, and the looks they give each other, it’s obvious that they’re only interested in Janis because she’s a rock star. I wonder why she’s wasting her time with them until I realize that these bozos are the types she has come to Port Arthur to impress. They’re the ones who made fun of her in school, who didn’t understand her, who made her miserable, and who gravitate to her now because she has escaped in such a spectacular way the small-town life they’re stuck in. She has come home to take her revenge, but it isn’t as satisfying as she thought, and after a couple of bar stops we leave the three hangers-on standing in the street when we head back to Janis’s house and our motel to get ready for the reunion dinner that evening.

  Before the dinner, there is a press conference. Members of the local press have asked for a chance to interview Janis. The reunion committee has set up a table in one corner of the windowless conference room, with bright lights to facilitate photography. Here, for a short time, Janis is in her element, despite some questions that summon painful memories.

  Q: What do you remember most about Port Arthur?

  J.J.: (Laughs, hesitates) Ah, no comment.

  Q: What do you think young people are looking for today?

  J.J.: Sincerity, and a good time. . . . I think they’re looking for people not to lie to them.

  Q: Will you come back more often now?

  J.J.: Oh, I can’t say, because you see I live in San Francisco, and you can’t get any looser than that.

  Q: Did you entertain in high school, when you were back here in high school?

  J.J.: Only when I walked down the aisle. (Laughter.) No, I was a painter, and sort of a recluse in high school. I’ve changed.

  Q: What happened?

  J.J.: I got liberated. No, I started to sing, and singing makes you want to come out, whereas painting, I feel, really keeps you inside.

  Q: How were you different from your schoolmates?

  J.J.: I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?

  Asked about the nickname “Pearl,” which has been widely reported in recent weeks, Janis sets the record straight: “That name was not supposed to reach the press. . . . That name’s a private name for my friends to call me so they won’t have to call me Janis Joplin.”

  The reunion dinner is a step down from the rubber-chicken circuit much bemoaned by campaigning politicians. The roast beef is cooked to the consistency of shoe leather. We load up on salad and vegetables instead. As Bob Neuwirth makes his way back to our table, his selection draws some taunts from Janis’s classmates. “What’s the matter, you don’t eat meat? You like that rabbit food?”

  There are some halfhearted speeches, and a few tales of high-school pranks. We figure we can’t leave until it’s over, and so Janis is on hand to receive the prize for having come the longest distance to get to the reunion. They give her a bald tire. At least it’s painted gold.

  It’s meant to be funny, but it makes Janis feel the way she felt too often when she was in school with these same people.

  On her first day back in Port Arthur, Janis and Laura met with the reunion committee at their request, at one of her classmate’s homes. “What do you want?” they asked Janis. Being polite, Janis said, “Oh, nothing.” Of course she wanted something, an acknowledgment of her presence and how far she had come, both literally and figuratively, to get there. She doesn’t want it to be all about her, but a moment of recognition would be nice. If the committee had an ounce of imagination among them, they would have organized some gesture, something to make her feel welcome without being fawning. But they took Janis too literally, and the bald tire is all she gets.

  Dancing is scheduled after the drab dinner, but we are seeking livelier entertainment. Jerry Lee Lewis is playing at a roadhouse out toward Beaumont. A bottle of tequila and some rock and roll by the Killer will lift our spirits. We are ever optimistic.

  The roadhouse has a box office, where you pay to see the show. Janis announces, “I’m Janis Joplin,” but that doesn’t get us in. Informed we’ll have to pay like everybody else, Janis pulls out the cash and slaps it down and in we go.*

  This is a genuine Texas roadhouse with an unlikely name, the Pelican Club. Smoky and rowdy and drunk from wall to wall. Jerry Lee is onstage, shouting out the rocking blues and making the piano ring. Now and again he hollers instructions to the young bass player.

  This is not the first time Janis has set eyes on the bass player. When we played Louisville, Kentucky, back in June, we had a day off after Janis’s Friday night concert. On Saturday, Janis and Clark Pierson and David Dalton went to see a big country show starring Jerry Lee and George Jones at the civic auditorium. Backstage, Janis made a blatant play for the bass player, who might be all of seventeen, embarrassing him no end.

  Bound to continue her quest tonight, Janis leads the way backstage at the Pelican Club when Jerry Lee and the band take a break. The atmosphere in the cramped, sweaty band room is not festive. There are two or three guys in the room who are not members of the band. They’re the heavies. Whatever the details of their role, they are here as muscle. Somebody is counting out money on a small table, and that’s part of the heavies’ job, to guard the money. One of the guys has a pistol stuck in the back of his waistband.

  Lewis himself does not smile, does not react to our group entering his domain, except to follow Janis with a cold stare. In Louisville, he wasn’t exactly welcoming. Here, he’s downright hostile.

  “And I remember Janis was kind of tinkly and giggly and she walked up to Jerry Lee Lewis, who I thought behaved like an absolute prick from the get-go. I mean he was not gracious about anybody being there, and I immediately thought, This is not good. We really shouldn’t be back here. This does not feel right. The reception was not friendly.”

  Margaret Moore

  Janis is oblivious to the signs. She waves a Hiya, honey, at the young bass player and leads Laura over to meet Jerry Lee. “Hey, Jerry Lee,” she says, “this is my hometown, and I want you to meet my little sister, Laura. Isn’t she pretty?” Jerry Lee looks at Laura and he’s quiet for a long moment, and then he says, “Not really.”

  And Janis goes straight for Jerry Lee and clips him a flailing smack upside the head and without a second’s hesitation, he slaps her right back. Bobby and I grab her, and she’s cursing Jerry Lee, calling him a motherfucker and he’s responding in kind. Margaret and Laura are out the door and the rest of us aren’t far behind. Out to the parking lot and into the car, and so much for the Pelican Club.

  “And she was foul-mouthin’ him, ‘Yeah, motherfucker, whatever you say, motherfucker,’ so like he said, ‘Don’t talk to me like a man or I’ll treat you like a man.’ Just two south Texas rednecks going at each other, man.”

&nb
sp; Bob Neuwirth

  We were in the back room longer than that, and maybe Janis took a few minutes to chat up the bass player, who, it turns out, is Jerry Lee’s son, but that’s the way it plays back in memory, both later that night and long after the event.

  All in all, not as much fun as Ken Threadgill’s birthday party. Yet despite Janis’s disappointment that she hasn’t gained the satisfaction she was hoping for from her reunion weekend, the next morning, when Bobby and John Fisher and Margaret and I hug her good-bye before we hit the road for the Houston airport, she seems to be centered and calm, as if her not-so-triumphant return to the scene, and the company, of her adolescent difficulties has helped her put at least some of the lingering resentments behind her.

  Janis is looking ahead, and she has much to look forward to. She will stay with her family for a few more days before she flies home to San Francisco for two weeks’ vacation. After that, we go to L.A. to begin recording with Paul Rothchild. Before the reunion, while we were touring in the East, we got word that Paul played the July demos for Albert and Clive Davis and the Columbia executives in a blind hearing. Nobody knew which demo was made in which studio. Sunset Sound won hands down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A Woman Left Lonely

  AS SOON AS Paul Rothchild returns to Los Angeles from his trip to the Bay Area in July, he puts out the word to songwriters and music publishers that he will be producing Janis’s next album and she needs material.

  Songs arrive by the bucketload, on cassettes and demo discs and reel-to-reel tapes. With help from his housemate and sometimes engineer, Fritz Richmond, Paul goes through the material, looking for anything that might appeal to Janis. A representative of MCA Publishing, with a misguided sense of initiative, shows up at Paul and Fritz’s house on Ridpath Drive at eight thirty one morning, barges through the big wooden gate, jangling the bell that’s wired to it, and knocks on the door of the house. When Paul mumbles, “Who is it?” from the bedroom, where he is a couple of hours away from his usual rising time, the guy calls out, “I’m from MCA. You might have heard of us.” To which Paul replies, “Get the fuck out of here!” No songs from MCA are considered for the album.

  At the upper end of professionalism is the Motown representative, who calls for an appointment and arrives at the house on the dot, with reel tapes, discs, and his own cassette player that he plugs into the stereo. He has lyric and lead sheets and he has Paul’s and Fritz’s full attention throughout his presentation.

  Another question on which Paul enlists Fritz’s expertise is how best to record Janis’s exceptional voice. They talk about different types of mikes they’ve used for recording different singers, and they hit on the idea of using an RCA ribbon mike, an old-fashioned mike from between the wars that produces a very mellow sound. By capturing Janis’s voice, which is anything but mellow, with the RCA mike, Paul may get a more manageable signal to work with.

  Janis and Full Tilt Boogie arrive in L.A. before Labor Day and settle into the Landmark Hotel for what could be two months of recording. Janis has driven down from the Bay Area in her Porsche. George Ostrow has decided he’s put in enough time on the road. Vince Mitchell and Phil Badella are handling the equipment for these sessions. They have brought the Boogie Wagon, which will be the band’s taxi.

  In the first week, Janis and Paul Rothchild settle into a routine. Janis drives up to Paul and Fritz’s house in Laurel Canyon around eleven in the morning. Paul makes a pot of coffee and they listen to the songs he and Fritz have selected, to see what Janis likes and to decide which song they will work on in the studio that day.

  Paul schedules the sessions at Sunset Sound on musicians’ hours. Work begins sometime after midday and ends in time for a late supper and drinks at Barney’s Beanery. At the end of each day’s work, Paul tells Janis and the band when to show up the next day. It’s less than a mile from the Landmark Hotel to Sunset Sound. Sometimes the band members walk. Sometimes I shuttle someone in my car. Often Phil or Vince or one of the Full Tilt boys drives the Boogie Wagon.

  On some days Paul needs just Janis in the studio, or just the band, but Janis likes to have the band on hand when she’s laying down vocal tracks. (The RCA ribbon mike proves to be just the thing, and Janis sings into the forty-year-old mike throughout the sessions.)

  As Paul develops his working relationship with Janis, he is also getting to know each member of the band, which for him is an essential part of the producer’s job.* He learns how to talk with them. He teaches them the difference between playing in live performance and playing in the studio. When they have questions or suggestions, Paul listens. He makes them feel like an important part of the process.

  “Rothchild is . . . a little bit above the musicians. You know, he just seemed to know how to relate to each musician. And get their ideas in, but also not put anybody down or—you know, he just kept it so fucking comfortable. . . . If I were to ever make another record again, he’d be the first person I would call.”

  Brad Campbell

  I spend more time in the studio than I did with Big Brother or Kozmic Blues, because this time it’s fun.

  Late one afternoon I come back to the Landmark to find Janis sitting by the pool. She’s on a chaise on the shady side, looking alone and serious—maybe blue? She’s thinking hard. I can almost hear the wheels spinning. I sit beside her. “What’s happening, Pearl?” She shakes her head. “Boy, that guy,” she says.

  “What guy?”

  “Rothchild.”

  I feel a chill. If Janis has decided Paul isn’t the right producer, we’re in deep shit. “What about him?” Janis shakes her head, still doesn’t look at me. “He’s really something.” She starts to talk now—the serious Janis, explaining something that’s important to her—and my fear gives way to a rush of relief as she tells me how much she’s learning from Paul, how well it’s going. For the first time, she’s experiencing recording—the long hours spent in the studio—as a high in itself, rather than a trial to be endured. She never dreamed the relationship between a singer and a producer could be like this.

  Paul has been talking to her about how she uses her voice, onstage and in the studio. He has helped her understand that different techniques are required, but he isn’t telling her to put anything less than her full commitment into a song. This is something Janis will never do, and Paul’s not asking her to do it. He’s asking her to explore the different voices she has at her command, the different parts of her range, to experiment with modulating her vocal power and considering more critically when to use it at full force.

  Janis talks about these things with something close to a sense of wonder. Paul has opened doors to possibilities she didn’t know existed. Maybe she doesn’t have to blow her voice out within a few years. She likes to joke that when she loses her voice she’ll buy a bar in Marin County and settle down. This is what she has always expected, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.

  I remember what Paul said to me in San Francisco, about wanting to introduce Janis to the truly great singer inside her. Paul is proceeding at his own pace, in his own way, and from everything Janis tells me the plan is on track.

  “You know what he told me?” Janis says, and now she’s got that little-girl-who-got-an-A-on-her-homework look. “He said I’m the only woman he’s ever met who could be a record producer.” She’s proud, and well she should be. If Paul said that, he meant it.

  During breaks in the recording and over the occasional meals and drinks we share, I get Paul’s side of the story. He says that working with Janis is going better than he dared hope. His experience with lead singers is that they are self-indulgent children who show up at the studio late, sometimes drunk or stoned, and sometimes you have to send out search parties to find them in a bar or in bed with a groupie. Not Janis. She always shows up within half an hour of the appointed time, which for a rock singer is on the dot. She never gives less than e
verything she’s got, and she always lets her affection show for the boys in the band, which puffs them up with pride and makes them redouble their efforts to please her.

  Paul is impressed by Janis’s capacity for storing information and using it. In the studio, she often sits beside him in the control room while the band is recording. Whenever she expresses curiosity about some aspect of the recording procedure, Paul fills her up with as much information as she wants. That she takes an interest in the technical aspects of recording adds another dimension to his respect for her, while the center of his focus remains her voice. Since the start of the sessions he has become convinced that Janis has yet to develop her full range. He tells me of a conversation they had recently. Paul asked her, “Come on, Pearl, what do you really sing like?” And she said, “I’ll show you.” What happened next pleased him no end. “She sang me stuff out of the church choir. Like she used to sing back in the church choir, when she was a teenager, a young teenager. And I heard this pure, straight, white voice. Clean, clear, no vibrato, no fur, no broken glass and rusty razor blades, just ‘Ahhhh,’ soprano. And I said, ‘Right, you can sing, fantastic.’” For Paul, the revelation that Janis has this voice has far-reaching implications for her career, and for his. Paul is never less than self-interested. He knows his work with Janis can benefit his reputation in both the short and the long term. But the long-term benefits will only be realized if he can help Janis develop in a way that is best for her long-term prospects as well.*

  Paul and Janis have been spending time together outside the studio too—not just having drinks or a meal after work, but talking about cars and driving their Porsches along Mulholland Drive, the twisty road that winds along the crest of the Hollywood Hills, at a high rate of speed.

  Paul is an automotive enthusiast. When I first knew him in Cambridge, he drove an Alfa Romeo convertible. His present car is a Porsche 911S. The way Janis drives tells him she understands her own Porsche as a finely tuned machine. She doesn’t share his interest in the detailed workings of the internal combustion engine, but she understands the coordination of the engine, the gears and the steering. “She drives like a man,” he says, and from Paul there is no greater compliment. (He is something of a chauvinist, in these times that are still more than a little chauvinistic.) Paul knew beforehand that Janis is a very emotional person. That’s where the music comes from. But she also understands machines. She can examine and analyze and articulate abstract concepts and things in the physical world. Right brain, left brain, both up and running. In a woman or a man, this is a rare combination.