Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Holly George Morn. He's got a
Speaker 1: new book about Janice Joplin entitled Janice Joplin for Life
Speaker 1: in Music. Holly, good to have you here. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on your show, Bob. Okay, why a book
Speaker 1: about Janice Joplin? Why? Now you know, Bob, I have been,
Speaker 1: of course a fan like every one of Janice's voice,
Speaker 1: going back to my teen years back in the Setona,
Speaker 1: I have to ask, since you brought that up, were
Speaker 1: you alive and conscious when Janice had her success? Yes,
Speaker 1: um the end of her career. I got to see her,
Speaker 1: you know, on TV from my little hometown of North
Speaker 1: Carolina on the Dick Cabot Show. And of course, one
Speaker 1: of my first albums when I joined the Columbia House
Speaker 1: Record Club twelve albums for a penny, was Pearl, so
Speaker 1: I still have my original copy. How did you feel
Speaker 1: after getting the twelve albums free and then having to
Speaker 1: pay list price for the ensuing records. I did a
Speaker 1: lot of babysitting in those days, and since I lived
Speaker 1: in a tiny town with not a lot of access
Speaker 1: to records, hey, I was cool with it. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. It's a little town called Ashborough, not
Speaker 1: to be confused with Ashville, which everyone's heard of, the
Speaker 1: cool hipster town. But Ashboro was right smack dab in
Speaker 1: the center of the state, near Nascar Richard Petty Territory
Speaker 1: for any of this. Okay, So for those of us
Speaker 1: who were ignorant city people, what's the closest town we
Speaker 1: would know of? Greensboro were the first sit ins took
Speaker 1: place at? So how far from Greensboro were you? Like
Speaker 1: twenty miles and okay, let's get back to it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you bought Barol, you still have it? Yes, I
Speaker 1: have my copy too. And that was you know, I
Speaker 1: was a huge record fan already because when I was
Speaker 1: in third grade, Bob, I discovered on my little clock
Speaker 1: radio that I could tune into w ABC in New
Speaker 1: York and w l S and Chicago. And this was
Speaker 1: the golden age of channels. That's why was ultimately and
Speaker 1: in my town, I think that there are one radio
Speaker 1: station which mostly played country and gospel, which, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, being a rock and roll kid, I hated
Speaker 1: it went off the air, you know, So I discovered
Speaker 1: this radio from far away that played this incredible mix
Speaker 1: of music because am just was amazing. In the mid sixties,
Speaker 1: I became so obsessed. I would not go to sleep
Speaker 1: at night without listening to my radio. And that's the
Speaker 1: transistor under the pillow. Well, you know, I don't remember
Speaker 1: having it. It was the baby blue pastel you know,
Speaker 1: clock radio. My parents kind of just said whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't really care. And I started buying forty fives
Speaker 1: like crazy with my babysitting money. And so this was
Speaker 1: again I was third grade and I started my first
Speaker 1: little group. Then, so I became obsessed. Well I want
Speaker 1: to go deeper into this, Let's first get into the book.
Speaker 1: So well, I can't as drop in. Why not? Well,
Speaker 1: because I discovered when I was asked to write liner
Speaker 1: notes for the Pearl Sessions, which was a two CD
Speaker 1: set in which they went and pulled out all these
Speaker 1: tapes from the vaults at Columbia and at least they
Speaker 1: were still there as opposed to universal tape. Yes, thank god. Right,
Speaker 1: And so you could hear Janice and Paul Rothschild, the
Speaker 1: producer of Pearl Talking Shop. Janice was leading the conversation
Speaker 1: coming up with guitar parts, arrangement ideas, you know, like
Speaker 1: literally calling the shots. And I knew from work I'd
Speaker 1: done on the Doors and interviewed Bruce Botnick, the Great
Speaker 1: Engineer and other people, that Paul Rothschild was famously iron
Speaker 1: fisted producer, and in fact, Joni Mitchell did not like
Speaker 1: working with him because he was so bossy. And actually
Speaker 1: Paul Rothschild a little bit. I wish I could have
Speaker 1: met him. He seems like a cool guy. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I have to remember that, of course he cut
Speaker 1: all those early Electra records, but he was the son
Speaker 1: of an opera singer. Did you know that? If I
Speaker 1: knew what I forgot it? I didn't know that, but
Speaker 1: um luckily I got some interviews with him from some
Speaker 1: journalist friends who did interview him before he passed away.
Speaker 1: So I suddenly realized that, you know, this persona this
Speaker 1: image that jan has created, which was so indelible and
Speaker 1: so vivid, wasn't all there was to the story of
Speaker 1: Janis Joplin. You know, she kind of had this image
Speaker 1: of being this blues mama. I'm just all about the field, baby,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know that whole technique versus field idea,
Speaker 1: and I started thinking, you know what, I think there's
Speaker 1: more to this woman's music. Music musicianship then meets the eye.
Speaker 1: So I then started thinking, and wait a minute. She
Speaker 1: was growing up Port Arthur, Texas, very conservative, segregated town,
Speaker 1: oil town in the fifties. How did she even get
Speaker 1: access to records by Lead Belly and seventy Eights by
Speaker 1: Bessie Smith. It must have taken a lot of effort
Speaker 1: on her part because I had read some of the
Speaker 1: other books about her, so I really was obsessed with
Speaker 1: tracing her musical journey and finding out how she got
Speaker 1: um Port Arthur, Texas to queen of the counterculture and
Speaker 1: then this big star with pearls. Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: hear that, But let's go back to the tapes. What
Speaker 1: did you hear on the tapes? Well, again, with Paul's
Speaker 1: reputation of being a very um yeah, exactly, he was
Speaker 1: listening to Janice, he was like, wow, that's a great idea,
Speaker 1: you know, and he apparently inspired her to pursue being
Speaker 1: a producer. In fact, she told John Cook, her late
Speaker 1: road manager, who think goodness, I got to meet and
Speaker 1: interview that um Janice would make a great producer, and
Speaker 1: Janice was so excited about this idea. She was a
Speaker 1: studio rat. I mean she wrote home letters as far
Speaker 1: back as the nineteen six six, the first time she
Speaker 1: went into the studio in Chicago for the first record
Speaker 1: Big Brother in the Holding Company did for mainstream records.
Speaker 1: She wrote home detelling the studio recording process, talking about
Speaker 1: double tracking her vocals and explaining what that was, the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing when they got signed to Lumbian
Speaker 1: did Cheap Thrills. She was very, very involved in the
Speaker 1: recording process. Again, letters home describing what mixing was for example,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and Fred Catero, the great engineer, and have
Speaker 1: talked about she was the first one there and the
Speaker 1: last to leave. She was really really involved in that
Speaker 1: whole process. So there was that aspect of her that
Speaker 1: I think no one really realized that she was this studious,
Speaker 1: hard working musician that was perfecting her craft and wanting
Speaker 1: to learn every aspect of music. Not just that amazing
Speaker 1: voice of her. What was her personality like? Again, she
Speaker 1: was very multifaceted. You know, we have the Janus image
Speaker 1: of her, you know, out on stage and just so intense,
Speaker 1: so impassion this music coming from deep within of her,
Speaker 1: expressing all this pain and all this um torment, you know,
Speaker 1: through her vocals and really reaching and touching her audiences.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have seen her live, because to
Speaker 1: this day I talked to people who saw her nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six and they go into this reverie, describing it
Speaker 1: as if it was last week. I mean, her impact
Speaker 1: was that powerful. But the other side of Janice, which
Speaker 1: she kept on the down low from her fans, was
Speaker 1: this very intellectual, studious woman who always had a book
Speaker 1: with her. She was a total book worm, love to read.
Speaker 1: And she also, you know, had her own fears and
Speaker 1: her own um shyness that again she kept tamped down
Speaker 1: through her whole stage bravado and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the end. Do you think her death
Speaker 1: was inevitable for a pure accident, pure accident bomb, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of what happened when we tragically lost Tom,
Speaker 1: Petty and Prince. The whole it's similar to that whole
Speaker 1: fentinyl thing. Because she had had an addiction to heroin
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, um, but she had gotten clean
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy she'd been off it for maybe four
Speaker 1: or five months, she still was a heavy drinker and
Speaker 1: the drinking is much worse on the voice than smack,
Speaker 1: and she was trying to cut back on the drinking
Speaker 1: while making Pearl because she knew that Paul wath Child
Speaker 1: would not tolerate her voice not being there and it
Speaker 1: can really script your voice too much. Booz. So she
Speaker 1: happened to run into her dealer from before in l
Speaker 1: A at the Landmark Hotel where she always stayed and relapsed. Um.
Speaker 1: Now what happened that killed her was she, by weird chance,
Speaker 1: got this really strong heroine that had just been introduced
Speaker 1: to this country called China White, and it was really
Speaker 1: pure compared to her usual and she was by herself
Speaker 1: overdosed and it was a tragic accidym Okay, So how
Speaker 1: did you actually decide to do the book? Well? Fortunately,
Speaker 1: over the years through different um things like there's been
Speaker 1: a couple of Janice uh conferences believe it or not?
Speaker 1: At the road Yeah, at the Rock and Wall Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame in Cleveland, wannabes or scholars yeah, well not scholars,
Speaker 1: but the people that were there. So in the nineties
Speaker 1: there was one and another one in the outs, and
Speaker 1: I got to participate as a panelist talking about Janiss legacy, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But really I was a student. I got to meet
Speaker 1: her brother and sister who, um, we really hit it off.
Speaker 1: I also got to meet Sam Andrew was still alive
Speaker 1: for guitarists from Big Brother chet Helm's The Guy who
Speaker 1: Family Don't started the avalon who really is the guy
Speaker 1: that got Janis? At San Francisco not once, but twice
Speaker 1: in sixty three and again in sixty six. Jerry Ragavoy,
Speaker 1: who was her favorite songwriter that wrote a lot of
Speaker 1: her great hits, was there. So I was learning more
Speaker 1: and more about her and just became, you know, fascinated.
Speaker 1: But so, when did you hear the unreleased tapes that
Speaker 1: was in around I think it was around twenty twelve
Speaker 1: something like that. Already been going to these conferences, Yes,
Speaker 1: I had just been, you know, a student, because I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a general. Are you are you a
Speaker 1: student of other things? You're going to other conferences? Yes,
Speaker 1: I love I'm a conference junkie. Well, it used to
Speaker 1: be called the e MP conference. Now it's called MoPOP
Speaker 1: in Seattle, which has been going since two thousand two.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. I try to go to that
Speaker 1: every year. So what what have you learned there? Oh? Gosh,
Speaker 1: what have I not learned? Because it goes all through
Speaker 1: like every genre going back to I've learned about artists
Speaker 1: that I like Eva Tingay. I think her name is
Speaker 1: who is this? Do you know her name? I know
Speaker 1: the name? The music? Yeah, just people go down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole at these conferences. And each year there's a theme,
Speaker 1: so it'll be everything from you know, drag. Last year
Speaker 1: it was death so perfect for Janas. How many people go? Um? Gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, it lasts about four days and there's lots
Speaker 1: and lots of you should go. Bobby would love it.
Speaker 1: UM and it's people and it's not just academics. It's
Speaker 1: UM fans, fancy and writers, musicians, the great John Langford,
Speaker 1: the me cons and the Wakeer Brothers has been part
Speaker 1: of it. Um they have. They've had Janelle Mone, they
Speaker 1: had Solomon Burke. They'll have a keynote a lot of times,
Speaker 1: a musician, Um the tune smith woman I'm blanking on
Speaker 1: her or anyway, how many of these do you go
Speaker 1: to in a year? Um? See, I go to that
Speaker 1: when I go to the Americana Conference in Nashville. I
Speaker 1: used to go to south By Southwest every year and
Speaker 1: always do panels for that, and that was really fun.
Speaker 1: And again I saw amazing like Harold Bradley and Holly Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of it's too big now. Um, so
Speaker 1: American is kind of stepping up to the plate now.
Speaker 1: And so you can actually see like Tanya Tucker, you know,
Speaker 1: talk Okay, So you're going to these panels, you hear
Speaker 1: the tapes, you write the liner notes, when do you
Speaker 1: decide you want to write a book? Well, I was
Speaker 1: able to talk to the siblings who control Anas. We
Speaker 1: were talking just because you're interested or in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind to do something with this, I know,
Speaker 1: totally not thinking of doing something. But my literary agent,
Speaker 1: who was a wonderful person who actually has been She
Speaker 1: worked at Rolling Stone going back to the what's her name?
Speaker 1: Her name is Sarah Lason and she reps lots of
Speaker 1: rock writers, been functorus and you know Robert christcal and
Speaker 1: how did you get hooked up with her? Well, because
Speaker 1: one of my first jobs when I first moved to
Speaker 1: New York City, and besides waiting tables after graduating college
Speaker 1: with my policy English double major. Was I got a
Speaker 1: job as a fact checker at Rolling Stone Press. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they wish they still had that. Of course,
Speaker 1: is the books, not the magazine that they had a
Speaker 1: fact director would help their image. Yeah, definitely. So my
Speaker 1: first job, Bob, I think it was like five bucks
Speaker 1: an hour. It was fact checking the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of Rock and Roll, which of course I owned, Yes,
Speaker 1: And I got to meet all these guys pretty much.
Speaker 1: They're all guys who I had read as a kid
Speaker 1: reading Rolling Stone, like you know, Dave marsh and different people.
Speaker 1: And then my job was like calling up question Mark
Speaker 1: of question Mark and the Mysterious and saying, is it
Speaker 1: true that you know you're really from Mars? And did
Speaker 1: did you know whatever? Davidout him in the sycopo. I
Speaker 1: have to ask, how did you get the job? Was
Speaker 1: it that easy? Just you know, you have to know
Speaker 1: somebody because I am a rock and roll geek, Bob,
Speaker 1: and I obsessively always read rock and roll books. A
Speaker 1: friend of mine who I met at American Baby Magazine,
Speaker 1: where I also had a job, and you know, of
Speaker 1: course I was a long way from having kids or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But um she went to work for
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone and was Sarah Layson's assistant. Sarah was the
Speaker 1: director of the book division, and she knew I was
Speaker 1: this rock and roll geek. They needed a fact checker.
Speaker 1: I got to go in for the interview, and this
Speaker 1: wonderful woman, Patti Romanowski, who has written. She went on
Speaker 1: to write a lot of co authorships with um Otis
Speaker 1: Williams of The Temptations, which now they've made that book
Speaker 1: into the Broadway musical. She did dream Girls, and Mary
Speaker 1: was anyway, she was the person hiring and we just
Speaker 1: started talking about our favorite rock and roll books and
Speaker 1: I was just geeking out with her. She's like, you
Speaker 1: got the job, so perfect work for you. Let's stop
Speaker 1: there for a second, especially in the Me Too era
Speaker 1: and a second wave of feminism, shall we say, who
Speaker 1: are the unsung women writers in music who need to
Speaker 1: get more attention? Ellen Sander number, of course I love
Speaker 1: her writing and for the Yeah, and well that's Ellen
Speaker 1: Willis right, right, right, I hear from Ellen sand Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ellen died a few years ago, and she she was
Speaker 1: definitely the most intellectual, culturally anthropological, anthropological kind of rock
Speaker 1: critic who I mean she was amazing, and of course
Speaker 1: reading her on Janice, her reviews of Janis at the
Speaker 1: Film or East and the New York Are are just
Speaker 1: mind blowing. But my last book, you know, was on
Speaker 1: Alex Chilton. She was a big box tops fans, Kay Sander.
Speaker 1: She lives in May, Yeah, yeah, she lived in Her
Speaker 1: book Trips was amazing, which is a collection. I think
Speaker 1: she wrote for different magazines and she went on the
Speaker 1: road with different bands. Um. And she actually reviewed a
Speaker 1: lot of Janice concerts in New York back in the day.
Speaker 1: And Woodstock of course. Um, her writing on Woodstock is great.
Speaker 1: So both of those two jan you Helski, who was
Speaker 1: that Cream magazine? Um, who was an incredible writer. And
Speaker 1: I think she's actually working on a dock now about Cream,
Speaker 1: but I think she was there in the late sixties. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So those are three right there. And are these people
Speaker 1: you have regular contact with? Is there a fraternity or
Speaker 1: shall I say a sorority of women music writers? Well,
Speaker 1: those women I kind of put on a pedestal, so
Speaker 1: I'm like a gushy fangirl um around them. But um,
Speaker 1: as far as other women go, it's, you know, there
Speaker 1: is kind of I would say, for the most part,
Speaker 1: it is a very cool, supportive group of women. There's
Speaker 1: a great book called Women Who Rock, edited by Evelyn
Speaker 1: mcde mc nodal, who is out here in California, and
Speaker 1: Evelyn got a lot of different women writers to do
Speaker 1: essays on different women artists, again across the genre spectrum.
Speaker 1: I wrote a piece on Patsy Klein, for example. Then
Speaker 1: she got all women illustrators to do portraits of the
Speaker 1: subjects and that book came out last year. And Evelyn,
Speaker 1: who teaches also out here, was really careful to include
Speaker 1: a lot of new, up and coming young women writers
Speaker 1: as well as us. You know, heggs have been out
Speaker 1: there doing it forever. So so it's it's great to
Speaker 1: get to meet all these different women writers who had
Speaker 1: this passion for rock and roll. Okay, so you have
Speaker 1: the agent and you were telling a story of how
Speaker 1: this book came to be. Yes, so my agent Sarah
Speaker 1: Lays and new Laura Joplin and actually was her agent
Speaker 1: when she did a book that was basically a memoir
Speaker 1: with um referencing lots of letters at Janice wrote home
Speaker 1: and so she intruduce us to us, and she kind
Speaker 1: of paved the way for me to get to know uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Laura and Michael Joplin and then also Jeff
Speaker 1: jam Paul you probably know of course who represents yes exactly.
Speaker 1: And so we all hit it off and they but
Speaker 1: your agent was basically pitching a book. Well she was
Speaker 1: kind of interfacing. I mean this, Bob, this took like
Speaker 1: many years. The first conversation I think was long before
Speaker 1: I started working on the Alex Chilton book, which was
Speaker 1: in so I would say in like the late audits,
Speaker 1: like around two thousand eight or so, essentially ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was just conversations. This. How long after your
Speaker 1: agents started looking you up with these people, did you
Speaker 1: actually have a go or get a deal? Probably? You know,
Speaker 1: like gosh, I would say, um, you know, like about
Speaker 1: six years or something. And this was us conversing back
Speaker 1: and forth deciding how could we do this? Uh. I
Speaker 1: gave them other books. I My first biography was of
Speaker 1: Gene Autry, the Great Singing Cowboy, who also his widow
Speaker 1: Jackie Autrey, had opened up her vaults and files and
Speaker 1: all of his personal archives to me. Again, I will
Speaker 1: only do a book like this if I have complete
Speaker 1: editorial control over what I'm doing so the estate or
Speaker 1: the airs have to realize that they I would love
Speaker 1: for them to share all this incredible information with me.
Speaker 1: It's in these archives, but I can't give them any
Speaker 1: kind of control ever what I write, and you end
Speaker 1: up getting into battles. Uh No, not really. I mean
Speaker 1: I think they trust me and they know that I am, like,
Speaker 1: I really, really dedicated to try to tell the story
Speaker 1: as accurately as possible, and to try to make it
Speaker 1: you know, all the different facets of someone. So have
Speaker 1: you ever written a book and then have the person
Speaker 1: argue with you or be disenchanted because you've got something
Speaker 1: wrong or you had an opinion they're not comfortable with. Well,
Speaker 1: not the actual people who um, I mean, some of
Speaker 1: them disagree with the conclusions I draw. For example, Jackie Autrey,
Speaker 1: she still believes that Geane Autrey met Will Rogers in
Speaker 1: a telegraph office and he said, son, you should be
Speaker 1: doing more than just running this, you know, telegraph for
Speaker 1: the railroad. You should be a Hollywood star or whatever,
Speaker 1: which I did tons of geeky research and found out
Speaker 1: that that could not have taken place because when Will
Speaker 1: Rogers died, etcetera. And so I have to depose this
Speaker 1: incredible myth like the John Ford don't you know, don't
Speaker 1: you know print the legend, you know, kind of thing
Speaker 1: that didn't really happen. And she, you know, because I
Speaker 1: think Jeane Autrey for himself, actually began to believe the
Speaker 1: story that a press agent created that he was discovered
Speaker 1: by Will Rogers, when in reality, the press agent created
Speaker 1: that totally. Okay, So she disagreed with that, but we
Speaker 1: agreed to disagree. Okay. So this book, unlike a lot
Speaker 1: of music books, is with one of the biggest publishers
Speaker 1: in the nation, that Simon and Schuster. How did that
Speaker 1: come together? I just really lucked out. UM. The guy
Speaker 1: who was the head of UM. I guess Simon and
Speaker 1: Schuster is a guy who I worked with a long
Speaker 1: time ago when I was doing books at Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: because I ended up going back to Rolling Stone after
Speaker 1: being a fact checker. I ended up going back there
Speaker 1: in the early nineties and re igniting the book division again.
Speaker 1: So I worked with him on some of this person's
Speaker 1: his name, Okay, you know, we're we're, we're, you know,
Speaker 1: having a senior moment. But then my editor, Priscilla Painton,
Speaker 1: who is this wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster. She's
Speaker 1: the one that I went and met with. She really
Speaker 1: got it, and she was not a typical music book editor.
Speaker 1: She does a lot of their political books, a lot
Speaker 1: of their you know, big So you make the deal
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster, as they say, Simon Schuster, Random House,
Speaker 1: these are like the biggest companies. Is the deal lucrative?
Speaker 1: Uh well, let's just put it this way. Janice was
Speaker 1: much more lucrative than Salally Jeane Autrey was. And this
Speaker 1: way you're writing writing a book on Janice Joplin. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: with the advance, could you live a year and do
Speaker 1: nothing else? Uh? Not if you have a son that's
Speaker 1: in college. Okay, Okay, we got my general idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the book is like I teach also and I
Speaker 1: still write. You know, let's stay with Janice for a second. Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's been a number of books about Janice. I
Speaker 1: remember in seventy four vividly remember reading this book in Jackson,
Speaker 1: Wyoming and a diner, the Myra Friedman book. Yes, I
Speaker 1: read that book of any good you know, I totally
Speaker 1: bought that book lock Stock and Barrel. It really formed
Speaker 1: my opinion of Janice, which is part of the reason
Speaker 1: why I wanted to do my book because now in retrospect,
Speaker 1: looking back, I realized Mayra Friedman, who was her publicist,
Speaker 1: worked for Albert Grossman, her manager, and truly loved Janice.
Speaker 1: You know, we're old enough now, Bob, that we've lost people,
Speaker 1: and we know the effect that has on you when
Speaker 1: you lose someone, especially at tragic death like Janice is
Speaker 1: you're angry at that person. And now, looking back, I
Speaker 1: think that the portrait, my opinion, was very inaccurate. She
Speaker 1: made Janice seem like this tragic figure who was just
Speaker 1: just kind of um in this morass of you know,
Speaker 1: sadness and insecurity and just very neurotic and and all
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. She I think it was very
Speaker 1: one dimensional portrait of her, and it was she was
Speaker 1: just too close to her subject, and I think she
Speaker 1: was really bitterly upset about her loss, so her anger
Speaker 1: came out and the way she cast okay, So you know,
Speaker 1: that's the one I read. How many books are their
Speaker 1: biography of Janice? L um gosh what some of them
Speaker 1: are no longer in print. Forget that they're not would
Speaker 1: say like about six or something like that. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this is not a subject that has not been covered. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the question becomes, uh, why what do you think
Speaker 1: you can add or what is your goal in writing
Speaker 1: the book? I wanted to show Janice as a musician.
Speaker 1: I wanted to show her as you know, the real
Speaker 1: Janis Joplin, who persisted, who overcame so many obstacles to
Speaker 1: pursue her ambitions to be the greatest, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean she told Paul Rothschild when he said where do
Speaker 1: you want to be? At age fifty? And this was
Speaker 1: when she was, you know, horribly twenty seven, she said,
Speaker 1: I want to be as good as a blue singer
Speaker 1: as Bessie Smith was, you know. She it was all
Speaker 1: about perfecting her craft, learning more, you know, getting better,
Speaker 1: you know, continuing to work hard at this. And I
Speaker 1: think that part of Janice's life, and that part of
Speaker 1: her story has never really been told. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to Port Arthur, because you began there. What were
Speaker 1: the circumstances of her upbringing? Well, it's an interesting story.
Speaker 1: She was very beloved by her parents. She was basically
Speaker 1: an only child until age six when her sister Laura
Speaker 1: came along. So her parents doated on her, but they
Speaker 1: were quite different people. You know, they came from you know,
Speaker 1: difficult backgrounds themselves. And the mom was, you know, wanted
Speaker 1: Janis to have the white picket fins, the perfect life,
Speaker 1: you know, the typical fifties kind of middle class life.
Speaker 1: And Janis was born in forty three. The father was
Speaker 1: Janie called him a secret intellectual. His name with Seth Joplin.
Speaker 1: And he had a mid level management job at Texico
Speaker 1: then called the Texas Company. You know, the whole town
Speaker 1: was all oil distilleries and refineries, et cetera, and um.
Speaker 1: He came home from work, listened to Bach, loved classical music,
Speaker 1: was a huge reader of philosophy, history. Every Saturday, he
Speaker 1: took Janice to the library and that she said, you know,
Speaker 1: in my family, as soon as you could write your name,
Speaker 1: you got a library card. And old in her love
Speaker 1: of book books. But also he was an atheist. Her
Speaker 1: mom was a evangelical, you know, Christian, you know, very
Speaker 1: religious woman. Janice started singing soprano and the church choir
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, was baptized by immersion, you know,
Speaker 1: that whole thing. But the father never went to church.
Speaker 1: He was an atheist, and so the father particularly kind
Speaker 1: of instilled in Janice, um, you know, a quest for knowledge,
Speaker 1: to think outside the box. The mother also really was
Speaker 1: a great singer, had been a singer as a teenager
Speaker 1: in Amarillo, Texas, and started teaching Janice how to sing
Speaker 1: when she was like three years old, how to play piano.
Speaker 1: So there was some music in the house. And they
Speaker 1: discovered a Janice that she had this artistic talent. She
Speaker 1: was a quite good painter, and so they started buying
Speaker 1: her you know, paints and easels and everything when she
Speaker 1: was you know, quite young and all that. So they
Speaker 1: really supported her artistic endeavors. Now, Janice read On the
Speaker 1: Road by Caro wac when it came out, and that
Speaker 1: changed her life. Fifty oh, all the Carol people are
Speaker 1: gonna kill me. I think it was fifty seven, Okay,
Speaker 1: So but at that point she's already fourteen. Y yeah,
Speaker 1: she was fourteen. She was fourteen years old. So yuh.
Speaker 1: Going back to her growing up, She's an elementary school.
Speaker 1: She a member of the group, she a leader, She
Speaker 1: an outcasts what issue see, I think, Bob the reason
Speaker 1: she you know, famously had this horrible situation by the
Speaker 1: end of her high school year where she was completely bullied, ostracized, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I think she took it so to heart because
Speaker 1: she was, you know, barely popular. She had friends, she
Speaker 1: was in the Slide Rule Club. She you know, made
Speaker 1: pep Rally posters. I mean, she was a typical girl.
Speaker 1: You can see all this in her scrap book. She's
Speaker 1: got her little crinoline you know, swatches of crinoline's and
Speaker 1: fabrics that her mom's made her, all these dresses and everything.
Speaker 1: And she was very raw, raw teen spirit kind of girl.
Speaker 1: But reading Caroac, meeting these guys who were a year
Speaker 1: older than she was who set her on her path
Speaker 1: to listening to Lead belly Um. She discovered Odetta through them,
Speaker 1: Jeane Ritchie the grade to Appalachian folkusinger and started discovering
Speaker 1: other ways of thinking and moving away from that traditional
Speaker 1: Texas football culture, which you know, football rules in Texas.
Speaker 1: And she started moving away from that and sneaking across
Speaker 1: the river and going to Louisiana at night with the
Speaker 1: Carlatto Boys to hear um swamp Rock Louisiana from Port
Speaker 1: It's well, it's very close because Port Arthur's right on
Speaker 1: the Gulf there, so it's right across the river and so,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe forty five minutes and hey, you know
Speaker 1: this was a m radio was still great then too,
Speaker 1: so this was like they caught it doing the the triangle.
Speaker 1: They would drive from Port Arthur to Beaumont, Texas, you
Speaker 1: know where some great blues came out of Ivory Joe Hunter,
Speaker 1: et cetera. To Orange listening to the radio and picking
Speaker 1: up some black stations, hearing some R and B. Janice
Speaker 1: was so obsessed with it she would go and try
Speaker 1: to meet the DJs. There was a guy named Stevo,
Speaker 1: the night Rider. She would go and say, oh, can
Speaker 1: I get your coffee? She and her girlfriend would go
Speaker 1: up and visit the DJs at night. She was just
Speaker 1: she's in high school. She starts living a somewhat bohemian lifestyle,
Speaker 1: shall we say, well, as much as could be living
Speaker 1: at home as a teenager. But my question is it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I went and Ray Dat's on a Storyteller album,
Speaker 1: has a song, you know his art chicks, you know, babe.
Speaker 1: My point is I went to high school and remember
Speaker 1: the art people, they were a separate click. So at
Speaker 1: this point in high school. Is she a separate click
Speaker 1: or is it still all homogeneous? It was pretty homogeneous,
Speaker 1: except for there was these four or five guys that
Speaker 1: were a great ahead of her who she started hanging
Speaker 1: out with, and she was almost like their little mascot
Speaker 1: or whatever. And also she started school at a very
Speaker 1: young a skipped a grade, so she was about a
Speaker 1: year and a half younger than most of the kids
Speaker 1: in her actual grade level. Okay, there's a famous story
Speaker 1: where I believe she's voted best looking guys or something. Okay,
Speaker 1: by the time she you know, she had so many adventures.
Speaker 1: Beginning at age eighteen, she hit chiked out to San
Speaker 1: Franciscoco from l A, where she was living in Venice
Speaker 1: for a little while because she dropped out of college. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she was back. She goes to Texas, to Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: to ut and that's when she first starts. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's when she first performs for audiences in a little
Speaker 1: group called the Waller Creek Boys, which was again this
Speaker 1: little bohemian group of guys, a few women, but mostly
Speaker 1: guys who lived in a place called the Ghetto, this
Speaker 1: rundown apartment building in Austin, and of course they were
Speaker 1: very different because this was nineteen sixty two and most
Speaker 1: of the girls were buffon hair dues, a little cinched
Speaker 1: waist shirt, dresses, bobby socks. Janice was wearing like an
Speaker 1: oversized men hurt with blue jeans or else the black turtlenecks.
Speaker 1: She was often barefooted, and she had that amazing voice already,
Speaker 1: and she was applying it to these records that she
Speaker 1: had discovered by blues artists. The Waller Creek Boys were
Speaker 1: mainly doing kind of folky um when he got three
Speaker 1: ish kind of stuff bluegrass. So they started blending all
Speaker 1: these sounds and they started performing on campus and then
Speaker 1: at this great place thread Gills, which fortunately still exists,
Speaker 1: and building this audience. In the meantime, Janice was, as
Speaker 1: the kids say today, polyamorous. Um. She already was having
Speaker 1: flings with both men and women, and she didn't try
Speaker 1: to hide it, and um, she really stuck out. There
Speaker 1: was actually an article written about her in the Texas
Speaker 1: the University of Texas newspaper called she Dares to be Different.
Speaker 1: So she was becoming kind of known around the campus.
Speaker 1: And every year this fraternity would have a fundraiser The
Speaker 1: ugliest man on campus contest, so you would have to
Speaker 1: pay you know, ten bucks to nominate someone nominated Janice
Speaker 1: and it was just heartbreaking for her. Um she did
Speaker 1: not win a linebacker for the football team one but
Speaker 1: still just you know, very just hard. Was insecure about
Speaker 1: her look. She was yeah, and um she you know,
Speaker 1: I think she was a beautiful woman. And so it's
Speaker 1: weird to me to see how people singled out her
Speaker 1: body parts and her appearance. Even when she was getting
Speaker 1: huge as a star. Um, people would talk about her
Speaker 1: being playing or I think in Vogue magazine they said
Speaker 1: her her complexion was like pizza or so. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like sickening the way that the media would cover
Speaker 1: women and take this to heart. She bothered by all
Speaker 1: those negative information when she wasn't drinking or doing drugs.
Speaker 1: I think she was bothered by it. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: see he dropped on a school the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where was she going the first time? She first went
Speaker 1: to um Lamar Tech, which was kind of the school
Speaker 1: where most of the kids from Now it was a
Speaker 1: regular university, but it was where you went to be
Speaker 1: to get a job in the petroleum business. And where
Speaker 1: and then she did you know, wherever she went, she
Speaker 1: found a small little group of you know, outside the
Speaker 1: box people, So she found that in Beaumont. Then she
Speaker 1: ended up dropping out back in Port Arthur and she
Speaker 1: took business classes. If she was quite the good stenographer
Speaker 1: um and typeest, her mom demanded that she go to
Speaker 1: business college in Port Arthur, so she got a little
Speaker 1: certificate for that. Then her mom sent her out to
Speaker 1: live in l a with her aunts who lived out
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. She wanted to be a beat nick
Speaker 1: as I said, this was sixty one, she was eighteen.
Speaker 1: So she ends up in Venice, living there for a
Speaker 1: little while, goes to San Francisco, hitchhiking by herself, checking
Speaker 1: out the North Beach scene, whatever, runs out of money,
Speaker 1: takes a bus back to Port Arthur, and then she
Speaker 1: ends up discovering the scene in Austin. So that's when
Speaker 1: she went to college in Austin. She went there for
Speaker 1: the summer session in the fall session, how does she
Speaker 1: end up back on the West coast. Well, that horrible
Speaker 1: incident occurred with her poster of her dominated for Auglass
Speaker 1: Mental Campus, and she had met Chet Helms, who was
Speaker 1: a former UT student who had been traveling around doing
Speaker 1: the Caro Wac thing and had been living out in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. He heard her sing, and he's like, you're
Speaker 1: gonna knock their socks off in San Francisco because North
Speaker 1: Beach had a cafe scene, coffeehouse scene where people were
Speaker 1: doing folk music, some a little bit of blues. So
Speaker 1: in sixty three, a week after her twentieth birthday, she
Speaker 1: and Chet hitchhiked from Austin to San Francisco. Okay, just
Speaker 1: to be clear, was Chet living in San Francisco previously?
Speaker 1: Or did he go out with Janice? He had been
Speaker 1: kind of living there for a little while. He had
Speaker 1: been traveling around, you know, doing the whole on the road.
Speaker 1: Did Was there a romantic relationship there? No, they were
Speaker 1: just platonic good friends. She really believed in her to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Yeah, well, she did not stick around. She
Speaker 1: did not want to be managed. She wanted to be
Speaker 1: an independent agent. They basically stayed for a few nights
Speaker 1: at David Freiberg's place, clashed on his floor, Quicksilver and
Speaker 1: Ultimate right and uh he uh he, and Chat took
Speaker 1: her down to Coffee and Confusion, a coffee house North
Speaker 1: Beach where she did an open mic night, and of
Speaker 1: course that voice just knocked people knocked their socks off,
Speaker 1: just like Chat said. So she pretty much started getting
Speaker 1: little gigs, playing at the coffee house, Circle Circuit. She
Speaker 1: went out to um like San Jose. She met your
Speaker 1: Mcalchinan at like an open mic night, and they both
Speaker 1: loved the blues. I mean, most of these people were
Speaker 1: doing kind of more the folks stuff. They loved singing, singing. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, five bucks a night for money,
Speaker 1: she's scraping by. She's sleeping in people's floors. I mean,
Speaker 1: she has no infrastructure, no support. Um, it's really not
Speaker 1: really okay. So is she just in the moment or
Speaker 1: does she have a dream of making it? Atte She
Speaker 1: has a dream of making it, that's the thing. Even
Speaker 1: though she was living like a down and out beat nick,
Speaker 1: you know, on the streets, she still had this dream
Speaker 1: of making it. And people immediately recognized her talent. And
Speaker 1: she was nothing like the Janna Stop and we picture today,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole San Francisco freak rock. And then
Speaker 1: her later stuff she was doing. She had already started
Speaker 1: writing songs. She was doing her own stuff. She was
Speaker 1: sometimes accompanying herself with auto harp. She really wanted to
Speaker 1: learn to play guitar so she could learn how to
Speaker 1: back herself. So she started learning guitar. Gotta you know,
Speaker 1: pawn shop guitar and stuff, and um, she was making
Speaker 1: some noise. People were interested in her, but she was
Speaker 1: a very you know, she had was living a very
Speaker 1: unsettled existence. Okay, is Big Brother her first band? Or
Speaker 1: does she go through a few iterations with other people? Well,
Speaker 1: she had had the Waller Creek Boy, but she had
Speaker 1: never had electric Okay, So basically this whole blues singer
Speaker 1: thing lasted almost three or. She actually ended up coming
Speaker 1: to New York City the summer of sixty four and
Speaker 1: trying to make it there and ended up making most
Speaker 1: of her money as a pool shark. She was a
Speaker 1: great pool player, so she was like beating all these
Speaker 1: guys at pool and that's pretty much how she got back. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: she went back to San Francisco, tried to make it
Speaker 1: the end, but horribly, she'd picked up a really nasty
Speaker 1: drug habit. She got addicted to methamphetamine, which was very
Speaker 1: prevalent in San Francisco and New York at that period,
Speaker 1: and she ended up getting down eighty eight pounds, I mean,
Speaker 1: really facing death. Her friends put her on a Greyhound
Speaker 1: back to Port Arthur Ve. She was back in Texas
Speaker 1: for a year. Cleaned up, Irrat went back to school,
Speaker 1: back to Lamar as a commuter this time. But now
Speaker 1: she was trying to do the you know, campus co
Speaker 1: ed thing. But the music was gnawing at her. She
Speaker 1: really she could not stop doing. Is that she was
Speaker 1: writing songs. She wrote Turtle Blues then, which was on
Speaker 1: cheap Thrills. She started doing little gigs again, um in
Speaker 1: Houston where Towns van Zandt was performing. Guy Clark was
Speaker 1: hanging out. Then, So how did she get back to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. She ended up getting gigs in Austin because
Speaker 1: of you know, doing her shows again. And chet Helms
Speaker 1: was now fully entrenched in this so the you know,
Speaker 1: cool scene, the counterculture happening in San Francisco with the
Speaker 1: family dog the Avalon Ballroom. He was managing big brother
Speaker 1: in the holding company. They decided they wanted a chick
Speaker 1: singer doing those little yes and so he's like, I know,
Speaker 1: the perfect girl now. Peter Alban, the bass player, the
Speaker 1: founder of the band who was doing most of the
Speaker 1: vocals had actually seen Janice back in her blues singing
Speaker 1: folky days, um, you know, on the on that scene,
Speaker 1: so he remembered she had a great voice. So they
Speaker 1: sent an emissary, a mutual friend from San Francisco, who
Speaker 1: drove to Austin and absconded with Janice and she you know,
Speaker 1: and tell her parents. You know, they were horrified and
Speaker 1: just petrified that she was gonna end up in a
Speaker 1: bad situation again like she had before with the speaker.
Speaker 1: So how long did she play with Big Brother before
Speaker 1: they make the mainstream deal? She was very briefly. She
Speaker 1: got there in June of sixty six. They immediately bonded. Um.
Speaker 1: She was just one of the guys in the in
Speaker 1: the beginning, you know, she only sang maybe three or
Speaker 1: four songs the set as the lead singer. Everybody contributed material,
Speaker 1: everybody took turn singing lead, except for day of the
Speaker 1: drummer and Um. Interestingly enough, Paul Rothschild came into the picture.
Speaker 1: He was working for Jack Holsman and Electra and they
Speaker 1: had the idea of putting together a supergroup and putting
Speaker 1: together they heard Janice, you know, and again no one
Speaker 1: knew her and she was just part of Big Brother.
Speaker 1: They had heard her vocals and it was gonna be
Speaker 1: Taj Mahal, the great guitarist, Stephen Grossman, Janice Um. They
Speaker 1: wanted to put them together record an album for Electra, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So Janice almost quit Big Brother and like the end
Speaker 1: of the summer, you know, like July August of sixty
Speaker 1: six to do join this venture because it promised more
Speaker 1: success than Big Brother, because they were still pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Cacophon is you know, freak rock. Okay, So they got
Speaker 1: the deal with Mainstream. The great song down on Me
Speaker 1: is there, but that's in an era certainly when being
Speaker 1: on an independent label you're a second class citizen. Well
Speaker 1: and plus the label just didn't get this. They wanted
Speaker 1: to try to cash in on the San Francisco sound,
Speaker 1: and Bob Chad, who ran the label, had great ears.
Speaker 1: He had worked with Carmen McCrae. He was mainly a
Speaker 1: jazz producer, had been in the business for a long time,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to get on what the kids are doing.
Speaker 1: So they were actually marooned in Chicago, big Brother in
Speaker 1: the holding company. They had a month long residency at
Speaker 1: this club. Mother Blues, which was a disaster. People like
Speaker 1: what you know, they're like, what are these freaky people doing?
Speaker 1: You know, they're horrible And they were having to play
Speaker 1: three sets tonight, no money, barely getting by. So Bob
Speaker 1: Chad offers them this deal, which was a really bad deal.
Speaker 1: Now chat Helms was no longer their manager. They fired
Speaker 1: him because they thought he was too busy with the
Speaker 1: avalon and given not giving them any attention. So they
Speaker 1: had no manager to without a manager, and it was
Speaker 1: without a lawyer. Uh the lawyer was provided by Bob
Speaker 1: shadd by Mainstream. So it was a horrible deal. And
Speaker 1: also worst of all was that, you know the engineer.
Speaker 1: They did the first recordings right there in Chicago. They
Speaker 1: didn't even get an advance. They thought they would get
Speaker 1: an advanced so they'd have the money to get back
Speaker 1: to San Francisco. They couldn't get home. They were stuck there.
Speaker 1: How long after that did they played the Monterey Poff
Speaker 1: Festoral That was in June of sixty seven, This is
Speaker 1: like August September of sixty six. As the band stayed
Speaker 1: together for nine months. Well, they finally got back they
Speaker 1: did when it remember drive away cars, Okay, so they
Speaker 1: got a drive away car got back. The good thing
Speaker 1: about that bad situation was they were having to try
Speaker 1: to win over these people that were appalled by their music,
Speaker 1: and that really pushed Janis to develop this incredible stage
Speaker 1: presence even more than she was already doing with the
Speaker 1: loving audiences that they had at the at the Avalon,
Speaker 1: So she was really pushing herself. They were really expanding
Speaker 1: the repertoire. They had to do three sets a night,
Speaker 1: so it really helped her, you know, hone her skills.
Speaker 1: She was also a really good percussionist. Dave Gets, the drummer,
Speaker 1: told me she really took She was playing that um
Speaker 1: all kinds of percussion instruments at Girton all that, so
Speaker 1: she was really improving her chops. So by the time
Speaker 1: they got back to San Francisco, thanks were really moving
Speaker 1: along with the whole counterculture. Um. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the first music fanzines was you know, writing about them.
Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia was telling people what a great singer Janity.
Speaker 1: I was not aware of the mainstream albuntil after She
Speaker 1: Thrills was released. Well that's because it was rushed out
Speaker 1: after they were at Monterey Pop UM, so we didn't
Speaker 1: even come out. Yeah, they put out singles because you know,
Speaker 1: Bob the paradigm was still the whole am radio singles
Speaker 1: driven market. So they released two singles um on mainstream,
Speaker 1: which you know, a rarecle actables if you can find them.
Speaker 1: And so again Janice wasn't even featured on the first single,
Speaker 1: Harley Down on Me Find was the second single of them,
Speaker 1: recalling correctly, um, but the album didn't come out until
Speaker 1: after moderate. Yeah, so they're at Monterey Pop. The legend
Speaker 1: is that Clive Davis was there and became enamored and
Speaker 1: signed them. Is that the truth? Well, what happened was
Speaker 1: no one had really heard of Janice. A few people
Speaker 1: had heard of Big Brother, but they were mainly known
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. Okay, So they had a Saturday
Speaker 1: early afternoon slot on the Heart because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: Adler lew Adler and John Phillips really wanted to have
Speaker 1: kind of credibility that this was a cool festival. So
Speaker 1: they wanted the cool San Francisco bands who were very
Speaker 1: suspicious of these slick l A guys and the slick
Speaker 1: music because it was, you know, the counterculture thing. And
Speaker 1: so that's how they came kind of in a package
Speaker 1: was like Grateful Dead and you know some other bands
Speaker 1: from the Bay Area, Jefferson Airplane. So they have an
Speaker 1: early Saturday movie afternoon. Yeah, yeah, because they were the
Speaker 1: least known you know, the Dead, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: And so the deal was that um ABC TV had
Speaker 1: given the producers of Monterey Pop a deal to do
Speaker 1: a made for TV movie and they had brilliantly hired
Speaker 1: d A. Pina Baker, the late great documentarian who you
Speaker 1: know worked with Dylan et cetera. So he was filming this.
Speaker 1: Now the San Francisco people, being suspicious of their ulterior motives,
Speaker 1: refused to sign the release so their sets could not
Speaker 1: be filmed. Well, Janice and Big Brother went out and
Speaker 1: just killed I mean people were I mean to use
Speaker 1: the brit term gobs match by the same to the
Speaker 1: movie doesn't come out until the year after which, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So d A. Pina Baker was like, I don't We've
Speaker 1: got to film this woman they have, We've got to film,
Speaker 1: you know, the famous shot of Mama Cass's face. And
Speaker 1: that was the only thing that was the only thing
Speaker 1: they were able to film. They couldn't film the band.
Speaker 1: So so Big Brother said no to the filming, correct,
Speaker 1: as did the Dead and others. Okay. So they had
Speaker 1: a manager at this point who had been a Mary
Speaker 1: prankster with Ken Kiss, Julius Carpin, okay, and so he
Speaker 1: was very like, forget it. You know they're gonna rip
Speaker 1: us off, don't you can't do it. So this huge
Speaker 1: fight happens because the producers say to Janus and Big Brother,
Speaker 1: we will give you another time slot. You'll be the
Speaker 1: under only band to play twice if you let us
Speaker 1: film you for the movie. And so of course Janice, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we gotta do what we gotta do it. Albert Grossman
Speaker 1: is there because some of his clients, Mike Bloomfield and
Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield run the bill. He was there. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody was floored. Clive Davis in the audience, everybody was
Speaker 1: blown away by what they saw that Saturday afternoon first,
Speaker 1: the first one, and so they were finally convinced to
Speaker 1: play again on Sunday evening, like around dusk. Who did
Speaker 1: you know who they followed? I do know, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of been a cock webs, right, but but they yeah,
Speaker 1: they go on and again they killed and you know
Speaker 1: I think this time they only did like a three
Speaker 1: song set, or they ended with the amazing version of
Speaker 1: Ball and Chain that Janie and Janie and the band
Speaker 1: had gone and seen Big Mama Thornton, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: Janie had discovered as a teenager, you know when when
Speaker 1: Big Mama recorded for Houston Labels and did the original
Speaker 1: hound Dog, which Janice loved. So they saw her do
Speaker 1: Ball and Chain, went backstage, met her, learned the song
Speaker 1: and you know, hence we have So they killed there
Speaker 1: in their filmed How do their business arrangements, Well, what
Speaker 1: happened was so many music writers were there. Every music
Speaker 1: writer in the country was there. Everybody went nuts over Janice.
Speaker 1: She was in the headlines and it suddenly elevated, you know,
Speaker 1: her stature and suddenly, I mean, it really affected the
Speaker 1: democratic dynamic of the band. But in the meantime, different
Speaker 1: labels started coming to call. They were locked into this
Speaker 1: horrible deal with Mainstream five year contract, you know, really bad,
Speaker 1: like no, you know, teeny little percentage of royalties. They
Speaker 1: hadn't seen any money from the singles. Mainstream will not
Speaker 1: release them from the contracts. So they're getting despairing about that.
Speaker 1: Um so Eventually what happens is they end up having
Speaker 1: a falling out with their you know, hippie manager because
Speaker 1: he again was very suspicious of business practices. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: end up signing with Albert Gross want them. He wanted Janice.
Speaker 1: You know, he loved Janice. He was blown away by
Speaker 1: her voice and they really had a meeting of the
Speaker 1: minds too. I mean he became like a father figure
Speaker 1: to her, you know. So they signed with Albert how
Speaker 1: long after the pop festival? Um see, the pop festival
Speaker 1: was in June, so I think around November something like that.
Speaker 1: They ended up firing Julius and aetting him, and then
Speaker 1: he started to the negotiation and negotiations with Clive Davis,
Speaker 1: newly president of Columbia, who was able to come up
Speaker 1: with a huge amount of money to buy them out
Speaker 1: of their contract. Was there any other label involved? It
Speaker 1: wasn't always Columbia, but there were some others that were interested.
Speaker 1: But and even initially the first offer from Columbia wasn't huge.
Speaker 1: But this was again, you know, nineteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 1: they think it was like two fifty thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: buy out the contract, which in ninety seven dollars was
Speaker 1: a ton of money, and so they ended up at
Speaker 1: this point the mainstream record had come out, and you know,
Speaker 1: Big Brother refused to even promote the record. They told
Speaker 1: everybody it was terrible, you know, as a cash in
Speaker 1: kind of deal. And actually, I like, I enjoyed listening
Speaker 1: to that. Legend is when the deal is signed, Janice
Speaker 1: says that she and Clive should have sex to cement
Speaker 1: the deal. Is that apocryphal or true? That's Clive story.
Speaker 1: I would not doubt it though. Um I think Albert
Speaker 1: Grossman actually mentioned something about it as well. So Janice
Speaker 1: love to uh, you know, she loved to share experiences
Speaker 1: with people, so she was not averse to ceiling deals
Speaker 1: with with flesh. Okay, let's go talk about cheap thrills.
Speaker 1: UM Ultimately was a live album cut in the studio,
Speaker 1: the version that we hear on the record, No, not really, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how much was the album worked on before we
Speaker 1: got the version that came out a ton and again
Speaker 1: they this They were working with John Simon, who knew Grossman.
Speaker 1: Grossman Ultimately, Yeah, he had already done the band album
Speaker 1: which got them signed. UM. He had produced their demos.
Speaker 1: He produced Leonard Cohen. You know, he was an amazing producer,
Speaker 1: but he and big brother, the Holding company, were on
Speaker 1: the opposite end of this. Back from as far as
Speaker 1: the statics go. He it was terrible to them in
Speaker 1: the studio. He undermined their confidence. He you know, I
Speaker 1: know you love his book and everything, but he really
Speaker 1: browbeated them. Is that a word browbeated anyway? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So they you know, they were losing confidence in their
Speaker 1: own ability. They were a great live band, and they
Speaker 1: really communicated with their audiences, you know, at the a
Speaker 1: blond ballroom in film or et cetera. But in the
Speaker 1: studio and it's sterile environment, it was not working and
Speaker 1: they were messing up. And now Janis, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: she killed in the studio. She was a pro. Things
Speaker 1: wouldn't get to her. She would just keep going and
Speaker 1: going and going, and in fact, I find it kind
Speaker 1: of funny. John criticized John Simon criticized her for being
Speaker 1: inauthentic because she could redo a vocal part perfectly note
Speaker 1: to note exactly the way she had just done it
Speaker 1: before what we hear released LP. Was it one long
Speaker 1: session or did they start with many, many, many many,
Speaker 1: many many sessions in New York. No, no, no, Um,
Speaker 1: they ended up moving out doing them out here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, um prime at the Columbias. These were back
Speaker 1: in the days where and you had to use the engineers,
Speaker 1: the union engineers and all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: they only I think, ended up cutting two songs in
Speaker 1: the New York And some of those sessions you can
Speaker 1: see because Pinna Baker wanted to make a documentary about Janis,
Speaker 1: so he filmed um some of the sessions, so you
Speaker 1: can see some of that footage and see what the
Speaker 1: dynamic was like in the studio. Was very fraught, but
Speaker 1: Janice loved being in the studio and just ate it up.
Speaker 1: Took to it so that most of it was recorded
Speaker 1: out in l A. And most of those tracks are
Speaker 1: completely um splice. You know, this is the day of
Speaker 1: cutting tape spliced together, many many different takes of vocal
Speaker 1: part here, instrumental part there, blah blah blah. Whose decision
Speaker 1: was to make it a full live album? Um well,
Speaker 1: I think originally the the I don't think, I know.
Speaker 1: Originally they wanted to make a live album, so they
Speaker 1: first tried to record at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit,
Speaker 1: which was kind of the Detroit version of the Avalon
Speaker 1: and they were on sadly a double bill with the
Speaker 1: hometown heroes m C five, who were freaking killer live okay,
Speaker 1: and who were up to prove that they were better
Speaker 1: than anybody, right, So just nominated for the rock and
Speaker 1: roll Yeah for about the fifth time, I think, so
Speaker 1: maybe this is the charm, fifth times the charm. But anyway, um,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of not on their game big
Speaker 1: brother in the holding company, and again Janice always pulled
Speaker 1: it off, so she sounded great, but there were a
Speaker 1: lot of flubs with the band and they were under
Speaker 1: all this pressure. So they came back to New York.
Speaker 1: They sat down in Grossman's office. He played they had
Speaker 1: a remote recording there, and they were like, listen, all
Speaker 1: these mistakes. This is terrible, and you, Sam Andrew, you
Speaker 1: should play bass and somebody should play you know, just criticised.
Speaker 1: I mean, really they're poor confidences. Oh yeah, And the
Speaker 1: same thing with Columbia. So that next at what point
Speaker 1: was it decided the studio recordings would have elements added
Speaker 1: so that it would appear live. I think because that
Speaker 1: was really the aesthetic of big brother than the Honing Company.
Speaker 1: Was that live band? You know? Okay, so the album
Speaker 1: is an immediate splash. Did they anticipate that, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: shipped gold well, I think because there had been a
Speaker 1: lot of hype about Janice and um about the band,
Speaker 1: and they had come out to for the They didn't
Speaker 1: play in on the East Coast until they came out
Speaker 1: in February sixty eight for their very first ever shows.
Speaker 1: They played at colleges like Wesleyan University and ris Dy
Speaker 1: in places like that, mostly a lot of colleges and
Speaker 1: started getting a following, and the press just went nuts.
Speaker 1: You know. So what's the process of firing the band?
Speaker 1: It was very painful, and again, Janice Choplin was nothing
Speaker 1: but fearless. She was driven, driven to be the musician,
Speaker 1: to move, keep moving forward and evolving as a musician.
Speaker 1: She could not stay stuck in a rut and she
Speaker 1: felt like the band wasn't moving Okay, But the way
Speaker 1: the legend goes is those surrounding her never mind the press.
Speaker 1: I remember the press of the time said the band
Speaker 1: was not as good as she was, and they were untogether.
Speaker 1: Was it she wanted to fire the band or was it.
Speaker 1: Everybody around her said, convinced her they gotta go. I
Speaker 1: think it was a combination. Bob, I'm sure Grossman Um.
Speaker 1: You know he was always um criticizing the band. And
Speaker 1: you know, Clive Davis told me that he tried to
Speaker 1: stay out of that. And in fact, early on he
Speaker 1: Clive wanted it to be Janis Choplin with Big Brother
Speaker 1: the Holding Company on cheap thrill. She said, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: This is a band, same thing, Bill Graham. They were
Speaker 1: the first band. They played the first night of the
Speaker 1: film or East in New York. He wanted the Marquis
Speaker 1: Janis Choplin. Absolutely not. I mean, she wanted it to
Speaker 1: stay this communal. Okay, so they fire, she fires the band,
Speaker 1: but she didn't fire them. She just said she was
Speaker 1: leaving the band. She was gonna go. And and I
Speaker 1: mean she loved those guys. I mean, Bob, after all
Speaker 1: the horrible things that happened to her, you know that
Speaker 1: hurt her own confidence and helped her, you know, made
Speaker 1: her be insecure. They gave her so much confidence. They
Speaker 1: were her first real family, this tribe. I mean, they
Speaker 1: lived together and lag Anita's say, you know, they squabbled
Speaker 1: like siblings. But there was love among them, and she
Speaker 1: loved them, but she knew that they were doing their
Speaker 1: thing and she wanted to do other things. She wanted
Speaker 1: a horn. She was inurve with Otis Redding. She wave.
Speaker 1: Did she talk to them again? Oh? Yeah, they toured
Speaker 1: she this was at the beginning. This was she told
Speaker 1: them right before they did a show with the Staple
Speaker 1: Singers at Fillmore East that she was going to do
Speaker 1: this huge tour. I mean, they had a very book
Speaker 1: tour to promote the album. She was going to do
Speaker 1: the tour and then um, in December she would be leaving.
Speaker 1: This all came down. They played the Newport Folk Festival,
Speaker 1: which people loved. Grossman again. Uh, the rhythm seption was
Speaker 1: really off, you know, and I told them that right
Speaker 1: in front of you know, Rick Danko and Levin Helmer's.
Speaker 1: You know, they were just mortified. So it was right
Speaker 1: after that when she quit. But she said I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do the rest. She left in December of six. So
Speaker 1: now we ultimately get the album. I got them Old
Speaker 1: Cosmic Blues again, Mama Okay, which had the great single
Speaker 1: Try had incredible players, but externally looked like it really
Speaker 1: wasn't a success, you know. But you know what, Bob,
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up, you know, reading all the
Speaker 1: rock critics, so I never even gave that record the
Speaker 1: time of day. I went back to it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, twenty years ago whatever, and it's a
Speaker 1: freaking great record. But my different question is inside the
Speaker 1: camp Janice Clive Albert, did they think it was success
Speaker 1: or did they want something better? What happened was there
Speaker 1: was a huge backlash against Janice because she dared to
Speaker 1: leave the boy band behind and do her own thing.
Speaker 1: She was accused of selling out. Going show biz Paul
Speaker 1: Nelson famously wrote this scathing article this portrait rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: painting her as this neurotic mess, and its title was
Speaker 1: Janice Choplin the next Judy Garland. No, I'm sorry, Rocks,
Speaker 1: Judy got the Judy Garland of rock. That was the
Speaker 1: exact thing that Judy Garland. Judy, of course died a
Speaker 1: few months, so she was really castigated by former champions.
Speaker 1: Even the great Ralph Gleason, who had loved her, said
Speaker 1: she should drop this band and go go crawling back
Speaker 1: to Big Brother if they'll have her, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So then how is it decided that she's
Speaker 1: going to work with Paul Rothstow. Well, what happened was
Speaker 1: she had been working NonStop. She immediately segued from being
Speaker 1: one of the guys and big brother to being the
Speaker 1: band leader of what was later called Cosmic Blues on
Speaker 1: the road NonStop, and really within sixty nine, that Cosmic
Speaker 1: Blues experience really took her to the top as far
Speaker 1: as that's when she did ed Sullivan. That's when she
Speaker 1: toured Europe for the first and only time. She sold
Speaker 1: out Royal Albert Hall, got the audience out of their seat.
Speaker 1: She did Woodstock. I mean, she did all these big,
Speaker 1: big festivals, working non stop, so she was worn out. Okay,
Speaker 1: so she finally, um, you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: sixty nine, they did their last show, a big show
Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden and she you know, let the
Speaker 1: band go except for two players, the guitarists and the
Speaker 1: bass player. And then she took a break and went
Speaker 1: to Brazil and got off heroin um and started writing
Speaker 1: new songs, started kind of just getting re energized. She
Speaker 1: bought a house in Larkspur and Marin County and started,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting with some new players to put together
Speaker 1: a new band. This was much more of an organic
Speaker 1: kind of band. Some of the guys that played with
Speaker 1: the Hawks, Albert knew some of them, a lot of
Speaker 1: more Canadians, um. So they started kind of rehearsing together
Speaker 1: in her garage and they formed a really great kind
Speaker 1: of harmonious relationship where she was the band leader, but
Speaker 1: she was also still like had his camaraderie and that
Speaker 1: hadn't really happened with the Cosmic Blues. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: did she end up working with Paul? She had kind
Speaker 1: of burned her bridges with some people who thought she
Speaker 1: was a junkie, and Paul was one of those people. Uh,
Speaker 1: she was able to contact him. She had been hanging
Speaker 1: out with him, you know in the l A days
Speaker 1: because he was working with the Doors, et cetera. Bobby Newworth,
Speaker 1: Paul John Cook, her road manager, was a dear friend
Speaker 1: of of Paul's. So he decided to give her a chance.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, the son of an opera singer.
Speaker 1: He knew great singers and him yes for her last record.
Speaker 1: So they cut the record and he wasn't sure, but
Speaker 1: when he saw her performing again, he's like, this girl
Speaker 1: has got good. She touched the record, and the story
Speaker 1: is that these are all guide vocals rough vocals. Is
Speaker 1: that true on Pearl for the most part, yes, but
Speaker 1: she was jams chop Jann's job on rough. You know,
Speaker 1: rough takes are like people fired. She ended up cutting
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz. There's different stories. I like the one that
Speaker 1: Bobby Womack tells, so I'm gonna go with that one,
Speaker 1: and that she had already done that song, um when
Speaker 1: they had She had pulled that out and done it
Speaker 1: live in poor Chester at the Capitol Theater. She had
Speaker 1: written it in a bar before going on stage that
Speaker 1: night with ripped torn Generaldy and Page and Bob Newmark looking,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's definitely true, and Bob was writing down
Speaker 1: you know, they were just kind of riffing in this bar. Right,
Speaker 1: it's great. So she goes out and does it. The
Speaker 1: band jumps in and tries to play along. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it was just kind of a fun thing to do,
Speaker 1: inspired by Michael McClure thing, etcetera. So she was working
Speaker 1: in the studio, Bobby new Worth came in, I mean, sorry, Bob.
Speaker 1: Bobby Womack came in to pitch his songs for the record,
Speaker 1: and so he ended up playing guitar on his track,
Speaker 1: and then they started drinking partying. He's going to give
Speaker 1: her a ride in his Mercedes. So they're in his Mercedes.
Speaker 1: She starts, according to Bobby well Matt, she starts seeing
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz and she's like, oh man, you know, turn around,
Speaker 1: take me back, take me back. I want to go
Speaker 1: back to the studio. I want to go back to
Speaker 1: the studio. He goes back and only Paul Rothschild's there
Speaker 1: the sunset sound and um He's like, man, and what
Speaker 1: She's like, I want to put this down, Let's do this.
Speaker 1: So she just kind of does it as a lark.
Speaker 1: Apparently when she died, you know, before the album was
Speaker 1: completed and they were putting together all the sessions and
Speaker 1: different tracks and everything, he remembered that song that she
Speaker 1: had just done for fun and she had at some
Speaker 1: point called um out and spoken to Michael McClure to
Speaker 1: get his permission to do it. And so anyway, he
Speaker 1: pulled that and put it on the end of the
Speaker 1: album and you can just hear her do her a
Speaker 1: little cackle at the end of It's I mean, when
Speaker 1: I think about those guys gathered in the studio to
Speaker 1: hear that, You know, to hear that album must have
Speaker 1: been How does end up cutting me and Bobby? Oh well,
Speaker 1: Bobby new Worth, I'm telling you the Zelig of cool. Famously,
Speaker 1: we know him from being Dylan's buddy and etcetera. He
Speaker 1: was kind of her aide de camp on the road
Speaker 1: with her. He worked for Grossman, etcetera. He actually heard
Speaker 1: that song being played in Grossman's office in New York,
Speaker 1: and of course no one had heard of Chris Christofferson
Speaker 1: and it was being played by Gordon Lightfoot, who had
Speaker 1: heard the song heard a demo, and so he's like, man,
Speaker 1: that's a great song. Teach me that song. So Bobby
Speaker 1: North learns the song in Albert's office from Gordon Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: goes over sees Janis at the Chelsea Hotel. Man, you
Speaker 1: gotta hear the song, plays her the song. She goes
Speaker 1: nuts over it. He teaches her the song, and so
Speaker 1: she's this is in sixty nine, so she's still got
Speaker 1: the Cosmic Blues band. She pulls it out and plays
Speaker 1: it for the first time live in Nashville show in December.
Speaker 1: I think it was a sixty nine, you know, and said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is from a guy, hometown guy. You guys are
Speaker 1: gonna hear about him, Chris Christofferson. I haven't met him yet,
Speaker 1: but this is a great song kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: then fast forward to nineteen seventy, Bobby Newworth finally meets
Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson when he has some gigs in the village.
Speaker 1: They gone this crazy, as he called it, great tequili book,
Speaker 1: great tequila boogie, this wild tear, fly out to California
Speaker 1: to the ghost. Let's go see Janice, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's when she meets Chris Christofferson. They are just like
Speaker 1: m two Texans brought together by song and attraction and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. He teaches her Sunday Morning coming down,
Speaker 1: which she there's a bootleg of her doing that in Austin.
Speaker 1: She loved his music, loved his writing, and I just
Speaker 1: wish she had lived to do I can't you imagine
Speaker 1: her doing help me make it through the night the
Speaker 1: Sammi Smith hit. You know, Okay, so we've covered I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much people can read the book for more details.
Speaker 1: But getting to the author behind the book. You've written
Speaker 1: like sixteen books. What's your favorite book of the of
Speaker 1: course the one I just did. Um. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I love both my gene Autry and my children biographies
Speaker 1: because to me, right, I grew up loving to read biographies.
Speaker 1: They're still my favorite kind of book to read and
Speaker 1: to be able to pull off those books. It's really
Speaker 1: really hard to write biographies, but then putting so much
Speaker 1: of my heart and soul into it, I really feel
Speaker 1: like my subject becomes part of my life. So I still,
Speaker 1: you know, with the ken Burns doc series, all the
Speaker 1: gene Autrey stuff, I was like, yes, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I love it when they're getting their recognition. So both
Speaker 1: I would say, both my gene Autry and my Alex Children.
Speaker 1: Why did Alex Children sound so different vocally in the
Speaker 1: Box Tops in Big Star? Well, because he was, you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, you know when he was in the
Speaker 1: Box Tops and he was coached by Dan Penn to
Speaker 1: do the letter in that way. He'd stayed out all
Speaker 1: night having a little frolicking fun with his girlfriend in
Speaker 1: a graveyard, drinking, smoking cigarettes. So he's had that rasp naturally,
Speaker 1: and if you even see him on some live things
Speaker 1: from that period, he you know, he liked to drink
Speaker 1: and smoke in those days, so he had that kind
Speaker 1: of teenage rasp. But you know, people didn't know what
Speaker 1: he looked like. They thought he was like a forty
Speaker 1: year old black man, you know, and that's why they
Speaker 1: got to be on a tour with He had National
Speaker 1: healthcare with alex children still be alive today, No, I
Speaker 1: you know, sadly, that didn't really have anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. Um. He was very actually pretty health conscious,
Speaker 1: but like most of us, he was afraid of getting
Speaker 1: a bad diagnosis. His family had a history of heart problems.
Speaker 1: His father had a heart attack at a young age,
Speaker 1: his sister did, his brother. He had a fear, but
Speaker 1: he also could have afforded it. I think he could
Speaker 1: have because he was in New Orleans and you know, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean at the end of his life he was
Speaker 1: a money Oh yeah, yeah, because of that seventies show Baby.
Speaker 1: You know, he made a lot of money from that show,
Speaker 1: using one of his big star songs as the theme
Speaker 1: song for that show and thanks to you know, for
Speaker 1: three placements and then counting Crows. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: getting a lot of props from these young artists, so
Speaker 1: he was doing quite well. He actually bought this really gorgeous,
Speaker 1: expensive piano. He had a little house in New Orleans
Speaker 1: and Tremay, and he he liked to live on the
Speaker 1: down low, but he liked, you know, a nice piano.
Speaker 1: But he could have afforded healthcare, but he did not
Speaker 1: want to find out that he had a heart problem
Speaker 1: and that killed him. Okay, so what's your next book?
Speaker 1: How to sleep? That's obviously a joke. Do you have
Speaker 1: any idea what your next book? We do? But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to jink. Let's say you know someone, Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of questions here, lightning round. Albert Grossman crook
Speaker 1: or honest. He was a sharp businessman and an incredible esteete.
Speaker 1: So did he do right by Janice? Yes, he did
Speaker 1: right by Janice. Okay, you've met a lot of your heros.
Speaker 1: I presume who lived up to the rep Oh gosh, well,
Speaker 1: I did get to meet Geane Autrey when he was
Speaker 1: eighty nine years old, and that's kind of what led
Speaker 1: me to doing that book. So that was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: Of course, I didn't know Alex long before. I was
Speaker 1: in a little combo that he actually produced, called clam Bake.
Speaker 1: So that's how I got to know him. UM, as
Speaker 1: far as most of my heroes, you know, you you
Speaker 1: learned not to um expect too much. Johnny Cash incredible,
Speaker 1: UM and June Carter Cash getting to interview him and
Speaker 1: hitting it off by talking about the Carter family and
Speaker 1: cowboys stuff. He was a big Gene Autry fan. He
Speaker 1: ended up inviting me over to their house and I
Speaker 1: you know, so that was totally lived up to my heroes. UM.
Speaker 1: Patti Smith, you know, she was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I moved to New York as I She played at
Speaker 1: U n C. Chapel Hill when I was in college,
Speaker 1: and I've never seen a woman like she was, like my,
Speaker 1: you know, Janie. I guess as far as seeing a transformative,
Speaker 1: you know, woman on stage and like, wow, what is that?
Speaker 1: You know? So I would say she you know, I
Speaker 1: got to hang out with her and interview her. So
Speaker 1: and then of course I love just kids, so so
Speaker 1: I'd say, okay. So, then you've written books about the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, what female performers are
Speaker 1: not in who should be in? Oh? Well, I'd love
Speaker 1: to see the Shango Laws in there. Of course, one
Speaker 1: of their songs and the Choka Khan definitely. I mean,
Speaker 1: year after year she's on the ballot. She's on the
Speaker 1: ballot this year with Rufus so, you know, and that
Speaker 1: was kind of like Patti Smith. First it was the
Speaker 1: Patti Smith group, then it was just Patti Smith and
Speaker 1: she got in. So one year it's Choka kN Once
Speaker 1: with Rufus. So I'm hoping she really really deserves to
Speaker 1: be in. She's amazing. There's some more pioneers that should
Speaker 1: be in. Big Mama Thornton should be in. It was
Speaker 1: so cool to get Nina Simone and Wanted Wanted Jackson,
Speaker 1: some other maybe more outlier in the public consciousness women.
Speaker 1: It would be great to get in some of the
Speaker 1: other point. I think Patsy Klein should be in there.
Speaker 1: What about pat Benatar has nominated. I think that's great, know,
Speaker 1: I mean, she's an amazing role model and that she
Speaker 1: had all those hits toured with her husband, the guitarists,
Speaker 1: and they're still together after all these years. She should
Speaker 1: be in for that reason alone, I think. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what do you think about today's music? I love you know,
Speaker 1: I am a music Spotify Top fifty which is mostly
Speaker 1: hip hop and pop. Well, you know, there's some hip
Speaker 1: hop I like. Of course, you know, I gotten into
Speaker 1: post Malone. I've gotten too little Nazacs and and I
Speaker 1: have to be honest. I mainly got into them because
Speaker 1: they're cool. Nuty suits and the Western thing, you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm really into nuty suits. I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called How the West Was Worn. I love Nudy and
Speaker 1: the whole Ryanstone Cowboy look. Um. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still kind of a roots rock kind of gal. I
Speaker 1: love the Avid Brothers. I love all those Americana bands.
Speaker 1: I love you know. Um, oh my god, what's the
Speaker 1: new guy? Oh? Oh yeah, I love Sturgill Simpson and
Speaker 1: I love the other guy, Jason Isabel and his um
Speaker 1: partner is amazing. I love her record, which is really
Speaker 1: outside the box. Um. I love Orville Peck. Have you
Speaker 1: seen him yet? Oh my god, you gotta check him out.
Speaker 1: He's got a kind of Roy Orbison, amazing voice. He
Speaker 1: wears the weird fringed mask. I saw him at the
Speaker 1: Americana Conference a few weeks ago. He was awesome. Anybody
Speaker 1: you haven't seen who you want to see? Oh gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still alive. Oh that's still alive. Um, let's see
Speaker 1: most of the ones that I wanted to see have
Speaker 1: sadly passed on. Um, that's a good question of concerts
Speaker 1: you've been to top three? Oh my gosh, Bob, I
Speaker 1: hate picking top things. It doesn't just give me the
Speaker 1: ones to come tomorrow. Okay, Well again, I would say
Speaker 1: seeing Patti Smith and Chapel Hill in nineteens seventy seven,
Speaker 1: I think it was changed my life. Seeing the Clash
Speaker 1: in New York City at the Palladium when I first
Speaker 1: moved there in nineteen. I think that was seventy nine
Speaker 1: or eighty change my life. Seeing the Jackson five that
Speaker 1: was my first ever concert at the Greensboro Coliseum and
Speaker 1: Michael and I were close in age. That was an
Speaker 1: amazing show to see the Jackson five. And somehow I
Speaker 1: ended up like sixth row or something I was in
Speaker 1: like junior high school. I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 1: So is there a woman rock writer sorority? You are
Speaker 1: you a loaner or a loan gun person, or you're
Speaker 1: part of a group. I'm a people person. That's why
Speaker 1: I hate writing. I like I love the research. I
Speaker 1: love being out interviewing. I love hob nobbing with other
Speaker 1: writers with artists. I love meeting people and talking to people.
Speaker 1: You've got the perfect job, you know. But you're a
Speaker 1: great writer. Okay, thank you. So a couple of people
Speaker 1: unsung that people should be aware of, a couple of
Speaker 1: artists that are on song. Oh gosh, all right, let
Speaker 1: me thank oh boy. That's let's see who who who?
Speaker 1: Who's not a test. It doesn't have to be the coolest,
Speaker 1: you know. Holly Williams um Hank William's granddaughter, Hank Junior's daughter,
Speaker 1: who was featured also in the Kinburns thing as one
Speaker 1: of the talking heads. She's an amazing artist. Um I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing her next record. She's not really
Speaker 1: that very well known. Um Oh. There's a great band
Speaker 1: from the Woodstock area where I live called the Mammals,
Speaker 1: which is um Ruthie Unger and Mike Marinda's band. They
Speaker 1: are amazing. She's an incredible singer and they go out.
Speaker 1: They do a lot of the kind of Americana circuit
Speaker 1: festivals and things. Okay, so you live in Woodstock, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I live in Phoenicia, which is nearly right outside
Speaker 1: of and so how how long you've been living there?
Speaker 1: I moved up there in the end of two thousand one,
Speaker 1: I had a little cabin in the woods up there.
Speaker 1: I lived on St. Mark's Place in the East Village
Speaker 1: for twenty three years. So I started needing some treats.
Speaker 1: We were talking, uh, you know before the podcast began
Speaker 1: that you have a son at Wesleyan. Yes, senior in
Speaker 1: the film program. Senior in the film program. So where
Speaker 1: is his father? His father is probably his He's actually
Speaker 1: as we speak, in the recording studio in Rosendale, New
Speaker 1: York right now, working on a new recording. So is
Speaker 1: he someone we know? His name is Robert Burke Warren
Speaker 1: and he I met him when he was in the
Speaker 1: Flesh Towns and I was in an all girl punk
Speaker 1: rock poka band at the time called the Dust for
Speaker 1: a Lines back in the eighties. So we were on
Speaker 1: some double bills and that's how we met. And we've
Speaker 1: been together ever since. And so you're still together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're so together. That's why Pat's and Neil or my idol.
Speaker 1: Has he been married thirty years? Okay? So your first marriage? Yes,
Speaker 1: my one and only one. And he lived in England
Speaker 1: for a year. He played Buddy Holly on The West End,
Speaker 1: that musical that ran over there for a long time.
Speaker 1: Um my husband. I met when we did a gig
Speaker 1: together out in East Hampton Labor Day weekend of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven and with the Fleshtowns and dust for a lines.
Speaker 1: So that's how we met, was an instant romance. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, he's from Atlanta, I'm from North Carolina, so
Speaker 1: we had that in common in our first date was
Speaker 1: actually in New York City going to Sylvia's the Salt
Speaker 1: food restaurant and to the Cloisters. And is your son
Speaker 1: at Wesley and your only child? Well, I have another
Speaker 1: child art, which takes up a lot of our time
Speaker 1: and money, so I don't have any children. Jack is
Speaker 1: our only his name is Jack Laaren. He's going to
Speaker 1: be a great filmmaker someday. And he is our only
Speaker 1: human son. Yes, he's our only human child. I'm a stunt.
Speaker 1: You're still together. That's great, Yeah, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: I'm very, very fortunate. He's he's a great writer himself.
Speaker 1: He wrote a rock and roll novel called Perfectly Broken
Speaker 1: that came out a few years ago. And he's a
Speaker 1: songwriter and he's a great editor, so he reads all
Speaker 1: my work. And gives me great advice. And he's also
Speaker 1: a musician, so whenever he helps me get all the
Speaker 1: music stuff right, and he's been in the recording studio
Speaker 1: and many, many, many times. Back to this book, What
Speaker 1: is the promotion? What are you doing to make people
Speaker 1: aware of it other than this podcast? Your show? This
Speaker 1: is it? Man? Well, actually, you know, these days, with
Speaker 1: what's going on in the world, as we know, you
Speaker 1: never know when you're going to get canceled. But I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to be on CBS Sunday Morning. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be great. How did that come together? Um? They
Speaker 1: just said, Holly, come on our show. Well, that's not
Speaker 1: the way it works. Someone had previous Jonathan carp my
Speaker 1: wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster, and Priscilla Paynton, my
Speaker 1: wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster. I guess they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, check out this book. And but I will
Speaker 1: tell you a really cool thing because I was actually
Speaker 1: on CBS Sunday Morning twelve years ago from my gene
Speaker 1: Autry book, and the guy who produced that segment was
Speaker 1: my producer on this new segment. And it turns out
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that that was his first ever big
Speaker 1: segment that he produced. So we just reunited in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: last Friday for this already shot it. Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: it last Friday. Okay, did you get a huge bump
Speaker 1: on CBS Sunday Morning with the GENA? Oh? Yes, I actually,
Speaker 1: and you know I was on Oxford University Press for
Speaker 1: not exactly a powerhouse and the promotion. I mean a great,
Speaker 1: great publisher, but you know, not the super you know,
Speaker 1: big books, you know, get get this story out there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I actually I think I made it in
Speaker 1: to the Amazon top ten for a cop for a
Speaker 1: couple of days. You know, it was either that A
Speaker 1: couple of questions before we come to the end of
Speaker 1: the feeling we can we talk for two we could,
Speaker 1: but you know, the the editor to what degree did
Speaker 1: they either steer you or change your writing? My editor
Speaker 1: was amazing. I've had some great editors before, but this
Speaker 1: woman gets down in the weeds. I mean she does
Speaker 1: the old school pencil writing comments on the manuscript pages,
Speaker 1: which actually I'm kind of old school like that too.
Speaker 1: So we did like deep, deep dives into the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she I think really helped me elevate my prose totally.
Speaker 1: She i trusted her implicitly, and she was actually the
Speaker 1: perfect kind of reader, because usually my editors are music people,
Speaker 1: and that's the main thing. Of course, she knew Janice Choplin,
Speaker 1: but she didn't She wasn't a music geek like me,
Speaker 1: so she was able to have this perspective. I think
Speaker 1: that was really important for the book. So I didn't
Speaker 1: go to the weeds too much or you know, usually
Speaker 1: I tend to write way too much. So she helped
Speaker 1: me figure out where to trim and part that only
Speaker 1: geeks like me would care about. You know. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the book is coming out. You're gonna be on CBS
Speaker 1: Sunday morning. It's a major publisher. There are certain events
Speaker 1: in the world not always planned to kick start another thing.
Speaker 1: Journey would not be touring the world the way it
Speaker 1: is today if it hadn't been for the last Sopranos episode.
Speaker 1: You having done this book, do you believe it will
Speaker 1: kickstart certain things in the Janice Joplin's legacy. I hope so,
Speaker 1: because she deserves to be recognized as the important artist
Speaker 1: that she was and as a college professor. When I
Speaker 1: do happen to turn my kids on play, you know,
Speaker 1: ball and Chain at Monterey Pop for them on YouTube
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, they are blown away by the
Speaker 1: power and the authenticity. Yeah, her talent is palpable, and
Speaker 1: I think people today need that real nous that Janice
Speaker 1: was about real nous and the way she was able
Speaker 1: to touch these deep emotions that people are afraid to
Speaker 1: let out. You know, she would let out her fear,
Speaker 1: she would let out her disappointments for everyone to see.
Speaker 1: And I think with this world we're living in of
Speaker 1: lies and facades. I mean, Janice was a truth teller
Speaker 1: and I think we need people like her as role models. Listen,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. We need to end it there, because artists
Speaker 1: used to be beacons, and Janice Chopolin still is. You're
Speaker 1: bringing her back to like Holly, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: doing the podcast. I can't believe you have me on.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy. Thank you. Okay, great, Until next time,
Speaker 1: It's Bob left side.