Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Holly George-Warren

Transcript

Holly George-Warren · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Holly George Morn. He's got a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: new book about Janice Joplin entitled Janice Joplin for Life
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in Music. Holly, good to have you here. Thanks for
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: having me on your show, Bob. Okay, why a book
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: about Janice Joplin? Why? Now you know, Bob, I have been,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of course a fan like every one of Janice's voice,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: going back to my teen years back in the Setona,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I have to ask, since you brought that up, were
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you alive and conscious when Janice had her success? Yes,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: um the end of her career. I got to see her,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you know, on TV from my little hometown of North
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Carolina on the Dick Cabot Show. And of course, one
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of my first albums when I joined the Columbia House
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Record Club twelve albums for a penny, was Pearl, so
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I still have my original copy. How did you feel
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: after getting the twelve albums free and then having to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: pay list price for the ensuing records. I did a
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: lot of babysitting in those days, and since I lived
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in a tiny town with not a lot of access
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  Speaker 1: to records, hey, I was cool with it. Okay, we're
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: in North Carolina. It's a little town called Ashborough, not
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to be confused with Ashville, which everyone's heard of, the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: cool hipster town. But Ashboro was right smack dab in
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the center of the state, near Nascar Richard Petty Territory
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  Speaker 1: for any of this. Okay, So for those of us
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  Speaker 1: who were ignorant city people, what's the closest town we
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: would know of? Greensboro were the first sit ins took
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: place at? So how far from Greensboro were you? Like
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: twenty miles and okay, let's get back to it. Okay,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: so you bought Barol, you still have it? Yes, I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: have my copy too. And that was you know, I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: was a huge record fan already because when I was
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in third grade, Bob, I discovered on my little clock
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: radio that I could tune into w ABC in New
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: York and w l S and Chicago. And this was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the golden age of channels. That's why was ultimately and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in my town, I think that there are one radio
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: station which mostly played country and gospel, which, of course,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you know, being a rock and roll kid, I hated
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: it went off the air, you know, So I discovered
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: this radio from far away that played this incredible mix
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of music because am just was amazing. In the mid sixties,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I became so obsessed. I would not go to sleep
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: at night without listening to my radio. And that's the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: transistor under the pillow. Well, you know, I don't remember
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: having it. It was the baby blue pastel you know,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: clock radio. My parents kind of just said whatever, you know,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: they didn't really care. And I started buying forty fives
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: like crazy with my babysitting money. And so this was
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: again I was third grade and I started my first
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: little group. Then, so I became obsessed. Well I want
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to go deeper into this, Let's first get into the book.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So well, I can't as drop in. Why not? Well,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: because I discovered when I was asked to write liner
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: notes for the Pearl Sessions, which was a two CD
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: set in which they went and pulled out all these
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: tapes from the vaults at Columbia and at least they
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: were still there as opposed to universal tape. Yes, thank god. Right,
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  Speaker 1: And so you could hear Janice and Paul Rothschild, the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: producer of Pearl Talking Shop. Janice was leading the conversation
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  Speaker 1: coming up with guitar parts, arrangement ideas, you know, like
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: literally calling the shots. And I knew from work I'd
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: done on the Doors and interviewed Bruce Botnick, the Great
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Engineer and other people, that Paul Rothschild was famously iron
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: fisted producer, and in fact, Joni Mitchell did not like
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: working with him because he was so bossy. And actually
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Paul Rothschild a little bit. I wish I could have
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: met him. He seems like a cool guy. And you know,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: when I have to remember that, of course he cut
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: all those early Electra records, but he was the son
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: of an opera singer. Did you know that? If I
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: knew what I forgot it? I didn't know that, but
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: um luckily I got some interviews with him from some
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: journalist friends who did interview him before he passed away.
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  Speaker 1: So I suddenly realized that, you know, this persona this
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: image that jan has created, which was so indelible and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: so vivid, wasn't all there was to the story of
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Janis Joplin. You know, she kind of had this image
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of being this blues mama. I'm just all about the field, baby,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you know, and you know that whole technique versus field idea,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and I started thinking, you know what, I think there's
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  Speaker 1: more to this woman's music. Music musicianship then meets the eye.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So I then started thinking, and wait a minute. She
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  Speaker 1: was growing up Port Arthur, Texas, very conservative, segregated town,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: oil town in the fifties. How did she even get
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: access to records by Lead Belly and seventy Eights by
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Bessie Smith. It must have taken a lot of effort
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: on her part because I had read some of the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: other books about her, so I really was obsessed with
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: tracing her musical journey and finding out how she got
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: um Port Arthur, Texas to queen of the counterculture and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: then this big star with pearls. Okay, I want to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: hear that, But let's go back to the tapes. What
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: did you hear on the tapes? Well, again, with Paul's
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: reputation of being a very um yeah, exactly, he was
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: listening to Janice, he was like, wow, that's a great idea,
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  Speaker 1: you know, and he apparently inspired her to pursue being
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  Speaker 1: a producer. In fact, she told John Cook, her late
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: road manager, who think goodness, I got to meet and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: interview that um Janice would make a great producer, and
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Janice was so excited about this idea. She was a
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  Speaker 1: studio rat. I mean she wrote home letters as far
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: back as the nineteen six six, the first time she
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: went into the studio in Chicago for the first record
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Big Brother in the Holding Company did for mainstream records.
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  Speaker 1: She wrote home detelling the studio recording process, talking about
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: double tracking her vocals and explaining what that was, the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: same kind of thing when they got signed to Lumbian
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: did Cheap Thrills. She was very, very involved in the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: recording process. Again, letters home describing what mixing was for example,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and yeah, and Fred Catero, the great engineer, and have
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: talked about she was the first one there and the
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: last to leave. She was really really involved in that
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: whole process. So there was that aspect of her that
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  Speaker 1: I think no one really realized that she was this studious,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: hard working musician that was perfecting her craft and wanting
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to learn every aspect of music. Not just that amazing
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: voice of her. What was her personality like? Again, she
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was very multifaceted. You know, we have the Janus image
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  Speaker 1: of her, you know, out on stage and just so intense,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: so impassion this music coming from deep within of her,
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  Speaker 1: expressing all this pain and all this um torment, you know,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: through her vocals and really reaching and touching her audiences.
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  Speaker 1: I wish I could have seen her live, because to
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: this day I talked to people who saw her nineteen
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: sixty six and they go into this reverie, describing it
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: as if it was last week. I mean, her impact
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was that powerful. But the other side of Janice, which
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: she kept on the down low from her fans, was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: this very intellectual, studious woman who always had a book
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: with her. She was a total book worm, love to read.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And she also, you know, had her own fears and
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: her own um shyness that again she kept tamped down
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: through her whole stage bravado and all that kind of thing.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Let's go to the end. Do you think her death
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was inevitable for a pure accident, pure accident bomb, I mean,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of what happened when we tragically lost Tom,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Petty and Prince. The whole it's similar to that whole
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: fentinyl thing. Because she had had an addiction to heroin
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, um, but she had gotten clean
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy she'd been off it for maybe four
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: or five months, she still was a heavy drinker and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the drinking is much worse on the voice than smack,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and she was trying to cut back on the drinking
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: while making Pearl because she knew that Paul wath Child
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: would not tolerate her voice not being there and it
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: can really script your voice too much. Booz. So she
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: happened to run into her dealer from before in l
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: A at the Landmark Hotel where she always stayed and relapsed. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Now what happened that killed her was she, by weird chance,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: got this really strong heroine that had just been introduced
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to this country called China White, and it was really
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: pure compared to her usual and she was by herself
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  Speaker 1: overdosed and it was a tragic accidym Okay, So how
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: did you actually decide to do the book? Well? Fortunately,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: over the years through different um things like there's been
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a couple of Janice uh conferences believe it or not?
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  Speaker 1: At the road Yeah, at the Rock and Wall Hall
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  Speaker 1: of Fame in Cleveland, wannabes or scholars yeah, well not scholars,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: but the people that were there. So in the nineties
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: there was one and another one in the outs, and
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I got to participate as a panelist talking about Janiss legacy, etcetera.
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  Speaker 1: But really I was a student. I got to meet
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: her brother and sister who, um, we really hit it off.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I also got to meet Sam Andrew was still alive
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: for guitarists from Big Brother chet Helm's The Guy who
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Family Don't started the avalon who really is the guy
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: that got Janis? At San Francisco not once, but twice
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in sixty three and again in sixty six. Jerry Ragavoy,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: who was her favorite songwriter that wrote a lot of
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: her great hits, was there. So I was learning more
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and more about her and just became, you know, fascinated.
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  Speaker 1: But so, when did you hear the unreleased tapes that
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was in around I think it was around twenty twelve
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: something like that. Already been going to these conferences, Yes,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I had just been, you know, a student, because I'm
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm a general. Are you are you a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: student of other things? You're going to other conferences? Yes,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I love I'm a conference junkie. Well, it used to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: be called the e MP conference. Now it's called MoPOP
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in Seattle, which has been going since two thousand two.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: That's a great one. I try to go to that
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: every year. So what what have you learned there? Oh? Gosh,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what have I not learned? Because it goes all through
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: like every genre going back to I've learned about artists
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that I like Eva Tingay. I think her name is
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: who is this? Do you know her name? I know
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the name? The music? Yeah, just people go down the
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole at these conferences. And each year there's a theme,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: so it'll be everything from you know, drag. Last year
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: it was death so perfect for Janas. How many people go? Um? Gosh,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you know, it lasts about four days and there's lots
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: and lots of you should go. Bobby would love it.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: UM and it's people and it's not just academics. It's
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: UM fans, fancy and writers, musicians, the great John Langford,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the me cons and the Wakeer Brothers has been part
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of it. Um they have. They've had Janelle Mone, they
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: had Solomon Burke. They'll have a keynote a lot of times,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a musician, Um the tune smith woman I'm blanking on
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: her or anyway, how many of these do you go
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to in a year? Um? See, I go to that
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: when I go to the Americana Conference in Nashville. I
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: used to go to south By Southwest every year and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: always do panels for that, and that was really fun.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And again I saw amazing like Harold Bradley and Holly Yeah,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: it's just kind of it's too big now. Um, so
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: American is kind of stepping up to the plate now.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And so you can actually see like Tanya Tucker, you know,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: talk Okay, So you're going to these panels, you hear
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the tapes, you write the liner notes, when do you
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: decide you want to write a book? Well, I was
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: able to talk to the siblings who control Anas. We
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: were talking just because you're interested or in the back
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of your mind to do something with this, I know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: totally not thinking of doing something. But my literary agent,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: who was a wonderful person who actually has been She
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: worked at Rolling Stone going back to the what's her name?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Her name is Sarah Lason and she reps lots of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: rock writers, been functorus and you know Robert christcal and
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: how did you get hooked up with her? Well, because
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: one of my first jobs when I first moved to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: New York City, and besides waiting tables after graduating college
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: with my policy English double major. Was I got a
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: job as a fact checker at Rolling Stone Press. Well,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you know, they wish they still had that. Of course,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: is the books, not the magazine that they had a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: fact director would help their image. Yeah, definitely. So my
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: first job, Bob, I think it was like five bucks
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: an hour. It was fact checking the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of Rock and Roll, which of course I owned, Yes,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And I got to meet all these guys pretty much.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: They're all guys who I had read as a kid
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: reading Rolling Stone, like you know, Dave marsh and different people.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And then my job was like calling up question Mark
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of question Mark and the Mysterious and saying, is it
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: true that you know you're really from Mars? And did
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: did you know whatever? Davidout him in the sycopo. I
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: have to ask, how did you get the job? Was
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it that easy? Just you know, you have to know
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: somebody because I am a rock and roll geek, Bob,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and I obsessively always read rock and roll books. A
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: friend of mine who I met at American Baby Magazine,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: where I also had a job, and you know, of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: course I was a long way from having kids or
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: anything like that. But um she went to work for
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stone and was Sarah Layson's assistant. Sarah was the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: director of the book division, and she knew I was
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this rock and roll geek. They needed a fact checker.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I got to go in for the interview, and this
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: wonderful woman, Patti Romanowski, who has written. She went on
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: to write a lot of co authorships with um Otis
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Williams of The Temptations, which now they've made that book
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: into the Broadway musical. She did dream Girls, and Mary
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: was anyway, she was the person hiring and we just
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: started talking about our favorite rock and roll books and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I was just geeking out with her. She's like, you
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: got the job, so perfect work for you. Let's stop
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: there for a second, especially in the Me Too era
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and a second wave of feminism, shall we say, who
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: are the unsung women writers in music who need to
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: get more attention? Ellen Sander number, of course I love
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: her writing and for the Yeah, and well that's Ellen
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Willis right, right, right, I hear from Ellen sand Yeah.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Ellen died a few years ago, and she she was
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: definitely the most intellectual, culturally anthropological, anthropological kind of rock
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: critic who I mean she was amazing, and of course
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: reading her on Janice, her reviews of Janis at the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Film or East and the New York Are are just
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: mind blowing. But my last book, you know, was on
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Alex Chilton. She was a big box tops fans, Kay Sander.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: She lives in May, Yeah, yeah, she lived in Her
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: book Trips was amazing, which is a collection. I think
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: she wrote for different magazines and she went on the
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: road with different bands. Um. And she actually reviewed a
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: lot of Janice concerts in New York back in the day.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And Woodstock of course. Um, her writing on Woodstock is great.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: So both of those two jan you Helski, who was
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that Cream magazine? Um, who was an incredible writer. And
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I think she's actually working on a dock now about Cream,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: but I think she was there in the late sixties. Yeah, definitely.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So those are three right there. And are these people
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you have regular contact with? Is there a fraternity or
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: shall I say a sorority of women music writers? Well,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: those women I kind of put on a pedestal, so
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like a gushy fangirl um around them. But um,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: as far as other women go, it's, you know, there
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: is kind of I would say, for the most part,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: it is a very cool, supportive group of women. There's
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: a great book called Women Who Rock, edited by Evelyn
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: mcde mc nodal, who is out here in California, and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Evelyn got a lot of different women writers to do
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: essays on different women artists, again across the genre spectrum.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I wrote a piece on Patsy Klein, for example. Then
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: she got all women illustrators to do portraits of the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: subjects and that book came out last year. And Evelyn,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: who teaches also out here, was really careful to include
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of new, up and coming young women writers
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: as well as us. You know, heggs have been out
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: there doing it forever. So so it's it's great to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: get to meet all these different women writers who had
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: this passion for rock and roll. Okay, so you have
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the agent and you were telling a story of how
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: this book came to be. Yes, so my agent Sarah
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Lays and new Laura Joplin and actually was her agent
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: when she did a book that was basically a memoir
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: with um referencing lots of letters at Janice wrote home
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and so she intruduce us to us, and she kind
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of paved the way for me to get to know uh,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you know, Laura and Michael Joplin and then also Jeff
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: jam Paul you probably know of course who represents yes exactly.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And so we all hit it off and they but
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: your agent was basically pitching a book. Well she was
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: kind of interfacing. I mean this, Bob, this took like
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: many years. The first conversation I think was long before
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: I started working on the Alex Chilton book, which was
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: in so I would say in like the late audits,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: like around two thousand eight or so, essentially ten years. Yeah,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So it was just conversations. This. How long after your
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: agents started looking you up with these people, did you
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: actually have a go or get a deal? Probably? You know,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: like gosh, I would say, um, you know, like about
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: six years or something. And this was us conversing back
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and forth deciding how could we do this? Uh. I
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: gave them other books. I My first biography was of
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Gene Autry, the Great Singing Cowboy, who also his widow
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Jackie Autrey, had opened up her vaults and files and
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: all of his personal archives to me. Again, I will
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: only do a book like this if I have complete
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: editorial control over what I'm doing so the estate or
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the airs have to realize that they I would love
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: for them to share all this incredible information with me.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: It's in these archives, but I can't give them any
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: kind of control ever what I write, and you end
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: up getting into battles. Uh No, not really. I mean
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I think they trust me and they know that I am, like,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I really, really dedicated to try to tell the story
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: as accurately as possible, and to try to make it
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you know, all the different facets of someone. So have
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you ever written a book and then have the person
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: argue with you or be disenchanted because you've got something
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: wrong or you had an opinion they're not comfortable with. Well,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: not the actual people who um, I mean, some of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: them disagree with the conclusions I draw. For example, Jackie Autrey,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: she still believes that Geane Autrey met Will Rogers in
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: a telegraph office and he said, son, you should be
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: doing more than just running this, you know, telegraph for
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the railroad. You should be a Hollywood star or whatever,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: which I did tons of geeky research and found out
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that that could not have taken place because when Will
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Rogers died, etcetera. And so I have to depose this
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: incredible myth like the John Ford don't you know, don't
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: you know print the legend, you know, kind of thing
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that didn't really happen. And she, you know, because I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: think Jeane Autrey for himself, actually began to believe the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: story that a press agent created that he was discovered
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: by Will Rogers, when in reality, the press agent created
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: that totally. Okay, So she disagreed with that, but we
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: agreed to disagree. Okay. So this book, unlike a lot
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: of music books, is with one of the biggest publishers
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: in the nation, that Simon and Schuster. How did that
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: come together? I just really lucked out. UM. The guy
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: who was the head of UM. I guess Simon and
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Schuster is a guy who I worked with a long
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: time ago when I was doing books at Rolling Stone
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: because I ended up going back to Rolling Stone after
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: being a fact checker. I ended up going back there
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: in the early nineties and re igniting the book division again.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: So I worked with him on some of this person's
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: his name, Okay, you know, we're we're, we're, you know,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: having a senior moment. But then my editor, Priscilla Painton,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: who is this wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster. She's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the one that I went and met with. She really
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: got it, and she was not a typical music book editor.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: She does a lot of their political books, a lot
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of their you know, big So you make the deal
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster, as they say, Simon Schuster, Random House,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: these are like the biggest companies. Is the deal lucrative?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Uh well, let's just put it this way. Janice was
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: much more lucrative than Salally Jeane Autrey was. And this
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: way you're writing writing a book on Janice Joplin. Theoretically,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: with the advance, could you live a year and do
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: nothing else? Uh? Not if you have a son that's
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in college. Okay, Okay, we got my general idea. Okay,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: so the book is like I teach also and I
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: still write. You know, let's stay with Janice for a second. Okay.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So there's been a number of books about Janice. I
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: remember in seventy four vividly remember reading this book in Jackson,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Wyoming and a diner, the Myra Friedman book. Yes, I
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: read that book of any good you know, I totally
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: bought that book lock Stock and Barrel. It really formed
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: my opinion of Janice, which is part of the reason
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: why I wanted to do my book because now in retrospect,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: looking back, I realized Mayra Friedman, who was her publicist,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: worked for Albert Grossman, her manager, and truly loved Janice.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: You know, we're old enough now, Bob, that we've lost people,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and we know the effect that has on you when
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you lose someone, especially at tragic death like Janice is
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: you're angry at that person. And now, looking back, I
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: think that the portrait, my opinion, was very inaccurate. She
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: made Janice seem like this tragic figure who was just
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: just kind of um in this morass of you know,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: sadness and insecurity and just very neurotic and and all
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. She I think it was very
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: one dimensional portrait of her, and it was she was
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: just too close to her subject, and I think she
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: was really bitterly upset about her loss, so her anger
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: came out and the way she cast okay, So you know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that's the one I read. How many books are their
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: biography of Janice? L um gosh what some of them
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: are no longer in print. Forget that they're not would
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: say like about six or something like that. Okay, So
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: this is not a subject that has not been covered. Okay,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: so the question becomes, uh, why what do you think
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you can add or what is your goal in writing
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the book? I wanted to show Janice as a musician.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted to show her as you know, the real
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Janis Joplin, who persisted, who overcame so many obstacles to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: pursue her ambitions to be the greatest, you know. I
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: mean she told Paul Rothschild when he said where do
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: you want to be? At age fifty? And this was
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: when she was, you know, horribly twenty seven, she said,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I want to be as good as a blue singer
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: as Bessie Smith was, you know. She it was all
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: about perfecting her craft, learning more, you know, getting better,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, continuing to work hard at this. And I
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: think that part of Janice's life, and that part of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: her story has never really been told. Okay, let's go
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: back to Port Arthur, because you began there. What were
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the circumstances of her upbringing? Well, it's an interesting story.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: She was very beloved by her parents. She was basically
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: an only child until age six when her sister Laura
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: came along. So her parents doated on her, but they
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: were quite different people. You know, they came from you know,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: difficult backgrounds themselves. And the mom was, you know, wanted
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Janis to have the white picket fins, the perfect life,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: you know, the typical fifties kind of middle class life.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And Janis was born in forty three. The father was
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Janie called him a secret intellectual. His name with Seth Joplin.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And he had a mid level management job at Texico
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: then called the Texas Company. You know, the whole town
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: was all oil distilleries and refineries, et cetera, and um.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: He came home from work, listened to Bach, loved classical music,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: was a huge reader of philosophy, history. Every Saturday, he
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: took Janice to the library and that she said, you know,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: in my family, as soon as you could write your name,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you got a library card. And old in her love
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of book books. But also he was an atheist. Her
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: mom was a evangelical, you know, Christian, you know, very
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: religious woman. Janice started singing soprano and the church choir
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, was baptized by immersion, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that whole thing. But the father never went to church.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: He was an atheist, and so the father particularly kind
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of instilled in Janice, um, you know, a quest for knowledge,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to think outside the box. The mother also really was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a great singer, had been a singer as a teenager
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: in Amarillo, Texas, and started teaching Janice how to sing
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: when she was like three years old, how to play piano.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: So there was some music in the house. And they
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: discovered a Janice that she had this artistic talent. She
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: was a quite good painter, and so they started buying
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: her you know, paints and easels and everything when she
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: was you know, quite young and all that. So they
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: really supported her artistic endeavors. Now, Janice read On the
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Road by Caro wac when it came out, and that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: changed her life. Fifty oh, all the Carol people are
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: gonna kill me. I think it was fifty seven, Okay,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: So but at that point she's already fourteen. Y yeah,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: she was fourteen. She was fourteen years old. So yuh.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Going back to her growing up, She's an elementary school.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: She a member of the group, she a leader, She
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: an outcasts what issue see, I think, Bob the reason
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: she you know, famously had this horrible situation by the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: end of her high school year where she was completely bullied, ostracized, etcetera.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And I think she took it so to heart because
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: she was, you know, barely popular. She had friends, she
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: was in the Slide Rule Club. She you know, made
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: pep Rally posters. I mean, she was a typical girl.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You can see all this in her scrap book. She's
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: got her little crinoline you know, swatches of crinoline's and
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: fabrics that her mom's made her, all these dresses and everything.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And she was very raw, raw teen spirit kind of girl.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But reading Caroac, meeting these guys who were a year
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: older than she was who set her on her path
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to listening to Lead belly Um. She discovered Odetta through them,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Jeane Ritchie the grade to Appalachian folkusinger and started discovering
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: other ways of thinking and moving away from that traditional
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Texas football culture, which you know, football rules in Texas.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And she started moving away from that and sneaking across
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the river and going to Louisiana at night with the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Carlatto Boys to hear um swamp Rock Louisiana from Port
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: It's well, it's very close because Port Arthur's right on
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the Gulf there, so it's right across the river and so,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe forty five minutes and hey, you know
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: this was a m radio was still great then too,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: so this was like they caught it doing the the triangle.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: They would drive from Port Arthur to Beaumont, Texas, you
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: know where some great blues came out of Ivory Joe Hunter,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: et cetera. To Orange listening to the radio and picking
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: up some black stations, hearing some R and B. Janice
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: was so obsessed with it she would go and try
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to meet the DJs. There was a guy named Stevo,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the night Rider. She would go and say, oh, can
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I get your coffee? She and her girlfriend would go
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: up and visit the DJs at night. She was just
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: she's in high school. She starts living a somewhat bohemian lifestyle,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: shall we say, well, as much as could be living
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: at home as a teenager. But my question is it's like,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I went and Ray Dat's on a Storyteller album,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: has a song, you know his art chicks, you know, babe.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: My point is I went to high school and remember
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the art people, they were a separate click. So at
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: this point in high school. Is she a separate click
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: or is it still all homogeneous? It was pretty homogeneous,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: except for there was these four or five guys that
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: were a great ahead of her who she started hanging
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: out with, and she was almost like their little mascot
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And also she started school at a very
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: young a skipped a grade, so she was about a
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: year and a half younger than most of the kids
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: in her actual grade level. Okay, there's a famous story
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: where I believe she's voted best looking guys or something. Okay,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: by the time she you know, she had so many adventures.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Beginning at age eighteen, she hit chiked out to San
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Franciscoco from l A, where she was living in Venice
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: for a little while because she dropped out of college. Anyway,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: she was back. She goes to Texas, to Austin, Texas,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to ut and that's when she first starts. Yeah, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that's when she first performs for audiences in a little
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: group called the Waller Creek Boys, which was again this
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: little bohemian group of guys, a few women, but mostly
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: guys who lived in a place called the Ghetto, this
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: rundown apartment building in Austin, and of course they were
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: very different because this was nineteen sixty two and most
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: of the girls were buffon hair dues, a little cinched
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: waist shirt, dresses, bobby socks. Janice was wearing like an
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: oversized men hurt with blue jeans or else the black turtlenecks.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: She was often barefooted, and she had that amazing voice already,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and she was applying it to these records that she
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: had discovered by blues artists. The Waller Creek Boys were
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: mainly doing kind of folky um when he got three
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: ish kind of stuff bluegrass. So they started blending all
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: these sounds and they started performing on campus and then
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: at this great place thread Gills, which fortunately still exists,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and building this audience. In the meantime, Janice was, as
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the kids say today, polyamorous. Um. She already was having
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: flings with both men and women, and she didn't try
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to hide it, and um, she really stuck out. There
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: was actually an article written about her in the Texas
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the University of Texas newspaper called she Dares to be Different.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: So she was becoming kind of known around the campus.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And every year this fraternity would have a fundraiser The
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: ugliest man on campus contest, so you would have to
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: pay you know, ten bucks to nominate someone nominated Janice
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: and it was just heartbreaking for her. Um she did
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: not win a linebacker for the football team one but
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: still just you know, very just hard. Was insecure about
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: her look. She was yeah, and um she you know,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I think she was a beautiful woman. And so it's
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: weird to me to see how people singled out her
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: body parts and her appearance. Even when she was getting
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: huge as a star. Um, people would talk about her
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: being playing or I think in Vogue magazine they said
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: her her complexion was like pizza or so. I mean,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: it's like sickening the way that the media would cover
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: women and take this to heart. She bothered by all
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: those negative information when she wasn't drinking or doing drugs.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I think she was bothered by it. Okay, so you
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: see he dropped on a school the first time. Yeah,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: where was she going the first time? She first went
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to um Lamar Tech, which was kind of the school
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: where most of the kids from Now it was a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: regular university, but it was where you went to be
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to get a job in the petroleum business. And where
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and then she did you know, wherever she went, she
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: found a small little group of you know, outside the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: box people, So she found that in Beaumont. Then she
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: ended up dropping out back in Port Arthur and she
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: took business classes. If she was quite the good stenographer
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: um and typeest, her mom demanded that she go to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: business college in Port Arthur, so she got a little
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: certificate for that. Then her mom sent her out to
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: live in l a with her aunts who lived out
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. She wanted to be a beat nick
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: as I said, this was sixty one, she was eighteen.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: So she ends up in Venice, living there for a
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: little while, goes to San Francisco, hitchhiking by herself, checking
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: out the North Beach scene, whatever, runs out of money,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: takes a bus back to Port Arthur, and then she
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: ends up discovering the scene in Austin. So that's when
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: she went to college in Austin. She went there for
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the summer session in the fall session, how does she
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: end up back on the West coast. Well, that horrible
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: incident occurred with her poster of her dominated for Auglass
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Mental Campus, and she had met Chet Helms, who was
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: a former UT student who had been traveling around doing
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the Caro Wac thing and had been living out in
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: San Francisco. He heard her sing, and he's like, you're
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: gonna knock their socks off in San Francisco because North
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Beach had a cafe scene, coffeehouse scene where people were
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: doing folk music, some a little bit of blues. So
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: in sixty three, a week after her twentieth birthday, she
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and Chet hitchhiked from Austin to San Francisco. Okay, just
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: to be clear, was Chet living in San Francisco previously?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Or did he go out with Janice? He had been
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: kind of living there for a little while. He had
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: been traveling around, you know, doing the whole on the road.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Did Was there a romantic relationship there? No, they were
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: just platonic good friends. She really believed in her to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: San Francisco. Yeah, well, she did not stick around. She
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: did not want to be managed. She wanted to be
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: an independent agent. They basically stayed for a few nights
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: at David Freiberg's place, clashed on his floor, Quicksilver and
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Ultimate right and uh he uh he, and Chat took
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: her down to Coffee and Confusion, a coffee house North
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Beach where she did an open mic night, and of
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: course that voice just knocked people knocked their socks off,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: just like Chat said. So she pretty much started getting
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: little gigs, playing at the coffee house, Circle Circuit. She
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: went out to um like San Jose. She met your
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Mcalchinan at like an open mic night, and they both
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: loved the blues. I mean, most of these people were
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: doing kind of more the folks stuff. They loved singing, singing. No,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, five bucks a night for money,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: she's scraping by. She's sleeping in people's floors. I mean,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: she has no infrastructure, no support. Um, it's really not
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: really okay. So is she just in the moment or
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: does she have a dream of making it? Atte She
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: has a dream of making it, that's the thing. Even
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: though she was living like a down and out beat nick,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you know, on the streets, she still had this dream
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: of making it. And people immediately recognized her talent. And
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: she was nothing like the Janna Stop and we picture today,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you know, the whole San Francisco freak rock. And then
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: her later stuff she was doing. She had already started
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: writing songs. She was doing her own stuff. She was
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes accompanying herself with auto harp. She really wanted to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: learn to play guitar so she could learn how to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: back herself. So she started learning guitar. Gotta you know,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: pawn shop guitar and stuff, and um, she was making
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: some noise. People were interested in her, but she was
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: a very you know, she had was living a very
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: unsettled existence. Okay, is Big Brother her first band? Or
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: does she go through a few iterations with other people? Well,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: she had had the Waller Creek Boy, but she had
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: never had electric Okay, So basically this whole blues singer
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: thing lasted almost three or. She actually ended up coming
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: to New York City the summer of sixty four and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: trying to make it there and ended up making most
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of her money as a pool shark. She was a
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: great pool player, so she was like beating all these
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: guys at pool and that's pretty much how she got back. Suddenly,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: she went back to San Francisco, tried to make it
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the end, but horribly, she'd picked up a really nasty
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: drug habit. She got addicted to methamphetamine, which was very
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: prevalent in San Francisco and New York at that period,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and she ended up getting down eighty eight pounds, I mean,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: really facing death. Her friends put her on a Greyhound
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: back to Port Arthur Ve. She was back in Texas
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: for a year. Cleaned up, Irrat went back to school,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: back to Lamar as a commuter this time. But now
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: she was trying to do the you know, campus co
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: ed thing. But the music was gnawing at her. She
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: really she could not stop doing. Is that she was
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: writing songs. She wrote Turtle Blues then, which was on
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: cheap Thrills. She started doing little gigs again, um in
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Houston where Towns van Zandt was performing. Guy Clark was
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: hanging out. Then, So how did she get back to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: San Francisco. She ended up getting gigs in Austin because
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of you know, doing her shows again. And chet Helms
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: was now fully entrenched in this so the you know,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: cool scene, the counterculture happening in San Francisco with the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: family dog the Avalon Ballroom. He was managing big brother
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: in the holding company. They decided they wanted a chick
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: singer doing those little yes and so he's like, I know,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the perfect girl now. Peter Alban, the bass player, the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: founder of the band who was doing most of the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: vocals had actually seen Janice back in her blues singing
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: folky days, um, you know, on the on that scene,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: so he remembered she had a great voice. So they
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: sent an emissary, a mutual friend from San Francisco, who
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: drove to Austin and absconded with Janice and she you know,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and tell her parents. You know, they were horrified and
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: just petrified that she was gonna end up in a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: bad situation again like she had before with the speaker.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: So how long did she play with Big Brother before
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: they make the mainstream deal? She was very briefly. She
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: got there in June of sixty six. They immediately bonded. Um.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: She was just one of the guys in the in
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the beginning, you know, she only sang maybe three or
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: four songs the set as the lead singer. Everybody contributed material,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: everybody took turn singing lead, except for day of the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: drummer and Um. Interestingly enough, Paul Rothschild came into the picture.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: He was working for Jack Holsman and Electra and they
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: had the idea of putting together a supergroup and putting
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: together they heard Janice, you know, and again no one
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: knew her and she was just part of Big Brother.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: They had heard her vocals and it was gonna be
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Taj Mahal, the great guitarist, Stephen Grossman, Janice Um. They
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: wanted to put them together record an album for Electra, etcetera.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So Janice almost quit Big Brother and like the end
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: of the summer, you know, like July August of sixty
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: six to do join this venture because it promised more
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: success than Big Brother, because they were still pretty crazy.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Cacophon is you know, freak rock. Okay, So they got
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the deal with Mainstream. The great song down on Me
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: is there, but that's in an era certainly when being
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: on an independent label you're a second class citizen. Well
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and plus the label just didn't get this. They wanted
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to try to cash in on the San Francisco sound,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and Bob Chad, who ran the label, had great ears.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: He had worked with Carmen McCrae. He was mainly a
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: jazz producer, had been in the business for a long time,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: but he wanted to get on what the kids are doing.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: So they were actually marooned in Chicago, big Brother in
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the holding company. They had a month long residency at
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: this club. Mother Blues, which was a disaster. People like
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: what you know, they're like, what are these freaky people doing?
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: You know, they're horrible And they were having to play
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: three sets tonight, no money, barely getting by. So Bob
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Chad offers them this deal, which was a really bad deal.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Now chat Helms was no longer their manager. They fired
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: him because they thought he was too busy with the
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: avalon and given not giving them any attention. So they
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: had no manager to without a manager, and it was
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: without a lawyer. Uh the lawyer was provided by Bob
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: shadd by Mainstream. So it was a horrible deal. And
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: also worst of all was that, you know the engineer.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: They did the first recordings right there in Chicago. They
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: didn't even get an advance. They thought they would get
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: an advanced so they'd have the money to get back
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco. They couldn't get home. They were stuck there.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: How long after that did they played the Monterey Poff
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Festoral That was in June of sixty seven, This is
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: like August September of sixty six. As the band stayed
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: together for nine months. Well, they finally got back they
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: did when it remember drive away cars, Okay, so they
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: got a drive away car got back. The good thing
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: about that bad situation was they were having to try
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: to win over these people that were appalled by their music,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and that really pushed Janis to develop this incredible stage
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: presence even more than she was already doing with the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: loving audiences that they had at the at the Avalon,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: So she was really pushing herself. They were really expanding
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the repertoire. They had to do three sets a night,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: so it really helped her, you know, hone her skills.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: She was also a really good percussionist. Dave Gets, the drummer,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: told me she really took She was playing that um
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: all kinds of percussion instruments at Girton all that, so
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: she was really improving her chops. So by the time
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: they got back to San Francisco, thanks were really moving
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: along with the whole counterculture. Um. You know, one of
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the first music fanzines was you know, writing about them.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia was telling people what a great singer Janity.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I was not aware of the mainstream albuntil after She
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Thrills was released. Well that's because it was rushed out
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: after they were at Monterey Pop UM, so we didn't
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: even come out. Yeah, they put out singles because you know,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Bob the paradigm was still the whole am radio singles
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: driven market. So they released two singles um on mainstream,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: which you know, a rarecle actables if you can find them.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And so again Janice wasn't even featured on the first single,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Harley Down on Me Find was the second single of them,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: recalling correctly, um, but the album didn't come out until
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: after moderate. Yeah, so they're at Monterey Pop. The legend
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is that Clive Davis was there and became enamored and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: signed them. Is that the truth? Well, what happened was
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: no one had really heard of Janice. A few people
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: had heard of Big Brother, but they were mainly known
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. Okay, So they had a Saturday
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: early afternoon slot on the Heart because, um, you know,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Adler lew Adler and John Phillips really wanted to have
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: kind of credibility that this was a cool festival. So
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: they wanted the cool San Francisco bands who were very
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: suspicious of these slick l A guys and the slick
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: music because it was, you know, the counterculture thing. And
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: so that's how they came kind of in a package
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: was like Grateful Dead and you know some other bands
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: from the Bay Area, Jefferson Airplane. So they have an
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: early Saturday movie afternoon. Yeah, yeah, because they were the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: least known you know, the Dead, Yeah, something like that.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And so the deal was that um ABC TV had
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: given the producers of Monterey Pop a deal to do
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: a made for TV movie and they had brilliantly hired
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: d A. Pina Baker, the late great documentarian who you
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: know worked with Dylan et cetera. So he was filming this.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Now the San Francisco people, being suspicious of their ulterior motives,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: refused to sign the release so their sets could not
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: be filmed. Well, Janice and Big Brother went out and
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: just killed I mean people were I mean to use
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the brit term gobs match by the same to the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: movie doesn't come out until the year after which, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So d A. Pina Baker was like, I don't We've
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: got to film this woman they have, We've got to film,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you know, the famous shot of Mama Cass's face. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: that was the only thing that was the only thing
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: they were able to film. They couldn't film the band.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: So so Big Brother said no to the filming, correct,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: as did the Dead and others. Okay. So they had
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: a manager at this point who had been a Mary
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: prankster with Ken Kiss, Julius Carpin, okay, and so he
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: was very like, forget it. You know they're gonna rip
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: us off, don't you can't do it. So this huge
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: fight happens because the producers say to Janus and Big Brother,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: we will give you another time slot. You'll be the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: under only band to play twice if you let us
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: film you for the movie. And so of course Janice, yes, yes, yes,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: we gotta do what we gotta do it. Albert Grossman
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: is there because some of his clients, Mike Bloomfield and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield run the bill. He was there. I mean,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: everybody was floored. Clive Davis in the audience, everybody was
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: blown away by what they saw that Saturday afternoon first,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: the first one, and so they were finally convinced to
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: play again on Sunday evening, like around dusk. Who did
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you know who they followed? I do know, but it's
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: kind of been a cock webs, right, but but they yeah,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: they go on and again they killed and you know
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I think this time they only did like a three
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: song set, or they ended with the amazing version of
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Ball and Chain that Janie and Janie and the band
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: had gone and seen Big Mama Thornton, who, by the way,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Janie had discovered as a teenager, you know when when
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Big Mama recorded for Houston Labels and did the original
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: hound Dog, which Janice loved. So they saw her do
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Ball and Chain, went backstage, met her, learned the song
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, hence we have So they killed there
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in their filmed How do their business arrangements, Well, what
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: happened was so many music writers were there. Every music
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: writer in the country was there. Everybody went nuts over Janice.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: She was in the headlines and it suddenly elevated, you know,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: her stature and suddenly, I mean, it really affected the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: democratic dynamic of the band. But in the meantime, different
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: labels started coming to call. They were locked into this
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: horrible deal with Mainstream five year contract, you know, really bad,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: like no, you know, teeny little percentage of royalties. They
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: hadn't seen any money from the singles. Mainstream will not
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: release them from the contracts. So they're getting despairing about that.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Um so Eventually what happens is they end up having
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: a falling out with their you know, hippie manager because
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: he again was very suspicious of business practices. Anyway, they
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: end up signing with Albert Gross want them. He wanted Janice.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: You know, he loved Janice. He was blown away by
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: her voice and they really had a meeting of the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: minds too. I mean he became like a father figure
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: to her, you know. So they signed with Albert how
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: long after the pop festival? Um see, the pop festival
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: was in June, so I think around November something like that.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: They ended up firing Julius and aetting him, and then
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: he started to the negotiation and negotiations with Clive Davis,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: newly president of Columbia, who was able to come up
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: with a huge amount of money to buy them out
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: of their contract. Was there any other label involved? It
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: wasn't always Columbia, but there were some others that were interested.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: But and even initially the first offer from Columbia wasn't huge.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: But this was again, you know, nineteen sixty seven, and
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: they think it was like two fifty thousand dollars to
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: buy out the contract, which in ninety seven dollars was
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: a ton of money, and so they ended up at
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: this point the mainstream record had come out, and you know,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Big Brother refused to even promote the record. They told
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: everybody it was terrible, you know, as a cash in
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: kind of deal. And actually, I like, I enjoyed listening
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: to that. Legend is when the deal is signed, Janice
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: says that she and Clive should have sex to cement
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the deal. Is that apocryphal or true? That's Clive story.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I would not doubt it though. Um I think Albert
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Grossman actually mentioned something about it as well. So Janice
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: love to uh, you know, she loved to share experiences
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: with people, so she was not averse to ceiling deals
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: with with flesh. Okay, let's go talk about cheap thrills.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: UM Ultimately was a live album cut in the studio,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the version that we hear on the record, No, not really, Okay,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that's how much was the album worked on before we
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: got the version that came out a ton and again
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: they this They were working with John Simon, who knew Grossman.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Grossman Ultimately, Yeah, he had already done the band album
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: which got them signed. UM. He had produced their demos.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: He produced Leonard Cohen. You know, he was an amazing producer,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: but he and big brother, the Holding company, were on
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the opposite end of this. Back from as far as
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the statics go. He it was terrible to them in
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: the studio. He undermined their confidence. He you know, I
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: know you love his book and everything, but he really
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: browbeated them. Is that a word browbeated anyway? Okay, okay,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: So they you know, they were losing confidence in their
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: own ability. They were a great live band, and they
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: really communicated with their audiences, you know, at the a
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: blond ballroom in film or et cetera. But in the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: studio and it's sterile environment, it was not working and
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: they were messing up. And now Janis, on the other hand,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: she killed in the studio. She was a pro. Things
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: wouldn't get to her. She would just keep going and
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: going and going, and in fact, I find it kind
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: of funny. John criticized John Simon criticized her for being
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: inauthentic because she could redo a vocal part perfectly note
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to note exactly the way she had just done it
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: before what we hear released LP. Was it one long
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: session or did they start with many, many, many many,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: many many sessions in New York. No, no, no, Um,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: they ended up moving out doing them out here in
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, um prime at the Columbias. These were back
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: in the days where and you had to use the engineers,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: the union engineers and all that kind of stuff. So
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: they only I think, ended up cutting two songs in
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: the New York And some of those sessions you can
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: see because Pinna Baker wanted to make a documentary about Janis,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: so he filmed um some of the sessions, so you
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: can see some of that footage and see what the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: dynamic was like in the studio. Was very fraught, but
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Janice loved being in the studio and just ate it up.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Took to it so that most of it was recorded
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: out in l A. And most of those tracks are
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: completely um splice. You know, this is the day of
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: cutting tape spliced together, many many different takes of vocal
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: part here, instrumental part there, blah blah blah. Whose decision
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: was to make it a full live album? Um well,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: I think originally the the I don't think, I know.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Originally they wanted to make a live album, so they
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: first tried to record at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: which was kind of the Detroit version of the Avalon
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: and they were on sadly a double bill with the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: hometown heroes m C five, who were freaking killer live okay,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and who were up to prove that they were better
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: than anybody, right, So just nominated for the rock and
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: roll Yeah for about the fifth time, I think, so
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: maybe this is the charm, fifth times the charm. But anyway, um,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: so they were kind of not on their game big
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: brother in the holding company, and again Janice always pulled
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: it off, so she sounded great, but there were a
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: lot of flubs with the band and they were under
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: all this pressure. So they came back to New York.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: They sat down in Grossman's office. He played they had
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: a remote recording there, and they were like, listen, all
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: these mistakes. This is terrible, and you, Sam Andrew, you
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: should play bass and somebody should play you know, just criticised.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, really they're poor confidences. Oh yeah, And the
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: same thing with Columbia. So that next at what point
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: was it decided the studio recordings would have elements added
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: so that it would appear live. I think because that
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: was really the aesthetic of big brother than the Honing Company.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Was that live band? You know? Okay, so the album
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: is an immediate splash. Did they anticipate that, Yeah, it's
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: shipped gold well, I think because there had been a
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: lot of hype about Janice and um about the band,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and they had come out to for the They didn't
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: play in on the East Coast until they came out
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: in February sixty eight for their very first ever shows.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: They played at colleges like Wesleyan University and ris Dy
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: in places like that, mostly a lot of colleges and
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: started getting a following, and the press just went nuts.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: You know. So what's the process of firing the band?
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: It was very painful, and again, Janice Choplin was nothing
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: but fearless. She was driven, driven to be the musician,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: to move, keep moving forward and evolving as a musician.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: She could not stay stuck in a rut and she
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: felt like the band wasn't moving Okay, But the way
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: the legend goes is those surrounding her never mind the press.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I remember the press of the time said the band
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: was not as good as she was, and they were untogether.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Was it she wanted to fire the band or was it.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Everybody around her said, convinced her they gotta go. I
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: think it was a combination. Bob, I'm sure Grossman Um.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: You know he was always um criticizing the band. And
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you know, Clive Davis told me that he tried to
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: stay out of that. And in fact, early on he
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Clive wanted it to be Janis Choplin with Big Brother
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: the Holding Company on cheap thrill. She said, absolutely not.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: This is a band, same thing, Bill Graham. They were
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: the first band. They played the first night of the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: film or East in New York. He wanted the Marquis
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Janis Choplin. Absolutely not. I mean, she wanted it to
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: stay this communal. Okay, so they fire, she fires the band,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: but she didn't fire them. She just said she was
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: leaving the band. She was gonna go. And and I
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: mean she loved those guys. I mean, Bob, after all
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the horrible things that happened to her, you know that
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: hurt her own confidence and helped her, you know, made
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: her be insecure. They gave her so much confidence. They
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: were her first real family, this tribe. I mean, they
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: lived together and lag Anita's say, you know, they squabbled
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: like siblings. But there was love among them, and she
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: loved them, but she knew that they were doing their
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: thing and she wanted to do other things. She wanted
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a horn. She was inurve with Otis Redding. She wave.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Did she talk to them again? Oh? Yeah, they toured
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: she this was at the beginning. This was she told
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: them right before they did a show with the Staple
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Singers at Fillmore East that she was going to do
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: this huge tour. I mean, they had a very book
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: tour to promote the album. She was going to do
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the tour and then um, in December she would be leaving.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: This all came down. They played the Newport Folk Festival,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: which people loved. Grossman again. Uh, the rhythm seption was
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: really off, you know, and I told them that right
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: in front of you know, Rick Danko and Levin Helmer's.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: You know, they were just mortified. So it was right
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: after that when she quit. But she said I'm gonna
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: do the rest. She left in December of six. So
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: now we ultimately get the album. I got them Old
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Cosmic Blues again, Mama Okay, which had the great single
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Try had incredible players, but externally looked like it really
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't a success, you know. But you know what, Bob,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: You know, I grew up, you know, reading all the
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: rock critics, so I never even gave that record the
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: time of day. I went back to it, you know,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know, twenty years ago whatever, and it's a
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: freaking great record. But my different question is inside the
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: camp Janice Clive Albert, did they think it was success
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: or did they want something better? What happened was there
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: was a huge backlash against Janice because she dared to
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: leave the boy band behind and do her own thing.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: She was accused of selling out. Going show biz Paul
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: Nelson famously wrote this scathing article this portrait rolling Stone,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: painting her as this neurotic mess, and its title was
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Janice Choplin the next Judy Garland. No, I'm sorry, Rocks,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Judy got the Judy Garland of rock. That was the
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: exact thing that Judy Garland. Judy, of course died a
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: few months, so she was really castigated by former champions.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Even the great Ralph Gleason, who had loved her, said
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: she should drop this band and go go crawling back
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to Big Brother if they'll have her, you know, stuff
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: like that. So then how is it decided that she's
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: going to work with Paul Rothstow. Well, what happened was
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: she had been working NonStop. She immediately segued from being
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: one of the guys and big brother to being the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: band leader of what was later called Cosmic Blues on
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the road NonStop, and really within sixty nine, that Cosmic
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Blues experience really took her to the top as far
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: as that's when she did ed Sullivan. That's when she
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: toured Europe for the first and only time. She sold
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: out Royal Albert Hall, got the audience out of their seat.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: She did Woodstock. I mean, she did all these big,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: big festivals, working non stop, so she was worn out. Okay,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: so she finally, um, you know, at the end of
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: sixty nine, they did their last show, a big show
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden and she you know, let the
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: band go except for two players, the guitarists and the
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: bass player. And then she took a break and went
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: to Brazil and got off heroin um and started writing
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: new songs, started kind of just getting re energized. She
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: bought a house in Larkspur and Marin County and started,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: you know, meeting with some new players to put together
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: a new band. This was much more of an organic
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: kind of band. Some of the guys that played with
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the Hawks, Albert knew some of them, a lot of
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: more Canadians, um. So they started kind of rehearsing together
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: in her garage and they formed a really great kind
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: of harmonious relationship where she was the band leader, but
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: she was also still like had his camaraderie and that
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: hadn't really happened with the Cosmic Blues. Okay, So how
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: did she end up working with Paul? She had kind
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: of burned her bridges with some people who thought she
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: was a junkie, and Paul was one of those people. Uh,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: she was able to contact him. She had been hanging
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: out with him, you know in the l A days
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: because he was working with the Doors, et cetera. Bobby Newworth,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Paul John Cook, her road manager, was a dear friend
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: of of Paul's. So he decided to give her a chance.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: He was, you know, the son of an opera singer.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: He knew great singers and him yes for her last record.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: So they cut the record and he wasn't sure, but
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: when he saw her performing again, he's like, this girl
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: has got good. She touched the record, and the story
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: is that these are all guide vocals rough vocals. Is
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: that true on Pearl for the most part, yes, but
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: she was jams chop Jann's job on rough. You know,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: rough takes are like people fired. She ended up cutting
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz. There's different stories. I like the one that
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Bobby Womack tells, so I'm gonna go with that one,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: and that she had already done that song, um when
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: they had She had pulled that out and done it
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: live in poor Chester at the Capitol Theater. She had
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: written it in a bar before going on stage that
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: night with ripped torn Generaldy and Page and Bob Newmark looking,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's definitely true, and Bob was writing down
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you know, they were just kind of riffing in this bar. Right,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: it's great. So she goes out and does it. The
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: band jumps in and tries to play along. So anyway,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: it was just kind of a fun thing to do,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: inspired by Michael McClure thing, etcetera. So she was working
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: in the studio, Bobby new Worth came in, I mean, sorry, Bob.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Bobby Womack came in to pitch his songs for the record,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and so he ended up playing guitar on his track,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and then they started drinking partying. He's going to give
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: her a ride in his Mercedes. So they're in his Mercedes.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: She starts, according to Bobby well Matt, she starts seeing
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz and she's like, oh man, you know, turn around,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: take me back, take me back. I want to go
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: back to the studio. I want to go back to
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the studio. He goes back and only Paul Rothschild's there
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: the sunset sound and um He's like, man, and what
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: She's like, I want to put this down, Let's do this.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: So she just kind of does it as a lark.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Apparently when she died, you know, before the album was
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: completed and they were putting together all the sessions and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: different tracks and everything, he remembered that song that she
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: had just done for fun and she had at some
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: point called um out and spoken to Michael McClure to
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: get his permission to do it. And so anyway, he
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: pulled that and put it on the end of the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: album and you can just hear her do her a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: little cackle at the end of It's I mean, when
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: I think about those guys gathered in the studio to
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: hear that, You know, to hear that album must have
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: been How does end up cutting me and Bobby? Oh well,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Bobby new Worth, I'm telling you the Zelig of cool. Famously,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: we know him from being Dylan's buddy and etcetera. He
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: was kind of her aide de camp on the road
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: with her. He worked for Grossman, etcetera. He actually heard
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: that song being played in Grossman's office in New York,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and of course no one had heard of Chris Christofferson
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: and it was being played by Gordon Lightfoot, who had
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: heard the song heard a demo, and so he's like, man,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: that's a great song. Teach me that song. So Bobby
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: North learns the song in Albert's office from Gordon Lightfoot,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: goes over sees Janis at the Chelsea Hotel. Man, you
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: gotta hear the song, plays her the song. She goes
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: nuts over it. He teaches her the song, and so
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: she's this is in sixty nine, so she's still got
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: the Cosmic Blues band. She pulls it out and plays
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: it for the first time live in Nashville show in December.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I think it was a sixty nine, you know, and said, oh,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: this is from a guy, hometown guy. You guys are
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: gonna hear about him, Chris Christofferson. I haven't met him yet,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: but this is a great song kind of thing. So
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: then fast forward to nineteen seventy, Bobby Newworth finally meets
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson when he has some gigs in the village.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: They gone this crazy, as he called it, great tequili book,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: great tequila boogie, this wild tear, fly out to California
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: to the ghost. Let's go see Janice, you know. So
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: that's when she meets Chris Christofferson. They are just like
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: m two Texans brought together by song and attraction and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. He teaches her Sunday Morning coming down,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: which she there's a bootleg of her doing that in Austin.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: She loved his music, loved his writing, and I just
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: wish she had lived to do I can't you imagine
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: her doing help me make it through the night the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Sammi Smith hit. You know, Okay, so we've covered I mean,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: there's so much people can read the book for more details.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: But getting to the author behind the book. You've written
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: like sixteen books. What's your favorite book of the of
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: course the one I just did. Um. Well, you know,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: I love both my gene Autry and my children biographies
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: because to me, right, I grew up loving to read biographies.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: They're still my favorite kind of book to read and
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: to be able to pull off those books. It's really
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: really hard to write biographies, but then putting so much
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: of my heart and soul into it, I really feel
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: like my subject becomes part of my life. So I still,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: you know, with the ken Burns doc series, all the
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: gene Autrey stuff, I was like, yes, yes, you know,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I love it when they're getting their recognition. So both
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: I would say, both my gene Autry and my Alex Children.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: Why did Alex Children sound so different vocally in the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Box Tops in Big Star? Well, because he was, you know,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: sixteen years old, you know when he was in the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Box Tops and he was coached by Dan Penn to
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: do the letter in that way. He'd stayed out all
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: night having a little frolicking fun with his girlfriend in
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: a graveyard, drinking, smoking cigarettes. So he's had that rasp naturally,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: and if you even see him on some live things
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: from that period, he you know, he liked to drink
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and smoke in those days, so he had that kind
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: of teenage rasp. But you know, people didn't know what
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: he looked like. They thought he was like a forty
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: year old black man, you know, and that's why they
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: got to be on a tour with He had National
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: healthcare with alex children still be alive today, No, I
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: you know, sadly, that didn't really have anything to do
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: with it. Um. He was very actually pretty health conscious,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: but like most of us, he was afraid of getting
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: a bad diagnosis. His family had a history of heart problems.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: His father had a heart attack at a young age,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: his sister did, his brother. He had a fear, but
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: he also could have afforded it. I think he could
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: have because he was in New Orleans and you know, yes,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I mean at the end of his life he was
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: a money Oh yeah, yeah, because of that seventies show Baby.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: You know, he made a lot of money from that show,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: using one of his big star songs as the theme
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: song for that show and thanks to you know, for
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: three placements and then counting Crows. I mean, he was
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: getting a lot of props from these young artists, so
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: he was doing quite well. He actually bought this really gorgeous,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: expensive piano. He had a little house in New Orleans
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: and Tremay, and he he liked to live on the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: down low, but he liked, you know, a nice piano.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: But he could have afforded healthcare, but he did not
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: want to find out that he had a heart problem
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: and that killed him. Okay, so what's your next book?
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: How to sleep? That's obviously a joke. Do you have
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: any idea what your next book? We do? But you know,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I don't want to jink. Let's say you know someone, Okay,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: a couple of questions here, lightning round. Albert Grossman crook
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: or honest. He was a sharp businessman and an incredible esteete.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: So did he do right by Janice? Yes, he did
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: right by Janice. Okay, you've met a lot of your heros.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I presume who lived up to the rep Oh gosh, well,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I did get to meet Geane Autrey when he was
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: eighty nine years old, and that's kind of what led
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: me to doing that book. So that was an amazing experience.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Of course, I didn't know Alex long before. I was
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: in a little combo that he actually produced, called clam Bake.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: So that's how I got to know him. UM, as
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: far as most of my heroes, you know, you you
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: learned not to um expect too much. Johnny Cash incredible,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: UM and June Carter Cash getting to interview him and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: hitting it off by talking about the Carter family and
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: cowboys stuff. He was a big Gene Autry fan. He
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: ended up inviting me over to their house and I
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: you know, so that was totally lived up to my heroes. UM.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Patti Smith, you know, she was one of the reasons
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: I moved to New York as I She played at
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: U n C. Chapel Hill when I was in college,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: and I've never seen a woman like she was, like my,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Janie. I guess as far as seeing a transformative,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: you know, woman on stage and like, wow, what is that?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: You know? So I would say she you know, I
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: got to hang out with her and interview her. So
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: and then of course I love just kids, so so
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I'd say, okay. So, then you've written books about the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, what female performers are
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: not in who should be in? Oh? Well, I'd love
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: to see the Shango Laws in there. Of course, one
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: of their songs and the Choka Khan definitely. I mean,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: year after year she's on the ballot. She's on the
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: ballot this year with Rufus so, you know, and that
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: was kind of like Patti Smith. First it was the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: Patti Smith group, then it was just Patti Smith and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: she got in. So one year it's Choka kN Once
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: with Rufus. So I'm hoping she really really deserves to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: be in. She's amazing. There's some more pioneers that should
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: be in. Big Mama Thornton should be in. It was
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: so cool to get Nina Simone and Wanted Wanted Jackson,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: some other maybe more outlier in the public consciousness women.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: It would be great to get in some of the
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: other point. I think Patsy Klein should be in there.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: What about pat Benatar has nominated. I think that's great, know,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's an amazing role model and that she
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: had all those hits toured with her husband, the guitarists,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: and they're still together after all these years. She should
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: be in for that reason alone, I think. Okay, so
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: what do you think about today's music? I love you know,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I am a music Spotify Top fifty which is mostly
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: hip hop and pop. Well, you know, there's some hip
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: hop I like. Of course, you know, I gotten into
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: post Malone. I've gotten too little Nazacs and and I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: have to be honest. I mainly got into them because
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: they're cool. Nuty suits and the Western thing, you know,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: because I'm really into nuty suits. I wrote a book
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: called How the West Was Worn. I love Nudy and
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: the whole Ryanstone Cowboy look. Um. But you know, I'm
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: still kind of a roots rock kind of gal. I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: love the Avid Brothers. I love all those Americana bands.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: I love you know. Um, oh my god, what's the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: new guy? Oh? Oh yeah, I love Sturgill Simpson and
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I love the other guy, Jason Isabel and his um
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: partner is amazing. I love her record, which is really
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: outside the box. Um. I love Orville Peck. Have you
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: seen him yet? Oh my god, you gotta check him out.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: He's got a kind of Roy Orbison, amazing voice. He
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: wears the weird fringed mask. I saw him at the
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Americana Conference a few weeks ago. He was awesome. Anybody
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: you haven't seen who you want to see? Oh gosh, yeah,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: there's still alive. Oh that's still alive. Um, let's see
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: most of the ones that I wanted to see have
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: sadly passed on. Um, that's a good question of concerts
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you've been to top three? Oh my gosh, Bob, I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: hate picking top things. It doesn't just give me the
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: ones to come tomorrow. Okay, Well again, I would say
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: seeing Patti Smith and Chapel Hill in nineteens seventy seven,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: I think it was changed my life. Seeing the Clash
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: in New York City at the Palladium when I first
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: moved there in nineteen. I think that was seventy nine
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: or eighty change my life. Seeing the Jackson five that
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: was my first ever concert at the Greensboro Coliseum and
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Michael and I were close in age. That was an
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: amazing show to see the Jackson five. And somehow I
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: ended up like sixth row or something I was in
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: like junior high school. I don't know how that happened.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: So is there a woman rock writer sorority? You are
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: you a loaner or a loan gun person, or you're
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: part of a group. I'm a people person. That's why
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I hate writing. I like I love the research. I
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: love being out interviewing. I love hob nobbing with other
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: writers with artists. I love meeting people and talking to people.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: You've got the perfect job, you know. But you're a
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: great writer. Okay, thank you. So a couple of people
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: unsung that people should be aware of, a couple of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: artists that are on song. Oh gosh, all right, let
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: me thank oh boy. That's let's see who who who?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Who's not a test. It doesn't have to be the coolest,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: you know. Holly Williams um Hank William's granddaughter, Hank Junior's daughter,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: who was featured also in the Kinburns thing as one
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: of the talking heads. She's an amazing artist. Um I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: look forward to hearing her next record. She's not really
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: that very well known. Um Oh. There's a great band
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: from the Woodstock area where I live called the Mammals,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: which is um Ruthie Unger and Mike Marinda's band. They
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: are amazing. She's an incredible singer and they go out.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: They do a lot of the kind of Americana circuit
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: festivals and things. Okay, so you live in Woodstock, Yeah,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: well I live in Phoenicia, which is nearly right outside
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: of and so how how long you've been living there?
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I moved up there in the end of two thousand one,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: I had a little cabin in the woods up there.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I lived on St. Mark's Place in the East Village
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: for twenty three years. So I started needing some treats.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: We were talking, uh, you know before the podcast began
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: that you have a son at Wesleyan. Yes, senior in
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: the film program. Senior in the film program. So where
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: is his father? His father is probably his He's actually
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: as we speak, in the recording studio in Rosendale, New
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: York right now, working on a new recording. So is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: he someone we know? His name is Robert Burke Warren
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and he I met him when he was in the
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Flesh Towns and I was in an all girl punk
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: rock poka band at the time called the Dust for
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: a Lines back in the eighties. So we were on
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: some double bills and that's how we met. And we've
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: been together ever since. And so you're still together. Yeah,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: we're so together. That's why Pat's and Neil or my idol.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: Has he been married thirty years? Okay? So your first marriage? Yes,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: my one and only one. And he lived in England
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: for a year. He played Buddy Holly on The West End,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: that musical that ran over there for a long time.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Um my husband. I met when we did a gig
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: together out in East Hampton Labor Day weekend of nineteen
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: eighty seven and with the Fleshtowns and dust for a lines.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: So that's how we met, was an instant romance. Well,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, he's from Atlanta, I'm from North Carolina, so
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: we had that in common in our first date was
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: actually in New York City going to Sylvia's the Salt
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: food restaurant and to the Cloisters. And is your son
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: at Wesley and your only child? Well, I have another
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: child art, which takes up a lot of our time
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: and money, so I don't have any children. Jack is
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: our only his name is Jack Laaren. He's going to
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: be a great filmmaker someday. And he is our only
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: human son. Yes, he's our only human child. I'm a stunt.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: You're still together. That's great, Yeah, it's you know, it's
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I'm very, very fortunate. He's he's a great writer himself.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: He wrote a rock and roll novel called Perfectly Broken
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: that came out a few years ago. And he's a
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: songwriter and he's a great editor, so he reads all
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: my work. And gives me great advice. And he's also
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: a musician, so whenever he helps me get all the
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: music stuff right, and he's been in the recording studio
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: and many, many, many times. Back to this book, What
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: is the promotion? What are you doing to make people
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: aware of it other than this podcast? Your show? This
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: is it? Man? Well, actually, you know, these days, with
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the world, as we know, you
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: never know when you're going to get canceled. But I
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: think I'm going to be on CBS Sunday Morning. Really, yeah,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: that'll be great. How did that come together? Um? They
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: just said, Holly, come on our show. Well, that's not
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the way it works. Someone had previous Jonathan carp my
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster, and Priscilla Paynton, my
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: wonderful editor at Simon and Schuster. I guess they said, hey,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: you know, check out this book. And but I will
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: tell you a really cool thing because I was actually
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: on CBS Sunday Morning twelve years ago from my gene
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Autry book, and the guy who produced that segment was
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: my producer on this new segment. And it turns out
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that that was his first ever big
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: segment that he produced. So we just reunited in Brooklyn
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: last Friday for this already shot it. Yeah, I did
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: it last Friday. Okay, did you get a huge bump
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: on CBS Sunday Morning with the GENA? Oh? Yes, I actually,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and you know I was on Oxford University Press for
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: not exactly a powerhouse and the promotion. I mean a great,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: great publisher, but you know, not the super you know,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: big books, you know, get get this story out there.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I actually I think I made it in
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: to the Amazon top ten for a cop for a
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: couple of days. You know, it was either that A
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: couple of questions before we come to the end of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the feeling we can we talk for two we could,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: but you know, the the editor to what degree did
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: they either steer you or change your writing? My editor
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: was amazing. I've had some great editors before, but this
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: woman gets down in the weeds. I mean she does
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: the old school pencil writing comments on the manuscript pages,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: which actually I'm kind of old school like that too.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: So we did like deep, deep dives into the Yeah,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: and she I think really helped me elevate my prose totally.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: She i trusted her implicitly, and she was actually the
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: perfect kind of reader, because usually my editors are music people,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: and that's the main thing. Of course, she knew Janice Choplin,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: but she didn't She wasn't a music geek like me,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: so she was able to have this perspective. I think
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: that was really important for the book. So I didn't
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: go to the weeds too much or you know, usually
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I tend to write way too much. So she helped
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: me figure out where to trim and part that only
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: geeks like me would care about. You know. So, uh,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: the book is coming out. You're gonna be on CBS
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning. It's a major publisher. There are certain events
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: in the world not always planned to kick start another thing.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Journey would not be touring the world the way it
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: is today if it hadn't been for the last Sopranos episode.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: You having done this book, do you believe it will
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: kickstart certain things in the Janice Joplin's legacy. I hope so,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: because she deserves to be recognized as the important artist
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: that she was and as a college professor. When I
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: do happen to turn my kids on play, you know,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: ball and Chain at Monterey Pop for them on YouTube
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: or something. I mean, they are blown away by the
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: power and the authenticity. Yeah, her talent is palpable, and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: I think people today need that real nous that Janice
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: was about real nous and the way she was able
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: to touch these deep emotions that people are afraid to
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: let out. You know, she would let out her fear,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: she would let out her disappointments for everyone to see.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: And I think with this world we're living in of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: lies and facades. I mean, Janice was a truth teller
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: and I think we need people like her as role models. Listen,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: that's perfect. We need to end it there, because artists
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: used to be beacons, and Janice Chopolin still is. You're
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: bringing her back to like Holly, thanks so much for
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: doing the podcast. I can't believe you have me on.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I'm so happy. Thank you. Okay, great, Until next time,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: It's Bob left side.