Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Cheap Thrills went gold in three days, with Cash Box calling Janis “a mixture of Leadbelly, a steam-engine, Calamity Jane, Bessie Smith, an oil derrick, and rot-gut bourbon funneled into the twentieth century somewhere between El Paso and San Francisco.” Fans started trying to get at Janis onstage. They wanted to touch her. When fame engulfed her, she needed even more testimonials to her greatness. She gave so much onstage, she got so much back, that Janis needed to feel that profound audience adoration twenty-four hours a day. When asked how she could sing like that, Janis always answered, “I close my eyes and feel things.”

  Big Brother must have felt it coming, but getting the boot from the chubby Port Arthur girl who auditioned in tacky short-shorts must have stung. Only Sam Andrew was asked to be a part of her new group. Janis played her last gig with Big Brother on December 1, 1968, at a benefit for the Family Dog. She premiered her new band three weeks later.

  The Detroit Free Press called her 100-PROOF JANIS JOPLIN, and Southern Comfort became Janis’s trademark. She carried the bottle onstage with her and held on to it during interviews, claiming that it tasted like “orange petals in tea.” In appreciation, the liquor company bought Janis a lynx coat, which she flaunted in grand style. But the Southern Comfort bottle was conveniently hiding her escalating heroin problem. Not that she thought it was a problem. In her most notorious quote, Janis told The New York Times Magazine, “Man, I’d rather have ten years of superhypermost than live to be seventy by sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV Right now is where you are, how can you wait?”

  Janis often shot dope with “Sam-O,” Sam Andrew, who OD’d after a triumphant gig at Albert Hall in London. That night she and Linda saved Sam’s life by getting him into a tub of ice-cold water, then walking him around and around the room. Janis herself was revived at least half a dozen times after overdosing on heroin. She was shooting two hundred dollars’ worth of dope a day. When Linda asked why she did so much heroin, Janis said, “I just want a little fucking peace, man.” Her favorite combination of booze and junk would prove to be lethal.

  Janis’s career was at its zenith: She did “The Ed Sullivan Show” and traded wits with Dick Cavett, all dolled up in her trademark beads, bangles, and rings on every finger. The girl nominated for “Ugliest Man on Campus” was now setting swinging fashion trends in Vogue and Glamour.

  Janis relished her time onstage, but the road just seemed to remind her that she was alone. Said her lawyer, Sam Gordon, “Sure, Albert was there a phone call away and the band was there for tunes and the wine store was down the block and there were freaks in the lobby for her entertainment. But after that, it was just a situation with four walls, a chick lying in a fucking hotel room with nobody and nothing.”

  The week she was supposed to be on the cover of Newsweek, General Eisenhower had the audacity to die, and an irate Janis told the British paper Melody Maker, “Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week! In my week!” Seven days later she did grace the cover of Newsweek, but Janis was devastated by the mean-spirited Rolling Stone cover story, which called her “The Judy Garland of Rock and Roll.” The Kozmic Blues sessions had started and they were full of turmoil. Band members were leaving and being replaced on a regular basis. Sam Andrew finally split for good. And then her beloved pooch, George, disappeared. Janis believed he had been stolen by a fan and pleaded for his return on the radio, but the dog was gone. The only time Janis seemed to feel good was onstage, but her performance at the Woodstock festival suffered due to her escalating use of heroin and alcohol. In Going Down with Janis, Peggy Caserta describes a horrid scene in which Janis shoots smack in one of the grotesquely foul mobile toilets before being literally carried to the Woodstock stage to sing. Her usual vitality and enthusiasm had turned into peevish demands and tortured tantrums. She played the role of diva-dervish, living up to her JANIS JOPLIN persona, which was so huge and overwhelming she didn’t know how to handle it. When the cops in Houston requested her help in controlling the crowd by asking the frenetic groovers to “move back and cool off,” not only did Janis refuse, she told the cops where to go. When the same thing happened in Florida, Janis cursed out the cops for the entire audience to hear, and was instantly yanked offstage and arrested for “vulgar and indecent language.” Janis had had a brief fling with Joe Namath, and onstage at Madison Square Garden she called plaintively for the football star: “Joe, Joe, where are you, Joe?”

  Peggy Caserta claims that Janis had a better time with Dick Cavett than she did with Joe Namath. “‘Guess what? I balled Cavett after appearing on the show,’ she said. Can you imagine? She started laughing then, and I wondered as she went on if she was making it all up. ‘You’d never guess it,’ she said, ‘but Cavett has a much bigger cock and is a better lay than Namath. Poor old Broadway Joe,’ she said, almost crying she was laughing so hard. ‘He was a disaster. He could hardly even get it to stand.’”

  According to her psychiatrist at the time, Dr. Ed Rothchild, Janis sincerely wanted to stop using heroin, attempting several methadone cures. He described her as “just intellectually bordering on brilliant … . One of her problems was that intellectually she was so advanced, and her emotions were childlike and uncontrollable … . She was unbelievably ‘on’ all the time.” Janis also seemed to have an alarming appetite for sex—always blabbering about who she just “balled”—and she couldn’t get enough junk food and sweets. She ate gooey pies and cakes for breakfast and washed it all down with Coke floats. Her weight fluctuated wildly from 115 to 155 pounds. She was a mess.

  The painfully soulful I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! was released in November 1969 to mediocre reviews. Distraught and ready for a life change, Janis made another sincere effort to settle down, buying her own home in Larkspur, a little community north of San Francisco in Marin County. With redwood decks and lots of glass, the back of the house opened onto a lush woodland paradise. Janis bought loads of antique furniture, Oriental rugs, and bric-a-brac. She started piano lessons, and to replace George, Janis rescued several mutts from the pound.

  Determined to kick junk again, Janis went with Linda Gravenites to the Rio carnival in Brazil, where she met David Niehaus, a down-to-earth fellow who didn’t even know who she was. After spending two romantic days with her, David announced, “You know, you look like that rock star Janis Joplin.” She felt he cared about her for who she really was, and with David’s help, Janis did manage to kick heroin. When Uncle Albert telegraphed Janis to come home and get back to work, she wired back, “No. And don’t lay that guilt trip on me.” She was having one of the only carefree times of her life. On March 20, during a press conference at her hotel, Janis declared, “I’m going into the jungle with a big bear of a man named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don’t have to be onstage twelve months a year. I’ve decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks.”

  At the end of the idyllic three-month vacation, David planned to return home with Janis but had some trouble with his visa. To make it just a little worse, Janis hollered at the official in charge, “You’re a cunt and this is a cunt country!” And by the time David arrived in Larkspur two days later, Janis was back in persona mode and back on heroin. What had happened to the vivacious, colorful woman he danced with on the beach? David gave the relationship a royal try but couldn’t stand to see what Janis was doing to herself. When he found her in bed with Peggy Caserta, he sadly left to continue his world travels. Her roommate Linda couldn’t handle Janis’s addiction, either, and moved out of the Larkspur house. This shook Janis up enough to take another cure, and according to her next roommate, Lyndall Erb, Janis managed to kick dope entirely But never booze—she was up to a quart of tequila a day.

  In April 1970 Janis put together a new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, and began rehearsals in her garage. Looking for the “real” Janis, she gave herself the nickname “Pearl,” which was supposed to embody her stage personality, but she seemed to have trouble telling the two apart. She even had a
fake voice for Pearl, a nasally whine with the vowels left out. Was it Pearl who picked up the pretty young boys, calling them “talent”? Was it Janis who threw them out of her bed in the wee morning hours?

  In the middle of rehearsals, friend Bobby Neuwirth dropped in with Kris Kristofferson, and an afternoon of knocking back tequila turned into a three-week binge that Janis later called “The Tequila Boogie.” Daily the trio covered the local bars and boozed through the nights, with Janis hanging on to Kris as if he were her saving grace. She was wild for Kristofferson and had a large fantasy about him, but he remained noncommittal during their brief affair. She did get a killer song out of the deal, “Me and Bobby McGee,” but once again Janis was left alone with her dastardly habits. The Full Tilt tour was kicked off at a party for the Hell’s Angels, which turned into a free-for-all that had a very drunk Janis slugging it out with a biker’s girlfriend after she lunged for Janis’s precious bottle. People who were there recall naked dancers and a couple having sex onstage. The only way the Full Tilt tour could go was up.

  There were a couple of disastrous concerts and Janis realized she couldn’t get drunk and perform. She cut back on her pre-show booze consumption and her performances reflected the discipline. The tour went fairly well, but Janis was unbearably lonely, often calling home to Port Arthur, complaining of exhaustion. But she needed the love that poured all over her from the audience, she had to have it. It was the only thing that could fill the gaping hole in her heart. The mood swings were unbearable. When she was happy, she was maniacally ecstatic; when she was sad, she was morbid. In her despair she ranted wildly, making up tawdry sexual escapades if she was lacking for horny anecdotes. She freaked out about getting old, insisting she was “ugly,” and why couldn’t she look like a movie star? She attacked and insulted her friends, she was tortured and missed the deadening relief of heroin. Myra Friedman observed Janis in a dressing room one night, reading a book on philosophy. A few moments later she overheard her saying. “Well, I have to go and change into Janis Joplin. She’s upstairs in a box.”

  After announcing her intentions on “The Dick Cavett Show,” Janis dragged three of her male friends to her ten-year high-school reunion in Port Arthur. What was she expecting? She had been misunderstood in high school, even taunted and abused. The slights must have grown to elaborate proportions and Janis probably wanted to “show them” that the outcast had attained megastar status. Decked to the nines wearing purple satin and gold-embroidered velvet, bracelets, baubles, beads, and the usual pink and blue feathers in her hair, Janis agreed to a press conference. Facing reporters at a long table, she grinned. “Looks like the Last Supper, doesn’t it?” When asked if she entertained in school, she joked, “Only when I walked down the aisles.” Somebody wondered if she went to her high-school prom. “No, I don’t think they wanted to take me,” she said, “and I’ve been suffering ever since. It’s enough to make you want to sing the blues.” I’m sure she was only partly kidding.

  Janis had wanted her royal ass kissed, and it hadn’t happened. After the reunion she took her younger sister, Laura, to a Jerry Lee Lewis show and introduced her to the legendary “Killer.” “You wouldn’t be half-bad-looking—if you weren’t trying to look like your sister,” Jerry Lee snapped. Janis slugged the obnoxious superstar in the face, and before hauling off and belting her back, he said, “If you’re gonna act like a man, I’ll treat you like one!” Janis was mortified and proceeded to get blind drunk. Instead of filling the hole in her heart, the trip back home had stirred up painful, shameful memories that wouldn’t be put to rest.

  The Doors’ producer, Paul Rothchild, had always wanted to work with Janis but had been concerned about her addiction. When he found that she had been clean for a few months, he went to some Full Tilt gigs and agreed to produce the record. “She was singing and I was enraptured,” he enthused, “because I was listening to one of the most brilliant vocalists I had ever heard in classical, pop, or jazz music. What a voice! I went, ‘Oh my God!’ All of the woman was revealed.”

  During the first week of September Janis and the band checked into the notorious rock-and-roll Landmark Hotel in Hollywood for the Pearl sessions at Sunset Sound Studios. An ugly stucco building on Franklin Avenue, the Landmark catered to a questionable clientele. Several of my all-girl freak band, the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), lived there for a while. So did Alice Cooper. Painted sunburst orange and bear brown, the lobby featured psychedelic swirls on the walls and a very tolerant attitude. The hotel’s manager, Jack Hagy, said, “It was Janis’s kind of place.”

  A few weeks earlier Janis had met twenty-one-year-old Seth Morgan and was falling hard for the dark, cocky, intelligent Berkeley student. His brash self-confidence enabled Seth to deal with Janis/Pearl’s superstar status, and since he came from an affluent family, for once Janis didn’t feel she was being used. She encouraged him to stay in school, thinking it would be a kick to share her life with a college graduate. Other than a few temper flare-ups, they had been living a fairly quiet life in Larkspur, reading the morning papers over coffee, strolling through the woods. She announced that she would limit her touring, maybe even get pregnant. Janis had even cut back on her drinking, and the couple were talking about a wedding at sea when she left for the sessions in L.A. The plan was for Seth to join her at the Landmark on the weekends.

  When Seth turned up in L.A., Janis was wrapped up with Paul Rothchild, listening to tapes and choosing songs for the album. Seth felt like an outsider and didn’t spend as much time with Janis as she would have liked. She wanted total adoration from Seth, but nobody had ever been able to give Janis the attention she demanded. When she discovered that Peggy Caserta was also staying at the Landmark—and still addicted to heroin—Janis was irate, insisting that Peggy find another hotel. But it wasn’t long before Janis was doing dope with Peggy. She had been clean for five months this time, and when she got back on the needle, Janis explained it away by saying she couldn’t drink and get to the studio on time. She said she needed to mellow out after a session and would stop shooting dope when the album was finished, no problem. She told a friend she shot junk again just to see if she wanted to do it anymore.

  Janis started out buying only fifty dollars’ worth at a time but was swiftly heading back into the trap. She had been back on heroin for a week when Jimi Hendrix died. To Peggy she said, “It just decreases my chances. Two rock stars can’t die in the same year.” To her publicist, Myra, Janis reflected, “I wonder what they’ll say about me after I die.”

  Janis had been getting herself a tan at the Landmark pool and had blond streaks woven into her hair. She visited her lawyer, who was drawing up a prenuptial agreement for her marriage to Seth, and signed her revised will: Half of her estate would go to her parents, the other half to her siblings. She allocated twenty-five hundred dollars so that her friends could have a party when she died, and before she left, Janis made her lawyer promise there would be a big party.

  The recording was going well, there were high hopes for Pearl, but Seth wasn’t around enough and Janis was desperately lonely. He was supposed to arrive in L.A. on Saturday, October 3, but there had been a heated argument on the phone and he said he would be there on Sunday. Saturday night Janis listened to the instrumental track for “Buried Alive in the Blues,” looking forward to singing the vocal the next day. Then she stopped at Barney’s Beanery for a couple of screwdrivers and at twelve-thirty was back at the Landmark, alone in her room.

  Earlier that day Janis had bought a supply of heroin from her regular dealer. She only bought from this particular guy because he was always careful to have his dope checked out by a chemist. Unbeknownst to Janis, the chemist had been out of town that day and the heroin she bought was four to ten times stronger than what she was used to taking.

  Skin-popping the drug, instead of finding a vein, delays the high for up to ninety minutes, which is what Janis chose to do that night. She then discovered she was out of cigarettes and went to the lo
bby and got change from Jack Hagy at the desk. He was the last person to see Janis alive.

  When Janis didn’t show up for her Sunday-evening session, her road manager, John Cooke, got a key from the desk at the Landmark and went to her room. Finding her facedown on the floor, John touched her cool skin, hoping it wasn’t too late, but Janis Lyn Joplin had been dead for seventeen hours. Her body was wedged between the table and the bed, her lip was bloody, her nose appeared to be broken, and a red ball of fresh needle marks punctured her arm. Janis was wearing only a blouse and panties and in her closed fist were four dollar bills and two quarters—change from the cigarettes.

  Janis under arrest.

  The police found Janis’s hype kit neatly put away in a drawer. They called her death an “accidental overdose,” though there was talk about suicide. “Some people say it was murder, some say suicide,” Sam Andrew tells me, shaking his head, “but that stuff is way out. One of the things about heroin being illegal is there’s no controlling the dosage. It’s amazing it doesn’t happen more often. You let it sift through the strainer and it gets real strong,” he says. “There’s such a fine line.” Janis’s supplier lost several more customers that week with his lethally pure batch of heroin. I knew one of them. I ask Sam what he did when he found out Janis had died. “I went out and scored some smack,” he admits. “We all gathered over at the drummer’s house, had some kind of wake. They scattered her ashes in Marin County off the coast. I didn’t go.”

  Peter Tork blames Janis’s death on low self-esteem. “She died with a needle in her arm,” he says. “It may be genetic or environmental or both, it’s hard to know. If you don’t have a sense of community or a higher power, then you blame yourself, think bad of yourself, so you struggle and try to divert. One form of diversion is entertaining. If you can make those thousands love you, you’ll be all right. In fact, it makes no fucking difference. It’s a kick when you’re onstage, but an hour and a half later it starts all over.”