by John Glatt
After laying down the instrumental track, Janis took a couple of the band members to Barney’s Beanery, where she drank two vodkas before driving back to the Landmark Hotel with her organist, Ken Pearson.
“She had two drinks,” said John Cooke, “which for Janis was like very little.”47
Back at the hotel, Janis went into her room and waited for Seth Morgan and Peggy Caserta. When they didn’t show she tried to call them but was unable to reach either. Upset at being stood up, Janis shot some of the almost pure heroin that she had scored earlier.
At about one o’clock in the morning, waiting for the drug to take effect, she left her room to get change for a $5 bill for the cigarette machine. After chatting with the desk clerk, she put fifty cents into the machine for a pack of Marlboros.
Janis then returned to Room 105, put the cigarettes on the bed, and undressed down to her blouse and panties. Suddenly the full force of the pure heroin hit her like a lightning bolt. It knocked her to the ground with such force she broke her nose and was dead instantly.
And there she lay, between the bed and a chair, for the next eighteen hours.
At six o’clock Sunday evening, after Janis failed to arrive at the studio, producer Paul Rothchild asked John Cooke to check on her.
“Janis was most punctual,” said Cooke. “She had missed her time and wasn’t at the studio, so I set out to look for her with two of our equipment men.”48
It was dusk when Cook pulled into the Landmark Hotel on Franklin Avenue and observed Janis’s distinctively painted Porsche parked outside. He also noticed that the lights were on in her ground-floor room. After getting her room key from the manager, he let himself in.
“And there was Janis,” said Cooke, “except that Janis wasn’t there. I put a finger on the flesh and the spirit was long gone. And there was no question, Janis was dead on the floor of her hotel room.”
As the coroner arrived to transport Janis Joplin’s body to the mortuary for autopsy, three thousand miles away, Howard Smith broadcast the interview he’d done with her four days earlier.
“It was a five-hour live show on WPLJ,” he recalled, “and it was going to end with her interview and then a couple of her songs.”
Smith was packing up to go home when the 1:00 a.m. news bulletin came on announcing that Janis Joplin had just been found dead in Los Angeles. It sent shivers up his spine.
“And I’m trying to be quiet,” said Smith, “because it’s a live mike and the assistants and engineer all go, ‘oooohhh.’ We draw our breaths in because of the weird coincidence of what’s just happened.”
Back in San Francisco, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service were playing Paul Baratta’s first show at Winterland. It was being broadcast live on San Francisco public television, as well as in quadrophonic sound on two radio stations.
During the Grateful Dead’s set, word reached backstage that Janis had died, which was soon confirmed by a phone call to UPI. Baratta deliberately withheld the news from Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service, who had yet to play.
“I think we heard just before we went onstage,” recalled Paul Kantner. “Marty [Balin] was devastated. I know he went offstage and I don’t remember if he came back or not.”49
Baratta said that Grace Slick was visibly upset by the news.
“I think she felt a kinship with Janis,” he said. “It was a guys’ world. Grace was probably somewhat threatened by all the other ones that had gone down, but this was too close to home.”50
Jorma Kaukonen said Janis’s death was a huge shock to everybody.
“When you’re in your twenties you don’t expect one of your friends to die,” he said. “Janis was the first death of one of my contempories that was close to me.”51
Later that night, the members of Big Brother and the Holding Company gathered at David Getz’s home in San Francisco.
“We held a small wake for her,” said Sam Andrew, “and talked about her. We were all kind of numb [and] everybody was pretty high at that time. Pretty stoned. It’s just amazing it was her instead of us.”52
Peter Albin said he had not been surprised by Janis’s death.
“She was burning the candle at three ends,” he explained. “She was holding a match to the middle here as things were burning on the ends. She was just doing so much stuff and trying to work at the same time.”53
On Monday night, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead were back at Winterland. Marty Balin was still too traumatized to play, and a fifty-five-year-old black fiddler named Papa John Creach played his first show with the Airplane. Asked later why he had not shown up to play, Balin replied he had been “attending a funeral.”
Bill Thompson said that although the whole band was upset about Janis’s death, only Balin bailed that night.
“I always thought that maybe Marty had a thing with Janis,” said Thompson, “but he would never tell me about it.”54
Backstage, Jerry Garcia told a reporter that it was probably the best time for Janis to die.
“If you know any people who passed that point into decline,” he said, “you know, really getting messed up, old, senile, done in. But going up, it’s like a skyrocket, and Janis was a skyrocket chick.”
When Grace Slick was asked if she had a comment on Janis’s death, she replied: “Well, not really. Why print all that stuff about someone who’s dead? She’s gone, it’s done. I mean, I’m sorry she’s dead, but . . . you know. If I come up with any jewels I’ll send them to you, OK?”55
Years later, Grace spoke about her friend’s tragic death on a television show.
“It’s like a Russian roulette,” she said, “and you have to know that when you start it. Janis had a new record coming out. A new boyfriend at that time. A new producer [and] everything was looking good. She just decided to have a little more, because if this feels good one more is going to feel great. Two more may have worked last week, but it didn’t work this week.”56
The day after Janis’s death, Kris Kristofferson went to the studio to hear her recording of the song he wrote for her, “Me and Bobby McGee,” for the first time.
“It was like a very intense experience for me to hear her singing,” he recalled, “and it’s still very emotional for me because the song is associated with her. That line, ‘Somewhere near Salinas I let her slip away.’ You can’t help but feel you let somebody down. I’m sure that there’s not a person that really was close to her that doesn’t feel that way.”57
On Monday, October 5, Los Angeles County Coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, held a press conference and confirmed that Janis Joplin had died of an accidental heroin overdose. He told reporters that a hypodermic needle had been found in her hotel room, along with a red balloon containing white powder in a trash can. Some marijuana had also been found. The autopsy had also revealed numerous needle marks on her arms and an enlarged liver from drinking alcohol.
“We have excluded the possibility of homicide,” said Dr. Noguchi. “Suicide? There is nothing to indicate at this time it was a death by suicidal attempt.”58
That same day Janis was cremated at a private service for her immediate family. Her parents had wanted to transport her body back to Port Arthur for burial, but they later agreed to abide by Janis’s wishes to have her ashes scattered at sea, off Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco.
“God what a year this is turning out to be,” wrote Don Heckman in the New York Times. “As if the mass violence at Kent State weren’t enough, we now seem to be caught in an almost hypnotic string of personal violence. Three weeks ago, Jimi Hendrix, and now Janis Joplin. The king and queen of the gloriously self-expressive music that came surging out of the late sixties are dead, the victims, directly or indirectly, of the very real physical excesses that were part of the world that surrounded them.
“But I don’t think Janis Joplin would
want anyone to sing sad songs for her. Whatever her problems, she dealt in the currency of life, of right—here—and—now—do—it—baby—before—it’s—too—late. And how she did it all right, oh how she did it.”59
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“The Show Must Go On”
October 12 to December, 1970
On Columbus Day, Bill Graham held a Rock Relics Auction Show at the Fillmore East to raise money for peace candidates at the next election. It would be the first rock memorabilia auction ever, setting the stage for a multimillion-dollar industry.
Janis Joplin’s fur hat was to have been auctioned off, but the item was withdrawn so that it wouldn’t look like anyone was capitalizing on her recent death.
Among the items auctioned off from the Fillmore East stage were Joni Mitchell’s spiral notebook, containing handwritten drafts of all the songs for Song to a Seagull, which had a suggested starting bid of $200 but sold for just $90; Carlos Santana’s switchblade, marked “Not in working order, given up for peace,” which sold for $20.30; and a vial of dried rose petals thrown from the Madison Square Garden stage by Mick Jagger, which fetched just $20.
Other items on the block included: drumsticks belonging to Keith Moon, going for $10; a shard of a guitar Pete Townshend had smashed in action at the Fillmore East, verified by Kip Cohen as authentic, which sold for $75, Leonard Cohen’s tuxedo, $25; Miles Davis’s trumpet with his name engraved on it, $270; and a brassiere tossed to Jerry Garcia at a recent Fillmore East show, which fetched $15.1
“It’s the first auction of our generation’s future memorabilia,” said auctioneer John B. Thomas “Why, buying a Fillmore poster today is like buying a Currier and Ives print a hundred years ago.”
On October 30, 1970, Grace Slick turned thirty. Two weeks earlier, Grace and Paul Kantner’s much anticipated Blows Against the Empire had been released to a cool reception. Ironically, as the couple had used all their new material for the album, RCA was forced to release a best-of compilation, entitled The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.
The Blows Against the Empire album, credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, featured a who’s who of guest appearances by Jerry Garcia, David Crosby, and Graham Nash.
The album was divided into songs about revolutionary politics, Kantner’s obsession with science fiction, and the couple’s imminent new baby. Their collaborative song “A Child Is Coming” told how Grace had broken the news to Kantner on an “electric Sunday morning,” saying, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you. A child is coming.’ ”
The week of its release, Jefferson Airplane was profiled by the New York Times, with Grace singled out as its undisputed star.
“Grace is a beautiful girl,” wrote Times journalist Calvin Kentfield. “She plays the guitar, the piano, the Hammond organ, what have you. She’s thirty years old now, the oldest of the group. She clearly takes her work seriously, is self-critical, intelligent, loathes hypocrisy and puts people on mercilessly; in fact, even those close to her are not always certain if they’re being had.”
In the lengthy feature, Grace proudly recounted her unsuccessful attempt to dose President Nixon with LSD.
“Their concerts are invariably sold out,” read the article, “and young people with sleeping bags habitually line up the night before at the Fillmore East box office in New York in order not to miss getting tickets at $10 top.”
The profile also said that unlike many other top bands, Jefferson Airplane won’t play the larger venues like Madison Square Garden because of the bad acoustics.
“So they refuse to play just anyplace,” it said. “In New York, for instance, they play at the relatively small Fillmore East because it’s a beautifully set up place with great sound, and they decline to perform in Madison Square Garden where they would draw many more people, the acoustics are terrible.”
The profile also reported a recent late-night recording session, revealing the personality conflicts splitting the band apart.
“Ego were rampant,” wrote Kentfield, “everybody was mad at everybody else, every time they tried another tape each one tried to outdo the other. It sounded terrible.
“Marty: ‘Play it smooth and gentle, none of your cocaine jumps.’
“Paul: ‘You don’t like the way I play, you can get yourself another guitarist.’
“Grace went home disgusted.”2
On Monday, October 26, San Francisco’s rock elite gathered at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo, California, for a special wake for Janis Joplin. She had set aside $2,500 in her will “so my friends can have a ball after I’m gone.”
The Grateful Dead played at the “Drinks Are on Pearl” party, and then jammed with other Bay Area musicians for the all-night bash. One of the moving highlights was Country Joe McDonald playing “Janis,” the love song he had written for her three years earlier.
“People were coming out of the backroom going, ‘I think I just saw Janis,’ recalled Peter Albin. “I said, ‘Oh, man. You’re stoned. Crazy.’ ”3
Bill Graham brought along his Fillmore West personal assistant, Vicki Cunningham, and ended up seducing her that night and starting an affair. She would be the first of a long line of employees he would become romantically involved with during the next few years.
Kip Cohen said his boss spent so much time working, it was natural he would gravitate toward young women in his office.
“There was usually a crossover between the romantic relationship and that,” Cohen explained. “There were a lot of people who were staff but were also involved with him romantically.”4
Still several years away from the finalization of their divorce, Bonnie Graham was well aware of Bill’s behavior.
“And I know he had many secretaries,” she said. “[That] was how he had relationships. I couldn’t look at them and feel comfortable. It made me so sad.”5
Graham was still seeing his troubled girlfriend Diane LaChambre, who called his house one day and Cunningham answered the phone. When she told the teenager she was now Graham’s girlfriend, Diane arrived at the office the next morning in a fury. She then physically attacked Bill Graham, kicking and scratching. After ordering Cunningham out of his office, he wrestled Diane to the floor and tied her arms together with his belt to restrain her.
A few minutes later, Diane stormed out of his office and finally out of his life.
On November 12, a twenty-three-year-old English singer-songwriter called Elton John opened for The Kinks at the Fillmore West. Three months earlier, Elton had played the Troubadour in Los Angeles and received ecstatic reviews. Bill Graham had been in the audience, immediately booking him for four nights at the Fillmore West, followed by another two at the Fillmore East a week later.
“Big talent,” recalled Graham. “I overheard [him] and called and booked it. He’s the first artist that I can recollect that I liked that I booked him second [on the bill] into the Fillmore East ‘right off.’ ”
The Fillmore East staff were already prejudiced against the unfamiliar English musician because he had insisted on coming in early to try out the Steinway grand piano that had been especially brought in for the show.
“[We thought] this is pretentious,” said Dan Opatoshu of the stage crew. “Who the hell is he, Van Cliburn? So he comes in and sits down at the piano and goes through his entire repertoire. It was everything from the first two albums. And just everybody stopped. We’d never heard these songs before, and could he play piano.”6
Bob Dylan was sitting in the light booth during Elton’s last night at the Fillmore East to check him out. The four shows were a triumph, really launching Elton John in America.
“Elton John, a British singer-songwriter who is the current ‘most talked-about’ pop music arrival,” wrote Mike Jahn, “made his New York concert debut at the Fillmore East this weekend and proved the rumors were true. [He] is a writer of unusual force and imagination.”7
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In mid-November, Santana were rehearsing in Wally Heider’s Studio on their third album when Eric Clapton arrived to check out the fifteen-year-old guitar prodigy everyone was talking about. Neal Schon now regularly hung out with Santana, hoping to be asked to join the band on second guitar.
“We were in the studio messing around on some new material,” said Schon. “And Clapton stopped by because he was in town with Derek and the Dominoes. And we ended up jamming that night.”
In the middle of the jam, Carlos Santana arrived at the studio but was too stoned to play.8
“I felt really bad because I wanted to play,” he said later. “I’d just taken LSD. I used to take a lot of LSD in those days.”
The next day, Schon arrived at the studio to find Clapton had left him a note at the front desk. It was an invitation to come to the Berkeley Community Center that night, where Derek and the Dominoes were playing a show for Bill Graham.
As soon as Schon arrived, he was taken backstage to meet Clapton and the rest of the band, who were all zonked out on heroin.
“I got there ten minutes before they went on,” Schon recalled, “and everyone was asleep. They were kind of out [of it] backstage and I was like, ‘different.’ ”
But they soon woke up and played a great show.
“And [Clapton] pulled me up onstage,” Schon recalled, “and I played a good portion of the set with him.”
After the show, Clapton invited the teenager to move to England and join Derek and the Dominoes.
“It was kind of crazy,” said Schon, “because I felt like I was just about to get asked to join the Santana band. I had been hanging out with those guys for months and to have two offers like that. I was fifteen and I was like, ‘Oh, this is insane. Two great offers. Amazing offers.’ ”
