before their time chapter two

seein’ it first here folks

2 Why so young?

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an influential singer, songwriter, and music arranger. She rose to fame in the 1960’s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and eventually a solo career before her death from a drug overdose. She was one of the most popular and influential singers of the sixties and is considered to be one of the greatest female rockers of all time. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin #46 on their list of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Further down in the ‘wikinfo’ under the heading of ‘trivia’the report mentions:

She once went on a blind date with conservative author and former Secretary of Education William Bennett. The link for this man, Bennett, reveals: William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative pundit and politician. He served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (or “Drug Czar”) under George H. W. Bush.

Now, that’s what I call a hot (and dangerous) date! From memory Bennett and his brother, Robert, are among the many unsavory characters featured in Cathy O’Brien’s Trance. The title, ‘drug czar’ also bodes poorly when we consider how Janis died. Oh, but that’s right, it was ‘trivia’. The shame about many celebrity deaths that I have looked into (even if only in a shallow way at this point) is that, too often, their deaths have been ‘kept quiet’ (and none more so than JFK but that deserves an[other] entire book in itself). Furthermore, the name of the band she was chosen (by manager Chet Helms-now looked on as ‘the father of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love’) to audition for was “Big Brother and the Holding Company”. Wiki says of Helms:

Chet Helms (August 2, 1942–October 30, 2005), often called the father of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love, was a music promoter and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the late Sixties.

Helms was the founder and manager of Big Brother and the Holding Company and recruited Janis Joplin as its lead singer. He was a producer and organizer, helping to stage free concerts and other cultural events at Golden Gate Park, the backdrop of San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967, as well as at other venues, including the Avalon Ballroom. He was the first producer of psychedelic light-show concerts at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom and was instrumental in helping to develop bands that had the distinctive the San Francisco sound.^[1] Helms died June 25, 2005 from complications of hepatitis C.^[2] He was 62.

One of Helms’ first partners (in crime?) was a fellow named Bill Graham which immediately made me think of the Masonic evangelist with the same name (except with a “Y” on the end of his billJ).

In February 1966, Helms formally founded Family Dog Productions to begin promoting concerts at The Fillmore Auditorium, alternating weekends with another young promoter, Bill Graham. As the concerts became more popular, inevitable conflicts arose between the two promoters. Within a few months Helms secured the permits necessary to host events at the Avalon Ballroom, an old dancehall located at the corner of Sutter and Van Ness. Big Brother and the Holding Company debuted there in June 1966 at the Avalon. Later Helms would get them the gig that made them famous, the Monterey Pop Festival where Albert Grossman spotted Joplin and offered her a contract.

Bill Graham, it seems, was:

… born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin, the youngest son of a Jewish family that had emigrated from Eastern Europe/Russia to Germany prior to the rise of Nazism. Graham’s father died when he was a baby. As it became increasingly difficult for Jews to survive in Nazi Germany, Graham’s mother placed Graham and his younger sister in an orphanage in Berlin. This turned out to be fortunate, as the orphanage sent them to France in a pre–Holocaust exchange of Jewish children for Christian orphans. …

A charismatic but often difficult personality, Graham’s shows attracted elements of America’s now legendary counterculture of the time such as Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and The Fish, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, The Committee, The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, and, a particular favorite of Graham’s, The Grateful Dead.

That is an interesting bunch of connections, especially when one looks at Janice’s youth and her attempts to escape what must have seemed to her, at times, the comparative comfort of her upbringing:

Janis Joplin was born to Seth Ward Joplin and Dorothy Bonita East.^[2] Her father was an engineer at Texaco. Her mother was the registrar at a business college. Janis had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, including Jim Langdon and Grant Lyons, the latter of whom played her the blues for the first time. She began singing in the local choir and listening to musicians such as Leadbelly, Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she was mostly shunned. Among her high school classmates was another individual destined for stardom: future college and NFL coach Jimmy Johnson. In a 1992 Sports Illustrated profile of his career, Johnson claimed that he gave Janis the high school nickname of “beat weeds.” Primarily a painter, in high school she first began singing blues and folk music with friends.

Despite the attempts to position JJ’s youth as characteristic of a modest home, the combination of both parents working white collar jobs would have brought a degree of comfort but would have left her little time to interact with them. Whatever her reasons Janis showed, even at high school, an affinity with “outcasts”. From my own experience this often signifies a desire for ‘more’ than the status quo seems to have on offer. It may involve a spiritual search and, very often, leads to experimentation with, at the very least marijuana and, more often a whole gamut of ‘illicit substances’. This, it seems, was Janis’ fate from very early. At university the trend continued:

Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended the University of Texas at Austin, though she never obtained a degree. She lived in a building commonly referred to as “The Ghetto” which was located at 2812 1/2 Nueces Street. The rent was $40 a month when she lived there. The campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined “She Dares To Be Different.”…

Around this time [June 1964] her drug use began to increase, and she acquired a reputation as a “speed freak” and occasional heroin user. She also used other intoxicants. She was a heavy drinker throughout her career, and her trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.

This is not a good way to treat your body-it is trademark of an unhappy, insecure person to be in such need of escape so often-I should know, I’ve done my time on the same substances. However, it was clear that Janis was waking up to the folly of (excess) drugs in the final years before her death:

Several months after recording the tracks with Kaukonen, however, Janis’ friends, noticing the physical effects of her speed habit (she weighed 88 pounds), paid for her to travel by Greyhound bus to her parents in Port Arthur, Texas. Whether she required medical assistance in her hometown at this time (April of 1965) is not known, but it is a fact that she changed her entire lifestyle, began wearing relatively modest dresses, a beehive hairdo and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Though she avoided drugs, alcohol and bars that she had frequented years earlier, she still corresponded by mail with a methedrine dealer she had known in San Francisco and still considered his proposal of marriage. Shortly after the man visited the Joplin household wearing a conservative suit and tie, charming the entire family and asking Mr. Joplin for permission to marry his daughter, the man broke off contact with Janis. Very possibly, this heartbreak fueled the pain Janis displayed in her music. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman.

Unfortunately, wiki doesn’t give a name for this San Franciscan “methedrine dealer” although the subtext suggests that his identity (and links) could provide further clues as to whom (and if anyone) was controlling Janis’ life behind the scenes. It is also interesting to note the ‘beehive’ hairdo. The beehive is a key Masonic symbol, in itself. Curiously, she enrolled in sociology, eschewed the old bars and was, at least outwardly trying to get her life on track (if all the junkies will pardon the accidental pun). Yet, there was this one, obviously influential, guy to whom she continued to contact. She must have known he too was bad for her. Maybe he was just as escape valve; a last resort if she got desperate.

Whatever the case it wasn’t long before she was back in the spotlight making a big hit with big names wherever she went:

Like Jimi Hendrix, Joplin’s performance at Monterey made her an international star virtually overnight. (The D.A. Pennebaker documentary Monterey Pop captured Cass Elliot in the crowd silently mouthing “Wow, that’s really heavy” during Joplin’s performance.)

In November 1967, the group parted ways with Helms — who can be heard introducing them to the audience on the Monterey Pop CD but not the DVD — and they signed with top artist manager Albert Grossman, who had become famous in his own right as the manager of Bob Dylan. Up to this point, Big Brother had performed only in California (mostly in San Francisco) but they had gained national prominence with their Monterey performance. On February 16, 1968^[4] the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day they gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968, the last day of their East Coast tour, Janis and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop at the “Wake for Martin Luther King Jr” concert in New York.

The kind of stardom we’re talking about is stratospheric and can be catalyst for fame and fortune but can be cataclysmic for others. For Janis, and others in this book, fame did them few real favours, imho (that’s, ‘in my humble opinion’ for those not internetting yetJ)

In August 1969, Janis performed at the legendary Woodstock Festival giving one of her most memorable performances. For 25 years after Woodstock, the only portion of her performance there that was available commercially — in either sound or picture — was a spontaneous dance she did with her band’s African-American tenor saxophone player, Cornelius “Snooky” Flowers, during an instrumental break. It is part of the 1975 theatrically released documentary Janis (film). Woodstock includes several seconds of Janis walking with her friend Peggy Caserta to the festival site in broad daylight hours before she went onstage, but this film — a box-office hit that Janis saw in a theater in 1970 ^[6] — omitted her entire performance, even the dance with Flowers. These omissions of her singing at the festival, along with comments from Janis’ devoted publicist Myra Friedman (present at the event) and from the post-production crew of the movie, suggest strongly that Janis was not at her best that weekend. At least one clean and sober audience member, however, remembered her performance fondly twenty years later. ^[7] The 25th anniversary director’s cut of Woodstock includes just one of her selections from the concert: Work Me, Lord. …

In February 1970, Joplin got clean and sober in Brazil accompanied by her clean-living friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer’s stage costumes from 1966 to 1969. Janis was romanced by an American schoolteacher named David Niehaus, also drug-free and responsible, who was traveling around the world. They were photographed together in a crowd at Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, where Janis’ only vice appears to have been a cigarette. Returning to the United States, the singer then formed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. Composed mostly of drug-free Canadian musicians who didn’t associate with Janis’ friends from Big Brother and its San Francisco entourage, the band included an organ but no horn section. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on April 4, 1970.^[8] Recordings from this concert were included in an “in concert” album released posthumously in 1972.

One can see from the above passage that Janis was truly coming into her own. Having emerged from precarious teenage and adolescent ears soaked in the hippie/drug culture, Janis was immensely popular with the youth who, it could be said, saw her as something of a role model-particularly the women. The next paragraph of the wiki-entry for JJ was rather intriguing in the light of the direction of this book, as well:

As with the hostile reaction of some reporters to her first back-up band, not replacing Linda said a lot about Janis’ tough position as the first wild woman who sang to white audiences. She didn’t know whom to believe when she assessed people’s reactions to her music and physical appearance. The feathers and clothes in 1970 did not showcase her cleavage or sexuality as much as they introduced new people, even those over the dreaded age of 30, to … the unique celebrity “Janis.”

The curious matters with this paragraph have to do with the under 30 phenomenon that Cathy O’Brien mentions (and that would fit in with a eugenicists idea of fair play), the assertion of her mental toughness and the simultaneous admission she found it difficult to know whom she could trust as well as the rather odd assertion she was ‘the first wild woman” who sang to white audiences. There have certainly been many since. What about, say, Courtney Love? No; her turns coming up in Kurt Cobain’s chapterJ

Apparently JJ died in a Hollywood hotel from a heroin overdose on October 4 1970:

Janis Joplin’s last public performance, given with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970 at the Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts. A glowing review appeared on the front page of the Harvard Crimson newspaper despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie performed with makeshift sound amplifiers after their regular equipment was stolen in Boston.

The last recordings Joplin completed were “Mercedes Benz” and a birthday greeting for John Lennon on October 1, 1970; Lennon, whose birthday was October 9, later told Dick Cavett that her taped greeting arrived at his home after her death. Joplin made an unlikely choice for the song she transformed into the birthday greeting for the ex – Beatle: Happy Trails composed by Dale Evans. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited the Sunset Sound Studios ^[13] in Los Angeles to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites‘ song “Buried Alive In The Blues” so she could lay down vocals the next day. ^[14] When she failed to show up at the studio by Sunday afternoon, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned. Full Tilt Boogie’s road manager John Cooke drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel (since renamed the Highland Gardens Hotel) where Joplin had been a guest since August 24. ^[15] He saw Joplin’s psychedelically painted Porsche still in the parking lot. Upon entering her room, he found her dead on the floor.

Just out of interest I thought I’d get the lyrics to the song Janis recorded for John Lenons birthday, as mentioned in the quote above. Happy Trails, a theme song for a Roy Rogers tv show, went like this (I couldn’t resist including the optional religious verse and Roy Rogers’ Rules, too):

Lyrics to “Happy Trails” by Dale Evans Rogers http://www.royrogers.com/happy_trails.html

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.

Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It’s the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here’s a happy one for you.

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.

Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.

Alternate Religious Verse:

Happy trails to you, it’s great to say “hello”.
And to share with you the trail we’ve come to know.
It started on the day that we met Jesus,
He came into our hearts and then he freed us.
For a life that’s true, a happy trail to you.

Roy Rogers Riders Club Rules:

1. Be neat and clean.
2. Be courteous and polite.
3. Always obey your parents.
4. Protect the weak and help them.
5. Be brave but never take chances.
6. Study hard and learn all you can.
7. Be kind to animals and take care of them.
8. Eat all your food and never waste any.
9. Love God and go to Sunday school regularly.
10. Always respect our flag and our country.

A really cool bunch of rules that John Lennon and JJ would, no doubt, have clung to all their adult life … notJ It seems Janis’ last known boyfriend was a drug dealer named Seth Morgan (http://www.jfkmontreal.com/john_lennon/Chapter14.htm) Well, well, well. And to think he had the same, unusual, Christian name as her father. (This last link led me to a fascinating study on the same theme)

Janis …

overdosed on heroin at the age of 27 while drunk on cocktails she had finished approximately an hour earlier at Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood. It is said that she purchased the heroin on Saturday afternoon in an effort to console herself when her boyfriend Seth failed to arrive for a scheduled date. ^[16] Joplin bought the drug from “George,” a large African-American man who made deliveries to her and other guests at the Landmark.^[17] The hotel attracted many drug users despite the fact that it was next door to the Magic Castle, which drew a very different crowd. George depended on a “taster” to cut the pure heroin with another substance, but the regular taster was out of town, and a substitute made the batch too pure. ^[18] The same batch that killed Joplin also led to other deaths in Los Angeles. ^[19]

More fascinating connections emerge from the above paragraph when one considers the very different personages that frequented Barney’s Beanery and the Magic Castle. I mean Barney’s Beanery had an infamously homophobic sign erected (fagots go home) and it is well known that the magic set love homosexual sex. An African american called “George” is blamed for delivering the lethal heroin however, it is more than likely the dealer was somewhere down the real ‘food chain’ and the mystery man Seth was involved again, even if only via his absence traumatizing Janis and affecting her judgment-quite a common tactic (traumatizing the victim) of ‘controllers’.

Whoever “George” the drug dealer was he (or his controllers) did not like the evidence being followed up as this, final, entry from Wikipedia on JJ’s life, demonstrates:

Upon publication of Peggy Caserta’s book three years later, someone connected with “George” knocked on her door and inflicted multiple knife wounds on the woman who answered. Though the book omitted George’s last name, it described his looks and speech patterns, identified places where he made deliveries by car and explained that his customers telephoned him, as had Joplin. (This option was uncommon for drug-oriented hippies in the vicinity of the Landmark Motor Hotel at the time.) Unbeknownst to the assailant, his victim was not Peggy Caserta but rather a friend of hers who had never used heroin and had never met George.^[21] The friend made a full recovery.

Unfortunately Janis, obviously, never recovered from her meeting with “George”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JanisJoplin60s.jpg

Now, from African American as ‘perp’ we move onto African American as victim: Jimi Hendrix. I’m sure many people, including Jimi, wouldn’t consider him a classic ‘victim’ but, for the purposes of the theme of this book I think he fits very neatly.

Baz