It took a few attempts before Janis Joplin’s relocation from Texas to California became permanent. It took secret road trips under the cover of darkness. And visits by tough bikers looking to collect on a debt. But Janis was tough, too — tough enough to give out piece after piece of her heart along the way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Seven Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis. Janice Joplin died at the age of
and she lived the life that was restless, from Texas
to California and back again. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Twelve would be
the number of times she would implore you to take it,
(00:21):
break it, have it her heart in the span of
a four minute R and B single that she made
her own, and one that would quickly become one of
her signature songs. Two more would be the number of
bikers who came looking to collect the debt that she owed,
and one that she would have to repay some other way,
if not with cold heart cash. Another one would be
the number of Blues Highways she drove down as a teenager,
(00:44):
racing to beat the clock and to keep a secret,
the very same highway where Robert Johnson made a hellishly
good deal decades earlier. Three more would be the number
of guys caught up in controversy with her when that
Blues Highway drive turned problematic. And nine would be the
number of years she had left to live after she
stumbled upon Venice Beach in California. And got her first
(01:07):
taste of a truly beatn Nick lifestyle and culture that
was as dangerous as it was freeing on this our
fourth episode of season three, Debts, Bikers, Reckonings, Crossroads, beat
Nick Beach life in Janice Joplin, Walking a winding path
to Liberation. I'm Jake Brennan and this is the twenty
(01:28):
seven Cloud. The heart of Burt Burns was scarred from
(01:59):
the start. Unlike other R and B songwriters from the
nineteen sixties who used figurative scars in their verses and
choruses to communicate loneliness and desire and existential tread, Bert
Burns affliction was the real deal. Rheumatic fever was the
case that they gave him. It was he was fourteen.
(02:21):
The doctors didn't sugarcoat it. The damage the disease did
to Bert's heart was irreversible. It would prove to be
deadly one day, whether it was next year or ten
years down the road. He probably wouldn't make it past thirty.
But Bert Burns was a tough motherfucker. He made it
to thirty. Whitecoats be damned. Thirty felt like a new life.
(02:41):
Thirty felt like a new lease. If he could buck
the doctor's predictions and stay alive, then he could do anything.
He could be a songwriter, he could start a record label.
He could make hit records. So he did. Right out
of the gate. He crushed it. In the early to
mid sixties, he wrote or co wrote Twist and Shout
Cry to Me, Everybody needs somebody to love. I want
(03:02):
candy here comes to the Night and Hang on Sloopy.
He worked with Solomon Burke, Van Morrison and the Drifters.
He started his own label, Bang Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic,
and then he launched Shout Records for the R and
B material he continued to crank out. By the end
of the decade, he land over fifty hits on the charts,
like the death defying, scarred Heart, badass that he was.
(03:26):
But as tough as Burt was, he felt that he
needed help, help to be tougher. What he called in
his big guns. They were literally just that, big guns
strapped to the waste of give no fox, big guys,
capable men, qualified men, earners for the Genevese family in
New York City, the world of R and B music
publishing and production in the mid twentieth century was straight, cutthroat,
(03:49):
a high stakes game where anything went. Like many label
men muscling their way through a sea of competition, Bert
wanted to do what Bert wanted to do. He wanted
his word to be fucking gospel from his mouth to
God's ears. If he needed some well connected men by
his side to make his desire a reality, then so
be it. People wouldn't just be impressed by Bird songs,
(04:12):
they'd fear him. When Record Exact Jerry Wexler and i
ad Eric And tried to take over Bang Records, Bert
brought made man Tommy Eviley over to Wexler's office, and
they made it very clear that no one was taking
Bang Records away. And they made it even clearer that
no one fucked with Bert Burns. It was hard to
deny the whiff of goon muscle in the air. When
(04:33):
Van Morrison signed a comprehensive contract with Bert that gave
him control of everything management, production, label, publishing. Bert wanted
Van to sign it all, and so Van signed it all.
And then there was Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond didn't own
a gun, so when he needed one for his own
protection and to protect his family, he borrowed a thirty
(04:55):
eight Revolver from a friend, and the solitary man was
feeling real solitary, scared, paranoid. He told himself that he
wasn't acting crazy, that his paranoia was justified. Burt was
the one acting crazy. Neil wanted to release his latest song, Shiloh,
as a single, but Bert found it a little too
introspective and not bubblegummy enough. Bert said no Bert's word
(05:17):
was the word. The two argued, Neil stood his ground.
Neil said some things he would regret, and Bert up
the antie and had some guys come around to assist
Neil and seeing things Bert's way, and then things got weird.
Neil's manager, Fred Weintrop, didn't catch the faces of the
guys who jumped him, but when they were through with him,
his face was unrecognizable. Neil's mind immediately went to Bert. Next,
(05:40):
at a show at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village,
a smoke bomb went off in the middle of neils set.
Neil had the microphone in one hand, eyes closed tight
to make sure he hit the right note at the
right time. He was singing Cherry Cherry, and he knew
he had the ears in the room, right where he
wanted them. His other hand was outstretched towards the crowd,
(06:00):
that universal attempt at connection from singer to audience. But
when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see anyone. Didn't
matter how hard he tried to connect. The whole room
was full of thick, gray smoke. People were choking on it.
The smoke plumed and blew around the room as people
scattered from wall to wall, desperately trying to find the exit.
It was chaos. Neil thought it was burnt. So Neil
(06:23):
borrowed the thirty eight. He packed up his wife and
kid and moved them from their new place in Manhattan
now to Long Island. It was like they were in hiding.
And Bert didn't cop the mugging or to the bitter
end bombing. He pleaded ignorance, and he kept on writing.
He didn't realize it, but one of the last songs
he would ever write would be one of his most personal.
He went back to the thing that had defined him
(06:45):
most of his life, the thing that made him vulnerable
but also that made him tough, the thing that allowed
him to fear and love life simultaneously. His heart. Bert
wrote piece of My Heart with Jerry Ragavoy for Irma Franklin,
who is looking for her own hit to break out
of her sister's shadow. Irma was the oldest of three girls,
but her younger sister, Aretha, the middle child, got all
(07:08):
the attention. In nineteen sixty seven, all eyes were on Aretha,
a k A soul sister number one in ven Aretha
sent a slew of singles straight to number one on
the R and B and pop charts. Irma was there
for every step of Aretha's success, and despite being four
years older and a great singer in her own right,
Irma was often relegated to a hard to see spot
(07:30):
beyond the spotlight. She stood behind Aresa, She sang backup,
She played a supporting role. Now, Piece of My Heart,
that was all Irma. That was her song, the song
of an Underdog. The song was moving up the charts
in late nineteen sixty seven. When Bert's heart finally gave out.
He was just thirty eight years old. Those who worked
(07:53):
closest with him didn't want anything to do with his legacy.
They resented the way he had pushed them all around
and made them feel threatened. Jerry Wexler had no idea
where Burt was buried, but said if he knew, he
would visit simply so he could piss on his grave.
In a two thousand and eleven compilation of his Seminal
Years on Bang Records, Neil Diamond made no mention of
Burt Burns in the liner notes. It wasn't long after
(08:15):
Bert's death that Jack Cassidy, bass player for the Jefferson Airplane,
heard Piece of My Heart on ks O L or
Katie i A or one of the Bay Area radio
stations playing R and B hits. Irma Franklin single had
made it to number ten on the R and B charts.
It was early night when Cassidy heard Theresa, Franklin's older
supporting role sister, heard the ache in her vocal, the
(08:37):
way the lyric pushed her voice to the brink of collapse,
the pleading come on, come on, Come on, Come on.
He knew that this song could be the anthem for
his scenes little sister. It could be pure gold in
the hands and voice of Janis Joplin. Janice had shared
some of her original material with Big Brother in the
Holding Company, songs like Turtle Blues, but like many iconic
(09:01):
performers before and after her, and she was a singer first,
she was an interpreter of material. It's a fallacy to
say that the best quote unquote artists are the ones
who write their own material, interpreting material, making someone else's
song your own, whether you're a Wreatha ripping on otis
or Johnny Cash remaking Trent Resner. That's our two Piece
(09:21):
of My Heart would be one of Janice's earliest and
best known signature songs, the one that would introduce her
band to the world beyond the Bay Area scene, the
one that would break them into the cities that had
given them the cold shoulder in the past. But it
was also the song that gave Janice a glimpse of
life after Big Brother. It put her up front. She
was stepping out from the band's unified front, the unified
(09:42):
front of power. Democratic songs like combination of the Two
Piece of My Heart was a vehicle for Janice's voice
in Janice's career, and people noticed. Mama cast noticed, Albert
Grossman noticed, Clive Davis noticed. Most importantly, Piece of My
Heart gave Janice Joplin the opportunit you need to make
that climb to the top to serve a big brother
(10:03):
and everyone else is They remained far far below, an
opportunity that was all the sweeter because only a few
years earlier she had found herself at the very pit
of human despair Spring, San Francisco. It was late and
(10:49):
the only light outside the anxious ASP came from the
club's neon signed that buzzed above the sidewalk. She had
a hard time making out the faces of the men
who were walking towards her. She leaned against the outside
wall of the ASP, a cigarette slowly burning between her fingers.
She didn't know these guys by sight, didn't know them
by name, but she knew them in her gut. She
(11:11):
had a queasy feeling deep down while they were walking
towards her, and they were saying her name out loud.
You Janice, one of the guys asked. She heard knuckles crack.
One of them held a thumb up to a nostril
and blue snot from his nose. She tried to make
out their features from what little light the neon sign offered,
but they remained mostly in the shadows. She nervously looked
(11:33):
up and down the street, hoping to spot a random
pass her by, or better yet, a group of people
out for an evening stroll between night spots. But no luck.
She was on her own, and she was made. Janice
nervously flicked the cigarette into the middle of Green Street
and bought herself a few more seconds by letting the
cigarette smoke booze from the corner of her mouth before
she answered, Who's asking? She shot back, she had to
(11:57):
act tough. At least she knew this. She knew survival is,
she knew self preservation. She also knew these two guys
are there about the money, the money for the drugs.
She just knew it. She could see their denim jackets,
now saw their scraggly beards, tattoos. She knew they were bikers.
She didn't know if there were angels or from another club,
but she knew they were there to collect. She had
(12:20):
debts that had gone unpaid. And that's all. She had. Debts,
dats and a drink waiting for her on the bar
and side, and a spent butts slowly burning out in
the middle of Green Street, and a jones for a
fix like you read about. What Janice didn't have was
their money. She knew these guys were going to hurt her.
Her hands started shake. She thought about making a run
for it, just tall, ask down the steep incline of
(12:42):
Green Street, bang right on Stockton, maybe hide out in
Washington Square. And she sized up the two guys, did
some rudimentary math in her head and wondered if she
could outrun them. You got that money, you owis, the
other biker asked. They were right in front of her,
now so close that she could smell them bikers, smell
their gasoline and cheap beer. She wasn't going anywhere. She
(13:04):
knew what was about to happen. She'd tell them that
she didn't have their money, that she used the money
she made from slinging their dope to get her own fixed,
but that she had a plan for how she get
the money back. She just needed a little more time.
And then the two bikers would probably look at each other.
One would say to the other, she just needs a
little more time, and they'd laugh, And then they'd stopped laughing,
(13:24):
and they turned their heads back to face hers, And
then she knew what would happen next. One of the
bikers would hold her against the wall, the anxious ass
while the other one beat the ship out. In the
spring of sixty five, Janis had been in San Francisco
for two years after hitching west from Port Arthur with
her friends at Helms in January n It was her
(13:46):
second attempt at hanging out in San Francisco. At that point,
she was twenty years old. She dragged an autoharp around
local clubs and cafes. She played songs by Bessie Smith
and b Rainy, along with some of her own originals.
For some scratch. She played as a duo with a
cat named Jerema, who would go on to play with
Jefferson Airplane in Hot Tuna. She rubbed elbows with Bay
(14:06):
Area bluegrass groups like the Pine Valley Boys, the Liberty
Hill Aristocrats, and the Wildwood Boys, the latter which featured
a young Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. When she needed
more money, she'd panhandle on the street. She'd even sling dope.
She got into slinging dope by doing dope. First, her
drinking had gotten worse. Then the pills came to balance
(14:28):
out the lows of the alcohol, and then it was
matta amphetamine to keep the buzzed feeling all the time,
and also to stay up late and stay alert for hours.
It gave her enough energy to write, rehearse, create, It
gave her false confidence that she was in control. She
left San Francisco to haunt the Lower East Side of
New York City for a few months. It was a
(14:50):
drug fueled boondoggle. She hung out with the Aad. She
shot speed, she shot mess, she shot pool. Singing took
a back seat back in the Bay Area. She missed
a gig at Top of the Tangent paul Ato, she
didn't show for her slot at the State College Music
Folk Festival, and by her twenty second birthday, her addiction
was all consuming. She would later look back on that
(15:11):
time of her life and say, I wanted to smoke dope,
take dope, lick dope, suck dope, fuck dope. Anything I
could lay my hands on, I wanted to do it.
And the venues she frequented got wise Coffee and Confusion,
the Cafe, and North Beach, where Janice played off and
got burned one too many times. A typical night would
involve Janice showing up asking for her in advance on
(15:31):
that night's show, and then she'd bail halfway through her set.
She'd be found out at the Amp Palace or the
Anxious Ass looking for her next score with the money
she just pocketed. Staff at Coffee and Confusion put their
foot down. They put up a sign. It read, anyone
giving Janice drop of money before the end of her
set will be fired. At the Anxious Asp, Janice could
(15:52):
hide out with like minded freaks. Formerly a cabaret, they asked,
catered to the queer bohemian crowd. They played Charlie Parker
on the High Five and plastered the Kinsey Report all
over the bathroom walls. At the ASP, you could get
a drink and be who you wanted, flirt with who
you wanted, no judgment. You could shoot pool or go
to the bathroom stall and shoot other things, but still
(16:13):
no judgment. No judgment suited Janice Joplin just fine. It's
what she loved about San Francisco and also what she
hated about Texas. She'd been judged her whole life. She
wasn't pretty enough, she wasn't girly enough. She was too tough,
too vulgar. She was an outsiders, outsider. The ASP was
all outsiders, all people who didn't belong somewhere else. But
(16:35):
once she stepped outside the ASP, she was no longer safe.
She was an easy target, leaned up against the wall
on Green Street to those who were looking for people
like these two bikers here to collect on debts. Ode
Then the bikers stuffed their fists into her stomach until
she fell onto the pavement. But when she was on
the ground, curled in a fetal position with her eyes
shut tight and her emaciated arms covering her acting's card face,
(16:58):
they kicked her in the ribs until they felt sad
us five. Janice limp tone bruised and bloodied. That night,
she was out of it Gonzo. Whether she was high
on math or low on a Jones, she could barely
think straight. She had stopped performing. She weighed less than
a hundred pounds and was still shedding lbs. The one
thing she did know was that things had gone from
(17:18):
bad to worse. You know. She didn't get the hell
out of town and back into some sort of stability,
then San Francisco would be the death of her. She'd
waste away to nothing and no one would be the wiser.
Her friends rallied, They emptied their pockets, bought her a
one way ticket on a Greyhound bus headed east. Janice
took her seat against the window near the back of
the bus, leaned her head against the glass, and knotted off.
(17:41):
When she woke up, she'd be home, back in Port Arthur, Texas, skinny,
strung out and ready to admit defeat. We'll be right
back after this world word world. Jannis Joplin felt like
she had been put in Texas at birth by mistake,
(18:04):
like it was some kind of cosmic joke, just to
think Janice, so free spirit and free thinker, hitting away
in an oppressive pocket of America, way down at the
very bottom of the map, so far down that you
didn't even know it was there. Nobody knew where the
fuck Port Arthur was, and nobody cared either. And sure
her destiny would take her out west Transformer into a
(18:26):
pre eminent beat neck and a trailblazing rock and roller,
a liberator of women of peace signed tossing freak flag waiver.
But first she would have to navigate through her adolescence
in an upside down place in Texas. And if Texas
wasn't bad enough, Port Arthur was even worse. Sure ship
wasn't Austin. Janice just didn't belong there. She felt it
(18:48):
in her bones. Port Arthur knew it to Port Arthur
had her in its clutches. It knew she was different
and that she hated it. And for those reasons, it
wasn't gonna let go over so easily. Janice would have
tore herself strong as she ever was going to free
herself from her hometown and not just get free, but
stay free. Port Arthur was an oil town. In nineteen
(19:10):
o one, the spindle Top well in nearby Beaumont struck
black gold and gushed for nine days straight. In nineteen
o two, the oil refinery and Port Arthur opened and
quickly became one of the largest in the country. Oil
brought Janice's parents to town. Seth and Dorothy Joplin came
from Amarillo. In the nineteen thirties. When Seth landed a
job at a Texas company which would later become Texico,
(19:33):
he managed a factory that made shipping containers for petroleum.
Janie arrived on January nine, the first of three children.
As she grew up, she proved herself different in every turn.
She was a tomboy when the other local girls were
consumed with beauty pageant standards. She cursed when the other
(19:53):
girls spoke proper. She skipped school while the other girls
sat at their desks all day and listened to chalk
scraped down the black board. She championed inclusion and acceptance
while the city practiced strict segregation. She didn't dress provocatively.
She had bad acne. She was teased and bullied and
made to feel less than less than all the other
girls who dressed the same, spoke the same, sat at
(20:15):
their desks the same. She gravitated towards the boys who
accepted her as one of their own, whether that was
a sister, a fellow dude, or just an outside or
looking for refuge. Whatever she was, Janice was not conventional.
Fuck that ship. Conventional was boring, it was row. Conventional
was expected, It's what you were supposed to be, and
she didn't want to be when anyone wanted her to be.
(20:38):
Port Arthur obviously couldn't offer what she wanted. In high school,
she jumped the Louisiana border with other thrills, seeking friends,
and hung out of joints like Busters, lou Anne's and
the Big Oak, where R and B bands played loud
and the scene was packed. It was rowdy. It wasn't
uncommon for fists to be thrown around. In nineteen sixty,
when Janice turned seventeen and was a senior in high school,
(20:58):
she decided that she had to go farther. She had
a push, not just the little ways beyond Port Arthur's
bawn trees, not just hopped the border to nestle into
some forbidden jew joint. She wanted to feel real free,
more free than ever before, and freedom was four hours
away in New Orleans. She put together a posse of
(21:19):
guys who shared in her wanderlust, Jim Langdon, a trombone
player two years her senior, Dale Guthea of the local
blues band the booge Kings, and fellow classmate Clyde Wade.
She told her folks that she was spending the night
at her friend Carline Bennett's house, and then they bought
some beers, piled into her father's nineteen fifty three sedan,
and hit the road for the big Easy. New Orleans
(21:41):
served up mouth watering plates of liberation, the booze, the music,
the sex. It all spilled from the nightclubs and the
second floor walk ups, and oozed out onto the street.
Everywhere Janice turned, there was excitement, temptation, vice. Conservative Southern
values were turned upside down on their heads, and there
was life beyond Port Arthur, and it hit out in
the open in places like New Orleans. The trip was brief.
(22:04):
Janis had to have the car back by the morning
so that she didn't blow a cover story about the sleepover.
Her crew piled back into the car before the sun
rose so that they can make good time on the
four hour trip back to Port Arthur. And they took
Highway sixty one, the Blues Highway, the same highway where
a Mississippi Blue singer named Robert Johnson supposedly made a
deal with the devil right there at the crossroads of
(22:27):
sixty one and Highway forty nine, a faustian bargain that
imbued Johnson with hellishly good talent in exchange for his soul.
Johnson went on down to the crossroads, tried to flag
a ride, and there was no one else on that road.
It was just the devil of Mr Johnson. The devil
has to see his guitar, and Johnson held it up.
The devil was taller than Johnson. His hands were about
(22:49):
twice the bluesman's size. The devil held Johnson's Gibson L
one flat top like it was a child's three quarter model,
turned it around in his hands. He strummed a NIS
seven chord. The beasts dring was flat, the high e
was sharp. He put his big hands on the tuners,
brought the acoustic back. The E seven sounded rich, full,
pure evil. He handed the guitar back to Johnson and
(23:11):
was on his way. And then the devil came for
Johnson's soul when he was only seven. If Janis had
been told that the devil was out on the highway
the night that she drove her crew back from New Orleans,
she might have believed it. And they were barely outside
of New Orleans and the rain started. It hit the
windshield and fat droplets. They splattered and spun out into
(23:33):
formless shapes that fucked with their sleep deprived, beer infused eyes.
The blobby rain splatters turned the whole windshield into an
impressionist painting that Janice was in no mood to code.
The wipers struggled to keep up, and the horizon was
full of undefined shadows and figures and structures. They raced
past a man standing on the side of the road
thumb extended could have been the devil himself. For all
(23:54):
Janis knew. The headlights of oncoming cars became smears of white.
It was hard to tell when tail lights were superseded
by brake lights. Janice was attempting to make sense of
it all through half masted eyes. When she realized that
the car in front of her, a newer Chevy, had stopped.
She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
(24:14):
The man and the Chevy stumbled out of the car,
his hand at his neck. Janice was cursing a blue street.
They all were, all four of them inside Seth Joplin's car,
which was jammed up the ass hand to some poor
s obs goddamn Chevy on Highway sixty one just outside
New Orleans, and the cops gave Janice the benefit of
the doubt, since the weather was so shitty in the
(24:35):
accident wasn't all that bad, honestly, and the guy who
got rammed in the Chevy was probably milking it anyway.
The bigger issue was Janie's age. Dale and Jim were older.
They had driven across state lines with a minor, didn't matter.
She was actually driving the car, and the cops started
talking about the man, acts started talking about felonies, about
men praying on women, about jail time. Dale and Jim freaked.
(24:57):
Janice stayed calm on the outside, but on the inside
she freaked too. She knew she could clear the whole
thing up. All she had to do was call her
parents and port Arthur so they could explain to the
cops that the guy she was with were good friends
and pose no threats. But the ruse would be up,
her lie would be uncovered, the punishment would come down,
the judgment would come down too, and it wasn't just
(25:19):
her parents doing the judging. Back at school, the whispers
and rumors about Janie got Juice. Here, the bullying got
more personal. They said that Janie slept around, that she
was loose, that Janice took three guys with her to
New Orleans and had a full on, freaky dicky good time.
And the more Janice angled for liberation, the more she
was pigeonholed by the conventional Texas establishment. College life wasn't
(25:41):
any better. Later that year, she enrolled at Lamar State
College and Technology, and her parents insistence for her parents
it was a local and cheap option, something to keep
her close and give her a trade to fall back on.
For Janice, it was just another way for her folks
in the great State of Texas to hold her back.
One night, she embarked on another world trip, this one
(26:02):
to Houston, and she knocked back handfuls of pills with
copious amounts of wine and wound up in the hospital.
When she came to in bed back home in Port Arthur,
her parents seemed to finally be realizing the truism that
Janie had known all along. And there was Texas, and
there was Janice, and never the twain shall me. Jim
(26:44):
Morrison may have been the golden God of Venice Beach,
but Janis Joplin beat him to the scene by about
four years, and by the time Janie got there, the
scene was on its way out. But Janie didn't know
scene from Shinola. All she knew was California from Texas.
It could have been a wannabe scene, could have been
a moldy oldie scene, and she still would have signed up.
(27:04):
True to its name. Venice and Los Angeles was modeled
after Venice and Italy by a McKinney, a developer who
dug miles of canals to create a seaside resort town
replete with quaint cottages and palazzo buildings. Around nineteen ten,
boardwalk games and rides turned it into an amusement park destination,
but l a neglected venice, and by the nineteen fifties
(27:26):
the Coney Island of the west to become the Slam
by the Sea. Buildings were falling in canals, once flowing
with life, were full of concrete. The palazzo's, once home
to high end retail and bingo parlors, were now shelters
for homeless squatters. The rundown field of the neighborhood had
its own outsider charm, not to mention the charm of
its cheap rents, and it soon became a hot spot
(27:48):
for Southern California poets, writers and musicians, the fringe people
the way Gone Daddy O's. It was also ground zero
for a criminal and drug adult element which came out
under the blanket of night and haunted the funky stretch
of coastline. These were the shadow people, looking for an
easy target, a quick fix, a lucky score. But there
had always been a shady element in Venice. Illegal gambling
(28:12):
was rife throughout the decades, the business of sketch ragmed supreme.
Janice knew she was getting into some weird ship in Venice,
but weird was good. Weird was exactly what the doctor ordered.
The less it reminded her of home, the better. She
wound up in Venice in the summer of nineteen sixty
one via Brentwood, specifically the homes of her aunt's Mimi
(28:32):
and Barbara. Following her wine and pills fueled trip to
the hospital in Houston, she dropped out of Lamar. Her
mother wasn't sure what to do with her anymore. She
was always running off, getting loaded and neglecting school. Dorothy's
solution was to put her on a bus to California,
where she lived with her aunts and worked at the
General Telephone Company in Santa Monica as a key punch operator,
a now defunct job that was as monotonous as it sounds,
(28:55):
but out of sight, out of mind. First, Janice lived
without me me, and she soon got her own apartment
by paying the rent on time wasn't really her style.
She moved in with Barbara's daughter, but she never felt
like she fit in, and then she stumbled onto Venice,
just a long distance stroll down the coast from Santa Monica.
Venice was certainly not Poort Arthur. Venice was well rolled,
(29:19):
joints and barbiturates scattered in the sand. Venice was the
place to watch the Pacific deep blue. It's dull roar,
white noise for the soul. The rundown stretch of amusement
park attractions decaying like a faded postcard of some once
great sight of fabled Americana, cast off with neglect and
perverted by the underbelly that's scurried inside the husk like
(29:39):
a hermit crab. Those underbelly types supposed a threat to
the status quo. The thinkers, the talkers, the poets, and
the artists and the singers. They were too strange, even
for California. Janice sniffed out the strange. Beaten nix filled
the seats at the gas House, the main hangout for
the outsider community, were fringe figures like Eric Big Daddy
nor had hung out. The cops took aim at the
(30:02):
counterculture and at the gas House in general, even sending
in one of their own undercover to drink their beer
and sip their wine and infiltrate their status quote. Defying
group think, Janice settled into a squalid garage apartment at
twenty five and a half Brooks Avenue, just a block
from the beach. She sought out any of the Beatnicks
who were still hanging around, but mostly she found the
(30:24):
sketchy human detritus, those who have been left behind, those
who had burned out and were working on fading away,
those who had learned to lurk in the shadows and
the sunken cottages and crumbling plassos, and the shadow people
were everywhere, especially at night. Janice would let up a
joint and suddenly they would be there. The flame from
her match would illuminate a face that had been next
(30:45):
to her all along. In the dark, She'd sense a
shadow creep over her shoulder. The shadows had weight in Venice.
The wind tore through the broken windows of the broke
down palace, the ways of the Pacific crash to block away,
and those sounds of a once viber Seaside community ushered
in a spectral form. Sensing the encroaching shadow, Janice would
turn around and there would be one too, maybe three
(31:07):
of the Shadow People, maybe someone she had seen a
few nights before, maybe someone new. They had asked her
for a hit, ask her for money, asked what she
was doing later, and they brought around harder stuff, darker stuff,
the sorts of highs she'd only heard about, the sorts
of highs that she worried lead to dangerous lows. They
left the same way they came in, carried by the
sound of the sea. At the moment that Janice closed
(31:29):
her eyes and took a hit, she would open her
eyes and something would be missing. A few bucks, a jackets,
some sunglasses, and the shadow People did their grifting under
the cover of the night. And the more time Janice
spent in Venice, the more she felt like she was
chasing some elusive enlightenment that was no longer there, but
it was a gateway and education. Things weren't always what
(31:50):
they seemed, people weren't always who they said they were.
Life out west really was wild, like they said, but
wild can be dangerous, wild can be dead. Janice Is
first real time spent in California was the beginning to
other moments in our life, moments that would lead to addiction, deception,
and even the Paranoid, Watchful Eye of the Real Big Brother,
(32:12):
the FBI. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the seven Club,
all right. This episode of The Seven Club is brought
(32:32):
to you by disgrace Land, the award winning music and
true crime podcast that I also host. Disgrace Land is
available only on the free Amazon Music app. To hear
tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away
with murder and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince, Jerry Lee Lewis,
The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi B and many
many more. Go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land,
(32:54):
or if you have an Echo device, just say hey
Alexa play. The disgrace Land podcast of the Club is
hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Landi
is the lead writer and co producer. Not voting mixes
the show. Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraaker
and Henry Anna. The twenty seven Club is produced by
myself for Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio.
(33:16):
Sources for this episode are available at double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page weekly every Thursday.
Our previous season's on Jimmie Hendricks and Jim Morrison are
available for you to binge right now wherever you get
your podcasts and if you'd like you here, Please be
sure to find and follow the twenty seven Club on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherevery game shows.
(33:38):
And if you like to win a free twenty seven
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leave a review for twenty seven Club on Apple podcasts
or hashtag subscribe to twenty seven Club on social media
and we'll pick two winners each week and announce them
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Do that a fall, So get out there and spread
(33:58):
the word about the twenty seven Club. You can talk
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pod Rock Corolla. What's up for your is
The Seven Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis. Janice Joplin died at the age of
and she lived the life that was restless, from Texas
to California and back again. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Twelve would be
the number of times she would implore you to take it,
(00:21):
break it, have it her heart in the span of
a four minute R and B single that she made
her own, and one that would quickly become one of
her signature songs. Two more would be the number of
bikers who came looking to collect the debt that she owed,
and one that she would have to repay some other way,
if not with cold heart cash. Another one would be
the number of Blues Highways she drove down as a teenager,
(00:44):
racing to beat the clock and to keep a secret,
the very same highway where Robert Johnson made a hellishly
good deal decades earlier. Three more would be the number
of guys caught up in controversy with her when that
Blues Highway drive turned problematic. And nine would be the
number of years she had left to live after she
stumbled upon Venice Beach in California. And got her first
(01:07):
taste of a truly beatn Nick lifestyle and culture that
was as dangerous as it was freeing on this our
fourth episode of season three, Debts, Bikers, Reckonings, Crossroads, beat
Nick Beach life in Janice Joplin, Walking a winding path
to Liberation. I'm Jake Brennan and this is the twenty
(01:28):
seven Cloud. The heart of Burt Burns was scarred from
(01:59):
the start. Unlike other R and B songwriters from the
nineteen sixties who used figurative scars in their verses and
choruses to communicate loneliness and desire and existential tread, Bert
Burns affliction was the real deal. Rheumatic fever was the
case that they gave him. It was he was fourteen.
(02:21):
The doctors didn't sugarcoat it. The damage the disease did
to Bert's heart was irreversible. It would prove to be
deadly one day, whether it was next year or ten
years down the road. He probably wouldn't make it past thirty.
But Bert Burns was a tough motherfucker. He made it
to thirty. Whitecoats be damned. Thirty felt like a new life.
(02:41):
Thirty felt like a new lease. If he could buck
the doctor's predictions and stay alive, then he could do anything.
He could be a songwriter, he could start a record label.
He could make hit records. So he did. Right out
of the gate. He crushed it. In the early to
mid sixties, he wrote or co wrote Twist and Shout
Cry to Me, Everybody needs somebody to love. I want
(03:02):
candy here comes to the Night and Hang on Sloopy.
He worked with Solomon Burke, Van Morrison and the Drifters.
He started his own label, Bang Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic,
and then he launched Shout Records for the R and
B material he continued to crank out. By the end
of the decade, he land over fifty hits on the charts,
like the death defying, scarred Heart, badass that he was.
(03:26):
But as tough as Burt was, he felt that he
needed help, help to be tougher. What he called in
his big guns. They were literally just that, big guns
strapped to the waste of give no fox, big guys,
capable men, qualified men, earners for the Genevese family in
New York City, the world of R and B music
publishing and production in the mid twentieth century was straight, cutthroat,
(03:49):
a high stakes game where anything went. Like many label
men muscling their way through a sea of competition, Bert
wanted to do what Bert wanted to do. He wanted
his word to be fucking gospel from his mouth to
God's ears. If he needed some well connected men by
his side to make his desire a reality, then so
be it. People wouldn't just be impressed by Bird songs,
(04:12):
they'd fear him. When Record Exact Jerry Wexler and i
ad Eric And tried to take over Bang Records, Bert
brought made man Tommy Eviley over to Wexler's office, and
they made it very clear that no one was taking
Bang Records away. And they made it even clearer that
no one fucked with Bert Burns. It was hard to
deny the whiff of goon muscle in the air. When
(04:33):
Van Morrison signed a comprehensive contract with Bert that gave
him control of everything management, production, label, publishing. Bert wanted
Van to sign it all, and so Van signed it all.
And then there was Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond didn't own
a gun, so when he needed one for his own
protection and to protect his family, he borrowed a thirty
(04:55):
eight Revolver from a friend, and the solitary man was
feeling real solitary, scared, paranoid. He told himself that he
wasn't acting crazy, that his paranoia was justified. Burt was
the one acting crazy. Neil wanted to release his latest song, Shiloh,
as a single, but Bert found it a little too
introspective and not bubblegummy enough. Bert said no Bert's word
(05:17):
was the word. The two argued, Neil stood his ground.
Neil said some things he would regret, and Bert up
the antie and had some guys come around to assist
Neil and seeing things Bert's way, and then things got weird.
Neil's manager, Fred Weintrop, didn't catch the faces of the
guys who jumped him, but when they were through with him,
his face was unrecognizable. Neil's mind immediately went to Bert. Next,
(05:40):
at a show at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village,
a smoke bomb went off in the middle of neils set.
Neil had the microphone in one hand, eyes closed tight
to make sure he hit the right note at the
right time. He was singing Cherry Cherry, and he knew
he had the ears in the room, right where he
wanted them. His other hand was outstretched towards the crowd,
(06:00):
that universal attempt at connection from singer to audience. But
when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see anyone. Didn't
matter how hard he tried to connect. The whole room
was full of thick, gray smoke. People were choking on it.
The smoke plumed and blew around the room as people
scattered from wall to wall, desperately trying to find the exit.
It was chaos. Neil thought it was burnt. So Neil
(06:23):
borrowed the thirty eight. He packed up his wife and
kid and moved them from their new place in Manhattan
now to Long Island. It was like they were in hiding.
And Bert didn't cop the mugging or to the bitter
end bombing. He pleaded ignorance, and he kept on writing.
He didn't realize it, but one of the last songs
he would ever write would be one of his most personal.
He went back to the thing that had defined him
(06:45):
most of his life, the thing that made him vulnerable
but also that made him tough, the thing that allowed
him to fear and love life simultaneously. His heart. Bert
wrote piece of My Heart with Jerry Ragavoy for Irma Franklin,
who is looking for her own hit to break out
of her sister's shadow. Irma was the oldest of three girls,
but her younger sister, Aretha, the middle child, got all
(07:08):
the attention. In nineteen sixty seven, all eyes were on Aretha,
a k A soul sister number one in ven Aretha
sent a slew of singles straight to number one on
the R and B and pop charts. Irma was there
for every step of Aretha's success, and despite being four
years older and a great singer in her own right,
Irma was often relegated to a hard to see spot
(07:30):
beyond the spotlight. She stood behind Aresa, She sang backup,
She played a supporting role. Now, Piece of My Heart,
that was all Irma. That was her song, the song
of an Underdog. The song was moving up the charts
in late nineteen sixty seven. When Bert's heart finally gave out.
He was just thirty eight years old. Those who worked
(07:53):
closest with him didn't want anything to do with his legacy.
They resented the way he had pushed them all around
and made them feel threatened. Jerry Wexler had no idea
where Burt was buried, but said if he knew, he
would visit simply so he could piss on his grave.
In a two thousand and eleven compilation of his Seminal
Years on Bang Records, Neil Diamond made no mention of
Burt Burns in the liner notes. It wasn't long after
(08:15):
Bert's death that Jack Cassidy, bass player for the Jefferson Airplane,
heard Piece of My Heart on ks O L or
Katie i A or one of the Bay Area radio
stations playing R and B hits. Irma Franklin single had
made it to number ten on the R and B charts.
It was early night when Cassidy heard Theresa, Franklin's older
supporting role sister, heard the ache in her vocal, the
(08:37):
way the lyric pushed her voice to the brink of collapse,
the pleading come on, come on, Come on, Come on.
He knew that this song could be the anthem for
his scenes little sister. It could be pure gold in
the hands and voice of Janis Joplin. Janice had shared
some of her original material with Big Brother in the
Holding Company, songs like Turtle Blues, but like many iconic
(09:01):
performers before and after her, and she was a singer first,
she was an interpreter of material. It's a fallacy to
say that the best quote unquote artists are the ones
who write their own material, interpreting material, making someone else's
song your own, whether you're a Wreatha ripping on otis
or Johnny Cash remaking Trent Resner. That's our two Piece
(09:21):
of My Heart would be one of Janice's earliest and
best known signature songs, the one that would introduce her
band to the world beyond the Bay Area scene, the
one that would break them into the cities that had
given them the cold shoulder in the past. But it
was also the song that gave Janice a glimpse of
life after Big Brother. It put her up front. She
was stepping out from the band's unified front, the unified
(09:42):
front of power. Democratic songs like combination of the Two
Piece of My Heart was a vehicle for Janice's voice
in Janice's career, and people noticed. Mama cast noticed, Albert
Grossman noticed, Clive Davis noticed. Most importantly, Piece of My
Heart gave Janice Joplin the opportunit you need to make
that climb to the top to serve a big brother
(10:03):
and everyone else is They remained far far below, an
opportunity that was all the sweeter because only a few
years earlier she had found herself at the very pit
of human despair Spring, San Francisco. It was late and
(10:49):
the only light outside the anxious ASP came from the
club's neon signed that buzzed above the sidewalk. She had
a hard time making out the faces of the men
who were walking towards her. She leaned against the outside
wall of the ASP, a cigarette slowly burning between her fingers.
She didn't know these guys by sight, didn't know them
by name, but she knew them in her gut. She
(11:11):
had a queasy feeling deep down while they were walking
towards her, and they were saying her name out loud.
You Janice, one of the guys asked. She heard knuckles crack.
One of them held a thumb up to a nostril
and blue snot from his nose. She tried to make
out their features from what little light the neon sign offered,
but they remained mostly in the shadows. She nervously looked
(11:33):
up and down the street, hoping to spot a random
pass her by, or better yet, a group of people
out for an evening stroll between night spots. But no luck.
She was on her own, and she was made. Janice
nervously flicked the cigarette into the middle of Green Street
and bought herself a few more seconds by letting the
cigarette smoke booze from the corner of her mouth before
she answered, Who's asking? She shot back, she had to
(11:57):
act tough. At least she knew this. She knew survival is,
she knew self preservation. She also knew these two guys
are there about the money, the money for the drugs.
She just knew it. She could see their denim jackets,
now saw their scraggly beards, tattoos. She knew they were bikers.
She didn't know if there were angels or from another club,
but she knew they were there to collect. She had
(12:20):
debts that had gone unpaid. And that's all. She had. Debts,
dats and a drink waiting for her on the bar
and side, and a spent butts slowly burning out in
the middle of Green Street, and a jones for a
fix like you read about. What Janice didn't have was
their money. She knew these guys were going to hurt her.
Her hands started shake. She thought about making a run
for it, just tall, ask down the steep incline of
(12:42):
Green Street, bang right on Stockton, maybe hide out in
Washington Square. And she sized up the two guys, did
some rudimentary math in her head and wondered if she
could outrun them. You got that money, you owis, the
other biker asked. They were right in front of her,
now so close that she could smell them bikers, smell
their gasoline and cheap beer. She wasn't going anywhere. She
(13:04):
knew what was about to happen. She'd tell them that
she didn't have their money, that she used the money
she made from slinging their dope to get her own fixed,
but that she had a plan for how she get
the money back. She just needed a little more time.
And then the two bikers would probably look at each other.
One would say to the other, she just needs a
little more time, and they'd laugh, And then they'd stopped laughing,
(13:24):
and they turned their heads back to face hers, And
then she knew what would happen next. One of the
bikers would hold her against the wall, the anxious ass
while the other one beat the ship out. In the
spring of sixty five, Janis had been in San Francisco
for two years after hitching west from Port Arthur with
her friends at Helms in January n It was her
(13:46):
second attempt at hanging out in San Francisco. At that point,
she was twenty years old. She dragged an autoharp around
local clubs and cafes. She played songs by Bessie Smith
and b Rainy, along with some of her own originals.
For some scratch. She played as a duo with a
cat named Jerema, who would go on to play with
Jefferson Airplane in Hot Tuna. She rubbed elbows with Bay
(14:06):
Area bluegrass groups like the Pine Valley Boys, the Liberty
Hill Aristocrats, and the Wildwood Boys, the latter which featured
a young Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. When she needed
more money, she'd panhandle on the street. She'd even sling dope.
She got into slinging dope by doing dope. First, her
drinking had gotten worse. Then the pills came to balance
(14:28):
out the lows of the alcohol, and then it was
matta amphetamine to keep the buzzed feeling all the time,
and also to stay up late and stay alert for hours.
It gave her enough energy to write, rehearse, create, It
gave her false confidence that she was in control. She
left San Francisco to haunt the Lower East Side of
New York City for a few months. It was a
(14:50):
drug fueled boondoggle. She hung out with the Aad. She
shot speed, she shot mess, she shot pool. Singing took
a back seat back in the Bay Area. She missed
a gig at Top of the Tangent paul Ato, she
didn't show for her slot at the State College Music
Folk Festival, and by her twenty second birthday, her addiction
was all consuming. She would later look back on that
(15:11):
time of her life and say, I wanted to smoke dope,
take dope, lick dope, suck dope, fuck dope. Anything I
could lay my hands on, I wanted to do it.
And the venues she frequented got wise Coffee and Confusion,
the Cafe, and North Beach, where Janice played off and
got burned one too many times. A typical night would
involve Janice showing up asking for her in advance on
(15:31):
that night's show, and then she'd bail halfway through her set.
She'd be found out at the Amp Palace or the
Anxious Ass looking for her next score with the money
she just pocketed. Staff at Coffee and Confusion put their
foot down. They put up a sign. It read, anyone
giving Janice drop of money before the end of her
set will be fired. At the Anxious Asp, Janice could
(15:52):
hide out with like minded freaks. Formerly a cabaret, they asked,
catered to the queer bohemian crowd. They played Charlie Parker
on the High Five and plastered the Kinsey Report all
over the bathroom walls. At the ASP, you could get
a drink and be who you wanted, flirt with who
you wanted, no judgment. You could shoot pool or go
to the bathroom stall and shoot other things, but still
(16:13):
no judgment. No judgment suited Janice Joplin just fine. It's
what she loved about San Francisco and also what she
hated about Texas. She'd been judged her whole life. She
wasn't pretty enough, she wasn't girly enough. She was too tough,
too vulgar. She was an outsiders, outsider. The ASP was
all outsiders, all people who didn't belong somewhere else. But
(16:35):
once she stepped outside the ASP, she was no longer safe.
She was an easy target, leaned up against the wall
on Green Street to those who were looking for people
like these two bikers here to collect on debts. Ode
Then the bikers stuffed their fists into her stomach until
she fell onto the pavement. But when she was on
the ground, curled in a fetal position with her eyes
shut tight and her emaciated arms covering her acting's card face,
(16:58):
they kicked her in the ribs until they felt sad
us five. Janice limp tone bruised and bloodied. That night,
she was out of it Gonzo. Whether she was high
on math or low on a Jones, she could barely
think straight. She had stopped performing. She weighed less than
a hundred pounds and was still shedding lbs. The one
thing she did know was that things had gone from
(17:18):
bad to worse. You know. She didn't get the hell
out of town and back into some sort of stability,
then San Francisco would be the death of her. She'd
waste away to nothing and no one would be the wiser.
Her friends rallied, They emptied their pockets, bought her a
one way ticket on a Greyhound bus headed east. Janice
took her seat against the window near the back of
the bus, leaned her head against the glass, and knotted off.
(17:41):
When she woke up, she'd be home, back in Port Arthur, Texas, skinny,
strung out and ready to admit defeat. We'll be right
back after this world word world. Jannis Joplin felt like
she had been put in Texas at birth by mistake,
(18:04):
like it was some kind of cosmic joke, just to
think Janice, so free spirit and free thinker, hitting away
in an oppressive pocket of America, way down at the
very bottom of the map, so far down that you
didn't even know it was there. Nobody knew where the
fuck Port Arthur was, and nobody cared either. And sure
her destiny would take her out west Transformer into a
(18:26):
pre eminent beat neck and a trailblazing rock and roller,
a liberator of women of peace signed tossing freak flag waiver.
But first she would have to navigate through her adolescence
in an upside down place in Texas. And if Texas
wasn't bad enough, Port Arthur was even worse. Sure ship
wasn't Austin. Janice just didn't belong there. She felt it
(18:48):
in her bones. Port Arthur knew it to Port Arthur
had her in its clutches. It knew she was different
and that she hated it. And for those reasons, it
wasn't gonna let go over so easily. Janice would have
tore herself strong as she ever was going to free
herself from her hometown and not just get free, but
stay free. Port Arthur was an oil town. In nineteen
(19:10):
o one, the spindle Top well in nearby Beaumont struck
black gold and gushed for nine days straight. In nineteen
o two, the oil refinery and Port Arthur opened and
quickly became one of the largest in the country. Oil
brought Janice's parents to town. Seth and Dorothy Joplin came
from Amarillo. In the nineteen thirties. When Seth landed a
job at a Texas company which would later become Texico,
(19:33):
he managed a factory that made shipping containers for petroleum.
Janie arrived on January nine, the first of three children.
As she grew up, she proved herself different in every turn.
She was a tomboy when the other local girls were
consumed with beauty pageant standards. She cursed when the other
(19:53):
girls spoke proper. She skipped school while the other girls
sat at their desks all day and listened to chalk
scraped down the black board. She championed inclusion and acceptance
while the city practiced strict segregation. She didn't dress provocatively.
She had bad acne. She was teased and bullied and
made to feel less than less than all the other
girls who dressed the same, spoke the same, sat at
(20:15):
their desks the same. She gravitated towards the boys who
accepted her as one of their own, whether that was
a sister, a fellow dude, or just an outside or
looking for refuge. Whatever she was, Janice was not conventional.
Fuck that ship. Conventional was boring, it was row. Conventional
was expected, It's what you were supposed to be, and
she didn't want to be when anyone wanted her to be.
(20:38):
Port Arthur obviously couldn't offer what she wanted. In high school,
she jumped the Louisiana border with other thrills, seeking friends,
and hung out of joints like Busters, lou Anne's and
the Big Oak, where R and B bands played loud
and the scene was packed. It was rowdy. It wasn't
uncommon for fists to be thrown around. In nineteen sixty,
when Janice turned seventeen and was a senior in high school,
(20:58):
she decided that she had to go farther. She had
a push, not just the little ways beyond Port Arthur's
bawn trees, not just hopped the border to nestle into
some forbidden jew joint. She wanted to feel real free,
more free than ever before, and freedom was four hours
away in New Orleans. She put together a posse of
(21:19):
guys who shared in her wanderlust, Jim Langdon, a trombone
player two years her senior, Dale Guthea of the local
blues band the booge Kings, and fellow classmate Clyde Wade.
She told her folks that she was spending the night
at her friend Carline Bennett's house, and then they bought
some beers, piled into her father's nineteen fifty three sedan,
and hit the road for the big Easy. New Orleans
(21:41):
served up mouth watering plates of liberation, the booze, the music,
the sex. It all spilled from the nightclubs and the
second floor walk ups, and oozed out onto the street.
Everywhere Janice turned, there was excitement, temptation, vice. Conservative Southern
values were turned upside down on their heads, and there
was life beyond Port Arthur, and it hit out in
the open in places like New Orleans. The trip was brief.
(22:04):
Janis had to have the car back by the morning
so that she didn't blow a cover story about the sleepover.
Her crew piled back into the car before the sun
rose so that they can make good time on the
four hour trip back to Port Arthur. And they took
Highway sixty one, the Blues Highway, the same highway where
a Mississippi Blue singer named Robert Johnson supposedly made a
deal with the devil right there at the crossroads of
(22:27):
sixty one and Highway forty nine, a faustian bargain that
imbued Johnson with hellishly good talent in exchange for his soul.
Johnson went on down to the crossroads, tried to flag
a ride, and there was no one else on that road.
It was just the devil of Mr Johnson. The devil
has to see his guitar, and Johnson held it up.
The devil was taller than Johnson. His hands were about
(22:49):
twice the bluesman's size. The devil held Johnson's Gibson L
one flat top like it was a child's three quarter model,
turned it around in his hands. He strummed a NIS
seven chord. The beasts dring was flat, the high e
was sharp. He put his big hands on the tuners,
brought the acoustic back. The E seven sounded rich, full,
pure evil. He handed the guitar back to Johnson and
(23:11):
was on his way. And then the devil came for
Johnson's soul when he was only seven. If Janis had
been told that the devil was out on the highway
the night that she drove her crew back from New Orleans,
she might have believed it. And they were barely outside
of New Orleans and the rain started. It hit the
windshield and fat droplets. They splattered and spun out into
(23:33):
formless shapes that fucked with their sleep deprived, beer infused eyes.
The blobby rain splatters turned the whole windshield into an
impressionist painting that Janice was in no mood to code.
The wipers struggled to keep up, and the horizon was
full of undefined shadows and figures and structures. They raced
past a man standing on the side of the road
thumb extended could have been the devil himself. For all
(23:54):
Janis knew. The headlights of oncoming cars became smears of white.
It was hard to tell when tail lights were superseded
by brake lights. Janice was attempting to make sense of
it all through half masted eyes. When she realized that
the car in front of her, a newer Chevy, had stopped.
She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
(24:14):
The man and the Chevy stumbled out of the car,
his hand at his neck. Janice was cursing a blue street.
They all were, all four of them inside Seth Joplin's car,
which was jammed up the ass hand to some poor
s obs goddamn Chevy on Highway sixty one just outside
New Orleans, and the cops gave Janice the benefit of
the doubt, since the weather was so shitty in the
(24:35):
accident wasn't all that bad, honestly, and the guy who
got rammed in the Chevy was probably milking it anyway.
The bigger issue was Janie's age. Dale and Jim were older.
They had driven across state lines with a minor, didn't matter.
She was actually driving the car, and the cops started
talking about the man, acts started talking about felonies, about
men praying on women, about jail time. Dale and Jim freaked.
(24:57):
Janice stayed calm on the outside, but on the inside
she freaked too. She knew she could clear the whole
thing up. All she had to do was call her
parents and port Arthur so they could explain to the
cops that the guy she was with were good friends
and pose no threats. But the ruse would be up,
her lie would be uncovered, the punishment would come down,
the judgment would come down too, and it wasn't just
(25:19):
her parents doing the judging. Back at school, the whispers
and rumors about Janie got Juice. Here, the bullying got
more personal. They said that Janie slept around, that she
was loose, that Janice took three guys with her to
New Orleans and had a full on, freaky dicky good time.
And the more Janice angled for liberation, the more she
was pigeonholed by the conventional Texas establishment. College life wasn't
(25:41):
any better. Later that year, she enrolled at Lamar State
College and Technology, and her parents insistence for her parents
it was a local and cheap option, something to keep
her close and give her a trade to fall back on.
For Janice, it was just another way for her folks
in the great State of Texas to hold her back.
One night, she embarked on another world trip, this one
(26:02):
to Houston, and she knocked back handfuls of pills with
copious amounts of wine and wound up in the hospital.
When she came to in bed back home in Port Arthur,
her parents seemed to finally be realizing the truism that
Janie had known all along. And there was Texas, and
there was Janice, and never the twain shall me. Jim
(26:44):
Morrison may have been the golden God of Venice Beach,
but Janis Joplin beat him to the scene by about
four years, and by the time Janie got there, the
scene was on its way out. But Janie didn't know
scene from Shinola. All she knew was California from Texas.
It could have been a wannabe scene, could have been
a moldy oldie scene, and she still would have signed up.
(27:04):
True to its name. Venice and Los Angeles was modeled
after Venice and Italy by a McKinney, a developer who
dug miles of canals to create a seaside resort town
replete with quaint cottages and palazzo buildings. Around nineteen ten,
boardwalk games and rides turned it into an amusement park destination,
but l a neglected venice, and by the nineteen fifties
(27:26):
the Coney Island of the west to become the Slam
by the Sea. Buildings were falling in canals, once flowing
with life, were full of concrete. The palazzo's, once home
to high end retail and bingo parlors, were now shelters
for homeless squatters. The rundown field of the neighborhood had
its own outsider charm, not to mention the charm of
its cheap rents, and it soon became a hot spot
(27:48):
for Southern California poets, writers and musicians, the fringe people
the way Gone Daddy O's. It was also ground zero
for a criminal and drug adult element which came out
under the blanket of night and haunted the funky stretch
of coastline. These were the shadow people, looking for an
easy target, a quick fix, a lucky score. But there
had always been a shady element in Venice. Illegal gambling
(28:12):
was rife throughout the decades, the business of sketch ragmed supreme.
Janice knew she was getting into some weird ship in Venice,
but weird was good. Weird was exactly what the doctor ordered.
The less it reminded her of home, the better. She
wound up in Venice in the summer of nineteen sixty
one via Brentwood, specifically the homes of her aunt's Mimi
(28:32):
and Barbara. Following her wine and pills fueled trip to
the hospital in Houston, she dropped out of Lamar. Her
mother wasn't sure what to do with her anymore. She
was always running off, getting loaded and neglecting school. Dorothy's
solution was to put her on a bus to California,
where she lived with her aunts and worked at the
General Telephone Company in Santa Monica as a key punch operator,
a now defunct job that was as monotonous as it sounds,
(28:55):
but out of sight, out of mind. First, Janice lived
without me me, and she soon got her own apartment
by paying the rent on time wasn't really her style.
She moved in with Barbara's daughter, but she never felt
like she fit in, and then she stumbled onto Venice,
just a long distance stroll down the coast from Santa Monica.
Venice was certainly not Poort Arthur. Venice was well rolled,
(29:19):
joints and barbiturates scattered in the sand. Venice was the
place to watch the Pacific deep blue. It's dull roar,
white noise for the soul. The rundown stretch of amusement
park attractions decaying like a faded postcard of some once
great sight of fabled Americana, cast off with neglect and
perverted by the underbelly that's scurried inside the husk like
(29:39):
a hermit crab. Those underbelly types supposed a threat to
the status quo. The thinkers, the talkers, the poets, and
the artists and the singers. They were too strange, even
for California. Janice sniffed out the strange. Beaten nix filled
the seats at the gas House, the main hangout for
the outsider community, were fringe figures like Eric Big Daddy
nor had hung out. The cops took aim at the
(30:02):
counterculture and at the gas House in general, even sending
in one of their own undercover to drink their beer
and sip their wine and infiltrate their status quote. Defying
group think, Janice settled into a squalid garage apartment at
twenty five and a half Brooks Avenue, just a block
from the beach. She sought out any of the Beatnicks
who were still hanging around, but mostly she found the
(30:24):
sketchy human detritus, those who have been left behind, those
who had burned out and were working on fading away,
those who had learned to lurk in the shadows and
the sunken cottages and crumbling plassos, and the shadow people
were everywhere, especially at night. Janice would let up a
joint and suddenly they would be there. The flame from
her match would illuminate a face that had been next
(30:45):
to her all along. In the dark, She'd sense a
shadow creep over her shoulder. The shadows had weight in Venice.
The wind tore through the broken windows of the broke
down palace, the ways of the Pacific crash to block away,
and those sounds of a once viber Seaside community ushered
in a spectral form. Sensing the encroaching shadow, Janice would
turn around and there would be one too, maybe three
(31:07):
of the Shadow People, maybe someone she had seen a
few nights before, maybe someone new. They had asked her
for a hit, ask her for money, asked what she
was doing later, and they brought around harder stuff, darker stuff,
the sorts of highs she'd only heard about, the sorts
of highs that she worried lead to dangerous lows. They
left the same way they came in, carried by the
sound of the sea. At the moment that Janice closed
(31:29):
her eyes and took a hit, she would open her
eyes and something would be missing. A few bucks, a jackets,
some sunglasses, and the shadow People did their grifting under
the cover of the night. And the more time Janice
spent in Venice, the more she felt like she was
chasing some elusive enlightenment that was no longer there, but
it was a gateway and education. Things weren't always what
(31:50):
they seemed, people weren't always who they said they were.
Life out west really was wild, like they said, but
wild can be dangerous, wild can be dead. Janice Is
first real time spent in California was the beginning to
other moments in our life, moments that would lead to addiction, deception,
and even the Paranoid, Watchful Eye of the Real Big Brother,
(32:12):
the FBI. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the seven Club,
all right. This episode of The Seven Club is brought
(32:32):
to you by disgrace Land, the award winning music and
true crime podcast that I also host. Disgrace Land is
available only on the free Amazon Music app. To hear
tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away
with murder and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince, Jerry Lee Lewis,
The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi B and many
many more. Go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land,
(32:54):
or if you have an Echo device, just say hey
Alexa play. The disgrace Land podcast of the Club is
hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Landi
is the lead writer and co producer. Not voting mixes
the show. Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraaker
and Henry Anna. The twenty seven Club is produced by
myself for Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio.
(33:16):
Sources for this episode are available at double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page weekly every Thursday.
Our previous season's on Jimmie Hendricks and Jim Morrison are
available for you to binge right now wherever you get
your podcasts and if you'd like you here, Please be
sure to find and follow the twenty seven Club on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherevery game shows.
(33:38):
And if you like to win a free twenty seven
Club poster designed by the man himself, Nick Gonzalez, then
leave a review for twenty seven Club on Apple podcasts
or hashtag subscribe to twenty seven Club on social media
and we'll pick two winners each week and announce them
on the Double Elvis Instagram page that's at Double Elvis.
Do that a fall, So get out there and spread
(33:58):
the word about the twenty seven Club. You can talk
to me per usual on Instagram and Twitter at disgrace Land,
pod Rock Corolla. What's up for your is
Host
Jake Brennan
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