May 10, 2021 • 32 mins
As Janis continues to find herself in her pre-fame days, she flirts with romantic relationships with both men and women, winds up under FBI surveillance, hustles pool in New York City, and works to create her own mythology. But the biggest struggle she faces is her increasingly deadly drug habit.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode has brought to you an I Heeart three
D audio for maximum effect. Headphones are recommended. 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 didn't always turn out the way she
thought it would. I can give you twenty seven reasons
(00:21):
why that statement is true. Sixteen would be the age
she was when she first discovered a world outside of
her segregated, white picket fence hometown, a world of gambling clubs,
wild bars, and strip joints, places where kids her age
simply didn't go. Another one would be the number of
secret surveillance files her name will be found on at
(00:41):
the University of Texas, unknown to her or any of
the other students, targeted for everything from long hair to
sympathizing with communists. One more would be the number of
breakout folk music stars she would have a serendipitous encounter
with at the inaugural Monterey Folk Festival, where she won
an open mic contest. Another four would be the number
(01:02):
of months she'd spend in New York City, haunting bars
and hustling pool in the Lower East Side in order
to fund a runaway speed habit. In five would be
the number of years she had left to live after
she woke up from the misery of a drunk detox,
only to find that the people she thought she knew
had been playing her all along. On this our fifth
(01:22):
episode of season three Secret Surveillance File Serendipity in Janice
Joplin Walking a winding Path to Liberation, I'm Jake Brennan.
In This is the Clock, Austin, Texas, Powell st. John
(02:19):
was walking down to Asis Street when he heard the
sound again. It idled a short distance behind him, the
low harm of an engine at rest, punctuated every ten
seconds or so by a gradual rise in tone, the
soft purr becoming a growl each time the vehicle crept
up to keep pace. Powell kept walking. He tried to
not let it be known that he knew the car
(02:41):
was there. He turned his head slightly in order to
confirm that his imagination wasn't playing tricks on him in
the hot Austin sun, and Powell came to an intersection,
waited for the light to change while his palms sweat.
He waited to hear the doors of a car slowly
opened behind him, to hear the quick story of a
few pairs of feet on the fault, to feel the
(03:01):
calloused hands of nameless men grabbed him by the arms,
while another hand clasped tight around his mouth. To struggle
helplessly as his body was dragged backwards and stuffed into
the back seat, sandwiched in between more nameless men en
route to an unknown fate. But there was no door,
no feet, no arms. Powell clenched his fists. When the
(03:21):
traffic light finally changed, Powle exhaled deeply and began to
make his way across the street. It had become a
familiar presence, this unmarked royal blue oldsmobile that trailed behind
him wherever he went, didn't matter what day it was
or what he was doing. He was going to meet
a friend, He's going to play a gig, he was
going out for a stroll and a long toke on
a wicked joint. Within minutes, he would hear it. He
(03:44):
got to know the very sound of the engine, the
timber of it. He started hearing it everywhere. At night,
he would hear the oldsmobiles rumble in his head when
he was trying to fall asleep. He would jump out
of bed, part the curtains and look at the window
in nothing. The next day he'd be back on the
sidewalk and the sound of his heels clicking rhythmically against
(04:05):
the pavement, and soon the rumble of the car was there,
accenting the sound of his own feet. It's like clockwork.
Powell couldn't be too careful, nobody could. You never knew
living that beat Nick Austin lifestyle and conservative Texas, what
kind of trouble would come looking for you? For Powell,
trouble included a pack of University of Texas jocks that
(04:25):
jumped him and beat on him because of the way
he looked, the people he hung out with, and the
songs he sang. It was soon after that beat down
that Powell started to sense the omnipresent car that seemed
to tail him everywhere. And on this particular day, Powell
was on his way back to the ghetto. That's what
everyone called the apartment complex at two eight one two
and a half maces where his friend and bandmate Janis
(04:48):
Joplin lived. A ut student could get a place real
cheap at the ghetto for just forty bucks a month.
You had yourself a glorified closet. The ghetto is home
to others like Janis and pop musicians, poets, artists, activists.
Friends came and went. Parties happened day and night, and
they talked about music, talked about art. They talked about
the university in Texas and the government and the rabble
(05:10):
rousing nature of the place. Put everyone there under the
watchful live, not just the University of Texas, but of
the US government. Pence seals will be able loitering behind
Powell at a safe distance. It was more than cars,
and there were files, files in the offices of high
ranking officials. Janis's name was one of over sixty names
and a file in the Dean's office at the University
(05:31):
of Texas at Austin. It was simply marked Ghetto. The
files contents who are more than names addresses in college majors.
The file was textbook mccarthierra Bunk for the New Day,
Full of Paranoia, hearsay and slander. Which kids were thought
to have excessively long hair, which kids were thought to
sympathize with the Commies, which kids were thought to have
(05:52):
mental issues, which kids were thought to be promiscuous, which
kids were thought to be homosexual, which kids were thought
to play the role of ringleader. The ghetto was under
heavy surveillance, but no one living there had any idea
except Powell. Powell knew something was up, but he was
too paranoid to tell anyone about it. He thought they
would all think he was insane. Well, Janice wouldn't think,
(06:14):
so he could trust Janice. He just had to find
a good moment to get her alone and let her
know all about the mysterious automobile and the authoritarian microscope
under which they were all living, and if he was
right about the inevitable life changing bust that was surely
going to come down on their little utopian ghetto one
of these days. Powell and Janice played together in a
(06:35):
local group called the Waller Creek Boys. Pawel played harmonica,
Janice sang and played her autoharp, and a third member,
Lonnie Wiggins, played guitar. They wasn't heavy on the old
timey vibe, with covers of songs like Louis Armstrong, St. James,
Infirmary Blues and Kitty Wells. As it wasn't God who
made hockey talk Angels. They played in places like Thread Gills,
(06:56):
a beer joint on North Lamarble of Art that hosted
who Nanny's on Wednesday nights. At those gigs, Janis's voice
sounded like it was coming directly from a scratchy old
seventy eight on Okay records. Janis enjoyed performing with the
Waller Creek Boys, but she was oblivious to everything else
that was going on around her. It was nineteen sixty
(07:17):
two and she had recently returned from her brief stint
in California that included formative time spent on Venice Beach,
only to wind up back where she didn't want to
be at school in Texas. It was Austin at least,
and this time she was studying as an art major,
not some zombie brain key punch bullshit. But regardless of major,
(07:40):
higher education still didn't suit Janis all that well, didn't
suit her at all. Really. She had a big appetite
for singing, for drinking, for the biblical companionship of men
and women alike, and she later said about her time
at UT all I did in Austin was be wild, drink,
constantly fucked people saying, and generally made a name for myself.
(08:00):
She kept herself inebriated enough that she didn't care if
they called her a slut or a beaten it, or
a freak or a lesbian or whatever supposed it hadcendiary label.
One of the Longhorn jocks felt was the Slam Dunk
put down, but the Ugliest Man on Campus contest. That
one she actually cared about. That one her. That was
the last straw. Someone entered her anonymously and the Ugliest
(08:24):
Man on Campus contest at the University of Texas, The
Ugliest Man There are pictures and flyers scattered throughout campus.
Even worse than being entered was when they announced the winner.
It was Janice. She joked around and told everyone that
she had entered it herself as a goof that she
didn't care. She didn't enter herself in the contest, and
(08:45):
she did care. It destroyed her for comfort. Her mind
turned to California, to Venice Beach, to a place where
no one knew her name, a place that was far out,
a place that welcomed her for her fuck college, fuck
the Ugliest Man in contest, in fuck Texas. She was
going back to California, and this time she wouldn't be
(09:06):
back so soon. Paul will never get a chance to
confide in her. He wanted a warner, warner about people
who weren't who they said they were, a warner about
the grass and only seemed to be greener on the
other side. Before Paul had that chance, Janice skipped final
exams and dropped out, and the Waller Creek Boys played
a farewell show at thread Gills on Janice's twentieth birthday.
(09:29):
And then she and her friend chat Helm stood on
the side of the road and Austin and thumbed at
any car that passed by. Chat was a civil rights
advocate who love peyote in Ornette Coleman. Like Janice, he
was also a fellow ut dropout with a desire to
head west. Eventually, a car pulled over and Janis and
chat hopped in the backseat. First they dropped out of school,
(09:53):
Now they dropped out of Texas. Janice Choplin stopped dead
(10:22):
in her tracks in the middle of the Monterey Folk
Festival fair grounds. Her head was swimming, and that would
be the red wine. Her pulse was racing, and that
would be the purple hearts. She couldn't believe what she
was seeing. Suddenly her head went from doing a back
stroke to a frantic dog paddle. She could feel her
pulse in every extremity. It was Bob Dylan in the flesh.
(10:43):
He was walking towards her, just be lining across the
grass at the idyllic Seaside City. She was an unknown
talent show winner and he was. He was the Bob Dylan.
There he was approaching her quickly with the New Yorker's
determined stride, probably a New Yorker's determ her in skepticism too.
It was a Sunday in May, in the inaugural year
(11:06):
the Monterey Folk Festival was winding down, and the weekend
featured performances by Doc Watson, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary,
Joan Biez, and Bob Dylan. Only one LP to his
name and already a legend. His second record, The Freewheel
and Bob Dylan, was just days away from release. Janice
was one of the winners of the open mic contest
(11:27):
on Saturday morning at the festival, which gave her tickets
to watch the rest of the festival, including Dylan's performance
on Saturday evening. It was the first time she'd ever
seen him perform live, and the red wine Purple Hearts
combo had proven to be a hindrance to her performances
as late. She forgot lyrics, miss notes, sometimes missed entire gigs.
But not this weekend. This weekend she had nailed it.
(11:51):
She played some of her signature blue songs Trouble in Mind,
Nobody Knows You when You're down and out. She sang
them with her well worn, gravelly voice, wise beyond its tears.
She sang them as if she had lived every single word.
She impressed the judges enough to taste victory that weekend.
Now she was tasting the purple pills she had put
on her tongue that day, and the cheap red wine
(12:12):
she washed them down with. Deximil was all the rage
and in phetamine barbiti with combo that was a favorite
of mods overseas and urban bohemian state side kids ate
them like they were penny candy, fucking Winston Churchill pop
Purple Hearts for Christ's sakes, and they'd be banned within
a year. Janice ran her tongue around in her mouth,
trying to cast out the lingering taste. She worried that
(12:34):
her tongue was swong a side effect from the pillow
or the wine, or maybe the combination of the two
of them. At least she thought it was swollen. She
couldn't risk a swollen tongue when she was about to
talk to one of her ridols, because she was talking
to Bob Dylan, that was for damn sure. Watching Dylan
play a short set the night before, she imagined that
it was her standing next to him on stage, not
(12:56):
Joan Bias, not that Janice wanted to be Joan Bias. Clearly,
the two sounded nothing alike and came from completely different
schools of thought. One was diamonds and rust and the
other was balls and chains. Joan and Dylan sang together
on with God on her side that night, and Janice
closed her eyes tight, clenched the hand of her friend
Jay Whittaker in her own hand, and imagine what it
(13:16):
would sound like if she Janice was harmonizing. Her voice
was rough, hard as nails. She was Bessie Smith to
Dylan's woody Guthrie. Joan was too flowery, too timid, too safe.
She belonged in a coffee house somewhere. Joan was cappuccino music,
not big time Monterey Festival music in her mind. Janice
pushed Joan right out of the way took her place
(13:38):
next to Dylon. It was her turn her time now.
As Dylon got within earshot of Janis and her friend
Jay on the festival grounds, Janice wasted no time. She
clenched Jay's hand tighter and pulled her along so that
they wound up directly in Dylan's path. Hey, man, she shared,
I'm Janice Joplin, I sang here yesterday, and I'm gonna
be famous too, man, just like you. Dylan stopped and
(14:01):
looked at Janis in the eyes. His stair was deep
but calm. He smiled and he laughed. Yet, Dylan said,
pausing for a moment to suck on the end of
his sour smelling cigarette, We're all going to be famous.
Dylan kept walking. Janice was star struck. Jay couldn't believe
that Dylan wasn't an eighty year old man, which is
what he sounded like on that one record. Jay and
(14:23):
Janice listened to Dylan's LP at Jay's house when Janice
wasn't spending Bessie Smith records. Jay and Janice were inseparable
for the most part, Janice met Jay one night at
the Anxious Asp. She was leaning against the bar, short stature,
short hair, African American and ragyn is sweet, funny. Janie
had a hard time not crushing on her, and they
(14:44):
played pool sang along to some Bobby Blue Bland that
was coming from the jukebox in the corner. She found
out that Ja was four years or senior and that
she had recently split with the girlfriend she moved to
San Francisco with. Within a few months, Janis had moved
in with Ja. From an early age, Janice liked boys
and girls. She was bisexual at a time when it
(15:05):
wasn't just taboo, it was illegal, but Jannis didn't fear much,
especially that which prevented her from doing what she wanted.
She would like who she liked, love who she loved,
and crushed on men and women equally, but she knew
that not everyone was already to wait as such open
expressions of love as she was. In the spring of
nineteen sixty two, Janice tested the social waters of a
(15:27):
same sex relationship when she kissed her friend Patty McQueen
at a basement party at Patty's house, and they had
a captive audience, which eventually included Patty's husband, Dave, who
walked in on the two mid kiss after working the
late shift. Like many red blooded conservative Texas males in
the early sixties, Dave thought he had witnessed an abomination.
(15:48):
He proceeded to drink heavily, and then, once he was
ship faced, he threw a bottle at Patty, who was
passed out, and the bottle missed Patty and hit another
party guest, Jack Smith, square in the mouth knocked his
front teeth right now. There was blood everywhere. Patty screamed
bolton shock at Jack's busted face and also at her
husband's bubbling rage. Jack frantically searched the floor in vain
(16:09):
for his teeth, and Janice ended the evening by driving
Jack to a hospital. It was incidents like those that
prevented Janice from living all aspects of her life out
in the open. So Janice kept a relationship with Jay
on the download when she needed to. She had learned
through experience how to slip things under the radar, how
to achieve the freedom to be who you wanted to
(16:30):
be without letting the rest of the town know about it. Then,
although San Francisco was the most tallerant city she had
lived in to date, and San Francisco for sure wasn't Texas.
But old habits die hard. But Jay wondered if it
was more than that, more than just Janice being careful.
Janice told Jay that she loved her. Janice gave her
a piece of her heart, but it was just a piece,
(16:52):
It wasn't the whole thing. And Jay wondered if Janice
was incapable of true commitment, or if she was incapable
of committing to the same sex relationship. She talked to talk,
but she didn't always walk the walk. Jay had been
around plenty of part time lesbians in her day, and
the more she was around Janie, the more she pegged
her as the same sex tourist. And then there was
(17:14):
Janie's erratic behavior. She would disappear for a day or
two at a time. She'd run off with friends or
with people she had just met. She'd hitchhike, she wouldn't
give a reason for leaving, no heads up, no I'll
be back, And then she was just scoring dope on
her own all of a sudden, scoring dope with new
friends that she was making and Jay didn't know if
they were exclusive, like Janie had said. She started to
(17:35):
wonder if Janice was being honest with her, if they
were a long term thing. And then one day Janice left, left, left,
she left Jay, and then she put down some money
for a cheap used car and left for New York City.
She wouldn't be back for four months. We'll be right
(17:57):
back after this word word word, June, New York City.
The pool table had seen better days. The green felt
was scuffed and stained. It was like looking at spots
on a green Dalmatian. And there were the old beer
spots spilled from a pint in someone's careless hand while
(18:19):
getting too close to the action. There were the blood
spots from one Johnny pocket. Palladino had the nosebleed midshot
that one time his nose bled because some guy he
hustled cracked him over the back of the head with
his pool queue. But still a nosebleeds a nose bleed.
And then there were the burn marks from the cigarettes
that had been stubbed out by hustlers who were poised
(18:39):
to take their shot, but it also happened to reach
the end of their smoke. It was easier to stay
in position and squish it out on the table than
to stand up and ruin the sweet set up. Janice
Joplin had never really seen a pristine pool table in
her twenty one years. It made no difference to her
if the thing was spotless or not. All she cared
about is whether the table was flat or not. And
(18:59):
i this moment, in this particular New York City bar
on the Lower east Side, Janice needed to bank the shot.
She had ten bucks riding on it, and that ten
bucks meant another score. She needed to get high, needed
to land some more speed. She'd swallow and snorted. Shoot,
it didn't matter how it came, She just had to
have it. She leaned over the table, closed one eye
(19:20):
and pulled back on the queue. A fat man nursing
her perps whistled at her mid pose. Janice thought for
a minute about breaking her concentration, standing up straight, walking
over to the fat man with long queue and both hands,
and smashing it straight against this asshole, smug face. That
would make her feel a million percent better. In the moment,
she miss out on what she really wanted. She had
(19:41):
to stay focused, so she ignored him, ignored the other
stairs that she knew were coming her way, from men
and women alike, some stairs like daggers and others like lust.
She let fly on the queue, and the ball went
exactly where she wanted it to go. She turned around
to face her opponent. Pay up man, she said, out
loud for the whole place to hear, laughing that big,
(20:01):
generous laugh of hers. Her empty hand was outstretched in
front of her opponent, ready to receive cold, hard cash
that she would immediately turn into a warm, hard high.
This broad's fucking robbing the joint, someone said from a
few tables away. Beer bottles clinked together, and a table
of middle aged guys chuckled, and the regulars at the
bar I thought Janie was all right. She was tough,
(20:23):
she was funny, She took no ship. She regaled them
all with tales of how she'd grown up and joints
like this one, places like the infamous Keyhole Club in
Port Arthur, a dive frequented by gamblers and hookers. She
told them about the time she busted this kid, John Clay,
upside the head with the metal pail when he was
pissed that she had dumped him, And about the time
of the Big Oak in Austin. When some redneck grabbed
(20:44):
her breast, she grabbed the nearest beer bottle and smashed
it upside his head. A knockdown, drag out brawl followed.
Teeth knocked out, jaws busted, helpless fuckers chased down by
fast moving automobiles, and the regulars at the bar was
suprocated and told Janice story about this one time that
a guy walked into the bar right up the street.
Was the middle of the summer. He had a gun
(21:06):
in his hand, a mask on his face. The place
was packed wall to wall people. He pushed through the crowd,
walked right up to the bartender and said that he
wanted all the cash in the till he was robbing
the place. And the bartender was in the middle of
making three Gin and Tonics and the Tom Collins. He
was fucking busy, and he told the stick up guy
that he was going to have to wait his turn.
No ship, Janice asked, no ship? The regular told her.
(21:29):
The stick up guy eventually got tired of waiting for
the bartender to pay him attention, so he just turned
around and split. Janie wondered if the story was even true.
The place was never packed when she was there, hustling
a little pool for a meager payday. And besides, this
rundown spot on the Lower east Side didn't exactly scream
hot spot. But it wasn't like she was a regular
at this place. She had only been in New York
(21:51):
City for a few weeks, and she wasn't planning on
staying forever. It was the spring of nineteen and Janice
had only just hold into town behind the wheel of
a yellow Morris Minor convertible with Linda Pool, one of
Jay Whittaker's excess of all people in the passenger seat
while she came, she wouldn't really say. Linda didn't even
(22:11):
really know why they did it. Was it wanderlust was
a fear of commitment with Jay. Was that to get lost,
to get lost, and to never come back. In the
block of New York City they found themselves on seemed
to be the kind of place you could get lost
in forever if you were careful. A heads were everywhere
in the lowery Side. They crept along the shadows of
the tenement walls. They hid behind over flont dumpsters. They
(22:33):
scurried down alleyways and peered out from stained curtains that
hung in windows of walk ups, and they reminded Janice.
So the shadow people in Venice, the ones who came
out at night, the ones who would do anything for
a score, the ones who made the tourists flesh crawl.
New York City was still a few years away from
being rebranded Fear City, the town that required its own
user manual to help visitors avoid a shocking and violent experience.
(22:58):
But some neighborhoods were getting moose. Drug dealers staked their
claim on street corners. Muggings were on the rise. Entire
buildings were vacant and slowly decaying. Cars were two left
on the side of the road and taken over by
a heads looking for shelter, a place to fuck, or
a place to score. And Janice played a set at
Gerty's Folk City in the West Village when she first arrived,
(23:20):
But for the most part, her months in the Big
Apple were a real gone boom doggle. She subsisted on
a regular diet of her parts. She shot speed with locals,
and she searched up the gay bars and tested the waters,
popping speed and led to shooting speed, and by the
time she drove the little Marris minor back to San Francisco.
It was all about meth amphetamy. Meth was everywhere, it
(23:42):
was impossible to avoid. It was the favorite street drug
on Hayte, Ashbury and beyond. And the people's chemist, Augustus
Susie Stanley the Third set up his first home laboratory
to produce meth not LSD, which he became known for.
And by the time she got back to San Francisco,
Janice was shooting meth and the regular It gave her
a false sense of power and endurance. She didn't sleep,
(24:05):
her face broke out, her weight dropped dangerously low. Soon
she was slinging speed in order to maintain her habit.
That's all. There was a crippling habit. And there were
no more Monterey Folk Festival dreams, no j Whittaker, no
crazy road trips across the country. Nowhere to run to.
She haunted the places where the drug ran rampant, places
(24:26):
like the Anxious Asp, where she once associated with Ja,
but now she would associate with the time she was
backed against the wall by muscled up debt collectors and
hit rock bottom. Janice Joplin could barely lift her head
(25:03):
from her bed. Every time she tried to get up,
she felt the crushing weight of a five pound anvil
pressed down. She tried to rise, and it pushed her
right back, and she felt like she had been sleeping
for weeks. Her dreams were a hellscape of people with
long teeth and sunken eyes, fires, burning pavement, opening and
swallowing the city's whole real end time ship. She tossed
(25:26):
and turned. Her sheets were soaked. She felt sick and
hungry all at once. She willed herself to go back
to sleep. She'd rather live in the unconscious nightmare state
than to be awake and alive in the real world.
The real world was too heavy. But every action has
an equal and opposite reaction. The reason that she was
(25:46):
back in her childhood bed and poured Arthur instead of
San Francisco, where she had spent the last few years,
was because of her actions. She got hooked on mess.
She allowed it to take over her life. The junk
put her on her ass and then on a bus
and put her way back to Texas that she was
motivated to get better. She told herself she wouldn't do
it again, wouldn't allow herself to be controlled by drugs,
(26:07):
whether it was math or anything else. But that meant
swearing off music and all the baggage that came with
it for the rest of her life, then so be it.
Still trying to lift her head, Janice's eyes scanned her
body wasted away, and it was reminded of the recent past.
She was scared. The bruises were still there on her abdomen,
in her arms from the beating she had taken outside
(26:29):
the anxious ass Those two bikers who came to collect
only to find a penniless, strung out dope case. They
pummeled her until she stopped screaming in pain, and they
figured she had had enough. At that point, the bruises
had gone through their multicolored faces, yellow and pink and blue,
and now they were stuck on that mouldy banana look.
And then there were the other scars. But she ran
(26:50):
her fingers over the marks on her arm where she
had shot the junk in, and they were reminders of
the black holes she had fallen through. But it wasn't
all darkness. There was light. Peter was the beacon, the
light at the end of the tunnel. She was going
to get clean for Peter for their future. Peter de
Blanc the dreamboat she had in San Francisco. He dressed well,
(27:13):
smelled nice, drove a fancy car. He was an engineer.
He wasn't like the other beaten nicks and bohemians she
hung around with. He was respectable, had his ship together,
and he was for money, old money. He would come
into his inheritance soon. He told Janis that she would
become his wife and they would settle down. She could
stay home, raised the kids, take care of the house.
(27:34):
The thought of it drove Janis to power through the
aches and pains, the anvil on her face, the feelings
of sickness and despair. It wasn't until Janice emerged from
her bed that she realized that she had it all wrong.
It must have been the drugs or the sweatsilk withdrawals.
Janice Chopolin a housewife, no way. The very notion was
laughable to her. But even worse, once Janice was clean
(27:57):
and clear headed, she learned that everything she thought to
be true it was in fact a lie. Peter de
Blanc was a lie. At first, Jannis didn't believe it.
She didn't believe her friends who were trying to break
the news to her. That change. When she picked up
the phone one day and dialed Peter's number, and another
woman answered, clean and sober and wave past the hell
escape meth withdrawal nightmares, Janice's world suddenly flipped upside down.
(28:22):
Peter wasn't for money. He had no money. He didn't
have a master's degree. He didn't own a fancy car.
He had no intention of settling down with her. He
was a world class grifter. He had duped. He wasn't
even bigger junkie than she was. Drugs drove him too,
delusions and waking psychotic episodes. He told her that he
was receiving secret messages from the moon and they came
directly to his brain. As his paranoia ramped up, so
(28:45):
did his gun collection, and the trunk of the car
he drove around was loaded with pieces that were voted.
While Janice swept through her withdrawals and shook the curse
of meth off her back, Peter had to camp to
Mexico with the airline attended. He was having an affair
with Oh And then there was the other woman that
he got pregnant back in San Francisco. Not to mention
the wife and child he had in New York City,
(29:06):
and that wife and child were the ones he had
left in the middle of the night when he snuck out,
headed west and started assuming of their identities. Janie had
to forget all about Peter, forget about the promises of
a life of domestic normalcy. Peter was no lifeline. No
one was her lifeline. People just deceived you and lied
to you and let you down. Music was her lifeline.
(29:28):
She put herself back out there, She started singing again.
She was clean. And then it happened fast. The thirteenth
Floor Elevators show at the Methodist Student Center Auditorium, Rocky
ericson channeling something feral and fearsome. Janie couldn't say what
it was, what that thing was that Rocky was channeling,
but she could see it, she could feel it, and
(29:49):
she wanted to channel it too. And then Travis Rivers
showed up, the guy who Chat Helms had sent all
the way back to Texas explicitly to hunt down Janie
and bring her back. Chat needed her. The band he
was managing, big brother in the holding company. They needed her.
San Francisco needed her. It was where she could be
free and Janice went in an instant, the snap of
(30:10):
a finger. She told herself she could dive back into
music and back into San Francisco and do it without
getting sucked back into that bottomless black hole of junk
and the scars it left in its wink. She was wrong,
Um Jake Brennan and this is the twenty seven Club.
(30:40):
This episode was brought to you and I Heeart three
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(31:01):
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(31:24):
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(31:45):
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Club is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Elvis.
Janice Joplin died at the age of and she lived
the life that didn't always turn out the way she
thought it would. I can give you twenty seven reasons
(00:21):
why that statement is true. Sixteen would be the age
she was when she first discovered a world outside of
her segregated, white picket fence hometown, a world of gambling clubs,
wild bars, and strip joints, places where kids her age
simply didn't go. Another one would be the number of
secret surveillance files her name will be found on at
(00:41):
the University of Texas, unknown to her or any of
the other students, targeted for everything from long hair to
sympathizing with communists. One more would be the number of
breakout folk music stars she would have a serendipitous encounter
with at the inaugural Monterey Folk Festival, where she won
an open mic contest. Another four would be the number
(01:02):
of months she'd spend in New York City, haunting bars
and hustling pool in the Lower East Side in order
to fund a runaway speed habit. In five would be
the number of years she had left to live after
she woke up from the misery of a drunk detox,
only to find that the people she thought she knew
had been playing her all along. On this our fifth
(01:22):
episode of season three Secret Surveillance File Serendipity in Janice
Joplin Walking a winding Path to Liberation, I'm Jake Brennan.
In This is the Clock, Austin, Texas, Powell st. John
(02:19):
was walking down to Asis Street when he heard the
sound again. It idled a short distance behind him, the
low harm of an engine at rest, punctuated every ten
seconds or so by a gradual rise in tone, the
soft purr becoming a growl each time the vehicle crept
up to keep pace. Powell kept walking. He tried to
not let it be known that he knew the car
(02:41):
was there. He turned his head slightly in order to
confirm that his imagination wasn't playing tricks on him in
the hot Austin sun, and Powell came to an intersection,
waited for the light to change while his palms sweat.
He waited to hear the doors of a car slowly
opened behind him, to hear the quick story of a
few pairs of feet on the fault, to feel the
(03:01):
calloused hands of nameless men grabbed him by the arms,
while another hand clasped tight around his mouth. To struggle
helplessly as his body was dragged backwards and stuffed into
the back seat, sandwiched in between more nameless men en
route to an unknown fate. But there was no door,
no feet, no arms. Powell clenched his fists. When the
(03:21):
traffic light finally changed, Powle exhaled deeply and began to
make his way across the street. It had become a
familiar presence, this unmarked royal blue oldsmobile that trailed behind
him wherever he went, didn't matter what day it was
or what he was doing. He was going to meet
a friend, He's going to play a gig, he was
going out for a stroll and a long toke on
a wicked joint. Within minutes, he would hear it. He
(03:44):
got to know the very sound of the engine, the
timber of it. He started hearing it everywhere. At night,
he would hear the oldsmobiles rumble in his head when
he was trying to fall asleep. He would jump out
of bed, part the curtains and look at the window
in nothing. The next day he'd be back on the
sidewalk and the sound of his heels clicking rhythmically against
(04:05):
the pavement, and soon the rumble of the car was there,
accenting the sound of his own feet. It's like clockwork.
Powell couldn't be too careful, nobody could. You never knew
living that beat Nick Austin lifestyle and conservative Texas, what
kind of trouble would come looking for you? For Powell,
trouble included a pack of University of Texas jocks that
(04:25):
jumped him and beat on him because of the way
he looked, the people he hung out with, and the
songs he sang. It was soon after that beat down
that Powell started to sense the omnipresent car that seemed
to tail him everywhere. And on this particular day, Powell
was on his way back to the ghetto. That's what
everyone called the apartment complex at two eight one two
and a half maces where his friend and bandmate Janis
(04:48):
Joplin lived. A ut student could get a place real
cheap at the ghetto for just forty bucks a month.
You had yourself a glorified closet. The ghetto is home
to others like Janis and pop musicians, poets, artists, activists.
Friends came and went. Parties happened day and night, and
they talked about music, talked about art. They talked about
the university in Texas and the government and the rabble
(05:10):
rousing nature of the place. Put everyone there under the
watchful live, not just the University of Texas, but of
the US government. Pence seals will be able loitering behind
Powell at a safe distance. It was more than cars,
and there were files, files in the offices of high
ranking officials. Janis's name was one of over sixty names
and a file in the Dean's office at the University
(05:31):
of Texas at Austin. It was simply marked Ghetto. The
files contents who are more than names addresses in college majors.
The file was textbook mccarthierra Bunk for the New Day,
Full of Paranoia, hearsay and slander. Which kids were thought
to have excessively long hair, which kids were thought to
sympathize with the Commies, which kids were thought to have
(05:52):
mental issues, which kids were thought to be promiscuous, which
kids were thought to be homosexual, which kids were thought
to play the role of ringleader. The ghetto was under
heavy surveillance, but no one living there had any idea
except Powell. Powell knew something was up, but he was
too paranoid to tell anyone about it. He thought they
would all think he was insane. Well, Janice wouldn't think,
(06:14):
so he could trust Janice. He just had to find
a good moment to get her alone and let her
know all about the mysterious automobile and the authoritarian microscope
under which they were all living, and if he was
right about the inevitable life changing bust that was surely
going to come down on their little utopian ghetto one
of these days. Powell and Janice played together in a
(06:35):
local group called the Waller Creek Boys. Pawel played harmonica,
Janice sang and played her autoharp, and a third member,
Lonnie Wiggins, played guitar. They wasn't heavy on the old
timey vibe, with covers of songs like Louis Armstrong, St. James,
Infirmary Blues and Kitty Wells. As it wasn't God who
made hockey talk Angels. They played in places like Thread Gills,
(06:56):
a beer joint on North Lamarble of Art that hosted
who Nanny's on Wednesday nights. At those gigs, Janis's voice
sounded like it was coming directly from a scratchy old
seventy eight on Okay records. Janis enjoyed performing with the
Waller Creek Boys, but she was oblivious to everything else
that was going on around her. It was nineteen sixty
(07:17):
two and she had recently returned from her brief stint
in California that included formative time spent on Venice Beach,
only to wind up back where she didn't want to
be at school in Texas. It was Austin at least,
and this time she was studying as an art major,
not some zombie brain key punch bullshit. But regardless of major,
(07:40):
higher education still didn't suit Janis all that well, didn't
suit her at all. Really. She had a big appetite
for singing, for drinking, for the biblical companionship of men
and women alike, and she later said about her time
at UT all I did in Austin was be wild, drink,
constantly fucked people saying, and generally made a name for myself.
(08:00):
She kept herself inebriated enough that she didn't care if
they called her a slut or a beaten it, or
a freak or a lesbian or whatever supposed it hadcendiary label.
One of the Longhorn jocks felt was the Slam Dunk
put down, but the Ugliest Man on Campus contest. That
one she actually cared about. That one her. That was
the last straw. Someone entered her anonymously and the Ugliest
(08:24):
Man on Campus contest at the University of Texas, The
Ugliest Man There are pictures and flyers scattered throughout campus.
Even worse than being entered was when they announced the winner.
It was Janice. She joked around and told everyone that
she had entered it herself as a goof that she
didn't care. She didn't enter herself in the contest, and
(08:45):
she did care. It destroyed her for comfort. Her mind
turned to California, to Venice Beach, to a place where
no one knew her name, a place that was far out,
a place that welcomed her for her fuck college, fuck
the Ugliest Man in contest, in fuck Texas. She was
going back to California, and this time she wouldn't be
(09:06):
back so soon. Paul will never get a chance to
confide in her. He wanted a warner, warner about people
who weren't who they said they were, a warner about
the grass and only seemed to be greener on the
other side. Before Paul had that chance, Janice skipped final
exams and dropped out, and the Waller Creek Boys played
a farewell show at thread Gills on Janice's twentieth birthday.
(09:29):
And then she and her friend chat Helm stood on
the side of the road and Austin and thumbed at
any car that passed by. Chat was a civil rights
advocate who love peyote in Ornette Coleman. Like Janice, he
was also a fellow ut dropout with a desire to
head west. Eventually, a car pulled over and Janis and
chat hopped in the backseat. First they dropped out of school,
(09:53):
Now they dropped out of Texas. Janice Choplin stopped dead
(10:22):
in her tracks in the middle of the Monterey Folk
Festival fair grounds. Her head was swimming, and that would
be the red wine. Her pulse was racing, and that
would be the purple hearts. She couldn't believe what she
was seeing. Suddenly her head went from doing a back
stroke to a frantic dog paddle. She could feel her
pulse in every extremity. It was Bob Dylan in the flesh.
(10:43):
He was walking towards her, just be lining across the
grass at the idyllic Seaside City. She was an unknown
talent show winner and he was. He was the Bob Dylan.
There he was approaching her quickly with the New Yorker's
determined stride, probably a New Yorker's determ her in skepticism too.
It was a Sunday in May, in the inaugural year
(11:06):
the Monterey Folk Festival was winding down, and the weekend
featured performances by Doc Watson, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary,
Joan Biez, and Bob Dylan. Only one LP to his
name and already a legend. His second record, The Freewheel
and Bob Dylan, was just days away from release. Janice
was one of the winners of the open mic contest
(11:27):
on Saturday morning at the festival, which gave her tickets
to watch the rest of the festival, including Dylan's performance
on Saturday evening. It was the first time she'd ever
seen him perform live, and the red wine Purple Hearts
combo had proven to be a hindrance to her performances
as late. She forgot lyrics, miss notes, sometimes missed entire gigs.
But not this weekend. This weekend she had nailed it.
(11:51):
She played some of her signature blue songs Trouble in Mind,
Nobody Knows You when You're down and out. She sang
them with her well worn, gravelly voice, wise beyond its tears.
She sang them as if she had lived every single word.
She impressed the judges enough to taste victory that weekend.
Now she was tasting the purple pills she had put
on her tongue that day, and the cheap red wine
(12:12):
she washed them down with. Deximil was all the rage
and in phetamine barbiti with combo that was a favorite
of mods overseas and urban bohemian state side kids ate
them like they were penny candy, fucking Winston Churchill pop
Purple Hearts for Christ's sakes, and they'd be banned within
a year. Janice ran her tongue around in her mouth,
trying to cast out the lingering taste. She worried that
(12:34):
her tongue was swong a side effect from the pillow
or the wine, or maybe the combination of the two
of them. At least she thought it was swollen. She
couldn't risk a swollen tongue when she was about to
talk to one of her ridols, because she was talking
to Bob Dylan, that was for damn sure. Watching Dylan
play a short set the night before, she imagined that
it was her standing next to him on stage, not
(12:56):
Joan Bias, not that Janice wanted to be Joan Bias. Clearly,
the two sounded nothing alike and came from completely different
schools of thought. One was diamonds and rust and the
other was balls and chains. Joan and Dylan sang together
on with God on her side that night, and Janice
closed her eyes tight, clenched the hand of her friend
Jay Whittaker in her own hand, and imagine what it
(13:16):
would sound like if she Janice was harmonizing. Her voice
was rough, hard as nails. She was Bessie Smith to
Dylan's woody Guthrie. Joan was too flowery, too timid, too safe.
She belonged in a coffee house somewhere. Joan was cappuccino music,
not big time Monterey Festival music in her mind. Janice
pushed Joan right out of the way took her place
(13:38):
next to Dylon. It was her turn her time now.
As Dylon got within earshot of Janis and her friend
Jay on the festival grounds, Janice wasted no time. She
clenched Jay's hand tighter and pulled her along so that
they wound up directly in Dylan's path. Hey, man, she shared,
I'm Janice Joplin, I sang here yesterday, and I'm gonna
be famous too, man, just like you. Dylan stopped and
(14:01):
looked at Janis in the eyes. His stair was deep
but calm. He smiled and he laughed. Yet, Dylan said,
pausing for a moment to suck on the end of
his sour smelling cigarette, We're all going to be famous.
Dylan kept walking. Janice was star struck. Jay couldn't believe
that Dylan wasn't an eighty year old man, which is
what he sounded like on that one record. Jay and
(14:23):
Janice listened to Dylan's LP at Jay's house when Janice
wasn't spending Bessie Smith records. Jay and Janice were inseparable
for the most part, Janice met Jay one night at
the Anxious Asp. She was leaning against the bar, short stature,
short hair, African American and ragyn is sweet, funny. Janie
had a hard time not crushing on her, and they
(14:44):
played pool sang along to some Bobby Blue Bland that
was coming from the jukebox in the corner. She found
out that Ja was four years or senior and that
she had recently split with the girlfriend she moved to
San Francisco with. Within a few months, Janis had moved
in with Ja. From an early age, Janice liked boys
and girls. She was bisexual at a time when it
(15:05):
wasn't just taboo, it was illegal, but Jannis didn't fear much,
especially that which prevented her from doing what she wanted.
She would like who she liked, love who she loved,
and crushed on men and women equally, but she knew
that not everyone was already to wait as such open
expressions of love as she was. In the spring of
nineteen sixty two, Janice tested the social waters of a
(15:27):
same sex relationship when she kissed her friend Patty McQueen
at a basement party at Patty's house, and they had
a captive audience, which eventually included Patty's husband, Dave, who
walked in on the two mid kiss after working the
late shift. Like many red blooded conservative Texas males in
the early sixties, Dave thought he had witnessed an abomination.
(15:48):
He proceeded to drink heavily, and then, once he was
ship faced, he threw a bottle at Patty, who was
passed out, and the bottle missed Patty and hit another
party guest, Jack Smith, square in the mouth knocked his
front teeth right now. There was blood everywhere. Patty screamed
bolton shock at Jack's busted face and also at her
husband's bubbling rage. Jack frantically searched the floor in vain
(16:09):
for his teeth, and Janice ended the evening by driving
Jack to a hospital. It was incidents like those that
prevented Janice from living all aspects of her life out
in the open. So Janice kept a relationship with Jay
on the download when she needed to. She had learned
through experience how to slip things under the radar, how
to achieve the freedom to be who you wanted to
(16:30):
be without letting the rest of the town know about it. Then,
although San Francisco was the most tallerant city she had
lived in to date, and San Francisco for sure wasn't Texas.
But old habits die hard. But Jay wondered if it
was more than that, more than just Janice being careful.
Janice told Jay that she loved her. Janice gave her
a piece of her heart, but it was just a piece,
(16:52):
It wasn't the whole thing. And Jay wondered if Janice
was incapable of true commitment, or if she was incapable
of committing to the same sex relationship. She talked to talk,
but she didn't always walk the walk. Jay had been
around plenty of part time lesbians in her day, and
the more she was around Janie, the more she pegged
her as the same sex tourist. And then there was
(17:14):
Janie's erratic behavior. She would disappear for a day or
two at a time. She'd run off with friends or
with people she had just met. She'd hitchhike, she wouldn't
give a reason for leaving, no heads up, no I'll
be back, And then she was just scoring dope on
her own all of a sudden, scoring dope with new
friends that she was making and Jay didn't know if
they were exclusive, like Janie had said. She started to
(17:35):
wonder if Janice was being honest with her, if they
were a long term thing. And then one day Janice left, left, left,
she left Jay, and then she put down some money
for a cheap used car and left for New York City.
She wouldn't be back for four months. We'll be right
(17:57):
back after this word word word, June, New York City.
The pool table had seen better days. The green felt
was scuffed and stained. It was like looking at spots
on a green Dalmatian. And there were the old beer
spots spilled from a pint in someone's careless hand while
(18:19):
getting too close to the action. There were the blood
spots from one Johnny pocket. Palladino had the nosebleed midshot
that one time his nose bled because some guy he
hustled cracked him over the back of the head with
his pool queue. But still a nosebleeds a nose bleed.
And then there were the burn marks from the cigarettes
that had been stubbed out by hustlers who were poised
(18:39):
to take their shot, but it also happened to reach
the end of their smoke. It was easier to stay
in position and squish it out on the table than
to stand up and ruin the sweet set up. Janice
Joplin had never really seen a pristine pool table in
her twenty one years. It made no difference to her
if the thing was spotless or not. All she cared
about is whether the table was flat or not. And
(18:59):
i this moment, in this particular New York City bar
on the Lower east Side, Janice needed to bank the shot.
She had ten bucks riding on it, and that ten
bucks meant another score. She needed to get high, needed
to land some more speed. She'd swallow and snorted. Shoot,
it didn't matter how it came, She just had to
have it. She leaned over the table, closed one eye
(19:20):
and pulled back on the queue. A fat man nursing
her perps whistled at her mid pose. Janice thought for
a minute about breaking her concentration, standing up straight, walking
over to the fat man with long queue and both hands,
and smashing it straight against this asshole, smug face. That
would make her feel a million percent better. In the moment,
she miss out on what she really wanted. She had
(19:41):
to stay focused, so she ignored him, ignored the other
stairs that she knew were coming her way, from men
and women alike, some stairs like daggers and others like lust.
She let fly on the queue, and the ball went
exactly where she wanted it to go. She turned around
to face her opponent. Pay up man, she said, out
loud for the whole place to hear, laughing that big,
(20:01):
generous laugh of hers. Her empty hand was outstretched in
front of her opponent, ready to receive cold, hard cash
that she would immediately turn into a warm, hard high.
This broad's fucking robbing the joint, someone said from a
few tables away. Beer bottles clinked together, and a table
of middle aged guys chuckled, and the regulars at the
bar I thought Janie was all right. She was tough,
(20:23):
she was funny, She took no ship. She regaled them
all with tales of how she'd grown up and joints
like this one, places like the infamous Keyhole Club in
Port Arthur, a dive frequented by gamblers and hookers. She
told them about the time she busted this kid, John Clay,
upside the head with the metal pail when he was
pissed that she had dumped him, And about the time
of the Big Oak in Austin. When some redneck grabbed
(20:44):
her breast, she grabbed the nearest beer bottle and smashed
it upside his head. A knockdown, drag out brawl followed.
Teeth knocked out, jaws busted, helpless fuckers chased down by
fast moving automobiles, and the regulars at the bar was
suprocated and told Janice story about this one time that
a guy walked into the bar right up the street.
Was the middle of the summer. He had a gun
(21:06):
in his hand, a mask on his face. The place
was packed wall to wall people. He pushed through the crowd,
walked right up to the bartender and said that he
wanted all the cash in the till he was robbing
the place. And the bartender was in the middle of
making three Gin and Tonics and the Tom Collins. He
was fucking busy, and he told the stick up guy
that he was going to have to wait his turn.
No ship, Janice asked, no ship? The regular told her.
(21:29):
The stick up guy eventually got tired of waiting for
the bartender to pay him attention, so he just turned
around and split. Janie wondered if the story was even true.
The place was never packed when she was there, hustling
a little pool for a meager payday. And besides, this
rundown spot on the Lower east Side didn't exactly scream
hot spot. But it wasn't like she was a regular
at this place. She had only been in New York
(21:51):
City for a few weeks, and she wasn't planning on
staying forever. It was the spring of nineteen and Janice
had only just hold into town behind the wheel of
a yellow Morris Minor convertible with Linda Pool, one of
Jay Whittaker's excess of all people in the passenger seat
while she came, she wouldn't really say. Linda didn't even
(22:11):
really know why they did it. Was it wanderlust was
a fear of commitment with Jay. Was that to get lost,
to get lost, and to never come back. In the
block of New York City they found themselves on seemed
to be the kind of place you could get lost
in forever if you were careful. A heads were everywhere
in the lowery Side. They crept along the shadows of
the tenement walls. They hid behind over flont dumpsters. They
(22:33):
scurried down alleyways and peered out from stained curtains that
hung in windows of walk ups, and they reminded Janice.
So the shadow people in Venice, the ones who came
out at night, the ones who would do anything for
a score, the ones who made the tourists flesh crawl.
New York City was still a few years away from
being rebranded Fear City, the town that required its own
user manual to help visitors avoid a shocking and violent experience.
(22:58):
But some neighborhoods were getting moose. Drug dealers staked their
claim on street corners. Muggings were on the rise. Entire
buildings were vacant and slowly decaying. Cars were two left
on the side of the road and taken over by
a heads looking for shelter, a place to fuck, or
a place to score. And Janice played a set at
Gerty's Folk City in the West Village when she first arrived,
(23:20):
But for the most part, her months in the Big
Apple were a real gone boom doggle. She subsisted on
a regular diet of her parts. She shot speed with locals,
and she searched up the gay bars and tested the waters,
popping speed and led to shooting speed, and by the
time she drove the little Marris minor back to San Francisco.
It was all about meth amphetamy. Meth was everywhere, it
(23:42):
was impossible to avoid. It was the favorite street drug
on Hayte, Ashbury and beyond. And the people's chemist, Augustus
Susie Stanley the Third set up his first home laboratory
to produce meth not LSD, which he became known for.
And by the time she got back to San Francisco,
Janice was shooting meth and the regular It gave her
a false sense of power and endurance. She didn't sleep,
(24:05):
her face broke out, her weight dropped dangerously low. Soon
she was slinging speed in order to maintain her habit.
That's all. There was a crippling habit. And there were
no more Monterey Folk Festival dreams, no j Whittaker, no
crazy road trips across the country. Nowhere to run to.
She haunted the places where the drug ran rampant, places
(24:26):
like the Anxious Asp, where she once associated with Ja,
but now she would associate with the time she was
backed against the wall by muscled up debt collectors and
hit rock bottom. Janice Joplin could barely lift her head
(25:03):
from her bed. Every time she tried to get up,
she felt the crushing weight of a five pound anvil
pressed down. She tried to rise, and it pushed her
right back, and she felt like she had been sleeping
for weeks. Her dreams were a hellscape of people with
long teeth and sunken eyes, fires, burning pavement, opening and
swallowing the city's whole real end time ship. She tossed
(25:26):
and turned. Her sheets were soaked. She felt sick and
hungry all at once. She willed herself to go back
to sleep. She'd rather live in the unconscious nightmare state
than to be awake and alive in the real world.
The real world was too heavy. But every action has
an equal and opposite reaction. The reason that she was
(25:46):
back in her childhood bed and poured Arthur instead of
San Francisco, where she had spent the last few years,
was because of her actions. She got hooked on mess.
She allowed it to take over her life. The junk
put her on her ass and then on a bus
and put her way back to Texas that she was
motivated to get better. She told herself she wouldn't do
it again, wouldn't allow herself to be controlled by drugs,
(26:07):
whether it was math or anything else. But that meant
swearing off music and all the baggage that came with
it for the rest of her life, then so be it.
Still trying to lift her head, Janice's eyes scanned her
body wasted away, and it was reminded of the recent past.
She was scared. The bruises were still there on her abdomen,
in her arms from the beating she had taken outside
(26:29):
the anxious ass Those two bikers who came to collect
only to find a penniless, strung out dope case. They
pummeled her until she stopped screaming in pain, and they
figured she had had enough. At that point, the bruises
had gone through their multicolored faces, yellow and pink and blue,
and now they were stuck on that mouldy banana look.
And then there were the other scars. But she ran
(26:50):
her fingers over the marks on her arm where she
had shot the junk in, and they were reminders of
the black holes she had fallen through. But it wasn't
all darkness. There was light. Peter was the beacon, the
light at the end of the tunnel. She was going
to get clean for Peter for their future. Peter de
Blanc the dreamboat she had in San Francisco. He dressed well,
(27:13):
smelled nice, drove a fancy car. He was an engineer.
He wasn't like the other beaten nicks and bohemians she
hung around with. He was respectable, had his ship together,
and he was for money, old money. He would come
into his inheritance soon. He told Janis that she would
become his wife and they would settle down. She could
stay home, raised the kids, take care of the house.
(27:34):
The thought of it drove Janis to power through the
aches and pains, the anvil on her face, the feelings
of sickness and despair. It wasn't until Janice emerged from
her bed that she realized that she had it all wrong.
It must have been the drugs or the sweatsilk withdrawals.
Janice Chopolin a housewife, no way. The very notion was
laughable to her. But even worse, once Janice was clean
(27:57):
and clear headed, she learned that everything she thought to
be true it was in fact a lie. Peter de
Blanc was a lie. At first, Jannis didn't believe it.
She didn't believe her friends who were trying to break
the news to her. That change. When she picked up
the phone one day and dialed Peter's number, and another
woman answered, clean and sober and wave past the hell
escape meth withdrawal nightmares, Janice's world suddenly flipped upside down.
(28:22):
Peter wasn't for money. He had no money. He didn't
have a master's degree. He didn't own a fancy car.
He had no intention of settling down with her. He
was a world class grifter. He had duped. He wasn't
even bigger junkie than she was. Drugs drove him too,
delusions and waking psychotic episodes. He told her that he
was receiving secret messages from the moon and they came
directly to his brain. As his paranoia ramped up, so
(28:45):
did his gun collection, and the trunk of the car
he drove around was loaded with pieces that were voted.
While Janice swept through her withdrawals and shook the curse
of meth off her back, Peter had to camp to
Mexico with the airline attended. He was having an affair
with Oh And then there was the other woman that
he got pregnant back in San Francisco. Not to mention
the wife and child he had in New York City,
(29:06):
and that wife and child were the ones he had
left in the middle of the night when he snuck out,
headed west and started assuming of their identities. Janie had
to forget all about Peter, forget about the promises of
a life of domestic normalcy. Peter was no lifeline. No
one was her lifeline. People just deceived you and lied
to you and let you down. Music was her lifeline.
(29:28):
She put herself back out there, She started singing again.
She was clean. And then it happened fast. The thirteenth
Floor Elevators show at the Methodist Student Center Auditorium, Rocky
ericson channeling something feral and fearsome. Janie couldn't say what
it was, what that thing was that Rocky was channeling,
but she could see it, she could feel it, and
(29:49):
she wanted to channel it too. And then Travis Rivers
showed up, the guy who Chat Helms had sent all
the way back to Texas explicitly to hunt down Janie
and bring her back. Chat needed her. The band he
was managing, big brother in the holding company. They needed her.
San Francisco needed her. It was where she could be
free and Janice went in an instant, the snap of
(30:10):
a finger. She told herself she could dive back into
music and back into San Francisco and do it without
getting sucked back into that bottomless black hole of junk
and the scars it left in its wink. She was wrong,
Um Jake Brennan and this is the twenty seven Club.
(30:40):
This episode was brought to you and I Heeart three
D Audio. To experience more podcasts like this, search for
I Heeart three D Audio in the I Heart Radio.
This episode of The seven Club is brought 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 Again. To hear tons of insane
(31:01):
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, or if you
have an Echo device, just say hey Alexa play the
disgrace Land podcast. The twenty seven Club is hosted and
co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Lundy is the
(31:24):
lead writer. And co producer not voting mixes the show
additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraaker and Henry
then that The twenty seven Club is produced by myself
for Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources
for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot com
on the twenty seven Club series page. Our previous seasons
on Jimmie Hendrix and Jim Morrison are available for you
(31:45):
to binge right now wherever you get your podcasts, and
if you like you here, please be sure to find
and follow the twenty seven Club on the I Heart
Radio at Apple podcast or wherever you get your shows.
And if you'd like to win a free twenty seven
Club poster designed by the man him self, Nick Gonzalez,
then leave a review for twenty seven Club on Apple
Podcasts or hashtag subscribe to Club on social media and
(32:08):
we'll pick two winners each week and announce them on
the Double Elvis Instagram page that's at Double Elvis. Give
that a fall. So get out there and spread the
word about the twenty seven Club and you can talk
to me per usual on Instagram and Twitter at disgrace Land,
pod Rock, Corrolla. What's up here is
Host
Jake Brennan
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