Tensions rise in the ranks of Big Brother and the Holding Company as it becomes increasingly obvious that Janis is looking to strike out on her own. The MC5 blow minds in Detroit. Leonard Cohen comes up short in New York. And one of Janis’ bandmates decides he’s done with it all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The twenty seven Club is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Dennis Joplin died at the age
of seven, and she lived the life where the highs
mingled closely with the lows. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Eleven would be
the number on a scale of one to ten that
(00:20):
she would turn her performance level up to while on
stage performing, especially when she was joined by a good
friend like Ron Pigpen McKernan. Another one would be the
number of performances by a certain rabble rousing rock band
in Detroit that would make her suddenly feel like a
woman out of time. Ten more would be the number
of jaws of San Francisco musicians that hit the floor
(00:42):
when news of Big Brother in the Holding companies unprecedented
deal with Columbia Records hit the wires. Another three would
be the early hour of the morning when she stepped
into an elevator at the Chelsea Hotel, only to have
fate intervene in the form of an unexpected passenger. And
to be the number of years she would have left
to live after she sat her band down and told
(01:04):
them that she would be leaving to pursue a solo career.
All totally on this our seventh episode of season three,
Rabble rosing, jaws on the floor, early morning, elevator rides
in Janice Joplin walking a winding path to liberation, Um
Jake Grennan and this is then'clock m Detroit, Michigan March.
(02:07):
The air in the Grand Ballroom was electric. The stage
was set, lights dimmed, the room balanced on edge. The
edge peered into a chasm, and then the chasm was
something that no one had seen or felt before, something new,
a revolution. People in the audience weren't restless, They were tense.
Every second felt like a minute, every minute like an hour.
(02:30):
Cigarette smoke hung in suspension, as if it too was
waiting for something to happen, before it faded into thin air.
A guy in dark aviator sunglasses and a black leather
jacket that read Zenta on the back and huge letters
was pacing the stage. He took the electric air, the
edge of the chasm, the suspended cigarette smoke, took it
all in his fuel. He put it in his legs,
(02:53):
which were in constant motion. He put it all in
his hands, which he flexed and clenched and crackled knuckles.
Janice Joplin stood to the side of the stage, bottle
in one hand, half smoked butt in the other, and
she felt the collective tension. She had goose bumps on
her arms. Who is this guy? She asked the promoter
standing next to her and motioned to the guy pacing
(03:13):
the stage. He's he in the band? The promoter shook
his head. Nah, that's J. C. Crawford. He's the band's
spiritual advisor. And here Janice thought the Big Brother was
bringing the enlightenment to the unsuspecting masses in Detroit. But
the crowd in Detroit didn't know Big Brother from Adam.
The crowd was there for the openers, the band from
(03:34):
up the road in Lincoln Park that was about to
set ship off. The guy on stage finally stopped pacing
and wrapped his hands around the microphone. The band walked
on stage and turned their amplifiers on, and Janice could
feel the hum of the amps tubes in her bones.
She felt the collective tension in the room swall up.
It was practically unbearable, and then the guy started to
(03:56):
wrap with the audience. It was a church sermon in
a political Allie wrapped in one, scored by the electric
breath of the band's amplifiers, switched on and ready to pounce.
Brothers and sisters, I want to see your hands. I
want everybody to kick up some noise. I want to
hear some revolution out there. Brothers and sisters, the time
is comfort each and every one of each decide whether
(04:17):
you were going to be the problem or whether you're
going to be the solution. You must choose, brothers. You
must choose brothers. It's time to testify. And I want
to know are you ready to testify? The ladies and gentlemen,
I give you the m C five. The music started
and it was like a bomb went off. Fuck. Janice
thought the m C five played far outside her comfort zone.
(04:40):
She didn't even know what zone they were in. And
Big Brother was yesterday and the m C five or tomorrow.
Then maybe right now, Albert Grossman was right. Maybe Big
Brother was holding her back. When the m C five
finished their set, there was only one thing Janice could
say when it was time for Big Brother to headline
the night, No fucking way. In March of Big Brother
(05:05):
in the Holding Company were on tour again, Detroit wasn't
intended to be just another show, but a recording session.
Albert Grossman had finally come through on his promise to
sweet talk Clive Davis, and Big Brother was part of
the Columbia family, and the deal was all anyone was
talking about out West. Columbia wound up paying a small
fortune for the band. First, Davis had to pay Bob
(05:27):
Shad two grand to release the group from their mainstream
records contract. Next, Shad with pocket a two percent royalty
from the group's first two records on Columbia, and then
Davis ponied up a fifty grand advance to cover costs
for the new record. The totality of the deal eclipsed
any other deal for any other Bay Area band, and
the high of the deal was quickly undermined by the
(05:48):
lows they felt on the tour. New York City was
way too uptight. Five grand worth of gear was stolen
after the show at the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston. In Detroit,
the land was to record their shows for the Columbia
record a live album, and the studio fell short when
it came to capturing their raw live sound. The best
place to witness Big Brother was in their natural habitats,
(06:11):
sweaty and breathless under bright stage lights and feeding off
of an audiences approving roar. He couldn't be there, then
a recorded document would be the next best thing. But
they weren't prepared for what was happening in Detroit. The
m C five shook them right down to the core.
The m C five showed them what true badass motherfucker's
looked like, regardless of how many zeros your record deal
(06:32):
had on it. And the m C five called for
a quote total assault on the culture by any means necessary,
and that included rock and roll, dope and fucking in
the streets. They were associates of the White Panthers and
anti racist political collective co founded by their manager John
Sinclair and heavily influenced by Fred Hampton and Hughey Newton
of the Black Panthers, and they were strip searched. It shows,
(06:55):
their phone lines were tapped, They endured routine visits from
g men. They said their fucker on their debut album
and then called for a boycott of the stores that
wouldn't carry it. Here was Big Brother getting the shape
down in San fran for playing too loud and smoking
too much grass, and then there was the m C
five turning the whole fucking system upside down. Later that summer,
(07:19):
the Democratic National Convention would be held at Grant Park
in Chicago, and a full lineup of contemporary rock and
roll was scheduled. The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother
in the Holding Company, and the m C five. Big
Brother bailed at the last minute. The other groups followed.
The m C five was the only band that showed up.
The d n c's whole vibe was off. Something was
(07:41):
going to go down and it wouldn't be pretty. Janice
could feel it. She knew it deep down. She thought
back to the show they played with the m C
five at the Grand Ballroom in March, about how in
the wrong scenario that sort of performance would be like
a bad trip truth bomb, and she was right. The
m C five's Rockets performance was nearly eclipsed by the
(08:03):
sound of ten thousand anti war demonstrators chanting at a
wall of National guardsmen, and then by the sound of
Chicago police helicopters circling overhead, and then by the sound
of demonstrators being hit with tear gas canisters and billy
clups back. On that March night in Detroit, Big Brother
(08:23):
finally took the stage following the m c fives opening set.
The Real to Real was rolling on the mobile recording unit,
and they didn't bring it at all. There was no
revolution in their sound, no liberation. Janie listened to the
playback afterwards and stormed off and frustration. Who would have
to try again another night in another city, preferably not
(08:44):
one where their preconceptions about rock and roll would be
burned to the ground in front of them by the
opening band, And Janis knew what city they'd be in next,
and the night after next, and then the night after
that the tour. She told her that she didn't know
how they'd sound, though, or what they'd find when they
shifted from one time zone to another. He just never knew.
(09:05):
Sometimes the elevator door would open up and the plot
would twist, and then the elevator door would closed and
the plot would twist again where it would wind up.
Jannis didn't know. She knew, she wasn't prepared. Jannis Joplin
(09:45):
stepped into the elevator at the Chelsea Hotel on West
twenty three Street in New York City, only to find
that the lift wasn't empty after all. He was standing
in the corner adjacent to the buttons, tucked out of sight.
He looked like a professor who have been up all
night grading papers and nursing a bottomless old fashioned. It
(10:05):
was spring night, three in the morning. Time was nothing
but a number to the Chelsea Hotel. The Venerable Institution
was a favorite of artists who favored unorthodox hours and
unorthodox desires. Mark Twain was a guest, as was Charles Mukowski,
William Burrows, Jackson Pollock, Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clark wrote
(10:26):
two thousand one, A Space Odyssey in one of the
Chelsea rooms. Jack carrollac wrote On the Road in another.
Dylan Thomas entered the coma that would end his life
there in nineteen fifty three, and decades later, in ninety eight,
Sid Vicious girlfriend Nancy sponge In was found dead in
the bathroom of Sweet Number one hundred. Janis and Big
(10:48):
Brother were in New York City to begin their new
but faithfully short lived time with Albert Grossman, Clive Davis,
and Columbia Records. They had begun recording at Columbia's New
York studios and the tour that wuld take them to
Janice's eye opening woman in Detroit was about to start.
The Chelsea Hotel was as good of a home base
for Janice as anywhere she had. The man in the
(11:09):
elevator made within seconds of stepping inside. She knew exactly
who he was, but he looked at her with a
look of late night lust, the kind of leer that
would get others in trouble, but for him led to
more sexual conquests, and he could count on two hands
and two feet. His leer was driven by his ego,
which told him he could ball whomever he wanted, even
(11:30):
a stranger in an elevator at three in the morning.
Is ego also told him that this stranger had no
idea who he was. The celebrity meant nothing, that all
there was was this moment, this look, these people, a man,
a woman in the unspoken chemistry in this six by
seven box. Good evening, Miss, he said, is a voice,
(11:51):
low paced, like a turtle, and not the hair. Are
you looking for someone? She responded that she was looking
for Chris Christofferson. Little lady, you were in luck, the
mayor responded, because I am Chris Christofferson. Hold up. That
was his version of the encounter. Leonard Cohen's Leonard Cohen
(12:12):
had his own version of all of his encounters. He'd
tell this romanticized story on stage years later when he
introduced the song Chelsea Hotel Number two, which he wrote
about this very night, in this very encounter, about the
night that he slept with Janice Choplin in the Chelsea Hotel.
But that wasn't exactly how it all went down. Janice's
memory wasn't so poetic. First of all, she hadn't met
(12:37):
Chris Christofferson yet, hadn't even heard of the guy, So
why she would be saying his name in a Chelsea
hotel lift in was anyone's guests. Second, Leonard was in
a much gloomier state than he led on. He was
in his early thirties, and he had bailed on a
poet's life in his native Canada to try his hand
at being a singer songwriter in America. It wasn't going
(12:57):
so well. Rolling Stone said that his day View album
Songs of Leonard Cohen had three brilliant songs, one good one,
three qualified bumbers, and three flaming ships. That last part
eate a month. He was depressed. He took a walk
and ate his feelings in the form of a greasy
cheeseburger at Bronco Burger, gotta drink at a bar, tried
to pick up chicks, but kind of did it half
(13:18):
asked as glum and bummed out as he was, and
then went back to his hotel and hanging low. When
Janice ran into him in the elevator, she knew exactly
who he was. He was on her fucking record label,
for Christ's sakes, she was recording the new Big Brother
album in the same studio Leonard to cut his lukewarm
received debut. She also knew exactly the kind of night
he was having. She'd been there, done that. He wanted
(13:39):
to pretend that he didn't know who she was, and
that was fine, but she was no groupie. She was
the one in church here. She was the one who
asked him what floor he was staying on, and when
she found out they were both on the fourth floor,
asked him to come to her room. She later all
but forget about the night because it was so forgettable.
There was no passion, no spark. She had some better
late night trip at the Chelsea, though, including one with
(14:01):
a member of the Chambers Brothers, and that was after
a show they played with Jimmie Hendricks, the show crashed
by Jim Morrison, the show where Janice had to put
an end to Morrison's drunken hijinks by bringing a liquor
bottle down on his head. Men, God, damn men. Men
could be so goddamn groovy one minute and then so
disappointing the next. Joe McDonald was an exception to the rule,
(14:23):
but even that was a relationship that was doomed from
the start. They called him Country Joe, a k A
leader of Country Joe and the Fish, a psychedelic band
out of Berkeley. It was recently divorced. On the rebound,
it was mesmerized by Janis's voice and humor. But Joe
like singing protest music and dropping LSD taps, and Janice
(14:43):
liked Booze was continuing to develop a taste for heroin.
It wasn't interested in living a life of rallies and protests.
All Joe wanted to talk about was the Vietnam War.
Urgo dude. From the start, there were more men to fall,
whether it was pig Pen mccern and Chris Christofferson had
long last or David Nyhouse later on in Rio. And
(15:05):
there was also Seth Morgan, the man she would wind
up engaged to, although no one in her life knew
much about him, let alone their engagement. They met when
he delivered coke to her house one afternoon. They kept
the relationship on the downlow, real hush hush, so hush
hush that many of her close friends would have a
lot of questions for Seth Morgan when Janis didn't show
up as scheduled at a recording session in October nineteen seventy.
(15:28):
And then there was a time in late nineteen sixty
seven when Janice woke up one morning feeling sick. It
was a different kind of sick than the kind she
was used to, the kind she had experience after drinking
too much or when she needed to fix she was pregnant.
She wasn't one sure of the father, but she assumed
it was Paul Wally, the drummer for Blue Cheer, a
(15:51):
heavy San Francisco rock trio, that she had spent some
nights with Paul at skipped town and no one knew
where he was, and Janice made the difficult decision to
get an abortion. She knew she wasn't fit to be
a mother, not now, maybe not ever. Roe V. Wade
was still years away, however, and abortions weren't an option
in the States. She drove herself to Mexico for the procedure,
(16:12):
which turned out to be a botched one, as she
was hemorrhaging days later after she returned. Sometimes you're with
someone and you're convinced that they have something to tell you,
she later said, looking back on her relationships with all
these men and more, and maybe nothing's really happening, but
you keep telling yourself something's happening, So you keep showing up,
you keep pulling, giving, rapping, and then all of a sudden,
(16:33):
about four o'clock in the morning, you realize that this
motherfucker is just lying there. She could have been talking
about Leonard Cohen or Jim Morrison or Joe McDonald or
Paul Wally, or she could have been talking about her
band big brother in the holding company, was just lying there,
and Janice Joplin was ready to move on. We'll be
(16:55):
right back after this word. We were. She knew it
was a dream because in it the southern comfort tasted
like tang. She was on the back of a Harley
pig Pen was driving. She always thought the pig Pen
looked like one of the Hell's Angels. When she first
met him, she thought he was. He was wearing a
(17:16):
Paisley bandana around his head, his goatee was going rogue
on his face, and his jean jacket was littered with
pins and buttons. The wind blew Pig's hair back as
he opened the throttle and the bike pressed on down
the road. Janice looked in the bike's tiny rear view
mirror to see Pig's face, but his wind swept hair
was in the way. She reached her arms forward and
(17:36):
pulled his hair out of his face. But it wasn't
Pig's face she saw in the mirror. It was Jay
Whittaker's face. And the road was wet, the sky was dark.
Every time they drove past the street light, the face
in the rear view mirror was illuminated for a split second,
and every time it was somewhat different, but not Pig.
The face was Peter de Blanks. The face was Chad Helms.
(17:59):
The face was Jim Morrison's. He actually looked more like
his boozed up pal jimbo. He cracked a devilish smile,
and the face was her father's. But when the harley
came to a stop at the intersection of Hayton Ashbury
and its hopped off, the back pig was gone, and
the driver was now one of the shadow people she
had once seen skulking around Venice Beach. He kicked the
(18:19):
stand down and propped the bike up in the middle
of the intersection. He held out his hand at Janice
flat palm up, and stood there waiting for something. She
had nothing to give him. And then he was gone.
The city was empty. There were no musicians or beat next,
no diggers or headshot proprietors, no hippies or freaks or
Mary Prankster's. Janice pulled the bottle of Southern Comfort from
(18:42):
her back pocket, twisted the cap off, and took a swig.
She twisted her face up, still tasted like tang. She
screwed the cap back on, waited for five seconds, twisted
it off again, and took another pole, still sucking tang. Insanity.
She thought, this is insanity, to keep doing something in
next appecting it to somehow be suddenly different. To think
that her booze would suddenly taste like booze and not
(19:04):
like some orange adjacent spaceman juice. She stuffed the bottle
in the back pocket of her bell bottoms and walked
to the first door she saw. It was the entrance
to the Psychedelic Shop. She opened the door and stepped inside.
But inside wasn't the inside of the Psychedelic Shop. It
was the ranch in a lema where Quicksilver Messenger Service
(19:25):
lived communally. Everyone referred to them as Quicksilver Consumer Service
because they were on a NonStop diet of dope. Typically,
Quicksilver's place was bustling with activity unless they were all
over at the Dead's Compound, her big brother's spot in
nearby Lognitis, but it was dead quiet. Janice called out,
but there was no response, no signs of life, and
(19:48):
she could hear the ways crashing on the shore in
the distance, and they were rhythmic and soothing. She walked
down a dirt road surrounded on both sides by rows
of eucalyptus trees. The trees towered over her and provided
shade from the sun. She could hear them wrinkle and
crackle as the wind blew. Soon she found herself at
the entrance to the Vedanta Society spiritual retreat. She thought
(20:10):
of the MC five spiritual Adviser. She heard his voice
ring out throughout the calm of the distinctly Californian geography.
Somewhere a bell told that there were more trees now,
and though these were bent over her like a deformed canopy,
they were covered in moss. Long translucent whiffs hung from
(20:30):
the thick branches. She had felt a calmness up until now,
and now something unsettling took up space in the pit
of her stomach. The wind kicked up, and the translucent
whiffs swung back and forth in the breeze. She heard
voices coming from the Vedanta Society's place in the big
white two story house up the road. The voices hoummed
in unison, and there were no words. She thought the
(20:53):
sound of the other human voices would provide some sort
of comfort. They just made her feel increasingly uneasy. Soon,
the rumble of a motorcycle could be heard in the distance.
It was getting closer. Janice hoped it was Pig again.
It really picked this time, and not any of the
other people that Pig and morphed into earlier. She could
see a small cloud of dust down the dirt road
(21:15):
where the bike was. The rumble of the engine got
louder and the bike got closer. She realized now that
it wasn't Pig on the bike, and the Harley was
painted gold. Orange flames were drawn on either side, and
Janice noticed the rider's tattoos as he got closer. A
son on one arm, a scorpion on the other. He
had short hair, thick mutton chops on the sides of
his face. He wasn't wearing sunglasses, and his eyes were
(21:38):
nearly squinted shut from the sun. She had never seen
him before, not in real life, not in any other dreams.
He was a stranger. He slowed down and motioned to
Janice to get on the bike, and the pit her
stomach quickly faded away. She climbed onto the back seat.
When she woke up, she could hear the rain coming
down hard outside, and room was pitch black. She started
(22:02):
to piece together the parts of her dream, but like
most of her dreams, it was already fading from memory
when she awoke, and the last part stuck with her.
The stranger on the bike that she had never seen before,
lying awake in the middle of the night after a
strange dream. She wasn't in the mood for a stranger
She reached over in the bed and her hands found
a pig Pen, the dead head she loved the most,
(22:25):
laying next to her. He was passed out, and they
were in Pig's room at the Dead's compound in Marin County.
The two had been up late drinking Thunderbird and Southern Comfort,
and the Southern Comfort did not taste like tang. The
more they drank, the lucier they got, and the lucer
they got, the more they felt a deep connection with
each other. Unlike the other members of the Dead, pig
(22:46):
Pen would rather take long poles of a bottle than
drop doses of Owsley's Finest. Like Janice, pig Pen loved
the blues, and the older the blues, the better. There
were two old souls. They made her racket and Pig's room,
which was right above Phil Lusher's room. Phil what hit
his ceiling with a broom handle with the intimate noises
(23:06):
got to be too much. A year later, Janice would
join the Dead on stage at the film War. She
would duet with pig on one of those blue songs
they loved Bobby Blue Blands, turn on your Love Light.
As their voices co mingled in ragged unison, Janice thought
back to that night, waking up in pigs room, the
rain pounding outside, the dream lifting like fog on a
(23:29):
San Francisco morning, and how it gave her comfort to
reach over and feel him next to her. She looked
over at Pig Pens standing next to her on the stage,
her eyes staring directly into his. The band picking up
momentum as the song came around to a refrain, and
the stage lights changed colors from white to red to
green and black to white again, and each time they changed,
(23:52):
suddenly Pig's face changed with them, like it had in
the dream. Pig was Jay, and then Pig was Peter,
and then it was her father, and Janice closed her
eyes tight, twisted her voice up with Pigs and their
alley cat harmony, and reached out for his hand to
ground her. On stage in front of thousands, she couldn't
help but feel totally alone. August, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Peter Alban
(24:43):
was thinking of the sweater incident and Mother Blues in
Chicago years earlier when he decided he'd had enough of
Janice Choplin. He was all bent out of shape then,
and he was still bent out of shape now. At
some point in between he had allowed himself to be
bent back into shape, and he regret edit that it
made him seem weak. Janice had ditched him. They all
(25:04):
ditched him, actually, after a recent gig to go shoot
up with a bunch of junkies and somehow somewhere fun.
If he knew where, then, if he knew where, Janice
drove Porst three fifty six around town painted and I
catching psychedelic design, while the rest of them just lived
like fucking papers that they were supporting players for this
rock and roll goddess, even though they were a democracy,
(25:24):
a band of five, supposedly a band of five, no
one was above anyone else, or at least that's what
they had told depressed early on. Obviously things had changed.
They were on stage at the gut Throe Theater when
Peter lost it. He humiliated Janice told her she sounded
like Lassie the way she was dancing around and was
all out of breath every time she came back to
(25:45):
the microphone to sing. Janis told Peter to fuck off.
Just as he expected she would. Hell, she had a
bottle of something hanging around, she probably would have tossed
that at his head to Later, he regretted what he said.
He realized that he had let his anger and his
sadness get but it was true. Peter felt betrayed. Janis
had made the announcement to leave Big Brother. She wanted
(26:06):
a band to lift her up to the next level,
and she felt the Big Brother was not that band.
Albert Grossman knew the Big Brother was not that band,
so she told the boys of the band meeting in
August ninety eight, that she would be leaving at the
end of the year, just a few months away. They
all knew that their career as they knew it was
d o a even worse, Sam Andrew told the group
(26:28):
that he was going with Janice. That may have stung
a little more, to be honest, and they all knew
that Janie's day would come that she would move on.
But Sam's decision made the whole situation seemed like an
US and them split, and they had just gotten their
ship together to a big industry deal, a big manager,
a big label, a big record. When Cheap Thrills was
(26:49):
released in August ninety eight, it sold so many advanced
copies that had already gone gold by the time had shipped.
That's five hundred thousand copies soon after store shelves that
topped the Billboard charts and sold upwards of a million copies.
It wasn't exactly a live album as had been intended.
The live performances were tough to capture, and the album's
(27:11):
producer John Simon built a makeshift stage in the studio
so that they could have complete control over the process
and still replicate the feel of a live show, though
only one of the album's seven songs was actually taken
from a live show. Rock critic Dean Robert Christgau ranked
it the third best album of night, behind Dylan's John
(27:31):
Wesley Harding and the Birds notorious Bird Brothers. Other critics
weren't so flattering. The New York Times called out Big
Brother as middle class white kids with long blonde hair
pretending to be black, and said the record was a
bad parody down be panded as quote unquote embarrassing blackface.
Mick Jagger, himself an acolyte of black American music, and
(27:54):
R and B said, if I want to listen to
a black singer. I'll listen to a black singer. Jannis
put the blinders on and moved forward. She was busy
assembling a new crew, and the musicians would rise up
to meet her far above where Big Brother were operating.
Albert Grossman wanted her new band to sound like the
Muscle Shoals sound the greasy R and B rock hybrid
(28:16):
that had propelled Aretha Franklin's career making hits, not to
mention that A James Is Tell Mama. Skip pro Cop,
a Canadian drummer who played with the Paupers, one of
Grossman's clients, had been tapped to put together Janice's new band.
They needed to hit the ground running when Big Brother
in its course. Skip moved to San Francisco and they
workshop new material. It was late one evening after a
(28:40):
rehearsal session that Skip saw the beefy figure approaching him
outside the film more. He was walking straight at Skip.
It was erily quiet. Soon there was another figure, and
then another, and another, and they came from the shadows.
For such big dudes, they were incredibly stealthy. Skip was
surrounded on all sides by Hell's Angels and leather. Their
(29:02):
faces were bearded and bruised. Some were missing teeth. One
had a patch over one of his eyes. Skip tried
to swallow what his spit caught in his throat. You
skip pro cop, the one with the earliest beard and
biggest belly, asked. Skip's hands shook. He tried to swallow again,
but it was no use. He confirmed in as few
words as possible, they yes, he was skip pro cop.
(29:26):
The biker nodded, you're going to take care of our
little sisterem, aren't she skip pro cop. He wouldn't want
to go and do a stupid thing like not take
care of our little sister, would you now, skip pro cop?
Skip confirmed again, in as few words as possible that yes,
absolutely he was going to take care of heror no,
he didn't want to do stupid things. He thanked the
angels for looking out for their little sister. His hands
(29:48):
continued to shake. In nineteen sixty nine, however, Janice's problems
would begin to multiply. She'd have to hide her drug
habit from Grossman, band members would go missing, needs to
wear disguises, and not least because the FBI had Janice
Joplin on a watch list um Jake Brennan in this
(30:10):
is the seven Club, all Right? 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.
(30:32):
Disgrace Land is available only on the free Amazon Music app.
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(30:54):
Club is hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan.
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voting the mixes. The show. Additional music and score elements
by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Lenetta. The twenty seven Club
is produced by myself for Double Elvis and partnership with
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(31:17):
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(32:11):
so f your ear is
The twenty seven Club is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Dennis Joplin died at the age
of seven, and she lived the life where the highs
mingled closely with the lows. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Eleven would be
the number on a scale of one to ten that
(00:20):
she would turn her performance level up to while on
stage performing, especially when she was joined by a good
friend like Ron Pigpen McKernan. Another one would be the
number of performances by a certain rabble rousing rock band
in Detroit that would make her suddenly feel like a
woman out of time. Ten more would be the number
of jaws of San Francisco musicians that hit the floor
(00:42):
when news of Big Brother in the Holding companies unprecedented
deal with Columbia Records hit the wires. Another three would
be the early hour of the morning when she stepped
into an elevator at the Chelsea Hotel, only to have
fate intervene in the form of an unexpected passenger. And
to be the number of years she would have left
to live after she sat her band down and told
(01:04):
them that she would be leaving to pursue a solo career.
All totally on this our seventh episode of season three,
Rabble rosing, jaws on the floor, early morning, elevator rides
in Janice Joplin walking a winding path to liberation, Um
Jake Grennan and this is then'clock m Detroit, Michigan March.
(02:07):
The air in the Grand Ballroom was electric. The stage
was set, lights dimmed, the room balanced on edge. The
edge peered into a chasm, and then the chasm was
something that no one had seen or felt before, something new,
a revolution. People in the audience weren't restless, They were tense.
Every second felt like a minute, every minute like an hour.
(02:30):
Cigarette smoke hung in suspension, as if it too was
waiting for something to happen, before it faded into thin air.
A guy in dark aviator sunglasses and a black leather
jacket that read Zenta on the back and huge letters
was pacing the stage. He took the electric air, the
edge of the chasm, the suspended cigarette smoke, took it
all in his fuel. He put it in his legs,
(02:53):
which were in constant motion. He put it all in
his hands, which he flexed and clenched and crackled knuckles.
Janice Joplin stood to the side of the stage, bottle
in one hand, half smoked butt in the other, and
she felt the collective tension. She had goose bumps on
her arms. Who is this guy? She asked the promoter
standing next to her and motioned to the guy pacing
(03:13):
the stage. He's he in the band? The promoter shook
his head. Nah, that's J. C. Crawford. He's the band's
spiritual advisor. And here Janice thought the Big Brother was
bringing the enlightenment to the unsuspecting masses in Detroit. But
the crowd in Detroit didn't know Big Brother from Adam.
The crowd was there for the openers, the band from
(03:34):
up the road in Lincoln Park that was about to
set ship off. The guy on stage finally stopped pacing
and wrapped his hands around the microphone. The band walked
on stage and turned their amplifiers on, and Janice could
feel the hum of the amps tubes in her bones.
She felt the collective tension in the room swall up.
It was practically unbearable, and then the guy started to
(03:56):
wrap with the audience. It was a church sermon in
a political Allie wrapped in one, scored by the electric
breath of the band's amplifiers, switched on and ready to pounce.
Brothers and sisters, I want to see your hands. I
want everybody to kick up some noise. I want to
hear some revolution out there. Brothers and sisters, the time
is comfort each and every one of each decide whether
(04:17):
you were going to be the problem or whether you're
going to be the solution. You must choose, brothers. You
must choose brothers. It's time to testify. And I want
to know are you ready to testify? The ladies and gentlemen,
I give you the m C five. The music started
and it was like a bomb went off. Fuck. Janice
thought the m C five played far outside her comfort zone.
(04:40):
She didn't even know what zone they were in. And
Big Brother was yesterday and the m C five or tomorrow.
Then maybe right now, Albert Grossman was right. Maybe Big
Brother was holding her back. When the m C five
finished their set, there was only one thing Janice could
say when it was time for Big Brother to headline
the night, No fucking way. In March of Big Brother
(05:05):
in the Holding Company were on tour again, Detroit wasn't
intended to be just another show, but a recording session.
Albert Grossman had finally come through on his promise to
sweet talk Clive Davis, and Big Brother was part of
the Columbia family, and the deal was all anyone was
talking about out West. Columbia wound up paying a small
fortune for the band. First, Davis had to pay Bob
(05:27):
Shad two grand to release the group from their mainstream
records contract. Next, Shad with pocket a two percent royalty
from the group's first two records on Columbia, and then
Davis ponied up a fifty grand advance to cover costs
for the new record. The totality of the deal eclipsed
any other deal for any other Bay Area band, and
the high of the deal was quickly undermined by the
(05:48):
lows they felt on the tour. New York City was
way too uptight. Five grand worth of gear was stolen
after the show at the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston. In Detroit,
the land was to record their shows for the Columbia
record a live album, and the studio fell short when
it came to capturing their raw live sound. The best
place to witness Big Brother was in their natural habitats,
(06:11):
sweaty and breathless under bright stage lights and feeding off
of an audiences approving roar. He couldn't be there, then
a recorded document would be the next best thing. But
they weren't prepared for what was happening in Detroit. The
m C five shook them right down to the core.
The m C five showed them what true badass motherfucker's
looked like, regardless of how many zeros your record deal
(06:32):
had on it. And the m C five called for
a quote total assault on the culture by any means necessary,
and that included rock and roll, dope and fucking in
the streets. They were associates of the White Panthers and
anti racist political collective co founded by their manager John
Sinclair and heavily influenced by Fred Hampton and Hughey Newton
of the Black Panthers, and they were strip searched. It shows,
(06:55):
their phone lines were tapped, They endured routine visits from
g men. They said their fucker on their debut album
and then called for a boycott of the stores that
wouldn't carry it. Here was Big Brother getting the shape
down in San fran for playing too loud and smoking
too much grass, and then there was the m C
five turning the whole fucking system upside down. Later that summer,
(07:19):
the Democratic National Convention would be held at Grant Park
in Chicago, and a full lineup of contemporary rock and
roll was scheduled. The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother
in the Holding Company, and the m C five. Big
Brother bailed at the last minute. The other groups followed.
The m C five was the only band that showed up.
The d n c's whole vibe was off. Something was
(07:41):
going to go down and it wouldn't be pretty. Janice
could feel it. She knew it deep down. She thought
back to the show they played with the m C
five at the Grand Ballroom in March, about how in
the wrong scenario that sort of performance would be like
a bad trip truth bomb, and she was right. The
m C five's Rockets performance was nearly eclipsed by the
(08:03):
sound of ten thousand anti war demonstrators chanting at a
wall of National guardsmen, and then by the sound of
Chicago police helicopters circling overhead, and then by the sound
of demonstrators being hit with tear gas canisters and billy
clups back. On that March night in Detroit, Big Brother
(08:23):
finally took the stage following the m c fives opening set.
The Real to Real was rolling on the mobile recording unit,
and they didn't bring it at all. There was no
revolution in their sound, no liberation. Janie listened to the
playback afterwards and stormed off and frustration. Who would have
to try again another night in another city, preferably not
(08:44):
one where their preconceptions about rock and roll would be
burned to the ground in front of them by the
opening band, And Janis knew what city they'd be in next,
and the night after next, and then the night after
that the tour. She told her that she didn't know
how they'd sound, though, or what they'd find when they
shifted from one time zone to another. He just never knew.
(09:05):
Sometimes the elevator door would open up and the plot
would twist, and then the elevator door would closed and
the plot would twist again where it would wind up.
Jannis didn't know. She knew, she wasn't prepared. Jannis Joplin
(09:45):
stepped into the elevator at the Chelsea Hotel on West
twenty three Street in New York City, only to find
that the lift wasn't empty after all. He was standing
in the corner adjacent to the buttons, tucked out of sight.
He looked like a professor who have been up all
night grading papers and nursing a bottomless old fashioned. It
(10:05):
was spring night, three in the morning. Time was nothing
but a number to the Chelsea Hotel. The Venerable Institution
was a favorite of artists who favored unorthodox hours and
unorthodox desires. Mark Twain was a guest, as was Charles Mukowski,
William Burrows, Jackson Pollock, Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clark wrote
(10:26):
two thousand one, A Space Odyssey in one of the
Chelsea rooms. Jack carrollac wrote On the Road in another.
Dylan Thomas entered the coma that would end his life
there in nineteen fifty three, and decades later, in ninety eight,
Sid Vicious girlfriend Nancy sponge In was found dead in
the bathroom of Sweet Number one hundred. Janis and Big
(10:48):
Brother were in New York City to begin their new
but faithfully short lived time with Albert Grossman, Clive Davis,
and Columbia Records. They had begun recording at Columbia's New
York studios and the tour that wuld take them to
Janice's eye opening woman in Detroit was about to start.
The Chelsea Hotel was as good of a home base
for Janice as anywhere she had. The man in the
(11:09):
elevator made within seconds of stepping inside. She knew exactly
who he was, but he looked at her with a
look of late night lust, the kind of leer that
would get others in trouble, but for him led to
more sexual conquests, and he could count on two hands
and two feet. His leer was driven by his ego,
which told him he could ball whomever he wanted, even
(11:30):
a stranger in an elevator at three in the morning.
Is ego also told him that this stranger had no
idea who he was. The celebrity meant nothing, that all
there was was this moment, this look, these people, a man,
a woman in the unspoken chemistry in this six by
seven box. Good evening, Miss, he said, is a voice,
(11:51):
low paced, like a turtle, and not the hair. Are
you looking for someone? She responded that she was looking
for Chris Christofferson. Little lady, you were in luck, the
mayor responded, because I am Chris Christofferson. Hold up. That
was his version of the encounter. Leonard Cohen's Leonard Cohen
(12:12):
had his own version of all of his encounters. He'd
tell this romanticized story on stage years later when he
introduced the song Chelsea Hotel Number two, which he wrote
about this very night, in this very encounter, about the
night that he slept with Janice Choplin in the Chelsea Hotel.
But that wasn't exactly how it all went down. Janice's
memory wasn't so poetic. First of all, she hadn't met
(12:37):
Chris Christofferson yet, hadn't even heard of the guy, So
why she would be saying his name in a Chelsea
hotel lift in was anyone's guests. Second, Leonard was in
a much gloomier state than he led on. He was
in his early thirties, and he had bailed on a
poet's life in his native Canada to try his hand
at being a singer songwriter in America. It wasn't going
(12:57):
so well. Rolling Stone said that his day View album
Songs of Leonard Cohen had three brilliant songs, one good one,
three qualified bumbers, and three flaming ships. That last part
eate a month. He was depressed. He took a walk
and ate his feelings in the form of a greasy
cheeseburger at Bronco Burger, gotta drink at a bar, tried
to pick up chicks, but kind of did it half
(13:18):
asked as glum and bummed out as he was, and
then went back to his hotel and hanging low. When
Janice ran into him in the elevator, she knew exactly
who he was. He was on her fucking record label,
for Christ's sakes, she was recording the new Big Brother
album in the same studio Leonard to cut his lukewarm
received debut. She also knew exactly the kind of night
he was having. She'd been there, done that. He wanted
(13:39):
to pretend that he didn't know who she was, and
that was fine, but she was no groupie. She was
the one in church here. She was the one who
asked him what floor he was staying on, and when
she found out they were both on the fourth floor,
asked him to come to her room. She later all
but forget about the night because it was so forgettable.
There was no passion, no spark. She had some better
late night trip at the Chelsea, though, including one with
(14:01):
a member of the Chambers Brothers, and that was after
a show they played with Jimmie Hendricks, the show crashed
by Jim Morrison, the show where Janice had to put
an end to Morrison's drunken hijinks by bringing a liquor
bottle down on his head. Men, God, damn men. Men
could be so goddamn groovy one minute and then so
disappointing the next. Joe McDonald was an exception to the rule,
(14:23):
but even that was a relationship that was doomed from
the start. They called him Country Joe, a k A
leader of Country Joe and the Fish, a psychedelic band
out of Berkeley. It was recently divorced. On the rebound,
it was mesmerized by Janis's voice and humor. But Joe
like singing protest music and dropping LSD taps, and Janice
(14:43):
liked Booze was continuing to develop a taste for heroin.
It wasn't interested in living a life of rallies and protests.
All Joe wanted to talk about was the Vietnam War.
Urgo dude. From the start, there were more men to fall,
whether it was pig Pen mccern and Chris Christofferson had
long last or David Nyhouse later on in Rio. And
(15:05):
there was also Seth Morgan, the man she would wind
up engaged to, although no one in her life knew
much about him, let alone their engagement. They met when
he delivered coke to her house one afternoon. They kept
the relationship on the downlow, real hush hush, so hush
hush that many of her close friends would have a
lot of questions for Seth Morgan when Janis didn't show
up as scheduled at a recording session in October nineteen seventy.
(15:28):
And then there was a time in late nineteen sixty
seven when Janice woke up one morning feeling sick. It
was a different kind of sick than the kind she
was used to, the kind she had experience after drinking
too much or when she needed to fix she was pregnant.
She wasn't one sure of the father, but she assumed
it was Paul Wally, the drummer for Blue Cheer, a
(15:51):
heavy San Francisco rock trio, that she had spent some
nights with Paul at skipped town and no one knew
where he was, and Janice made the difficult decision to
get an abortion. She knew she wasn't fit to be
a mother, not now, maybe not ever. Roe V. Wade
was still years away, however, and abortions weren't an option
in the States. She drove herself to Mexico for the procedure,
(16:12):
which turned out to be a botched one, as she
was hemorrhaging days later after she returned. Sometimes you're with
someone and you're convinced that they have something to tell you,
she later said, looking back on her relationships with all
these men and more, and maybe nothing's really happening, but
you keep telling yourself something's happening, So you keep showing up,
you keep pulling, giving, rapping, and then all of a sudden,
(16:33):
about four o'clock in the morning, you realize that this
motherfucker is just lying there. She could have been talking
about Leonard Cohen or Jim Morrison or Joe McDonald or
Paul Wally, or she could have been talking about her
band big brother in the holding company, was just lying there,
and Janice Joplin was ready to move on. We'll be
(16:55):
right back after this word. We were. She knew it
was a dream because in it the southern comfort tasted
like tang. She was on the back of a Harley
pig Pen was driving. She always thought the pig Pen
looked like one of the Hell's Angels. When she first
met him, she thought he was. He was wearing a
(17:16):
Paisley bandana around his head, his goatee was going rogue
on his face, and his jean jacket was littered with
pins and buttons. The wind blew Pig's hair back as
he opened the throttle and the bike pressed on down
the road. Janice looked in the bike's tiny rear view
mirror to see Pig's face, but his wind swept hair
was in the way. She reached her arms forward and
(17:36):
pulled his hair out of his face. But it wasn't
Pig's face she saw in the mirror. It was Jay
Whittaker's face. And the road was wet, the sky was dark.
Every time they drove past the street light, the face
in the rear view mirror was illuminated for a split second,
and every time it was somewhat different, but not Pig.
The face was Peter de Blanks. The face was Chad Helms.
(17:59):
The face was Jim Morrison's. He actually looked more like
his boozed up pal jimbo. He cracked a devilish smile,
and the face was her father's. But when the harley
came to a stop at the intersection of Hayton Ashbury
and its hopped off, the back pig was gone, and
the driver was now one of the shadow people she
had once seen skulking around Venice Beach. He kicked the
(18:19):
stand down and propped the bike up in the middle
of the intersection. He held out his hand at Janice
flat palm up, and stood there waiting for something. She
had nothing to give him. And then he was gone.
The city was empty. There were no musicians or beat next,
no diggers or headshot proprietors, no hippies or freaks or
Mary Prankster's. Janice pulled the bottle of Southern Comfort from
(18:42):
her back pocket, twisted the cap off, and took a swig.
She twisted her face up, still tasted like tang. She
screwed the cap back on, waited for five seconds, twisted
it off again, and took another pole, still sucking tang. Insanity.
She thought, this is insanity, to keep doing something in
next appecting it to somehow be suddenly different. To think
that her booze would suddenly taste like booze and not
(19:04):
like some orange adjacent spaceman juice. She stuffed the bottle
in the back pocket of her bell bottoms and walked
to the first door she saw. It was the entrance
to the Psychedelic Shop. She opened the door and stepped inside.
But inside wasn't the inside of the Psychedelic Shop. It
was the ranch in a lema where Quicksilver Messenger Service
(19:25):
lived communally. Everyone referred to them as Quicksilver Consumer Service
because they were on a NonStop diet of dope. Typically,
Quicksilver's place was bustling with activity unless they were all
over at the Dead's Compound, her big brother's spot in
nearby Lognitis, but it was dead quiet. Janice called out,
but there was no response, no signs of life, and
(19:48):
she could hear the ways crashing on the shore in
the distance, and they were rhythmic and soothing. She walked
down a dirt road surrounded on both sides by rows
of eucalyptus trees. The trees towered over her and provided
shade from the sun. She could hear them wrinkle and
crackle as the wind blew. Soon she found herself at
the entrance to the Vedanta Society spiritual retreat. She thought
(20:10):
of the MC five spiritual Adviser. She heard his voice
ring out throughout the calm of the distinctly Californian geography.
Somewhere a bell told that there were more trees now,
and though these were bent over her like a deformed canopy,
they were covered in moss. Long translucent whiffs hung from
(20:30):
the thick branches. She had felt a calmness up until now,
and now something unsettling took up space in the pit
of her stomach. The wind kicked up, and the translucent
whiffs swung back and forth in the breeze. She heard
voices coming from the Vedanta Society's place in the big
white two story house up the road. The voices hoummed
in unison, and there were no words. She thought the
(20:53):
sound of the other human voices would provide some sort
of comfort. They just made her feel increasingly uneasy. Soon,
the rumble of a motorcycle could be heard in the distance.
It was getting closer. Janice hoped it was Pig again.
It really picked this time, and not any of the
other people that Pig and morphed into earlier. She could
see a small cloud of dust down the dirt road
(21:15):
where the bike was. The rumble of the engine got
louder and the bike got closer. She realized now that
it wasn't Pig on the bike, and the Harley was
painted gold. Orange flames were drawn on either side, and
Janice noticed the rider's tattoos as he got closer. A
son on one arm, a scorpion on the other. He
had short hair, thick mutton chops on the sides of
his face. He wasn't wearing sunglasses, and his eyes were
(21:38):
nearly squinted shut from the sun. She had never seen
him before, not in real life, not in any other dreams.
He was a stranger. He slowed down and motioned to
Janice to get on the bike, and the pit her
stomach quickly faded away. She climbed onto the back seat.
When she woke up, she could hear the rain coming
down hard outside, and room was pitch black. She started
(22:02):
to piece together the parts of her dream, but like
most of her dreams, it was already fading from memory
when she awoke, and the last part stuck with her.
The stranger on the bike that she had never seen before,
lying awake in the middle of the night after a
strange dream. She wasn't in the mood for a stranger
She reached over in the bed and her hands found
a pig Pen, the dead head she loved the most,
(22:25):
laying next to her. He was passed out, and they
were in Pig's room at the Dead's compound in Marin County.
The two had been up late drinking Thunderbird and Southern Comfort,
and the Southern Comfort did not taste like tang. The
more they drank, the lucier they got, and the lucer
they got, the more they felt a deep connection with
each other. Unlike the other members of the Dead, pig
(22:46):
Pen would rather take long poles of a bottle than
drop doses of Owsley's Finest. Like Janice, pig Pen loved
the blues, and the older the blues, the better. There
were two old souls. They made her racket and Pig's room,
which was right above Phil Lusher's room. Phil what hit
his ceiling with a broom handle with the intimate noises
(23:06):
got to be too much. A year later, Janice would
join the Dead on stage at the film War. She
would duet with pig on one of those blue songs
they loved Bobby Blue Blands, turn on your Love Light.
As their voices co mingled in ragged unison, Janice thought
back to that night, waking up in pigs room, the
rain pounding outside, the dream lifting like fog on a
(23:29):
San Francisco morning, and how it gave her comfort to
reach over and feel him next to her. She looked
over at Pig Pens standing next to her on the stage,
her eyes staring directly into his. The band picking up
momentum as the song came around to a refrain, and
the stage lights changed colors from white to red to
green and black to white again, and each time they changed,
(23:52):
suddenly Pig's face changed with them, like it had in
the dream. Pig was Jay, and then Pig was Peter,
and then it was her father, and Janice closed her
eyes tight, twisted her voice up with Pigs and their
alley cat harmony, and reached out for his hand to
ground her. On stage in front of thousands, she couldn't
help but feel totally alone. August, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Peter Alban
(24:43):
was thinking of the sweater incident and Mother Blues in
Chicago years earlier when he decided he'd had enough of
Janice Choplin. He was all bent out of shape then,
and he was still bent out of shape now. At
some point in between he had allowed himself to be
bent back into shape, and he regret edit that it
made him seem weak. Janice had ditched him. They all
(25:04):
ditched him, actually, after a recent gig to go shoot
up with a bunch of junkies and somehow somewhere fun.
If he knew where, then, if he knew where, Janice
drove Porst three fifty six around town painted and I
catching psychedelic design, while the rest of them just lived
like fucking papers that they were supporting players for this
rock and roll goddess, even though they were a democracy,
(25:24):
a band of five, supposedly a band of five, no
one was above anyone else, or at least that's what
they had told depressed early on. Obviously things had changed.
They were on stage at the gut Throe Theater when
Peter lost it. He humiliated Janice told her she sounded
like Lassie the way she was dancing around and was
all out of breath every time she came back to
(25:45):
the microphone to sing. Janis told Peter to fuck off.
Just as he expected she would. Hell, she had a
bottle of something hanging around, she probably would have tossed
that at his head to Later, he regretted what he said.
He realized that he had let his anger and his
sadness get but it was true. Peter felt betrayed. Janis
had made the announcement to leave Big Brother. She wanted
(26:06):
a band to lift her up to the next level,
and she felt the Big Brother was not that band.
Albert Grossman knew the Big Brother was not that band,
so she told the boys of the band meeting in
August ninety eight, that she would be leaving at the
end of the year, just a few months away. They
all knew that their career as they knew it was
d o a even worse, Sam Andrew told the group
(26:28):
that he was going with Janice. That may have stung
a little more, to be honest, and they all knew
that Janie's day would come that she would move on.
But Sam's decision made the whole situation seemed like an
US and them split, and they had just gotten their
ship together to a big industry deal, a big manager,
a big label, a big record. When Cheap Thrills was
(26:49):
released in August ninety eight, it sold so many advanced
copies that had already gone gold by the time had shipped.
That's five hundred thousand copies soon after store shelves that
topped the Billboard charts and sold upwards of a million copies.
It wasn't exactly a live album as had been intended.
The live performances were tough to capture, and the album's
(27:11):
producer John Simon built a makeshift stage in the studio
so that they could have complete control over the process
and still replicate the feel of a live show, though
only one of the album's seven songs was actually taken
from a live show. Rock critic Dean Robert Christgau ranked
it the third best album of night, behind Dylan's John
(27:31):
Wesley Harding and the Birds notorious Bird Brothers. Other critics
weren't so flattering. The New York Times called out Big
Brother as middle class white kids with long blonde hair
pretending to be black, and said the record was a
bad parody down be panded as quote unquote embarrassing blackface.
Mick Jagger, himself an acolyte of black American music, and
(27:54):
R and B said, if I want to listen to
a black singer. I'll listen to a black singer. Jannis
put the blinders on and moved forward. She was busy
assembling a new crew, and the musicians would rise up
to meet her far above where Big Brother were operating.
Albert Grossman wanted her new band to sound like the
Muscle Shoals sound the greasy R and B rock hybrid
(28:16):
that had propelled Aretha Franklin's career making hits, not to
mention that A James Is Tell Mama. Skip pro Cop,
a Canadian drummer who played with the Paupers, one of
Grossman's clients, had been tapped to put together Janice's new band.
They needed to hit the ground running when Big Brother
in its course. Skip moved to San Francisco and they
workshop new material. It was late one evening after a
(28:40):
rehearsal session that Skip saw the beefy figure approaching him
outside the film more. He was walking straight at Skip.
It was erily quiet. Soon there was another figure, and
then another, and another, and they came from the shadows.
For such big dudes, they were incredibly stealthy. Skip was
surrounded on all sides by Hell's Angels and leather. Their
(29:02):
faces were bearded and bruised. Some were missing teeth. One
had a patch over one of his eyes. Skip tried
to swallow what his spit caught in his throat. You
skip pro cop, the one with the earliest beard and
biggest belly, asked. Skip's hands shook. He tried to swallow again,
but it was no use. He confirmed in as few
words as possible, they yes, he was skip pro cop.
(29:26):
The biker nodded, you're going to take care of our
little sisterem, aren't she skip pro cop. He wouldn't want
to go and do a stupid thing like not take
care of our little sister, would you now, skip pro cop?
Skip confirmed again, in as few words as possible that yes,
absolutely he was going to take care of heror no,
he didn't want to do stupid things. He thanked the
angels for looking out for their little sister. His hands
(29:48):
continued to shake. In nineteen sixty nine, however, Janice's problems
would begin to multiply. She'd have to hide her drug
habit from Grossman, band members would go missing, needs to
wear disguises, and not least because the FBI had Janice
Joplin on a watch list um Jake Brennan in this
(30:10):
is the seven Club, all Right? 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.
(30:32):
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 with Rolling Stones, Cardi Bate,
and many many more. Go to Amazon dot com slash
disgrace Land, or if you have an Echo device to
say hey Alexa, play the disgrace Land podcast. The seven
(30:54):
Club is hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan.
Zeth Landi is the lead writer and co producer, not
voting the mixes. The show. Additional music and score elements
by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Lenetta. 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.
(31:17):
Our previous seasons on Jimmy Hendricks and Jim Morrison are
available for you to Binge right now wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you like we here, please be
sure to find and follow the twenty seven Club on
the I Heart Radio app, 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 himself,
Nate Gonzalez, then leave a review for twenty seven Club
(31:38):
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. 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, rolla M, What's
(32:11):
so f your ear is
Host
Jake Brennan
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