Janis discovers that kicking a habit is easier said than done. She escapes to Rio during Carnival and has an auspicious meeting with someone who helps her through the worst of her withdrawals. Back home, she welcomes unexpected visitors who invite her to keep the party rolling with the Great Tequila Boogie.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The twenty seven Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Janis Joplin died at the age
of and she lived a life where a relapse and
vice were all too frequent. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Twelve would be
the number of months her group, The Cosmic Blues Band,
(00:22):
would remain intact before the mediocrity of their playing led
them to the same defunct fate as Big Brother. One
more would be the number of days she would wait
after being treated for heroin addiction before she was out
looking for her next fix. Another five would be the
number of minutes it would take for a carnival parade
to have an unexpectedly negative effect on her fragile, detoxing state.
(00:46):
Two more would be the number of unexpected visitors who
showed up at her door in order to commence what
they would deem the Great Tequila Boogie. And seven would
be the number of months she had left to live
when she pulled out a bar stool at Barney's Beanery
in West Hollywood and suddenly felt strange energy that she
was unable to describe. On this our ninth episode of
(01:09):
season three, withdrawal, Carnival, the Great Tequila Bookie, and Janice
Joplin walking a winding path to liberation. I'm Jake Grennan
in this is the twenty seven o'clock. Ye. The shakes
(02:00):
were new, They came out of nowhere, and they came
at the absolute worst moments. Janice Joplin was on stage
at Madison Square Garden with the Cosmic Blues Band. They
were flanked by two guests, Paul Butterfield on one side,
Johnny Winter on the other. It was December nineteenth, nine
sixty nine, and that's when the shakes came. Johnny Winter,
(02:23):
dressed in black velvet and a black cape that provided
a stark contrast to his long shock of white hair,
didn't notice. He was too busy playing his gold top
less Paul held tight against the middle of his chest.
Paul Butterfield, cradling his own or harmonica and between his
lips and the microphone, also didn't notice. It was too
(02:44):
busy blowing air through the reads of his electrified harp.
But Janice noticed. She heard the shakes before she even
felt them. She heard all the bracelets and bangles on
her wrist jangle in their motley cacophony from down. With
her arm hung at her side, she couldn't control the shaking,
and she couldn't control the sound of her jewelry, which
cut through the stadium sized in of the rock and
(03:06):
roll band, and this sound cut right through everything else.
It was for her ears only. She was derailed and
the band sounded like shipped to her. Johnny Winter, Johnny
was all right, man. The dude was dressed in fucking
black velvet. Cool as fuck. What the band sounded off
felt off to Janice, and she was worried that they
only sounded off to her, and the way that she
(03:26):
could only hear and feel what was going on with
her own body. She was in withdrawal. She needed to score.
Her small supply of dolaphine had just run out literally
the day before the show, and she was back to
feeling that untethered sinking, feeling, back to feeling the weight,
feeling the heavy pain that sat on her head. Her
throat hurt and her eyes ached and her joints burned.
(03:49):
She was irritable as ship. She needed a hit, and
she found it easily backstage behind the gardens ominous curtain.
Once the show was over and Johnny and Paul had
gone off with their respective entourages. Jannis lingered a bit
lingered when she saw the familiar outline of the person
she knew would have the very medicine she needed. Fuck
(04:11):
that Dola, fhe bullshit and Grossman's cure. She was a
grown woman and could handle herself, always had, always would,
and she wasn't necessarily committing to a lifetime of addiction. Okay,
she just needed a goddamn fix so that her hands
would stop shaking and her bracelets would stop rattling. She
watched the outline of the dealer received further into the
shadows of the backstage expanse, past a few wooden chairs
(04:33):
and around the edge of the heavy curtain the cosmic
blues guys who were mingling amongst themselves, nursing calloused fingers
and blistered palms. They weren't paying much attention to Janis
at all in the moment. She didn't know it, but
they had felt what she had felt about the show.
They were off. Whether they were off because Janie was off,
they didn't know. But whatever the funk was going on,
(04:53):
the mojo was bad. It may have been working for
Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield, but it sure wasn't working
for them. Janice made her way over to the dark
corner of the backstage area. She could see the whites
of the dealer's eyes, and she fumbled around in the
pocket of her jeans for some loose bills. And the
closer she got to that shadow area around the corner
of the curtain, the more her hands slowed, the more
(05:15):
the shaking subsided, and the anticipation of a sure high
was just as strong as the high itself. When the
Cosmic Blues guy stopped talking for a moment and looked
around for Janice, she was nowhere to be found, and
they wouldn't see her for the rest of the evening.
Just weeks earlier, Janice Choplin was beginning to realize that
the very thing she thought would liberate her was in
(05:37):
fact holding her back, holding her hostage. She was caged
by dope. She was sick with it, A helpless addict.
She thought of the very word addict, and was both
horrified and resigned when she finally admitted to herself that
she was won. She was locked in a vicious cycle
where one high led to another, one shot of dope
in her arm was never enough and two was too many.
(06:00):
She thought of Sam Andrews, he o'deed and nearly died.
She thought of Nancy Gurley, she o'deed and did die.
Goddamn Nancy in front of the goddamn kid too. Janis
ponied up twenty grand to James Gurley's legal defense when
he was put on trial for the death of his wife.
Since he was the one who gave her the fatal
shot of heroin, James was clear to the crime. And
then what did Janis do? She had her own brush
(06:22):
with death. She played a show with another one of
her radols, a Big Mama at a James or bb King.
She didn't even remember anymore. All she remembered was after
the show, she settled into her room somewhere with a
plastic baggy of heroin, and the next thing she knew,
her friends were slapping her blue face back to life.
And this was exactly what Albert Grossman had told her
not to do. No Schmid's he said when he first
(06:45):
signed Janis and Big Brother. That was the one caveat.
He didn't want Janis getting mixed up in that ship
because it was ship played and simple, and it would
end her, but Grossman wasn't stupid Janison. The others thought
they had been able to hide their habits behind Grossman's back,
but he was onto them. But when it was time
to step in, he stepped in. Grossman told Janice said
(07:06):
he had a guy, Dr. Ed Rothschild. He specialized in
drug addiction. He made her an appointment to see him
and get the help that she needed. Grossman worried that
he was too late, that it was too late to
make any difference with Janice, but he owed it to
her to try. Rothschild gave her a ten days supply,
a dolaphine basically methodone, and tablet for him. She took
them once a day and then they ran out, and
(07:29):
then she played the show at the Garden where she
couldn't stop thinking about getting astronomically high. And just like before,
chasing one high led to chasing another and another, she
was off the wagon once again. Grossman suggested some pretty
big changes. Janice should take a little time off, and
they put the Cosmic Blues Band on Ice. The boys
(07:50):
didn't know it at the time, but the Madison Square
Garden gig would wind up being their last. In January,
Jannie would turn seven. She should show lay off the dope,
lay off the drama of the band, recharge your batteries,
clear her mind. And then a few she Engrossman could
start talking about assembling a new band, a better band,
(08:10):
and she would be recharged and clear minded to lead
them into greatness. And then she thought of something else
that would help her get to that place, to a
place of self preservation and self discovery. A trip, a
big trip out of the country, out of her head,
somewhere she had always wanted to go. Who knows what
she'd find there. Grossman crossed his fingers in vain and
(08:32):
hoped to himself that it wasn't a bad IDEA February
(09:06):
seventy Rio de jan Arrow, the streets pulsed with light
and sound. Parade floats glowed as they appeared to glide
through the mass of ecstatic revelers. Dancers in matching outfits,
some with ornate hats and head dresses that leaned and
wobbled on top of their heads, moved their bodies to
the zampa music. Long white dresses swirled and twirled in
(09:28):
the dark, the embroideries along the edges catching the light
and sparkling with life, and the colors erupted from every
direction and every angle, oranges, reds, yellows, purples, and there
were floats made it look like horses, and others that
looked like dragons. From every block. The rapturous sound of
symbols and drums and undeniable rhythm infiltrated every ear and
(09:48):
every mind and every ass in the city. And there
was no escaping. The party, carnival and Rio was non stop.
And this is why Jannastopolin was here, why she made
the trip all the way to Rio. She had recently
seen Black Orpheus, Marcel Camus, film that told the story
of Orpheus and Eurtesy in the setting of the centuries
(10:09):
old celebration that draws hundreds of thousands to the streets
of Rio every February. She fell under the spell of
the city that she witnessed in the movie and of
the celebration that it documented. It was full of color,
full of sound, and full of some of the most
blatant liberation on planet Earth. The liberation was there in
plain sight, the colors, the outfits, the dances, the music.
(10:31):
To have nots dressed up like the halves, women and
barely their bikinis, men dressed in dragged, sweaty bodies gyrating
in the eighty degree heat. A mythical figure, King Momo,
giving his blessing to all in the city to cut
loose and indulge the masses, took over the streets of
Rio for a few days once a year and let
it all out, no holds barn. Janis wanted to promise
(10:53):
that that film laid bare. She wanted to get free.
Janis had just turned twenty seven years old. She had
disbanded the Cosmic Blues Band. She needed some time to
collect her thoughts before holding auditions for a new group.
She needed this extreme change of scenery. But she needed
something else too, She needed a fix. She was out
(11:14):
of her dollaphine again. She felt the shakes coming on
again as the seemingly endless parade snaked its way past
where she stood on the sidelines. Who was at chill
that she wasn't able to escape, a chill that would
hunt her down and follow her. No matter if she
was in San Francisco or New York City or Rio,
the chill would find her. The chill would find her
(11:34):
and remind her of all the things she missed, the
things she wanted, the things she needed. In the rhythm
of the symbols and the drums penetrated her head and
then shot lightning bolts down her spine. Her hands were vibrating,
and she could feel an oncoming migraine, like the high
beams of attractive trailer rolling on the highway at seventy miles.
She began to sweat, and not just from the humid
(11:55):
rio evening. She reached out and grabbed David Nyehouse's arm
to steady herself, and the feel of his skin on
hers gave her some comfort. A passing float with a
giant horace glowed with color, and then it began to
move in the torso of the oversized horse, pulsing along
with the rhythm of the samba. It was perfectly tied
with the music, imperfectly tied with the pounding she was
(12:16):
feeling in her head, and the synchronicity was freaky. Every
time the horse's belly would pulse inward, she could see
his rib cage poke out. She leaned her head into
David's shoulder and said, are you seeing this? David just
cradled her in his arm and tried to calm were
shaking hands. It was obvious. She thought that the two
of them were watching different parades. David was one of
(12:41):
the first people Janice met when she arrived in Rio
with her friend Linda Graviniti's, a fellow American. David had
done time in the Peace Corps in law school and
now was traveling the Amazon with his friend Ben Biale.
He saw her lounging on the eponym of Beach and
made the first move. He didn't even recognize her as
the Janis Joplin, and of the second day that they
hung out, David was down to earth, and Janice felt
(13:04):
stabilized around him, even in her unstable state. It was
his magic power, and nowhere did his magic power proved
to be more clutch than in this moment. During the
carnival parade in Rio, a samba school of kids danced
and clapped around the huge horse float as it continued
to move up the street. The greens and whites of
their outfits matched the colors of the float and on
(13:25):
the horse, and their rhythm became louder, more urgent. And
then Janice watched as the horse's eyes began to glow
a deep red a red so deep and so hot
that she could see smoke coming from its burning sockets.
And now the samba kid's eyes were going red too,
And every time they spun around and their shirts and
dresses pomed out, they would direct their gazes right back
(13:46):
to Janice, and their red eyes would sear deep into
her flesh. And the shaking of her hands intensified, and
the pounding in her head and down her spine were
becoming unbearable, and the chill had found her again. She panicked.
She had to escape the crowd and that was the
first thing she had to do. David had a holler
out of them. She was out of dolaphine. She had
(14:07):
no heroine. All she had was the chill and the
increasing fear that something awful is about to happen. She
needed David's help. David led her away from the demonic
horse float and the red eyed samba school, away from
the crowds and the incessant rhythm and noise, and they
got real free. Then they rolled thumb up the coast.
They slept on beaches and there were no crowds. It
was just them, the sand of water in the horizon.
(14:29):
David held Janice tight every time the chill grabbed hold
of her and wouldn't let go. He held her tighter
than the chill until the chill went away, and they
rented a motorcycle and tore ass up the road towards
Bahia en route by kid a medium strip and they
were both thrown onto the road and they walked away unscathed,
happy to be alive, and wound up hitching the rest
of the way to Salvador and the happy to be
(14:51):
alive feeling stuck with her. Eventually, Janice felt calm. She
rode the way of Calmness for a few days straight
and was hopeful that the combination of the bridge zillion countryside,
David's company in good old fashioned cold Turkey would make
her addiction a thing of the past. She had sweated
out at Carnival, throwing it out from the backseat of
the motorcycle. She was ready to go back home. She
(15:13):
flew back to California on her own, and David avowed
to return with her, but he realized that he had
overstayed his visa and had to stay behind for a
while to sort things out. She got back to her
house and Larkspur and Marin County, her first real house
that she had bought in the fall of nineteen sixty
nine with all that Albert Grossman money. It was still
new to her, and she unlocked the door, walked inside
(15:36):
and dropped her suitcase on the floor of the entryway.
She walked into the living room and sat down on
the couch. Everything was quiet. Larksburg was quiet, and the
house was quiet. Even the redwood trees still and didn't
make a peep. It was too quiet. She thought about
ringing someone up, maybe pig Pan or Sam or Linda.
Maybe she'd ring up one of the Angels. They could
(15:57):
rip through a bottle of something hard and sweet and
then tear her ass on the one on one, the
salty Pacific air blowing through her long hair. Days later,
when David would finally get his visa situation squared away
and make his way to Janice's doorstep, he'd encounter one
of those angels boys in the most unexpected way. David
and Janice were in bed and were startled by a
(16:19):
noise coming from the kitchen. David jumped up to investigate,
tiptoed his way into the kitchen in a T shirt
and underwear to find a couple of Hell's Angels going
through the fridge. One turned to face David and pulled
a gun from his thick leather belt, and then he
asked David the question that David had been thinking all along,
Who the fuck are you? Right now? Janice didn't have
(16:40):
David or any of the Angels boys, and the calm
that had washed over her in Brazil was withering away.
Something else was growing at his place, something coming up
fast and queasy. She picked up the phone and made
the call that she had wanted to make since the
day she left for Rio. She called her dealer and
asked him to bring around on a bag of heroin.
(17:06):
We'll be right back after this word word word, Janice
Joplin st Bernard Massive Mix. Thurber lifted his head from
the floor as soon as he heard the knock on
the door. A long wet blob of slobber hung from
his bottom lip. His ears perked up. He waited to
(17:29):
hear the knock again, and for a moment there was silence.
Theber cocked his ear in the opposite direction and wondered
if maybe there hadn't been a knock at all, Maybe
he'd imagine the whole thing He did that a lot.
He was a dog, after all. And then suddenly the
knocking resumed. This time it was louder and harder than before,
rapid and urgent. A man's voice called out Janice's name.
(17:51):
Thurber barked. He jumped up from the floor and scurried
towards the door, his ton nails clicking against the hardwood,
his shaggy dog frames this way and that he stuck
his head out through the four foot high dog door
that Janis had installed when she bought the house. It
was a one story wood shingled place on a cul
de sac, surrounded by redwoods and Larksburg, just north of
(18:13):
San Francisco. Everything about it was the exact opposite of
the places she had lived in California prior. It was
secluded in tranquil and it was about as far away
from the limelight of the party as you could get.
And that didn't mean that Janis didn't bring the party
to Larksburg. On the contrary, she still liked to party.
She still liked to be surrounded by people. She often
(18:33):
had them out to her place out there at three
eight West Baltimore and the creekside part of town called
Baltimore Canyon, where the neighbors weren't breathing down your neck,
or neither were the fuzz. When David Nihaus was in town,
he got a taste of that party more often than
he wanted, and those two of them would go into town.
Within minutes, their party of two became a party of twenty,
and then forty fans, friends, musicians, hippies, freaks. The party
(18:56):
would make its way back to Larksburg, and then the
very person David had traveled to California to see would
be virtually unattainable to him. The last straw with David
didn't involve a party per se, but it did involve
a scenario where he came back to Janice's house to
find her high on heroin. He told her he couldn't
stand to watch or do that to herself. He reminded
her of what happened to Nancy into Sam and to
(19:18):
Janice herself on that night after the Winterland Show. Janis
didn't listen, but she did beg him to stay. Said
she quit junk if you would stay with her forever.
He knew she didn't mean it. He told her he
was leaving to travel some more and at some point
down the line they'd find each other again. He would
return another time to knock on her door. And now
(19:39):
someone else was knocking on her door. Theber hoffed and
puffed some more, the slobber dripping and splattering with each
movement as he assessed the two men outside. One had
a big beard and a bulging black guitar case in
his hand. Hey there, boy, the guitar man said, in
a deep gruff voice that immediately put therber at ease.
Is your mama home? And then the door opened and
(20:02):
there was Janice, still groggy from a slow motion morning,
still hung over from the night before. She was surprised
to see Bob new Worth standing before her and had
his side, this bearded beauty of a man with a
guitar case in his hand and his eyes squinted nearly shut.
I've got a present for you, Bob said, and pushed
the man towards Janice, as if one of them was
(20:24):
a magnet and the other was steel. Janice Joplin, Meet
Chris Christofferson. Chris, this is Janice. Bob had in his
time saved Janice, saved her band, and delivered her one
of her signature songs. And now he was delivering the
man behind that song. But still she wasn't sure what
was happening. Janice asked the boys just how they found
(20:45):
themselves on her doorstep at the end of a cul
de sac and Marin County, and the last she had
heard Bob was hanging out in New York City with Rambon,
Jack Elliott. Well it happened like this, Chris began. We're
at this apartment in New York City, real upscale spot.
You can see the whole city laid out in front
(21:06):
of you, from this floor to ceiling window. You know,
all the city lights, taxi lights, flash of the public
works trucks backing down in one way, the bright blue
lights of the police. Holler and it's someone to stop.
Odetta was there, and her laugh was filling that whole
place up, and pretty soon we're all breathing in Odetta's
laughter just as much as we're breathing oxygen and rambling.
(21:26):
Jack was there too, Dreadnoughts strapped around his shoulder, just
loitering on a D seven chord, and Mickey Newberry too,
and Michael J. Paulard Funnier and Ship telling us all
about how hot fate done away really was how she
was hotter than she even was on the screen. You stop,
Bonny and glad right, Hell, you might just be the
best damn girl in Texas. Anyway. A bottle of tequila
(21:46):
is making the rounds, more laughter and d seven chords
and more stories about Fate's on away, and then the
coke is out on the table and Bob starts yelling, Hey,
range Rider. That's what Bob calls me, because we range rider.
You hear this parade of noses tooting onlines one who
or after another, you know, and Bobby's going, hey, range
Riders ship. So I knocked back a line you and
everybody's knocking back a line and two. And suddenly those
city lights, the whites and the blues and the red,
(22:08):
suddenly they got real wild, like fireworks. And I can
feel the tequila just coursing through my veins, you know.
And now Dead is singing something, and Jack's found the acorn,
thank the good Lord, and Bob goes, hey, range Rider,
Let's hop on a plane to San Francisco and go
pay Joan Bias a visit. Jannis stare to Chris and
Bob with a look at confusion. She didn't get it.
This wasn't San Francisco. She's sure ship wasn't Joan Bias.
(22:32):
Chris said things got fuzzy after that. After they left
the apartment on a whim, bought the plane tickets, got
on the plane, passed out in their seats, and woke
up somewhere over Kansas or Colorado. But when they woke up,
Bob said he had a better idea, better than Joan
Bias and San Francisco. He thought Chris should meet the
woman who had been the latest to take on me
and Bobby McGee. She was always in the mood to
(22:53):
whoop it up, and they were in the mood to
whoop it up to. Bob was thinking not just playing
matchmaker between a songwriter and a singer, but between a
man and a woman. So here they were, Bob Newworth
and Chris Christofferson were standing in the doorway of Janice
Choplin's single Story with her dog Thurber, working up a
pool of gooey saliva at their feet. And then Bob
(23:13):
spoke up, We're calling it the Great Tequila Boogie. You
want a boogie, let's boogie. Let's full tilt boogie, baby.
And then Bob had a handle of Quervo up from
behind his back, and he was inside of the house now,
rummaging around the cupboards in the kitchen and search of
some decent glassware to pass around. Chris and Janice hit
it off immediately. They sang, they talked, they bonded over
(23:34):
their Texas upbringing. They embarked on a full tilt boogie
bender together, and they inevitably wound up in bed. She
played me and Bobby McGee on an acoustic guitar, and
then he taught her Sunday Morning Coming Down, his hangover
song to end all hangover songs, the one that Johnny
Cash had covered on his television show. As with all
of Chris's lyrics, they cut deep into Janice. She held
(23:58):
the marks that they left at Bay though, whether it
was the peanut colada as they made for breakfast, or
the screwdrivers they made for lunch, or the cocktails that
would be waiting for them at the city bars when
they made their way into town each evening. But no
matter how long she held it off, no matter how
long she put it out of her mind, Sunday Morning
would come down, and it would come down hard on
(24:19):
Janis Joplin, and there was something about Bernie's Beanery in
(24:47):
West Hollywood that felt familiar to her. Janis Joplin bellied
up to the bar, Chris Christofferson by her side, and
Deja Vu took up a deep seated bar stool right
next to her. Perhaps it was the look and feel
of the place. It reminded her a little of Rio.
To be honest, it was an eruption of color in
a cramped space, and the ceiling littered with license plates
(25:07):
from all over the country, the plates left by patrons
who had made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles and its
fabled eateries and left behind a token of their travels.
Even the backs of the boots and seats in the
place were burst with color, like a Crayola box come
to life. Or maybe it was the grandfathered intolerance of
the place that reminded her of her early life as
a kid in Texas. If you looked in the right
(25:30):
spot at Barney's, right behind the bar and you're the
draft beer taps, you could still see the painted wooden
sign that read faggots stay out. And the slur itself
was misspelled. Of course, one gene instead of two, and
Janice found it fitting that a message of hatred was
penned by someone who's basic ignorance also applied the basic
grammar and the sign had been put there in ninety
(25:52):
by the original owner, John Barney Anthony, and the bar's
new owner, Erwin Held, had no intention of taking it down,
even that's growing gay community. West Hollywood certainly wasn't San Francisco,
Janis thought, and Berney's was not. The anxious asp the
sign and the attitudes behind the desire to hang the
sign and keep the sign reminded Janice of Port Arthur
(26:13):
and all the intolerant people she wanted to get away from.
And now here in this supposedly liberated state and liberated city,
a totem of repression and hate stared her in the face.
But that wasn't it. There was something else about the place,
something that made her feel like she had sat in
this particular bar stool before and that she would again,
Something that called to her that kept her coming back.
(26:36):
Even though she clearly disagreed with management on basic human rights.
The joint was like a car wreck to her personal constitution, loud, tacky,
off putting. If you knew where to look, but like
a car wreck. She couldn't look away and couldn't not
stop popping in for a burger and a beer. The
Great Tequila Boogie, as it was coined by Bob Neworth,
(26:56):
was coming to a close. Janie and Chris both felt
it winding down, this intense period of romance and whooping
it up, and they were a great fit for a
few weeks of booking, but neither was prepared for the
long haul. Bob had set them up and one on
his own merry way, but not before coining the name
for what would become Janie's new band, the Full Tilt
(27:17):
Boogie Band. At the bar, Janis and Chris talked about
the new roster of players, which included the cosmic blues bands,
Brad Campbell's the guy who had his blonde mustache painted black,
along with a crew of mostly Canadians hungry for the
same sort of stack slathered R and B that Janice craved.
But the more they talked and the more pines they drank,
(27:38):
the more their conversation turned to serious subjects, the way
conversation often turns when great spontaneous things come to their
inevitable end. She told Chris about the guy on the
Harley that she saw in her dreams, the one on
a gold bike painted with orange flames, the one who
showed up out of nowhere when she was wandering on
foot near the Vedanta Society and Alma. Chris raised an eyebrow,
(28:01):
just listened. Chris could tell that Janice wasn't happy, and
they had had a great time together, but she didn't
seem happy about that. Her new band was off to
a great start, but she didn't seem happy about that.
And in the span of a few short months, so
much had happened. The relapse back at Haroin Rio david Nyhouse,
the breakup of her second band, and all of it
(28:22):
seemed to conspire to making her own happy. Three dog Nights.
Mama told me not to come. Thudded from Barney's jukebox
and Chris settled up their bar to What's Next? Janice
Chris aster in that deep toned, gruff but intimate way
he had of talking what was next? She didn't know
what was around the corner when someone asked you that
(28:43):
kind of question. Inside Barney's Beanery, she was really thrown
for a loop. That place put out some weird energy,
so weird that she couldn't put her finger on it.
She knew that the good would only come with the bad.
She knew that much for sure. Around the corner, Janice
would unknowingly run into things from a pass that you
wanted to escape, not to mention more violence and self destruction,
(29:05):
and neither David Nihao Sir Chris Christofferson would be there
to help see her through it. Off. I'm Jake Brennan
in this This seven Club, all right? This episode of
(29:28):
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 in the free
Amazon Music Gap. To hear tons of insane stories about
your favorite musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince,
Jerry le Lewis, The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi
b In, many many more. Go to Amazon dot com
(29:49):
slash disgrace or if you have an Echo device to
say hey Alexa, play the disgrace Land podcast. The S
Club is hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan.
Zeth Wandi is the lead writer and co producer. Not
voting mixes the show additional music and score elements by
Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lynette. The twenty seven Club is
produced by myself for Double Elvis and partnership with I
(30:12):
Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are available at double
Elvis dot com when the twenty seven Club series page.
The twenty seven Club is released weekly every Thursday. Our
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Give that a fall. So get out there and spread
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disgrace Land pod Rock rolla what's up for your is
The twenty seven Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Janis Joplin died at the age
of and she lived a life where a relapse and
vice were all too frequent. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Twelve would be
the number of months her group, The Cosmic Blues Band,
(00:22):
would remain intact before the mediocrity of their playing led
them to the same defunct fate as Big Brother. One
more would be the number of days she would wait
after being treated for heroin addiction before she was out
looking for her next fix. Another five would be the
number of minutes it would take for a carnival parade
to have an unexpectedly negative effect on her fragile, detoxing state.
(00:46):
Two more would be the number of unexpected visitors who
showed up at her door in order to commence what
they would deem the Great Tequila Boogie. And seven would
be the number of months she had left to live
when she pulled out a bar stool at Barney's Beanery
in West Hollywood and suddenly felt strange energy that she
was unable to describe. On this our ninth episode of
(01:09):
season three, withdrawal, Carnival, the Great Tequila Bookie, and Janice
Joplin walking a winding path to liberation. I'm Jake Grennan
in this is the twenty seven o'clock. Ye. The shakes
(02:00):
were new, They came out of nowhere, and they came
at the absolute worst moments. Janice Joplin was on stage
at Madison Square Garden with the Cosmic Blues Band. They
were flanked by two guests, Paul Butterfield on one side,
Johnny Winter on the other. It was December nineteenth, nine
sixty nine, and that's when the shakes came. Johnny Winter,
(02:23):
dressed in black velvet and a black cape that provided
a stark contrast to his long shock of white hair,
didn't notice. He was too busy playing his gold top
less Paul held tight against the middle of his chest.
Paul Butterfield, cradling his own or harmonica and between his
lips and the microphone, also didn't notice. It was too
(02:44):
busy blowing air through the reads of his electrified harp.
But Janice noticed. She heard the shakes before she even
felt them. She heard all the bracelets and bangles on
her wrist jangle in their motley cacophony from down. With
her arm hung at her side, she couldn't control the shaking,
and she couldn't control the sound of her jewelry, which
cut through the stadium sized in of the rock and
(03:06):
roll band, and this sound cut right through everything else.
It was for her ears only. She was derailed and
the band sounded like shipped to her. Johnny Winter, Johnny
was all right, man. The dude was dressed in fucking
black velvet. Cool as fuck. What the band sounded off
felt off to Janice, and she was worried that they
only sounded off to her, and the way that she
(03:26):
could only hear and feel what was going on with
her own body. She was in withdrawal. She needed to score.
Her small supply of dolaphine had just run out literally
the day before the show, and she was back to
feeling that untethered sinking, feeling, back to feeling the weight,
feeling the heavy pain that sat on her head. Her
throat hurt and her eyes ached and her joints burned.
(03:49):
She was irritable as ship. She needed a hit, and
she found it easily backstage behind the gardens ominous curtain.
Once the show was over and Johnny and Paul had
gone off with their respective entourages. Jannis lingered a bit
lingered when she saw the familiar outline of the person
she knew would have the very medicine she needed. Fuck
(04:11):
that Dola, fhe bullshit and Grossman's cure. She was a
grown woman and could handle herself, always had, always would,
and she wasn't necessarily committing to a lifetime of addiction. Okay,
she just needed a goddamn fix so that her hands
would stop shaking and her bracelets would stop rattling. She
watched the outline of the dealer received further into the
shadows of the backstage expanse, past a few wooden chairs
(04:33):
and around the edge of the heavy curtain the cosmic
blues guys who were mingling amongst themselves, nursing calloused fingers
and blistered palms. They weren't paying much attention to Janis
at all in the moment. She didn't know it, but
they had felt what she had felt about the show.
They were off. Whether they were off because Janie was off,
they didn't know. But whatever the funk was going on,
(04:53):
the mojo was bad. It may have been working for
Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield, but it sure wasn't working
for them. Janice made her way over to the dark
corner of the backstage area. She could see the whites
of the dealer's eyes, and she fumbled around in the
pocket of her jeans for some loose bills. And the
closer she got to that shadow area around the corner
of the curtain, the more her hands slowed, the more
(05:15):
the shaking subsided, and the anticipation of a sure high
was just as strong as the high itself. When the
Cosmic Blues guy stopped talking for a moment and looked
around for Janice, she was nowhere to be found, and
they wouldn't see her for the rest of the evening.
Just weeks earlier, Janice Choplin was beginning to realize that
the very thing she thought would liberate her was in
(05:37):
fact holding her back, holding her hostage. She was caged
by dope. She was sick with it, A helpless addict.
She thought of the very word addict, and was both
horrified and resigned when she finally admitted to herself that
she was won. She was locked in a vicious cycle
where one high led to another, one shot of dope
in her arm was never enough and two was too many.
(06:00):
She thought of Sam Andrews, he o'deed and nearly died.
She thought of Nancy Gurley, she o'deed and did die.
Goddamn Nancy in front of the goddamn kid too. Janis
ponied up twenty grand to James Gurley's legal defense when
he was put on trial for the death of his wife.
Since he was the one who gave her the fatal
shot of heroin, James was clear to the crime. And
then what did Janis do? She had her own brush
(06:22):
with death. She played a show with another one of
her radols, a Big Mama at a James or bb King.
She didn't even remember anymore. All she remembered was after
the show, she settled into her room somewhere with a
plastic baggy of heroin, and the next thing she knew,
her friends were slapping her blue face back to life.
And this was exactly what Albert Grossman had told her
not to do. No Schmid's he said when he first
(06:45):
signed Janis and Big Brother. That was the one caveat.
He didn't want Janis getting mixed up in that ship
because it was ship played and simple, and it would
end her, but Grossman wasn't stupid Janison. The others thought
they had been able to hide their habits behind Grossman's back,
but he was onto them. But when it was time
to step in, he stepped in. Grossman told Janice said
(07:06):
he had a guy, Dr. Ed Rothschild. He specialized in
drug addiction. He made her an appointment to see him
and get the help that she needed. Grossman worried that
he was too late, that it was too late to
make any difference with Janice, but he owed it to
her to try. Rothschild gave her a ten days supply,
a dolaphine basically methodone, and tablet for him. She took
them once a day and then they ran out, and
(07:29):
then she played the show at the Garden where she
couldn't stop thinking about getting astronomically high. And just like before,
chasing one high led to chasing another and another, she
was off the wagon once again. Grossman suggested some pretty
big changes. Janice should take a little time off, and
they put the Cosmic Blues Band on Ice. The boys
(07:50):
didn't know it at the time, but the Madison Square
Garden gig would wind up being their last. In January,
Jannie would turn seven. She should show lay off the dope,
lay off the drama of the band, recharge your batteries,
clear her mind. And then a few she Engrossman could
start talking about assembling a new band, a better band,
(08:10):
and she would be recharged and clear minded to lead
them into greatness. And then she thought of something else
that would help her get to that place, to a
place of self preservation and self discovery. A trip, a
big trip out of the country, out of her head,
somewhere she had always wanted to go. Who knows what
she'd find there. Grossman crossed his fingers in vain and
(08:32):
hoped to himself that it wasn't a bad IDEA February
(09:06):
seventy Rio de jan Arrow, the streets pulsed with light
and sound. Parade floats glowed as they appeared to glide
through the mass of ecstatic revelers. Dancers in matching outfits,
some with ornate hats and head dresses that leaned and
wobbled on top of their heads, moved their bodies to
the zampa music. Long white dresses swirled and twirled in
(09:28):
the dark, the embroideries along the edges catching the light
and sparkling with life, and the colors erupted from every
direction and every angle, oranges, reds, yellows, purples, and there
were floats made it look like horses, and others that
looked like dragons. From every block. The rapturous sound of
symbols and drums and undeniable rhythm infiltrated every ear and
(09:48):
every mind and every ass in the city. And there
was no escaping. The party, carnival and Rio was non stop.
And this is why Jannastopolin was here, why she made
the trip all the way to Rio. She had recently
seen Black Orpheus, Marcel Camus, film that told the story
of Orpheus and Eurtesy in the setting of the centuries
(10:09):
old celebration that draws hundreds of thousands to the streets
of Rio every February. She fell under the spell of
the city that she witnessed in the movie and of
the celebration that it documented. It was full of color,
full of sound, and full of some of the most
blatant liberation on planet Earth. The liberation was there in
plain sight, the colors, the outfits, the dances, the music.
(10:31):
To have nots dressed up like the halves, women and
barely their bikinis, men dressed in dragged, sweaty bodies gyrating
in the eighty degree heat. A mythical figure, King Momo,
giving his blessing to all in the city to cut
loose and indulge the masses, took over the streets of
Rio for a few days once a year and let
it all out, no holds barn. Janis wanted to promise
(10:53):
that that film laid bare. She wanted to get free.
Janis had just turned twenty seven years old. She had
disbanded the Cosmic Blues Band. She needed some time to
collect her thoughts before holding auditions for a new group.
She needed this extreme change of scenery. But she needed
something else too, She needed a fix. She was out
(11:14):
of her dollaphine again. She felt the shakes coming on
again as the seemingly endless parade snaked its way past
where she stood on the sidelines. Who was at chill
that she wasn't able to escape, a chill that would
hunt her down and follow her. No matter if she
was in San Francisco or New York City or Rio,
the chill would find her. The chill would find her
(11:34):
and remind her of all the things she missed, the
things she wanted, the things she needed. In the rhythm
of the symbols and the drums penetrated her head and
then shot lightning bolts down her spine. Her hands were vibrating,
and she could feel an oncoming migraine, like the high
beams of attractive trailer rolling on the highway at seventy miles.
She began to sweat, and not just from the humid
(11:55):
rio evening. She reached out and grabbed David Nyehouse's arm
to steady herself, and the feel of his skin on
hers gave her some comfort. A passing float with a
giant horace glowed with color, and then it began to
move in the torso of the oversized horse, pulsing along
with the rhythm of the samba. It was perfectly tied
with the music, imperfectly tied with the pounding she was
(12:16):
feeling in her head, and the synchronicity was freaky. Every
time the horse's belly would pulse inward, she could see
his rib cage poke out. She leaned her head into
David's shoulder and said, are you seeing this? David just
cradled her in his arm and tried to calm were
shaking hands. It was obvious. She thought that the two
of them were watching different parades. David was one of
(12:41):
the first people Janice met when she arrived in Rio
with her friend Linda Graviniti's, a fellow American. David had
done time in the Peace Corps in law school and
now was traveling the Amazon with his friend Ben Biale.
He saw her lounging on the eponym of Beach and
made the first move. He didn't even recognize her as
the Janis Joplin, and of the second day that they
hung out, David was down to earth, and Janice felt
(13:04):
stabilized around him, even in her unstable state. It was
his magic power, and nowhere did his magic power proved
to be more clutch than in this moment. During the
carnival parade in Rio, a samba school of kids danced
and clapped around the huge horse float as it continued
to move up the street. The greens and whites of
their outfits matched the colors of the float and on
(13:25):
the horse, and their rhythm became louder, more urgent. And
then Janice watched as the horse's eyes began to glow
a deep red a red so deep and so hot
that she could see smoke coming from its burning sockets.
And now the samba kid's eyes were going red too,
And every time they spun around and their shirts and
dresses pomed out, they would direct their gazes right back
(13:46):
to Janice, and their red eyes would sear deep into
her flesh. And the shaking of her hands intensified, and
the pounding in her head and down her spine were
becoming unbearable, and the chill had found her again. She panicked.
She had to escape the crowd and that was the
first thing she had to do. David had a holler
out of them. She was out of dolaphine. She had
(14:07):
no heroine. All she had was the chill and the
increasing fear that something awful is about to happen. She
needed David's help. David led her away from the demonic
horse float and the red eyed samba school, away from
the crowds and the incessant rhythm and noise, and they
got real free. Then they rolled thumb up the coast.
They slept on beaches and there were no crowds. It
was just them, the sand of water in the horizon.
(14:29):
David held Janice tight every time the chill grabbed hold
of her and wouldn't let go. He held her tighter
than the chill until the chill went away, and they
rented a motorcycle and tore ass up the road towards
Bahia en route by kid a medium strip and they
were both thrown onto the road and they walked away unscathed,
happy to be alive, and wound up hitching the rest
of the way to Salvador and the happy to be
(14:51):
alive feeling stuck with her. Eventually, Janice felt calm. She
rode the way of Calmness for a few days straight
and was hopeful that the combination of the bridge zillion countryside,
David's company in good old fashioned cold Turkey would make
her addiction a thing of the past. She had sweated
out at Carnival, throwing it out from the backseat of
the motorcycle. She was ready to go back home. She
(15:13):
flew back to California on her own, and David avowed
to return with her, but he realized that he had
overstayed his visa and had to stay behind for a
while to sort things out. She got back to her
house and Larkspur and Marin County, her first real house
that she had bought in the fall of nineteen sixty
nine with all that Albert Grossman money. It was still
new to her, and she unlocked the door, walked inside
(15:36):
and dropped her suitcase on the floor of the entryway.
She walked into the living room and sat down on
the couch. Everything was quiet. Larksburg was quiet, and the
house was quiet. Even the redwood trees still and didn't
make a peep. It was too quiet. She thought about
ringing someone up, maybe pig Pan or Sam or Linda.
Maybe she'd ring up one of the Angels. They could
(15:57):
rip through a bottle of something hard and sweet and
then tear her ass on the one on one, the
salty Pacific air blowing through her long hair. Days later,
when David would finally get his visa situation squared away
and make his way to Janice's doorstep, he'd encounter one
of those angels boys in the most unexpected way. David
and Janice were in bed and were startled by a
(16:19):
noise coming from the kitchen. David jumped up to investigate,
tiptoed his way into the kitchen in a T shirt
and underwear to find a couple of Hell's Angels going
through the fridge. One turned to face David and pulled
a gun from his thick leather belt, and then he
asked David the question that David had been thinking all along,
Who the fuck are you? Right now? Janice didn't have
(16:40):
David or any of the Angels boys, and the calm
that had washed over her in Brazil was withering away.
Something else was growing at his place, something coming up
fast and queasy. She picked up the phone and made
the call that she had wanted to make since the
day she left for Rio. She called her dealer and
asked him to bring around on a bag of heroin.
(17:06):
We'll be right back after this word word word, Janice
Joplin st Bernard Massive Mix. Thurber lifted his head from
the floor as soon as he heard the knock on
the door. A long wet blob of slobber hung from
his bottom lip. His ears perked up. He waited to
(17:29):
hear the knock again, and for a moment there was silence.
Theber cocked his ear in the opposite direction and wondered
if maybe there hadn't been a knock at all, Maybe
he'd imagine the whole thing He did that a lot.
He was a dog, after all. And then suddenly the
knocking resumed. This time it was louder and harder than before,
rapid and urgent. A man's voice called out Janice's name.
(17:51):
Thurber barked. He jumped up from the floor and scurried
towards the door, his ton nails clicking against the hardwood,
his shaggy dog frames this way and that he stuck
his head out through the four foot high dog door
that Janis had installed when she bought the house. It
was a one story wood shingled place on a cul
de sac, surrounded by redwoods and Larksburg, just north of
(18:13):
San Francisco. Everything about it was the exact opposite of
the places she had lived in California prior. It was
secluded in tranquil and it was about as far away
from the limelight of the party as you could get.
And that didn't mean that Janis didn't bring the party
to Larksburg. On the contrary, she still liked to party.
She still liked to be surrounded by people. She often
(18:33):
had them out to her place out there at three
eight West Baltimore and the creekside part of town called
Baltimore Canyon, where the neighbors weren't breathing down your neck,
or neither were the fuzz. When David Nihaus was in town,
he got a taste of that party more often than
he wanted, and those two of them would go into town.
Within minutes, their party of two became a party of twenty,
and then forty fans, friends, musicians, hippies, freaks. The party
(18:56):
would make its way back to Larksburg, and then the
very person David had traveled to California to see would
be virtually unattainable to him. The last straw with David
didn't involve a party per se, but it did involve
a scenario where he came back to Janice's house to
find her high on heroin. He told her he couldn't
stand to watch or do that to herself. He reminded
her of what happened to Nancy into Sam and to
(19:18):
Janice herself on that night after the Winterland Show. Janis
didn't listen, but she did beg him to stay. Said
she quit junk if you would stay with her forever.
He knew she didn't mean it. He told her he
was leaving to travel some more and at some point
down the line they'd find each other again. He would
return another time to knock on her door. And now
(19:39):
someone else was knocking on her door. Theber hoffed and
puffed some more, the slobber dripping and splattering with each
movement as he assessed the two men outside. One had
a big beard and a bulging black guitar case in
his hand. Hey there, boy, the guitar man said, in
a deep gruff voice that immediately put therber at ease.
Is your mama home? And then the door opened and
(20:02):
there was Janice, still groggy from a slow motion morning,
still hung over from the night before. She was surprised
to see Bob new Worth standing before her and had
his side, this bearded beauty of a man with a
guitar case in his hand and his eyes squinted nearly shut.
I've got a present for you, Bob said, and pushed
the man towards Janice, as if one of them was
(20:24):
a magnet and the other was steel. Janice Joplin, Meet
Chris Christofferson. Chris, this is Janice. Bob had in his
time saved Janice, saved her band, and delivered her one
of her signature songs. And now he was delivering the
man behind that song. But still she wasn't sure what
was happening. Janice asked the boys just how they found
(20:45):
themselves on her doorstep at the end of a cul
de sac and Marin County, and the last she had
heard Bob was hanging out in New York City with Rambon,
Jack Elliott. Well it happened like this, Chris began. We're
at this apartment in New York City, real upscale spot.
You can see the whole city laid out in front
(21:06):
of you, from this floor to ceiling window. You know,
all the city lights, taxi lights, flash of the public
works trucks backing down in one way, the bright blue
lights of the police. Holler and it's someone to stop.
Odetta was there, and her laugh was filling that whole
place up, and pretty soon we're all breathing in Odetta's
laughter just as much as we're breathing oxygen and rambling.
(21:26):
Jack was there too, Dreadnoughts strapped around his shoulder, just
loitering on a D seven chord, and Mickey Newberry too,
and Michael J. Paulard Funnier and Ship telling us all
about how hot fate done away really was how she
was hotter than she even was on the screen. You stop,
Bonny and glad right, Hell, you might just be the
best damn girl in Texas. Anyway. A bottle of tequila
(21:46):
is making the rounds, more laughter and d seven chords
and more stories about Fate's on away, and then the
coke is out on the table and Bob starts yelling, Hey,
range Rider. That's what Bob calls me, because we range rider.
You hear this parade of noses tooting onlines one who
or after another, you know, and Bobby's going, hey, range
Riders ship. So I knocked back a line you and
everybody's knocking back a line and two. And suddenly those
city lights, the whites and the blues and the red,
(22:08):
suddenly they got real wild, like fireworks. And I can
feel the tequila just coursing through my veins, you know.
And now Dead is singing something, and Jack's found the acorn,
thank the good Lord, and Bob goes, hey, range Rider,
Let's hop on a plane to San Francisco and go
pay Joan Bias a visit. Jannis stare to Chris and
Bob with a look at confusion. She didn't get it.
This wasn't San Francisco. She's sure ship wasn't Joan Bias.
(22:32):
Chris said things got fuzzy after that. After they left
the apartment on a whim, bought the plane tickets, got
on the plane, passed out in their seats, and woke
up somewhere over Kansas or Colorado. But when they woke up,
Bob said he had a better idea, better than Joan
Bias and San Francisco. He thought Chris should meet the
woman who had been the latest to take on me
and Bobby McGee. She was always in the mood to
(22:53):
whoop it up, and they were in the mood to
whoop it up to. Bob was thinking not just playing
matchmaker between a songwriter and a singer, but between a
man and a woman. So here they were, Bob Newworth
and Chris Christofferson were standing in the doorway of Janice
Choplin's single Story with her dog Thurber, working up a
pool of gooey saliva at their feet. And then Bob
(23:13):
spoke up, We're calling it the Great Tequila Boogie. You
want a boogie, let's boogie. Let's full tilt boogie, baby.
And then Bob had a handle of Quervo up from
behind his back, and he was inside of the house now,
rummaging around the cupboards in the kitchen and search of
some decent glassware to pass around. Chris and Janice hit
it off immediately. They sang, they talked, they bonded over
(23:34):
their Texas upbringing. They embarked on a full tilt boogie
bender together, and they inevitably wound up in bed. She
played me and Bobby McGee on an acoustic guitar, and
then he taught her Sunday Morning Coming Down, his hangover
song to end all hangover songs, the one that Johnny
Cash had covered on his television show. As with all
of Chris's lyrics, they cut deep into Janice. She held
(23:58):
the marks that they left at Bay though, whether it
was the peanut colada as they made for breakfast, or
the screwdrivers they made for lunch, or the cocktails that
would be waiting for them at the city bars when
they made their way into town each evening. But no
matter how long she held it off, no matter how
long she put it out of her mind, Sunday Morning
would come down, and it would come down hard on
(24:19):
Janis Joplin, and there was something about Bernie's Beanery in
(24:47):
West Hollywood that felt familiar to her. Janis Joplin bellied
up to the bar, Chris Christofferson by her side, and
Deja Vu took up a deep seated bar stool right
next to her. Perhaps it was the look and feel
of the place. It reminded her a little of Rio.
To be honest, it was an eruption of color in
a cramped space, and the ceiling littered with license plates
(25:07):
from all over the country, the plates left by patrons
who had made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles and its
fabled eateries and left behind a token of their travels.
Even the backs of the boots and seats in the
place were burst with color, like a Crayola box come
to life. Or maybe it was the grandfathered intolerance of
the place that reminded her of her early life as
a kid in Texas. If you looked in the right
(25:30):
spot at Barney's, right behind the bar and you're the
draft beer taps, you could still see the painted wooden
sign that read faggots stay out. And the slur itself
was misspelled. Of course, one gene instead of two, and
Janice found it fitting that a message of hatred was
penned by someone who's basic ignorance also applied the basic
grammar and the sign had been put there in ninety
(25:52):
by the original owner, John Barney Anthony, and the bar's
new owner, Erwin Held, had no intention of taking it down,
even that's growing gay community. West Hollywood certainly wasn't San Francisco,
Janis thought, and Berney's was not. The anxious asp the
sign and the attitudes behind the desire to hang the
sign and keep the sign reminded Janice of Port Arthur
(26:13):
and all the intolerant people she wanted to get away from.
And now here in this supposedly liberated state and liberated city,
a totem of repression and hate stared her in the face.
But that wasn't it. There was something else about the place,
something that made her feel like she had sat in
this particular bar stool before and that she would again,
Something that called to her that kept her coming back.
(26:36):
Even though she clearly disagreed with management on basic human rights.
The joint was like a car wreck to her personal constitution, loud, tacky,
off putting. If you knew where to look, but like
a car wreck. She couldn't look away and couldn't not
stop popping in for a burger and a beer. The
Great Tequila Boogie, as it was coined by Bob Neworth,
(26:56):
was coming to a close. Janie and Chris both felt
it winding down, this intense period of romance and whooping
it up, and they were a great fit for a
few weeks of booking, but neither was prepared for the
long haul. Bob had set them up and one on
his own merry way, but not before coining the name
for what would become Janie's new band, the Full Tilt
(27:17):
Boogie Band. At the bar, Janis and Chris talked about
the new roster of players, which included the cosmic blues bands,
Brad Campbell's the guy who had his blonde mustache painted black,
along with a crew of mostly Canadians hungry for the
same sort of stack slathered R and B that Janice craved.
But the more they talked and the more pines they drank,
(27:38):
the more their conversation turned to serious subjects, the way
conversation often turns when great spontaneous things come to their
inevitable end. She told Chris about the guy on the
Harley that she saw in her dreams, the one on
a gold bike painted with orange flames, the one who
showed up out of nowhere when she was wandering on
foot near the Vedanta Society and Alma. Chris raised an eyebrow,
(28:01):
just listened. Chris could tell that Janice wasn't happy, and
they had had a great time together, but she didn't
seem happy about that. Her new band was off to
a great start, but she didn't seem happy about that.
And in the span of a few short months, so
much had happened. The relapse back at Haroin Rio david Nyhouse,
the breakup of her second band, and all of it
(28:22):
seemed to conspire to making her own happy. Three dog Nights.
Mama told me not to come. Thudded from Barney's jukebox
and Chris settled up their bar to What's Next? Janice
Chris aster in that deep toned, gruff but intimate way
he had of talking what was next? She didn't know
what was around the corner when someone asked you that
(28:43):
kind of question. Inside Barney's Beanery, she was really thrown
for a loop. That place put out some weird energy,
so weird that she couldn't put her finger on it.
She knew that the good would only come with the bad.
She knew that much for sure. Around the corner, Janice
would unknowingly run into things from a pass that you
wanted to escape, not to mention more violence and self destruction,
(29:05):
and neither David Nihao Sir Chris Christofferson would be there
to help see her through it. Off. I'm Jake Brennan
in this This seven Club, all right? This episode of
(29:28):
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 in the free
Amazon Music Gap. To hear tons of insane stories about
your favorite musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince,
Jerry le Lewis, The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi
b In, many many more. Go to Amazon dot com
(29:49):
slash disgrace or if you have an Echo device to
say hey Alexa, play the disgrace Land podcast. The S
Club is hosted and co written by me Jake Brennan.
Zeth Wandi is the lead writer and co producer. Not
voting mixes the show additional music and score elements by
Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lynette. The twenty seven Club is
produced by myself for Double Elvis and partnership with I
(30:12):
Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are available at double
Elvis dot com when the twenty seven Club series page.
The twenty seven Club is released weekly every Thursday. Our
previous seasons on Jimmie Hendricks and Jim Morrison are available
for you to binge right now wherever you get your podcasts,
and if you'd like you here, please be sure to
find and follow the twenty seven Club on the I
(30:33):
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get 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 on Apple podcast
or hashtag subscribe to twenty seven Club on social media
and will pick two winners each week and announce them
on the Double Elvis Instagram page that's at Double Elvis.
(30:55):
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 what's up for your is
Host
Jake Brennan
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