Janis: Little Girl Blue Page #3

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this coffeehouse career.

She almost died that time.

She lost all this

weight, you know,

and she went back to Texas.

And her mother said, if you

ever go back out there again,

you're going to die.

Parents encourage

you to sing at all?

Oh, no, no, no, they wanted

me to be a schoolteacher,

you know, like all parents.

But I started singing

when I was about 17.

I listened to a

lot of music first,

and one day I started singing.

And I could sing.

It was, like, it was a

surprise, to say the least.

Dear Mother

and Dad, Daddy brought up

the college issue,

which is good because I

probably would have continued

avoiding it until it went away.

I don't think I can go back now.

I don't know all the reasons,

but I just feel that this

a truer feeling, true to me.

I don't feel like I'm lying now.

I have to see this

through first.

If I don't, I'd always be

thinking about singing,

being good and known, and

feel like I cheated myself,

you know?

Weak as it is, I

apologize for being so

just plain bad in the family.

I'm just sorry, love, Janis.

We're all primitive musicians.

We're self-taught.

We don't know much about music.

We're not trained in the

music that we're doing.

We've all sort of come to it.

I was trained on

triangle and tuba.

Tuba, you weren't house trained.

You're a great

triangle player, baby.

I wasn't even house trained.

Go outside.

I used to be sort of

like a blues singer.

And Jimmy Swift.

Jimmy Swift?

She used to be a

baseball player,

and she always used

to say, sock it to me.

Folk blues, you know,

I was a folk singer,

you know, and sang blues mostly,

country blues, old time blues,

slow.

Didn't you have a

job soldering once?

Soldering?

No, a key punch operator.

It was a back then.

I was a waitress in a

bowling alley once, too.

Playing is like the

mostest fun there is.

Feeling things and really

getting into it, that's fun.

At that time,

there was definitely

a sense Of camaraderie.

If you knew the Grateful Dead

had the house on Ashbury,

it Wouldn't be unlikely that

if you were in the neighborhood

you'd just drop by and

hang out with those guys

and smoke a joint or

something like that.

We were all sort of riding the

same wave in a sense, all part

of the same scene, and

all shared, in some ways,

the same values

that we were par':

of this counterculture,

revolutionary music thing that

was going to change the world.

She was just funny,

unassuming, sexy,

and sort of a kind of, like,

almost a sort of Huck Finn

innocence to her, the

absolutely child-woman

ideal of the.

Well, I met Janis as

a romantic interest

for one of my band mates,

Pigpen, Ron McKernan.

We called him the Mighty Pig.

It was an on again, off again

little affair that they had.

And on the nights that Janis

would come over and visit,

I got very little

sleep because Janis

was not real quiet in the rack.

And so all night long, it

would be, daddy, daddy,

daddy, all that kind of

stuff, I mean, but endlessly.

Isn't Pigpen cute?

They make Pigpen T-shirts

now with his picture

on it for fans.

I have one in red.

Those people are

all friends of mine.

Aren't they amazing?

The people with stars

after their names

are members of the band.

I'm in the back on the left,

really an amazing picture.

They aren't dressed up.

They look that way all the time.

Now, taken in perspective,

I'm not so far out at all, eh'?

There was a party.

There was a party in

the city at an apartment

on California Street.

Someone opened this bottle

model of this stuff.

It's called Cold Duck.

You don't sit it around much.

Sparkling wine.

Sparkling wine, and it

started to go around the room,

and people were

taking chugs of it.

And Janis took a big swig of it.

And someone said to

Janis, oh, man, you

must really want to get high.

And she just went, like, what?

And someone said, yeah,

there's, like, you know,

60, 80 hits of acid in

that bottle of Cold Duck.

Anyway, she ran into the

bathroom and tried to throw up.

But she got very high, anyway,

and we went from this party

to the Fillmore.

And Otis Redding was I

think in his second night,

and it was his second show.

They did two shows, so there

weren't a lot of people there.

And I remember sitting with her.

We sat down in the

middle of the floor,

and Otis Redding came

out with his band.

I think when she saw him and

so the way he moved and how

he interpreted a song, I

really think it very much

affected her.

I mean, literally, she'd start

doing this got to, go to,

go to.

She stole that.

Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin,

now, they are so subtle.

They can milk you

with two notes.

They could go no

farther from A to B,

and they could make you

feel like they told you

the whole universe, you know?

And Otis, too.

And Otis, oh, Otis, my man,

but I don't know that yet.

All I got now is strength,

but maybe if I keep singing,

maybe I'll get it.

That's what I think.

Mother,

haven't heard from you yet.

But I'm brimming with

news, so here I am.

Last weekend, we

played in the city,

and a man from Elektra, a good

label, spoke to me afterwards.

Rothchild feels

that popular music

can't continue getting

farther and farther

out and more chaotic.

He feels there's going

to be a reaction,

and old-fashioned music...

Blues, shuffles, melodic stuff...

Is going to come back in.

Well, Elektra wants to form

the group to be this way,

and they want me.

Wish I could ask someone for

advice that knew and wasn't

biased for any reason.

Ah, dream on, Janis.

We thought maybe we

could get Janis to be

more locked into the group.

I took her down the hill,

down a little pathway

here through the

woods, and talked

to her all about this stuff.

And a lot of what you would

say the American dream

of most girls in the '50s and

'60s came out at that time.

She said, you know, I've

dreamed about all this stuff

all my life, being on the

cover of these magazines

and having a fancy car and

living in a fancy home.

And I don't know what to do.

I mean, you guys are

good stuff, but, I mean-

and I said, you know, a lot

of that stuff was bullshit,

and give us a chance.

Give us a month.

Bobby Shad from Mainstream

Records, he offered us a deal,

and so we signed this

bad record contract.

And at the same

time, in doing so,

we were kind of locking in Janis

and that she knew what she was

doing, that she was

in some way locking

herself in with the band

for at least a few years.

It was good that

she stayed with us

because we let her alone.

You know, we weren't talented

enough to get in her way.

You know what I mean?

We weren't strong enough.

But those guys, you know,

Paul Rothchild, they

would have eaten her alive.

They would have shoved

her over in the corner,

as much as you could

shove Janis in the corner.

In the very

beginning, she didn't

take over as, I'm the singer.

I'm the lead singer.

She really tried to

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