Janis: Little Girl Blue Page #5

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Break it.

Break another little piece

of my heart, oh, yeah.

Come on.

Take another little piece

of my heart now, baby.

You know you got it if

it makes you feel good.

You've got another

manager, Albert Grossman,

who also manages Bob Dylan.

Yeah, he's better.

Dear Mother,

as of yesterday afternoon,

we're officially with Columbia.

Wow, I'm so lucky.

25, 25, 25, it's

all too incredible.

I just fumbled around

being a mixed-up kid

and then fell into this.

Finally, it looks

like something is

gonna work for me... incredible.

February 20, 1968,

Dear Mother, our record

is a success story in itself.

We got a gold album

in three days,

and the most fantastic thing of

all happened at the Rose Bowl.

The cops wouldn't let the

kids off the grass near us.

And all of a sudden they

broke, just like a wave,

and swarmed onto the field.

They were pulling on my

clothes, my beads, calling,

Janis, Janis, we love you.

Come on.

Take another little piece

of my heart now baby.

You know you got it, man,

if it makes you feel good.

She had a sense that as long

as people gave her the stage,

she would be a winner.

Let's sit down, boys.

Come on, boys.

Let's sit down.

Here we are, sitting down.

Almost everybody's sitting down.

Oh, yes.

Fantastic.

Is there a San Francisco sound?

And if so, what is it,

and how did it start?

The thing that makes what they

call the San Francisco music

scene, as far as I'm concerned,

is, like, first of all,

the freedom to create here.

You know, for some reason,

like, a lot of musicians

ended up here and

ended up together

and had complete freedom to

do whatever they wanted to.

And so they came up with

their own kind of music.

What do you think, Sam?

Honey.

That's what we call

love music, baby.

Not bad.

Well, here we are,

together again at last,

by popular demand.

- Honey.

How are ya?

Yeah, I don't know what it was.

We sort of hit it

off right away.

Was she romantically

attached to me?

I would hope so.

May I light your fire, my child?

I guess not.

Apparently not,

no, well, I would

have bet against it myself.

We were good friends.

And I will level with you.

We may or may not have

ended up intimate.

I just, you know,

my memory is so bad.

Or so good.

We lived in the

Chelsea Hotel while we

were making Cheap Thrills

and while we were touring.

And we lived in Los Angeles.

About half the time,

we were in Hollywood,

and half the time we were at

the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.

And it was just so much fun.

You know, we would get together

and do heroin at these people's

rooms and just kind of not nod

off or go to sleep or something

but just have really nice

mellow conversations.

She liked New York, and it had

that tombstone quality for her.

And so I was going to do a

little film with her because I

really liked her a lot.

And she was recording

stuff with the band,

and I would go and

listen and film them.

I was interested mostly in

how she understood to control

her singing because

her singing had

this thing of when she'd lose

it, she would shout and scream.

And sometimes that

was very effective,

but the music had to have

something more to it than that.

Liar, I think it's a

real good-liar, liar.

Let's do Summertime.

OK, let's go.

Play the second one,

when she goes, no, no, no,

don't you cry.

No, no, no,

no, no, don't you cry.

At the very end of the song.

End of the song, the

last chord of the song.

You're first G major

arpeggio, I think, is wrong.

That's when she says, cry.

What do you want, like,

six arpeggios of G minor?

Because it changes to B

minor for two after that.

He's already in a major.

He's trying to get in a minor.

We can do it either way.

I mean, they're both

valid approaches.

But I think if we...

Like, it's 10 o'clock.

I think by 4:
00 we

could have Summertime.

I'd say if we don't do it

by 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock,

we can spend a few hours doing

something else, you know?

If you all voted to do

a bunch of them tonight,

it's OK with me.

But I personally

don't agree with it.

Playing it and

listening to it back

ain't gonna take

us a damn thing.

Man, I know exactly what

that song sounds like,

and I've racked my brain to

try and get ideas for it,

as I'm sure everybody else has.

D major and D minor

sing don't you cry.

I don't even know what it says.

Turn that mic thing off.

OK,.

Hey, don't go away.

You look so cute when

you're passed out.

You look just like a hot dog.

OK.

OK, good time.

You dug it the first

time you heard it.

Yeah, I did dig it.

I did dig it the

first time I heard it.

I also liked the other way.

I mean, I think maybe an

adaptation or.

Yeah, right, because, like,

yours had a lot of lyricism

to it, but this has nothing

but-frenetic is the word.

Oh, one of

these mornings, child,

you'll rise up singing, babe.

I said you're gonna go, honey,

gonna spread your wings.

Honey, take, take to the sky.

Move the sky.

Until that morning, honey, no,

nothing's gonna harm you, baby.

I said, honey, nothings

ever gonna let you down.

Oh, it just wouldn't do it.

Hush, baby, baby,

baby, baby, baby, baby.

No, no, no, no, don't you cry.

Janis Joplin and the Holding

Company, aren't they great?

Absolutely great, Janis, I just

thought you were wonderful.

You know, you were written up

recently in "Life Magazine,"

and I have a copy here.

And I'd like to read

what you were quoted

as saying about your music.

The audience sitting

down is a weird trip.

It's like separateness.

But when they're dancing,

they're doing it with you,

like you said it to them.

And they've got it, and you

can play freer and freer.

Would you care to

elaborate on that?

It sounds different when

you say it,.

It's sort of like

you as a performer

will understand like an audience

communicating with a performer.

Instead of one giving

and one receiving,

it's, like, a reciprocal thing.

When an audience is dancing,

they're communicating with you.

And you know that

you're getting to them.

And they're grooving,

and you're grooving.

And it's sort of like feedback.

Do you know what feedback

is in amplifiers?

Yes.

When you play the note

too loud, and the amplifier

will play it back.

And you play it back.

And it goes around and back,

and it just makes everything

go higher and higher.

I see, well, that...

That clears it up for me.

Dear family,

lots of trouble in the band,

most of them revolving

around the fact

that I think I'm hot

sh*t, as I'm told

by everyone from Albert down.

And the band is sloppy.

When she came into

the band, Peter

was the leader of the

band, the bass player,

and James was the

mythic, iconic, you know,

beautiful figure.

He represented the band.

And then here comes Janis.

And when she joined

the band, she

became both of those things.

They had a very complicated

reaction to her fame.

There was a cadre

of hangers that

sort of insulated her from her

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