Janis: Little Girl Blue Page #7

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going to ask me why?

I said what difference

does it make?

It was just like a marriage, you

know, it had run out of juice.

And a lot of our friends

were dying that year.

She's lying on a motel

bed, and she says,

it's not going to happen to me.

She said, my people

are pioneer stock,

you know, and they came

across the country.

And they came to Texas.

They're tough.

I've got those

genes, and nothing's

going to happen to me.

And I said, sh*t, I wish

you wouldn't have said that.

We had heard about Woodstock

from pretty well in advance.

And we thought, oh, great.

It's the next Monterey.

It's a very warm summer day,

and all this variety of choppers

are taking off and landing.

I do remember that Peggy

was on the airlift zone

where we took off from.

I was always apprehensive when

Peggy was around because I felt

that she would be an enabler,

rather than a helper,

with the drug problem.

She called and

said, you have to come.

I said, I can't, because

we were hearing reports

that the turnpike

was bogged down.

And people were out of

gas and having babies,

and, you know, it was like

locusts coming through.

And so I said the

only way I'd come out

there is if I was airlifted in.

And she said, OK.

We were both around the

same age in the South

with middle-class families.

But I think Janis had a

harder time of coming through.

But on the other hand, you know,

people tend to take because

of that she was depressed.

She wasn't.

It was all fun.

We shot heroin for fun,

and it took the edge off.

We were in the midst

of one of the most

social phenomenons in history.

What I understand

is she got very

high shooting up in the

portisan and couldn't go on.

Finally, Peggy and John Cooke

had to push her onstage.

How are y'all... how... I mean,

um, how are you out there?

Are you mellow?

Are you OK?

You're not, uh, are

you staying stoned?

And you've got enough water,

and you've got a place

to sleep and everything?

Because, you know, because we

ought to all of us, you know,

I don't mean to be preachy.

But we ought to remember... and

that means promoters, too...

That music's for grooving, man.

And music's not for putting

yourself through bad changes.

You know, I mean, you don't

have to take anybody's sh*t,

man, just to like music.

You know what I mean?

You don't.

So if you're getting more

sh*t than you deserve,

you know what to

do about it, man.

Work me, lord.

Work me, lord.

Please, don't you leave me.

I feel so useless down

here with no one to love,

though I've looked everywhere.

And I can't find me anybody

to love, to feel my care.

So work me.

Whoa, oh, use me, lord.

Did you ever have a whole night,

though, you just stand

up there and feel

like you're not making it?

Well, yeah, but you

kind of try and... you

have little games that

you play with yourself

to turn yourself on.

You can usually

get yourself going.

You never had a desire to

just leave the stage and say,

I'm sorry, it isn't

working tonight, folks?

It's the best thing

ever happened to me.

I wouldn't leave.

Yeah, yeah, if you

couldn't do it anymore,

you'd be miserable, huh?

Yeah, I hope that by

that time, I'll have

something else that's groovy.

Whoa, whoa, please, oh, no, no,

no, no, no, please...

Ah, oh, no, no,

no, don't you go and leave me.

Honey, when I reach

you, I want to,

I said I want to hold on to you.

Well, you're never there.

It doesn't turn me off, man.

I still reach out to

hold onto my man.

I said, daddy, daddy, daddy,

daddy, daddy, don't you go.

No, no, no, no, honey, don't

you go and leave some love.

This is the dark time

in my time with Janis.

Albert and Janis

reached a point where

they said, well, we're

going to let the Cosmic

Blues Band dissipate.

Janis took that

failure on herself.

She felt that she was failing.

And this was, as

a result, by far,

their worst abuse of

heroin and alcohol.

Well, this whole thing that's

happened to me, you see,

this whole success

thing, uh, it hasn't yet

really compromised

the position that I

took a long time ago in Texas.

That was to be true

to myself, to be

the person that was

on the inside of me

and not play games.

And so that's What I'm trying

to do mostly in the whole world,

is to not bullshit myself.

When I saw her in the hotel, all

of the uncertainties

and the little girl

lost were very visible.

And she said, come

on up, and we'll

order drinks from room service.

And I hadn't been

there very long

when she decided to shoot up.

And I'd never seen

her do that before.

And then we had some drinks.

We talked, and she did

it again before I left.

When I left, I thought,

I don't know if I

will want to see her again.

What do you think

when you're singing?

Are you actually thinking

what's going on in the song,

or can your mind

be somewhere else?

I'm not really thinking much.

You just sort of try and feel.

When last I heard of you, you

were in the jungles of Brazil.

I went to Rio for a

carnival, and then I

decided to hitchhike around

the northern part of Brazil.

As a kind of vacation?

Just like a regular

old beatnik on the road.

I knew I was going to try to

make it to Rio for carnivals

because I was meeting

a friend of mine.

So I got to Rio a

couple days early.

And I thought, God,

there's Ipanema Beach,

the girl from Ipanema you know?

So I went over to Ipanema Beach

and the very first person I ran

into on the beach was Janis.

So I didn't know it was Janis.

I just saw this girl

with a bikini on.

She looked up.

I remember her lifting her

sunglasses up and saying,

hi, you cute thing.

And I went, wow,

I, a cute thing.

I had been in the

jungle a long time.

When we went back to the

hotel the first night,

she wasn't sleeping well.

She was rolling around.

She was unhappy.

She was having cold sweats.

And she told me that she was

trying to kick the habit.

So I held her for two and a

half days while she came down.

She was really a

different person.

She was much more calm.

She was much more beautiful.

You know, and she wasn't

used to being straight,

so she knew she

was more beautiful.

And then after that,

everything was clear.

She couldn't have gotten higher

when we traveled around Brazil.

She was so free and so

different than any other girl

I'd ever met.

I never had a woman inspire

me before, so it stopped

me in my track, so to speak.

I was heading for North Africa.

And when I met her, I realized,

sh*t, I'm not going anywhere.

When we came back to

California, we more spent time

together just the two of us.

I mean, we did come

to the park here,

and we did go to.

But basically, we just

pretty much fun together.

We were inseparable,

really, for those months.

As my relationship

with Janis grew,

I realized that when she

sang me all these songs,

they were always the blues.

And that's what she felt,

basically, were the blues.

She could feel everybody's pain.

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