Janis Joplin - The First Time I saw her

Janis Joplin - what was it like for me to see her?

Wow, what a question. I saw her live three times. The first was at the Yale New Haven Bowl with Gordon Lightfoot as the opening act. That night I swore if there was ever an opportunity to see her again I would. I got to see her twice more: at Cole Field House at the University of Maryland and then at The Baltimore Civic Center.

Let me set the stage for you a bit. I was born in August of 1950. When I entered public school in Ridgefield Connecticut I was one of the youngest in my class and I would have graduated with the class of 1968. After sixth grade my parents put me in private school and given the way their grades worked I ended up being in the class that graduated in 1969 so I became one of the oldest in my class. This had the consequence of being one of the first to get my driver’s license; a mixed advantage but it did make me an “in-demand” guy. 

I started listening to the hits on the radio when the Trashman was the number one song in the nation with Surfin’ Bird. It is still known now because it’s one of the songs you can dance to on a game box. (“A bird bird bird. A bird is word. Well, everybody knows about the bird.”) The next week The Beatles had their first Number one hit with I Want to Hold Your Hand. They followed with She Loves Me and a bunch of other songs. They had four songs in the top ten. I thought this was normal. What did I know? Elvis had been seven years before and had a similar effect so I thought every seven years or so something like this would happen. (btw The band Ten Years After was named that because they were ten years after Elvis.)

The Rolling Stones followed The Beatles and then came Jerry and the Pacemakers, The Dave Clark Five, and a bunch of others. A second or underground wave of artists came over too, underground isn’t quite the word for it. They were significant but not as outwardly popular. Spencer Davis Group with Stevie Winwood, John Mayal and the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and a lot of blues groups. Some groups came out of Chicago like The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and from New York - The Blues Project. At least I associate The Blues Project with New York they may have actually been Chicago but Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper were in that group. They didn’t even get their names on the album.

Folk music had been big in the early 60s and was still going strong: The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; The New Christie Minstrels (who launched Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire) and many many others. Greenwich Village was hopping with the folk music scene. In the mid 60s the New York radio stations would advertise for the Bitter End, The Cafe Wha? and others. Ladies and Gentlemen tonight at the Cafe Whaaaa Dave Van Rooooonch. Some kid who called himself Bob Dylan was there but he never got mentioned. In fact, Dave Van Ronch in his auto-biography said that coffee shops hired Bobby Zimmerman, as he was called by Dave, to play between sets so people would leave and they could turn over the tables. Dave, btw, is the guy who came up with the chord changes for House of The Rising Sun.

I went to Europe in ’67 to spend time in Switzerland to learn French. I passed through England and all the shops had 45 record covers in the window of some black guy with frizzy hair named Jimi Hendrix. Who ever heard of him? I never really learned French. I think part of the problem was my hearing could not pick up mid-range sounds very well. I couldn’t hear the trailing sounds in the words. That fact and the fact that I met women who wanted to practice English. 

While in high school I went New York City to hear groups. At The Philmore East I heard Arthur Brown, the precursor to Marilyn Manson and Alice Copper. His big hit was Fire! (“I am the God of Hell Fire!”). I also heard  Sam and Dave (Hold on I’m coming!); Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield in Super Sessions at the Philmore. In the summertime Central Park’s Wolman Skating Rink had music, big groups almost every night. It was sponsored by Shaeffer Beer. The price of admission? $2. Well, you could pay $3 if you wanted to sit in the bleachers at the far end of the rink but if you wanted to be in the rink itself facing the raised stage at the end opposite the bleachers it was $2. It was free if you wanted to sit on the hill behind the bleachers.

I saw Led Zeppelin there. I think it was their first American gig. They weren’t very good. They didn’t seem to have their riffs or their act down. I saw Ten Years After there too. Alvin Lee did an amazing show but that’s a story for another time.

In Connecticut other venues were trying to get in on the action. I saw The Doors at some venue in Fairfield where Jim Morrison sang an amazing song that was a captivating moment. Near the end of the song he came off stage and leaned on the sand fence that separated the crowd from him as soon as the song ended he asked, “Does anyone have a cigarette?” kind of blew the moment. I also saw Blind Faith there a few years later. Ginger Baker is an amazing showman and Eric Clapton certainly deserves the name “Slowhand.” I’ve never seen anyone’s hands dance over the frets of a guitar like he can.

Well, the Greater Yale New Haven Jaycees got in on the action and held a series of concerts at The Yale Bowl. If you’ve never been to the Yale Bowl it’s a lovely structure, classic old school, of course. You enter at ground level through large curved cement portals and look down on the field. You discover that the portals are at mid level of the stands. It’s as if the dug an oval hole and threw the dirt up on the sides and made bleachers on the slope from field to top of the berm. I got tickets to see Janis there.

The stage was set up in and end zone facing the bleachers at that end of the field. They used four or six section of the bowl. The opening act was Gordon Lightfoot. He came out and played and played and played. All the while we could watch a gathering thunderstorm approaching from the far end of the field. Lightning was shooting across the clouds. Big flashes, dark menacing rising clouds lit by the lightning. Was he ever going to stop? What if they called the show? The raindate was the day I had tickets to see Joni Mitchell at The Wolman Skating Rink.

There was a family behind me: wife, two or three kids, and the dad. I’ll never forget the dad. A little guy in wire rim spectacles and a smooth bald head with hair close cropped around the sides, like a monk with a really close haircut. He was wearing his Greater New Haven Jaycees blue blazer with round patch on the breast pocket. There were a lot of these guys in blazers wandering around smiling vaguely at us the huddled masses.

And huddled masses we were! Gordon finally finished with The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald and the storm was nearly upon us - seems appropriate, now. There was an announcement that they were going to wait and see if the storm would pass by. I and many others had brought trash bags as rain protection because we had heard of the possibility of storms. Poking holes for our heads we huddled in the bags and I guess put one over our heads. It poured. Torrential stuff. During a let up I remember a young freaky kid a few rows in front of me to my left yelling “Janis!” as the rains continued to pound us from time to time you’d hear a lone yell for Janis.

Then the rains stopped. There was some fumbling around on stage we shrugged off our bags and nothing happened for a few minutes.

Then this guy walked out on stage. He had black hair down to about his nipples. The hair shown blue black in long languid curves. He didn’t walk out on stage as much as he loped out in a quick few steps. He went from the center back of the stage to the right side where there was a Leslie Amp set up. He was slightly hunched over as he walked. It was a quick purposeful entrance. He was on a mission. His hair was parted in the middle and had the look of what I’d imagine a pirate like Blackbeard’s hair to look like. His gait suggested he was about to snatch an eight year old little girl who had strayed a little too far from her mother. There was an air of purpose and menace about him.

Leslie Amps were the choice of organists in bands at that time. This was due to the fact that John Hammond used one. They were a large wooden box about three and a half feet high and stained on three sides a mahogany color. Bands always set the amp up so that you could see the back of the amp because there was an opening on the top of the back where you could see a black dual cone horn that from time to time would whirl around.

On top of the Leslie Amp on this stage was a tambourine and this pirate looking child molester picked it up and started violently attacking the top of the Leslie with it. Bam du da Bam du de Bam. It was unrelenting. He was followed on stage by the rest of Janis’ Cosmic Blues Band. This was her big band after she left Big Brother and The Holding Company. It filed out into two phalanxes: on the right were the percussionists and horns and on the left were the guitars. There was a guy with a beard that looked like it was modeled after a Babylonian statue. It was a about ten inches long and descended from his chin in a long neatly tapered form until it abruptly ended in a flat trimmed bottom. He played an instrument that looked like a four sided cheese grater but it had a washboard front and he ran a stick up and down on it. I guess he be called the cowbell man. Come to think of it there had to be someone on cowbell.

From the time the guy in the black long hair strutted out on stage to the time the two phalanxes were in place was seven maybe ten seconds and they were playing. It was an explosion of music and energy. I still remember the guy behind me in his blue blazer saying “What the (heck?...hell? Funny, I don’t remember)”

Snooky Flowers came out and so did Janis they were into Raise your Hand. (“I think you better ... Raise your hand!”)

Snooky was the sax player and provided the counter point to Janis’ singing. He was a big tall black man with a neatly cropped fro. Think Clarence Clemons in the E Street Band. If Clarence was tackle on the football team Snooky would have been the wide receiver.

As soon as that song ended their was some time spent checking electrical connections and such. They fellow behind me kept saying, “I don’t see why they just don’t play.” As if to answer him Janis said, “I don’t know how much you guys know about water and electricity but ...” Given that a short time before the lead singer of The Grassroots stepped up to an ungrounded mic and was electrocuted it made a lot of sense to me.

I don’t remember what else she sang that night until the closing song: Ball and Chain.

Just thinking about it gives me shivers and makes my eyes well up. She could wail. She could scream. She could gravel down in the gutter. She could hold you in the palm of her hand and crush you. The only other singer who I’ve ever heard that has a such an affect that Janis had on a crowd is Cecila Bartoli the mezo-soprano opera singer. (but, again, that’s another story.)

Janis stood with her left side to the audience as she finished many minutes later 

“and it felt, just like, ...

a ball

and CHAIN”

holding up her right arm and hand and bringing it and the house down with it.

To bring down the house when you are singing outside is tough, really really tough.

I think the guy and his family behind me were converts. I know I was and I swore I would go see her live every chance I got.

End of Part I