Big Brother: Interview (Part 1) [Side B]

[Interview Transcript from the book "Psychedelic Psounds". First part of interview is available at http://av.cah.utexas.edu/index.php/Vorda:Da_00096]

SA: So we went to Chicago for four weeks which included many sets each night. Musically, it forced us to play so much that we got tighter than we ever thought possible.PA: We played at a club called Mother Blues in Old Town on Wells Street. It was quite an experience. If you wanted to hear the blues you could go right to one of the sources, but Chicago didn't know about Flower Children. They had curfews and cops were coming down the street at 11 o'clock. It was old style Chicago.We got to a point that we weren't attracting large audiences and the club owner said he was going to have to cancel us after the second week. We had already spent most of our money and probably didn't have enough to make it home! Anyway, Bob Shad from Mainstream Records got in touch with us and he wanted to do a deal with us. He told us that Chet Helm was trying to do his own deal and was back-stabbing us. He made it sound as if we were getting the short end of the stick and that he would bend over backwards...SA: ... .to give us an even shorter end of the stick!PA: We eventually made a deal with Bob Shad even though it wasn't a very good deal. It also was a way of showing we had a record deal like the other San Francisco bands as well as locking in Janis.SA: He was our only hope.

AV: Please discuss the first LP.PA: We started recording the first album in Chicago at United Studios. We tried to select the songs with which we were most comfortable, which had the most acceptance by our audience, and anything that might have potential as a single. We didn't put up any argument to Shad about cutting down the length of some of our songs as they were played in concert. We also recorded some of these songs in Los Angeles.

AV: The first cut on the LP is "Bye Bye Baby" which is credited to P. St. John. Is he the same John St. Powell who wrote songs for the 13th Floor Elevators ("You Don't Know," "Kingdom of Heaven," "Monkey Island," "Slide Machine," and "You Gotta Take That Girl")? If so, how did the connection come about?SA: There is a 13th Floor Elevator connection. His real name is Powell St. John who was a student at the University of Texas. The name is some Medieval variance of Paul, but there are a lot of Southern names that continued that tradition. He was a harmonica player, a good artist, and an old friend and lover of Janis.PA: There was a Texas contingent in San Francisco --- Linda Bacon, Powell St. John, Tracy Nelson, and most of the Mother Earth band for whom Powell played harp.I don't know who first performed "Bye Bye Baby," whether it was Tracy Nelson or Mother Earth, but he gave the song to Janis.SA: I think he wrote the song about her. Perhaps when they were lovers or after they broke up.AV: Is he still around?PA: I talked to him about three years ago. I was trying to find him in regards to royalties. He was living over in Oakland and doing something with computers, but he is out of music.

AV: "Light Is Faster Than Sound" is an unusual tune with psychedelic tones.PA: I wrote that song in Lagunitas with some help from Nick Gravenites. I write nonsense-type songs where the lyrics have no real meaning.SA: I thought I found a meaning for the song years later when I took up photography. I thought Pete wrote that song because he was into photography at the time. Light is faster than sound. It wasn't because he was into psychedelics. Maybe it was just in the air. It had funny, strange textures to the song. PA: We were doing things with our voices such as Wah-Wah-Wah whereas nowadays it is done on a synthesizer. I remember James would take an amplifier and turn it all the way up and just shake it and come up with this analog lightning.SA: That sounds like a hit song to me --- "Analog Lightning"!PA: At first we had these small amplifiers and they were easy to shake, but then we got these Standell amps which elicited the same sound but were much bigger. I remember we played this concert in Denver and James had his guitar strapped on when he was shaking the amp and the guitar fell off. He then lost control of the amp and it fell and broke the neck of the guitar.

AV: "Call On Me" is one of your early songs which you performed last night and still sounds great. The vocals by Janis on the first album are very nice and sounds as she also did the background vocals.PA: It still holds up. We basically did live recordings in a studio. They were as simple as you could get and they rushed us through the recording. There were very little isolation and very little baffles used. We sang at the same time we played. I think the vocals bled and so they double up on the vocals to make them stronger.

AV: "Down On Me" was your first single to receive extensive airplay. Also discuss origins of the song which credits arrangement to Janis.PA: There were two singles released by Mainstream from the album that I remember---"Down On Me"/"Call On Me" and "Blindman"/"All Is Loneliness." ("Coo Coo" was later released in November, 1968 and reached #84.) I don't know about the rest of the country, but "Down On Me" got the most airplay and reached #39 in the San Francisco area (#43 nationally). The song may have been recorded in the winter of 1966, but it was released in 1967.The song was an old spiritual. I got it from an Allen Lomax book called Songs American. I originally sang the song with the band and when Janis joined she sang the song with the original lyrics.SA: One of the problems with the original song was that it said "Jesus" or "God." James had the foresight to say they wouldn't play it on the radio if we did it as a religious song and so Janis changed the lyrics as well as the way she sang it.

AV: Did the group realize the double entendre of the title with its sexual connotation?PA: No. Maybe we were too naive or the fact the song was a spiritual. We were made aware of it later when this female porno star came to audition for us. She couldn't sing, but when she asked us what song to try we suggested "Down On Me." She said, "Hey, after you, it's fine with me!"SA: I think the same is true for the Beatles' song "Come Together." The sexual connotation never occurred to me.

AV: It's amazing how the listener will pick up on lyrics and assume there is an additional meaning or a different interpretation to the song. I think the same could be said for Sam and Dave's "Hold On, I'm Comin' "SA: I also think that the listener is going to lose something with the advent of CDs replacing album covers. The record buyer could peruse the record cover (or even the record for various inscriptions on the vinyl) and get certain images which were reinforced by the vocals and the instruments. When you conjure up a great album you first think of the cover. I think our culture is going to lose a little bit with the transition to CDs.PA: I agree with the statement whole-heartedly. The physical format of a l2" disc presented an area for photographs, liner notes (which I love to read), and other things that could be tied into the album.

AV: "All Is Loneliness" has an eerie feel similar to Jefferson Airplane's "Ballad of You, Me and Pooneil." What was the impetus for this song?PA: The impetus for this song came from the composer named Moon Dog who is a very strange, esoteric street character from New York City. He is an inventor of percussion instruments and a writer of various kinds of musical pieces. I don't know how to describe him.SA: He would stand on a street corner dressed as a huge Viking from a Wagnerian opera. He would sell poetry on sheets of paper to passers-by. For that period of time he was a total eccentric.The way he sang "All Is Loneliness" was very strange. We had a hard time trying to get his timing down.PA: We listened to this record that James had and that's how we first heard it. Later on we went to New York and ran into Moon Dog on the street and he said, "Can you do it in five?" I said, "Five?" Moon Dog responded, "Yeah, 5/4, the way it was written." He had heard that we had done the song, but hadn't actually heard it.SA: I think my response was, "There are five of us, but we did it in three minutes."PA: Moon Dog said if we didn't do it in 5/4, then we probably lost the flavor of the song. He also wrote a series of "Rounds" which were called "Rounds Around the World" of which "All Is Loneliness" was one of the rounds.

AV: "Caterpillar" is a track that is different from the rest of the LP as it has an almost harmonic, bubble-gummy sound.PA: That was a song I wrote years before the band got together and it falls into the category of nonsense children-type songs.SA: When I first met Peter that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to write songs for children. The song recalls some of John Dunne's poetry with the "caterpillar crawling for your love." It has a nice metaphor and progression with its different stages.PA: Perhaps, but definitely no social significance.

AV: Last night you also played a song from the first LP called "Women Is Losers" which has the double entendre line where the woman ends up on top.PA: That song was brought to the group by Janis and originally was called "Whores Is Funky."SA: It was the grammatical error or solecism in the title---using a singular verb with a plural subject---which she liked. It was meant to have a dramatic effect. She also wanted to say something about women. Even though the title was changed, it's interesting it was originally about whores.Interestingly, Janis was addressing that issue before there was a women's liberation movement. Not only in her songs, but just by being herself.

AV: What about "Coo Coo"?SA: It was an old folk song that was done on a banjo where Peter was the vocalist. When Janis joined the band she took over the vocals on that song and really wails on the record.PA: I think the original song was spelled "Ca Coo" and it was probably Bob Shad who suggested we change the spelling. We also changed some of the lyrics. This can be even be seen by listening to the live LP from Rhino where the introduction is different from the Mainstream record.

AV: What groups did you play with at such places as the Avalon and Fillmore?PA: All the San Francisco groups: Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Charlatans, Loading Zone, Jefferson Airplane, and Sopwith Camel. My brother, incidentally, was the original bassist for Sopwith Camel. Sometimes it is hard to remember who we played with, but then we will see an old poster and then we will remember.SA: We also played with the 13th Floor Elevators whom we have already mentioned. They were really nice guys. The band was great, but really different. No one sounded like them with the electric jug that Tommy Hall played and Roky Erickson's vocals which had that eldritch scream.

AV: What is an eldritch scream?SA: You will have to look it up, but it means it is kind of weird. If anyone ever had an eldritch scream, it was Roky Erickson. Roky's scream was kind of metallic and non-human. Unfortunately, the Elevators were one of the misses who should have made it.PA: We later played with Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple, Santana, Chicago Transit Authority, and many others.

AV: Did you have a preference of playing the Avalon over the Fillmore? I believe Janis made a statement that she preferred the hippies of the Avalon over the Fillmore which catered to drunken soldiers and rednecks.PA: That was a problem that occurred right after we left Chicago. We did an interview with an underground newspaper called Mojo Navigator where Janis made some comments like, "It's nice to be home, but I'd rather be at the Avalon."What followed were some screaming sessions when she tried to get into the Fillmore for free. Bill Graham was at the top of the stairs and Janis was at the bottom. Graham was screaming that he wouldn't let her in and Janis was screaming back.I remember I had to do a lot of fast talking on the phone from Lagunitas to try and get back into Graham's good graces to hire us. He was furious.Graham comes off with this violent bravado. It sounds very heavy, but it's a facade and he usually forgets about it. He uses it to get his own way. For example, "I'm so pissed off at you guys! I want you to work, but I'm not paying you $2,000.00 after what you said! You're only worth a thousand!" He used it for business purposes and it probably worked many times.Needless to say, Bill Graham really supported the music scene and was instrumental in its development.

AV: What happened to the Fillmore?PA: The Fillmore was closed for a while but has been refurbished. It is operated under the auspices of Bill Graham, but the club's manager does all the booking and makes all the decisions.