Big Brother: Interview (Part 2) [Side A]

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

AV: The Monterey Pop Festival (June, 1967) literally propelled Big Brother & the Holding Company into the national limelight. What are your recollections of that event which were captured on film by D. A. Pennebaker and showed the frenetic show-stopping performance of Janis?PA: It was a three day festival with lots to see. It was a real, uplifting experience for the band, particularly Janis. It also gave us a chance to meet a lot of the other bands as well as Brian Jones and Paul Simon. We also got to work with John Phillips and his wife Michelle who were directly responsible, along with Lou Adler, Derek Taylor and Johnny Rivers, for organizing the festival. In fact, Lou Adler must have spent weeks mixing down Wally Heider's twenty-four track recordings. It is really good.Strangely enough, there was never an album released with the performances, other than individually, whereas Woodstock generated a lot of LP sales. This was because nobody signed releases. The only releases signed were for the Pennebaker film.Perhaps Lou Adler could put together an album or CD since he's already done the mixing. All he would have to do is edit the commercials and the interviews. The music, by itself, is pretty darn good.Whenever I talk about the Monterey Pop Festival, I always try to dispel the notion it was a hippie festival. It really wasn't. It was totally unlike Woodstock in several ways. First of all, the venue only held 20,000 and those were the entire grounds. Each seat was a reserved seat and there were ushers along with a map to find your seat. When you see the film and notice the dress and hairstyle, there is maybe only one out of twenty people with long hair and most of them were onstage. There were a couple of people who had their faces painted, but those were the exceptions.Another thing that made Monterey different from Woodstock was nobody made any money. It was a benefit. Everybody played for free. I don't think there has been another concert like it.Pennebaker has so much footage, I wouldn't mind seeing a nine or ten hour movie or have it put out on video. There are several acts you don't see on the film because they didn't sign the release. There's the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Johnny Rivers, and Moby Grape who put on a wonderful performance.One of the most important results of the Monterey Pop Festival was that all the San Francisco bands received national press. We thought our band was known all over the country, but it was only in the counter-culture press. Joe Schmo and his wife Flo in Oshkosh had never heard of Janis Joplin. When it came out there was tremendous coverage in Newsweek and Time.The festival also got Bob Shad off his ass to release our first album. By then we had progressed even further and wanted to change some things that had been recorded, but he went ahead and released it anyway. It was released in August and reached a respectable #60 on the charts. Of course, the festival also brought us to the attention of Columbia's Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's manager) who signed on as manager of the group. This led to Columbia buying out our contract with Mainstream in March of 1968.

AV: Cheap Thrills is one of the great "live" LPs of all time. The original tentative title was Dope, Sex and Cheap Thrills which the label insisted upon cutting to just Cheap Thrills. Normally, you wouldn't think a live album would be recorded as well as a studio album, yet conversely the live LP sounds like a studio LP. It's raw, it's fresh, but so clean.SA: Aside from the progression of the band as a whole, it was a progression in recording technology. John Simon, the producer, also knew how to get certain things onto tape.The album was a real mix. By that I mean it was largely a live album, but some things were recorded live in the studio and were overdubbed.PA: What we tried to do was give the impression the whole album was live and we succeeded. Consequently, even though it wasn't a total live album, we don't want to take that feeling away from the audience.

AV: What accounts for the incredible progression of your music from the first album to Cheap Thrills? Stylistically, there is also a change from the first album that had some country-flavored songs to an album that is basically hard blues-rock.PA: When we first did recordings with Janis her voice hadn't changed where she sang in a Texas folk-blues style. She hadn't really run up against any loudness where she had to sing above it.When we started the Cheap Thrills record almost a year had passed where we had been playing loud rock and roll music. Her style changed a lot and that is one of the main differences.

AV: How did you come up with the art work by R. Crumb?PA: We asked a couple of people to give us ideas. There were several photographic ideas of which two were tried in New York. One of those included the photographers who had done Thelonious Monk's underground album cover. We also did an incredibly long session which involved this very long and meticulous set of a San Francisco Victorian bedroom.SA: As seen by designers in New York! It was pink and frilly and lacy and totally off-the-wall. It was unreal.PA: The band looked at this bedroom and said, "This isn't us at all!" Nevertheless, we all took off our clothes and got in bed. somewhere there are proofs sheets of this which would be great to see. Needless to say, we trashed this idea as a cover for our album.There was also another artist and a friend of mine named Dennis Nolan who did a cover take-off of Venus-On-The-Half shell with the band in the shell. It was real nice, but the band rejected it.We liked R. Crumb because of his work from Zap Comics and we just got together. The original submittal Crumb gave us included a front and back cover. What you see on the front cover was actually the back cover. The front cover was a terrible hokey, high school yearbook-type of cartoon drawings of us on stage with cartoon bodies and faces. It had black-and-white photos of our faces pasted on it. It was tacky. We then looked at the back cover and said, "Hey, how about using this for the front cover?"

AV: What about all the sketches by R. Crumb such as the blonde groupies panting lasciviously for Sam? Were these sketches based on real scenarios?PA: I don't know if R. Crumb got this in talking to Dave and Janis, but he tried to put some particular character trait into the artwork. Sam always seems, even to this day, to attract blondes.SA: I think most of these characterizations were one-shot deals or based on a conversation. For example, one night Crumb went to dinner with Dave and he got real stoned on some hashish. He didn't get stoned every night, but that's how he drew Dave.When he came to see me I had several blondes with me who were probably just friends. It just was seen differently on the outside.The same thing applies to James with the one eye and halo. I think someone said something to Crumb, but that is kind of a long range truth of James.The strange look on Pete's face was probably due to this funny face Peter used to make with his eye balls out.He also got Janis with her nipples protruding through her halter top. It wasn't unlike her, but it was only a small part of Janis overall.

AV: Did any of the band members have any physical relationships with Janis?SA: Both James and I did. Mine occurred years later when we were with Kosmic Blues and was almost like a joke or an after-thought.James' relationship with Janis was early on when she first came out to California. It too was a brief fling.

AV: How did the proposed title of Dope, Sex and Cheap Thrills come about?SA: The title was a catch-phrase from old movie posters such as Reefer Madness.PA: I thought we saw it on a marquee in Los Angeles.SA: It's just an old saying. We wanted to use the whole title, but Columbia wouldn't go for it and so we negotiated and ended up with Cheap Thrills.PA: We also had to fight to make sure they listed us as Big Brother & the Holding Company and not as any permutation like featuring Janis Joplin. Strangely enough, we have the same debate now regarding Michel Bastian, our new lead singer. Michel is getting offers from other agents, mostly sleaze balls, because she is a talent in her own right.

AV: What is the story behind Barney's Beanery which is listed on the cover of Cheap Thrills?SA: Peter, Janis, and John Simon, our producer who played piano on the cut, were working on "Turtle Blues" in the studio. We wanted to get this bar sound, with this sleezy and gritty sound, so James and I went down to Barney's Beanery which is a famous eating place. It's a 40s all night diner with a bar and we recorded all the noise with a tape recorder. Unfortunately, the bar noise wasn't quite as good as we wanted---I guess we're telling you our secrets---but we came back to the studio and ended up breaking Southern Comfort bottles and throwing them in the trash can. I believe Bob Newhart, Howard Hessman, and John Cooke were there.

AV: Were the lyrics in "Turtle Blues" pretty close to home---e.g., "hiding underneath its horney shell" and "ain't no one gonna' talk me down"---as far as Janis was concerned?SA: It was a real, true song. Definitely autobiographical. That song was a good summing up of the way Janis felt about life. Basically, having this tough exterior which she wished she didn't have to use; yet being soft inside. Quite often she would overcompensate her toughness even when she didn't have to.

AV: Who introduced the band as, "Four gentlemen ... and one great, great broad"?PA: That was Bill Graham.AV: "Combination of the Two," written by Sam Andrew, is a great lead song which has a driving beat that propels the energy of the band onto the listener with this opening track.SA: The concept was the Avalon and the Fillmore where I was trying to heal that wound when Janis said she didn't like the Fillmore because of the drunken sailors. It was kind of a dichotomy---with the Avalon and the soft side of Chet Helm versus the Fillmore and the heavy Bill Graham---whereby the combination of the two made the San Francisco sound. There is always that idea which is a schizophrenic view of the universe. It's trying to keep a balance.

AV: What was the inspiration for "I Need A Man to Love" by Janis and Sam?SA: That came from a riff we got from tuning up backstage. Everyone in the band helped write it. Great vocals by Janis. It would be nice to do an up-dated arrangement of that song.

AV: "Summertime" is a hypnotic slow tune with wonderful elongated vocals (e.g., "nothing ... is ever going to harm you now") by Janis. How did the group arrange this song?PA: That's a good question because I have a tape of where I sang that song early on before Janis.SA: Every group who has ever played folk or jazz has probably played that song. There is an old version by Nina Simone where she plays piano and builds it up around a classical backdrop. It's really beautiful. James had the record in his collection and it really impressed us. I used a theme from one of the Back Inventions as a unifying motif for our classical treatment.The other cross-current is the arrangement which John Simon, who is classically trained, helped us to pull it together.SA: Janis had the ability to really stretch out the end of a word. It's one thing to stretch out a vowel, but a consonant is a different ma-tter. Michel has that same ability.