October 1970 - Janis Joplin found dead in Hollywood

MM front page Oct 10, click to expand

Three weeks after the shocking loss of Jimi Hendrix on September 18th 1970, the rock world was once again in mourning for one of its biggest stars. Janis Joplin was found dead in her Hollywood apartment on October 4th, at the age of 27.

According to the Melody Maker front page report, Janis had been recording during September with the 'Full Tilt Boogie' band, for the album that was released posthumously as Pearl, in January 1971.

An appreciation of Janis by the writer Geoffrey Cannon, said, "It's hard to sit down, a fortnight after trying to say something adequate, quickly, about Jimi Hendrix, and try to catch something of what Janis did - it's too soon."

Cannon said there was a connection between the deaths of Joplin, Hendrix and Brian Jones. "It's a question of how much you can give of yourself without being swallowed by your myth...It's as if a certain kind of star has made a racing car of their own mind and body, so that every night in performance, they slide round the chicane at 120 in a state of total concentration...

"We used to wonder how people like Jimi and Janis could stand the strain. Now we know - they couldn't."

Even though she lived life on the edge as a frequent heroin user, watching Janis Joplin perform, you were never in any doubt she was totally committed to the music and wanted to give the audience a whole-hearted experience. Sometimes she tried too hard and the results could be disheartening. Her soul revue band, that became the Kosmic Blues Band (my personal favourite of her bands) premiered at the Stax-Volt Christmas show in Memphis, going on after all the other local bands (Booker T & The MGs etc) had played, and they couldn't match up.

But watch her at work, at Monterey (with Big Brother & The Holding Company), at Woodstock (with the Kosmic Blues Band), on the Festival Express tour or singing 'To Love Somebody' on the Dick Cavett Show, she was a powerful musical force and a hell of singer.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham supported Janis at a gig at the San Jose Fairgrounds in 1970.

Nicks' memory of the gig is Janis yelling and swearing at her to hurry up and get off the stage. But once Janis hit the boards herself, any animosity was banished. "This woman who was screaming at me only moments before suddenly became my new hero," said Nicks.

"Janis put herself out there completely, and her voice was not only strong and soulful, it was painfully and beautifully real. She sang in the great tradition of the rhythm & blues singers that were her heroes, but she brought her own dangerous, sexy rock & roll edge to every single song."

'Full Tilt Boogie', the band that appeared on Pearl, were the musicians who accompanied her on the Festival Express train tour of Canada with The Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Delaney & Bonnie and the Grateful Dead in the summer of 1970. The movie of the tour is well worth watching, for the candid scenes on the train where they are just playing for their own amusement between stops on the tour.

"Next time you throw a train, invite me," she said. 

The MM story carried tributes from various musicians. Duster Bennett said, "So much of life was in her voice - the pain, despair and ecstacy. She could say it all for you."
Singer Maggie Bell said, "I'm absolutely choked. She had so much to say - the first girl who really started into hard rock."
Guitarist Stefan Grossman said, "Janis was a gentle girl and one of her last acts was to help finance the tombstone for the blues singer Bessie Smith. In her own time, Janis was the 'blues empress."

Some more highlights from her career, check out youtube.

Duetting with Tom Jones on 'Raise Your Hand', 1969

Maybe on US TV, 1969

Here's the song Move Over from Pearl, played live on the Dick Cavett Show, June 1970

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Also on this blog: Jimi Hendrix - The Last Interview, September 1970

Jimi Hendrix and some Christmas gift suggestions

HO HO HO!!

HERE'S MY GROOVY NEW LP, JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS.

Yes, it's December 1967 and Jimi's playing Santa Claus, bringing you seasonal joy with his new waxing Axis: Bold As Love.

The second of his three classic studio albums, 'Axis' combines some of Jimi's most psychedelic guitar experiments with his most sensitive songwriting. 

Tracks like Little Wing (truly one of his greatest songs) and Castles Made of Sand showed Jimi was so much more than the wild man of Borneo he was portrayed as by the media back then.

The recording was done mostly in London at Olympic Studios. Despite the ground-breaking guitar effects and stereo panning featured on tracks such as If 6 Was 9 and Bold As Love, the album could potentially have sounded even better if Jimi had not left a master tape of side one in a London taxi. 

The lost tape had to be remastered in one overnight session and Jimi always felt the rushed nature of it compromised the record. But to these ears it still sounds amazing, especially considering the limitations of using 4 track recorders.

Fast forward to December 1969 and Phillips/Fontana were trying to convince us to buy these goodies right away, because if we waited until Christmas eve they'd be sold out. 

Now let's be honest, Santa would not have been delivering many copies of any of these records. Scott 4 is beloved of wise-after-the-event hipsters, but it was his worst selling of the four 'Scott' albums.

The 'David Bowie' album, renamed Space Oddity in 1972 after his second coming with Ziggy Stardust, was another flop in 1969.

And Flaming Youth are only remembered now because their drummer was Phil Collins - that's him at the bottom of the diamond on the cover.

Of the four featured albums, Greek diva Nana Mouskouri was probably the best seller at the time; popular with the mums and dads, don't you know.

And of the others, well Blue Mink were having hits and Melting Pot is one of their best, so that would have probably been the best seller of the lot.

Elsewhere in this pre-Christmas 1969 edition of UK music paper Melody Maker, CBS were onto a winner with the new album from Janis Joplin, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

With a new more soulful sound, a shift away from the psychedelic rock of Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis was ready to rip up the joint as she did at Woodstock that summer. 

The new album should have done better sales-wise but some fans were put off by her change of direction. 

But to my ears, it was a vast improvement and positioned Janis in a much more soulful setting. 

Judged on its own merits, the record has some strong songs, including Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) and To Love Somebody. Check out those links, seriously. It's easily my favourite of her albums.

Island Records were also advertising in this edition of Melody Maker in December 1969. One or two of these albums, notably Fairport's Liege & Leif, Jethro Tull's Stand Up and In The Court of the Crimson King, had already been on the charts.

Others, such as Quintessence, Mott and poor old Nick Drake would see little Yuletide activity.

50 Years Ago Today: Jimi Hendrix wows Monterey

The most electrifying three minutes in the history of live rock music.

Made all the more significant because it was Jimi returning to his homeland in triumph.

  

On Sunday June 18 1967, The Jimi Hendrix Experience was introduced to the American rock audience, live for the first time at the 'Monterey Pop' Festival. And he blew their minds.

Jimi had come to London in September 1966 and was immediately hailed as the new guitar god, unseating Eric Clapton in the process. As described in my post about Jimi's shows at the Saville Theatre in London, Hendrix had crafted a stage act in his first European gigs that reached its first real flowering (man) when he returned to the U.S. 9 months later.

Monterey Pop was the first major coming together of rock's foremost talents, including Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas and Papas, Jefferson Airplane and The Who.

Jimi must have been ecstatic to suddenly be in this rarefied atmosphere - the California sunshine, a groundbreaking festival gathering and, to judge by his performance, he revelled in this talented company

Jimi was the surprise package of the festival. He had achieved his breakthrough in England, so no one on the West Coast had ever seen or heard of him. His first album Are You Experienced was only released later that month in the US. 

That made his performance even more of mouth-open shock. Michelle Phillips, who became great friends with Jimi subsequently, said she was initially appalled by the way he treated his guitar, smashing it up and setting it on fire. 

Pail McCartney had been asked by John Phillips to recommend an act to appear at the festival. He chose Hendrix. And to top it off, Jimi was introduced by one of his close friends from London, Brian Jones. He was the only one of the Rolling Stones or the Beatles who attended Monterey.

And for me, the adrenalin rush of their first song, Killing Floor (see the clip above) that had given Eric Clapton the shock of his life when Jimi first arrived in London is perhaps the most exciting three minutes in the history of live rock. Jimi, Mitch and Noel, with their frilly shirts and feather boa, give it everything and leave mouths agape, like 'what did we just see?'

"Yeah, it's really out-of-sight here, it didn't even rain; no buttons to push...". 

During the set, he pulled out all the stops, showing off his unique combination of rhythm and lead playing, cuffing the guitar, playing it behind is back, with his teeth, and then finally setting light to it, to the astonishment of the audience. 

Remember this is 60 years ago! The 1960s may have been swinging, but what Jimi did, in common with other revolutionaries of that era, was push out the boundaries beyond most people's imagining at that time.

The drugs helped in the mind-blowing, of course. Legend has it that Hendrix was tripping on Owsley LSD at Monterey. Hard to believe he could play and sing like that under the influence of mid-altering psychedelics, but records of the time suggest that may have been the case. 

Earlier in 1967, at the free festival at Mount Tamalpais, Owsley, the acid king immortalised in Steely Dan's Kid Charlemagne, was said to be dispensing acid to the performers as they were about to go onstage with the words, "do you want the sacrament?"

Robert Christgau noted in The Village Voice that Hendrix, after his famous row with Pete Townshend, (see the comments from John Phillips in the clip above) was stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour-de-force. "It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire." 

The performance, he said, heralded "the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying. Nowhere else will you witness a Hendrix still uncertain of his divinity."

 
This was a legendary performance. The arrival of King Guitar.

Youtube has not been your friend when it comes to clips of Jimi playing Monterey. Over the years, most of them have been taken down by copyright owners. What I have presented here - my own archived copy of Killing Floor and the Wild Thing finale, give a taste of the magical set Jimi played. But there's plenty more, including a great version of Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone.

There are some new HD versions appearing now too, like this clip of Rock Me Baby

Try to get hold of a copy of the original Jimi Plays Monterey movie from Criterion. I have it as part of a boxed set that includes Otis Redding's set, the original Monterey Pop movie and a DVD of outtake performances. Well worth checking out if your budget permits.

 

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this Blog:

Electric Ladyland - Genius At Work

Jimi Hendrix and The Who - Sunday Night At The Saville, 1967

Band of Gypsys reviewed, 1970

 

Five Days of Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

 

Jimi's Last Interview, September 1970 

Handel and Hendrix - Neighbours in London

Some have gone, and some remain

Here's a strange magazine cover from February 1970. These people are approaching 30 (no age to be a rock star back then). So would they survive the next decade? For Circus to be asking the question, it must have been clear that the rock and roll lifestyle of the 1960s was going to result in more casualties, following the death of Brian Jones in 1969. What's surprising is not that some of these 20 rock stars died (three of them - Jimi, Janis and Jim in little over a year)  but that 13 of them are still with us.

It's interesting to see Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts are featured, but Keith Richards is not. Apart from Keef, who by any normal measure of abuse, should be dead by now, the most notable survivor here is golden-voiced hippie David Crosby.  Crosby, whose favourite pastime for many years was freebasing cocaine,  has come close to death on numerous occasions.  The catalogue of drug busts, car accidents, guns and overdoses make Keith Richards' story seem tame in comparison.

Here's just one of many stories: On March 7, 2004, Crosby was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, illegal possession of a hunting knife, illegal possession of ammunition and illegal possession of about 1 ounce of marijuana. Crosby left said items behind in his hotel room. Authorities said a hotel employee searched the suitcase for identification and found about an ounce of marijuana, rolling papers, two knives and a .45-caliber pistol. Crosby was arrested when he returned to the hotel to pick up his bag.

In the prologue to his autobiography, Long Time Gone, Crosby, when asked if he was ever stoned onstage, replied, “The answer to that is that never once, until I got out of prison, did I ever record, perform, or do anything any way except stoned. I did it all stoned.”

He's still with us and singing as beautifully as ever.

The musical headlines from 1970

A glance at the big stories during the year, from the pages of UK music weekly Melody Maker.

JANUARY 3, 1970 - Viv Stanshall announces that the Bonzo Dog Band are splitting up, Steve Ellis leaves The Love Affair and Ian McDonald and Mike Giles quit King Crimson.

The Moody Blues are tipped as the group of the 70s. Two Little Boys by Rolf Harris is the top single, with Sugar Sugar by the Archies at No.2.

The Who's Tommy is hailed as the pop album of 1969. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young arrive in the UK for their first appearance, at the Royal Albert Hall. 

'Let It Be' is announced as the Beatles' next single.

JUNE 13 - In The  Summertime by Mungo Jerry storms up the charts.

The Who are announced for the bill at the Isle of Wight Festival. Here's a link to their performance at the festival, considered one of their best.

Bob Dylan's Self Portrait album is set for release.

Eric Clapton forms a new band with Bobby Whitlock, Jim Keltner and Carl Radle, that would go on to make the album Layla as Derek & The Dominoes.

Led Zeppelin say no to a $200,000 fee for two dates in the US, saying they are keeping faith with their booking at the Bath Festival on 28th June.

'Harrison in supersession' as Clapton, Ringo and Phil Spector gather for George's first solo album, All Things Must Pass.

JULY 4 - Jefferson Airplane have to cut short their set at the Bath Festival due to heavy rain, but promise to put on a free show in London to compensate their fans.

No such problems for Led Zeppelin, who play five encores to the 150,000 strong crowd.

Controversy over the inferior recording quality of the new Jimi Hendrix album Band of Gypsys.

Jimi's manager says the UK release was not taken from the original master tape.

You can read more about the background to the Band of Gypsys album here

AUGUST 1 - Aretha Franklin arrives for concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon.

Jethro Tull and Ten Years After are added to the Isle of Wight Festival bill.

Having been sacked by the BBC, DJ Kenny Everett gets widespread support, with one colleague describing him as "the Spike Milligan of our generation".

His Saturday morning show is taken over by 21 year old Noel Edmunds.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer record their first album.

SEPTEMBER 5 - Joni Mitchell gets credit for sticking it out after a stage invasion during her set at the IOW festival.

Neil Young had planned to appear as well but didn't like the festival vibe.

The IOW show is remarkable because it demonstrates not only Joni's qualities as a songwriter and performer, but her determination to win over a hostile crowd.

Joni was visibly upset by the bad vibes from a section of the crowd, some of whom just wanted to hear the rock bands. Then there were the freeloaders, who thought it was all too corporate and should be put on for nothing.

She toughs it out, enduring a stage invasion by one of the disgruntled hippies and telling the audience at one point that they were behaving like unruly tourists.

And when she could rightfully have fled the scene as it threatened to get out of hand, she stayed and won them over, even getting called back for an encore.

It remains a great shame that one of the greatest music festivals was marred by this conflict between promoters with a genuine love for the music and the high ideals of those who thought the promoters were selling out the free love, free everything culture of the late 1960s.

At the other end of the 1970s, Joni would collaborate with jazz legend Charles Mingus (confirmed in MM this week for his first dates in Britain).

That would have been unthinkable at this point in her career, but as we now know, Joni's music took a more jazzy direction in the late 1970s.

Also in this edition of Melody Maker, Jimi Hendrix on his new band, which was sadly not to be, as he died in London on September 18th. His former manager Chas Chandler talked subsequently about how Jimi had come back to the UK seeking to pick up the pieces of his career, which had become increasingly directionless. Chandler had planned to meet up with Hendrix the following week to map out a plan.

 

OCTOBER 10 - Three weeks after Jimi's death, Janis Joplin becomes the latest victim of the rock and roll lifestyle.

The BBC refuses to show what it considers an inferior performance by Bob Dylan on the Johnny Cash Show. This was the legendary performance where Cash and Dylan performed Girl From The North Country.

It was Dylan's first TV appearance since his brief withdrawal from the music scene following a motorcycle accident. He had holed up in Woodstock with wife sara and their young children.

Freda Payne is at No. 1 in the singles chart with Band of Gold, about to be overtaken by Deep Purple's Black Night.

Melody Maker's Chris Welch says the new Led Zeppelin (III) album "spans as many moods as a widescreen epic". Meanwhile Deep Purple's Ian Gillan plays the son of God in 'Jesus Christ - Superstar'.

NOVEMBER 7 - The success of Woodstock by Matthews Southern Comfort boosts the group's stock.

Mick Jagger says he won't be promoting the single Memo from Turner from the film Performance. The song features Ry Cooder on guitar.

Drummer Buddy Rich lays into rock musicians, avant-garde jazzers and the forthcoming drum dual between Ginger Baker and Elvin Jones.

"Guitar smashing Ritchie Blackmore" is pictured in a report saying Deep Purple have cancelled their French tour because of worries there might be another incident of fans dying in a blazing dance hall. This was way before the incident that inspired Smoke On The Water.

Also On This Blog:

Idiot Wind Marks Bob Dylan's Return to Greatness, 1975

Joni Mitchell and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

A Visit To The Annual Nick Drake Gathering

Sandy Denny and Fotheringay - A Beguiling Songbook

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak In The 1960s

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

A Wizard, A True Star - my all-time favourite album