I just finished listening to the 1998 release, "Live At Winterland '68". A great CD recorded in April 1968. It sounds like it was a good night for the band. 

Yeah, that was definitely a good night for us. We'd been on the road and we came in and we were all exercised and everyone was happy. So it was just one of those nights. You know, there are a couple of things out there that weren't such good nights for us and I kind of cringe when I hear them even though historically it's good.

Are you very self critical when listening to your work?

It's just like looking at a photograph of yourself. Someone will say, "yeah, that's you", and you say "I know, but I could have looked better!"

Tell us about some of your musical influences. Did you come from a musical family?
I know you spent some time overseas when you were younger.

Yes I did. My father played guitar real well in more of an academic manner. He read music and that kind of thing. All of my mother's people where musicians but none of them read music, they were just kind of intuitive musicians. So I got a little bit of both. 

You had a lot of jazz and classical influences while growing up and you were actually playing rock and roll professionally while you were still in your teens.

That's right I had a rock-and-roll band very early on. But by this time in life I kind of played almost everything. Like you said, I had a rock and roll band when I was in my teens and we wrote original music for that. And then when I started in university I played classical guitar. So those were two big musical seeds that were planted when I was young.

What did you call your first band?

The Cool Notes. Spelled just like that. No two K's or anything like that.

There was quite an eclectic mix of genres being absorbed by the musicians and artists in and around the SF Bay area in the mid sixties. You had folk, bluegrass, blues, Eastern influences, a little bit of everything it seems. What were you listening to in the mid sixties, just before Big Brother was formed?

We had just gone through a big folk phase, so those of us who were kind of serious about that really got into it and started listening to a lot of music from Appalachia, Native musics around the world and then right before that we started listening to a lot of Jazz and Blues like Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Furry Lewis and that kind of thing. Kind of a real serious enquiry into the Blues. So I think those two things, folk music and Blues were probably the big influence on that first classic San Francisco sound. 

In 1965 , Chet Helms was putting together jams at 1090 Page Street. 

Yes, That's where Peter (Albin) lived and he had a beautiful basement with a proscenium arch, it was a theater in an old Victorian house. We would go down there and jam. We figured why not invite people as long as we're playing.

As word spread they turned into quite the events after a while didn't they?

Yeah, but it was still real quiet in a local neighborhood kind of thing though. It wasn't that large. Just a lot of multi faceted people from around the neighborhood would come in. There'd be African-Americans, poor students, you know, a lot of different people. Real wide open.

And you would get together and jam with other local musicians?

We'd get together on Wednesday night or something, we'd have regular rehearsals and then Chet started inviting people and charging them to get in. Members of the Quicksilver Messenger Service would come by…

 Mr Cippollina and Mr Valente?

Yes, and Gary Duncan.

 Was it at those jams at 1090 Page Street where you met Peter?

Before all that was happening, I was walking by one day and heard him playing the guitar out of  a window and he sounded really good. And he still does, he still plays like that.

I read somewhere that described you as the "musical director" of Big Brother. How did you see your role in the band?

Well, at first I saw myself as more brand new to that whole thing than anyone else in the band, with the most to learn about where that scene was going to go. I was very unexposed to it. I'd been in university in a real academic environment and very far away from Pop music at all. I mean I hadn't even heard it at all, I'd stayed in the library for two or three years and so I was real unexposed and had a lot to learn, so everyone had a lot to teach me when I came in. On the other hand, I was the only one who had been in a band that made money so I understood that part about playing, you know, how songs had to have a beginning, middle and an end, where a chord was going. I knew more about chords and that part of music, the theory part of music, harmony, than anyone else in the band. So, just kind of by default I became the one who would know, like someone would say "Do you know this song?", I would be the one who knew it.

So while you were attending university, what was it that made you devote yourself to music and make it a career?

Well, I was always serious about it from real young but never thought about it as making a living at it. It was always a real serious pursuit. But I guess meeting Peter, and when I met him and heard him play I said 'Let's start a band' and he kind of wasn't for it. Very similar to our relationship today. I had to work on him for months, you know, keep asking him and it finally happened. He didn't go, "Yeah, that's a great idea, let's go do that!"

There was some serious mainstream attention focused on The Haight-Ashbury district around 1966, culminating with Time magazine declaring "The Younger Generation" to be "Man Of The Year". What was the musical community like at that time? It sounds like it was a musicians' Utopia. 

Well, in a way. But the thing about San Francisco in general was the music was unspecialized and unprofessional. In a good sense of those words and a bad sense of those words. Musicians in Los Angeles and New York were real professionally oriented and they were going to record and they knew which manager they wanted and they saw their career path and that kind of thing. We just weren't doing it that way in San Francisco. It was more like people who went to art school and they would pick up the guitar to express themselves and didn't really care if they were playing something that was correct or polished or professional, that was not the idea at all. The very first band in San Francisco, The Charlatans, aside from Dan Hicks, they almost couldn't play at all. They were far more interested in making a statement. Kind of like a conceptual art thing, than a professional thing of going and playing. No one wanted to go play clubs. The very idea of going to Broadway and playing behind strippers was very far away from what anyone was thinking about. Which was the only real professional outlet at the time. 

It seems that the attitude towards music and the business side of things spilled over into the freeform music styles and loose arrangements that many of the bands at that time employed. 

The only choice we had was to be freeform because we couldn't be tight formed. No one knew enough to do that. So by default, it was a real freeform, a kind of seeking after a new sound. The same thing happened in the Punk era where a lot of people were totally untutored on an instrument. 

The only thing that came even remotely close to that, as much as it is different, was the Seattle scene where guys couldn't really play all that well but had the heart. 

Yes, I think that will always be the case with young people. Thank God! They are young and have all this juice. 

And you don't mind sleeping in a van or not sleeping at all. 

Yes, for two weeks!

I was reading about the Trips Festival in January 1966 and it's unclear whether Big Brother performed there on the second night or not. Some say that you did, while other accounts say that you didn't actually take the stage. 

Well I think the reason for that confusion is that there were two of them, weren't there, and they were close together. I think we didn't play the first one did but I know we played one. I think we played the second one and there was a lot of trouble even then. They didn't want us to, there wasn't any time, Chet had to pull rank and he argued with, I think, Ken Babbs from the Merry Pranksters and said "Listen this is my band and they're going on". We played four tunes and so someone could have missed us very easily. But we played on the second one. 

 That was at the Longshoreman's Hall.

Yeah!

 That must have been quite the place to perform?

Well, it was, it was far away in every sense of the word from where everything was happening. We were all in another part of town and a more colorful perhaps like…. Yorkville in Toronto. That's where we were kinda of living and then if you could imagine a real touristy, hard, concrete, dry sterile area, that's where the Longshoreman's Hall was. It was made out of concrete and it was a very unlikely place for the birth of a scene.

 At the time did anyone have any idea what was happening or how momentous this scene would become?

No, it was real confusing, because it was all brand new. There wasn't any history to look back at so it was real confusing and perhaps more transitory and even shallow than you would think. Now I look back, and it's really true, those poster artists will be known forever. Their work will be known forever. But back then they were just cranking it out, getting real stoned and doing it rooms where lots of people were and everything was really confused. It just seemed very transitory. We were all thinking that we would be lucky if it went on for six months and then it went on for that long, and then OK maybe it will last like another year. Then really, even probably way into the 70's we thought it was definitely all over because it was, and then it came back. It comes and goes. 

 The anti-establishment has now become the mainstream hasn't it? There's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum with Janis Joplin's Porsche and John Cipollina's amp stack…

That's right, it's kind of scary… that's not what it was supposed to be. 

I've read that many musicians felt compelled to play Bill Graham's Fillmore West because he had a lot of power in the musical community, but that many preferred The Avalon with regards to the mood, size, atmosphere and lighting. What are your memories of both venues?

That's true. That's true although it may be a little exaggerated. First of all, any band was happy to play anywhere and get paid for it. Bill was a good guy. He turned out to be a good guy. I had a lot of trouble with him right at first but he made the trains run on time. He paid everyone promptly, he was a total professional and he was going for the bigger audience. He wasn't interested in the vision or the scene although I think he became interested in that later. 

We liked the Avalon because Chet was there, you know our daddy was running the place. We liked it a lot but we liked playing for Bill too. Janis and Bill had a real big argument at one point and Bill and I had a huge screaming thing one time. We were happy over at the Fillmore but the Avalon was like home. The Fillmore was the big place to go and work… when Janis' parents came out to see what she was doing, we played the Avalon to show them kinda what we were playing. 

 That must have been quite the moment...

Yeah, it was funny watching and meeting Mike and Laura (Janis' sister and brother) and seeing them looking very wide-eyed, that was fun. 

 When you were the house band how often were you playing the Avalon? Was it a weekly thing?

Yes, we played there a lot. Chet really did a lot for the band. He really was the father. He named it, he brought Janis to it, he brought James (Gurley) to it and then he provided the work for us. So really, he is the big brother in Big Brother and the Holding Company. That was a question we were asked a lot at the time and never really knew the answer to but I realize now that's what it was. He was the big brother.

Would you say that it was during this period at The Avalon that things began to gel musically? 

Yes, we are talking about a very telescoped period of time. This is maybe three years at the outside. I think that Big Brother played for nine months before Janis came and we were playing in a very amateurish fashion and then she came and probably played a year and a half and that's it. It was a very short time. So, when you say, "is that when the music was gelling" it's hard to answer because it was moving real fast. 

 With all the live shows you were doing around this time, like anything, the more you do, the better you get.

Yes, and in a way, in a real odd way, that was the death of the scene too because everybody, be it a poster artist or a print maker or psychedelic shop owner or a musician, as they did that they became specialized and then they didn't have any time to be in this big large group of people anymore because their specializing into this thing. It changed the scene, much as bad drugs did. Which is usually the reason given for it. 

 Was there a point where drugs actually helped the musical and creative process as far a "expanding the mind"?

Yeah, and then that would probably be a good time to quite it right there. But that didn't happen. No one had any experience with it. 

Tell us about your first introduction to Janis Joplin and the band's first rehearsals with her. Was it one of those situations where everyone looked at each other and said, "Wow!"
I understand you performed "Blindman" and "I Know You Rider" together on that first day. 

Well, we were rehearsing regularly at this place. As a matter of fact, at the studio of two of the poster artists and that's why I was mentioning that thing earlier about how they were doing all that really beautiful work when people were just running around. Children are running over the piece of paper that they were drawing on, dogs are chasing through, it was very loose, mad, chaotic kind of thing. We were rehearsing and Chet brought Janis in and she came in the room and she was from another state, and she was kind of looking around. She hadn't been in San Francisco since that had happened and all of that stuff had happened really fast. She was really kind of amazed at everything that was going on. She sang a couple of folk songs with us, yes, and she just sounded really good, real loud and frantic but definitely on pitch. A very high voice. 

The raw energy of Big Brother complimented Janis and vice versa.

I think that was our gift to her frankly. She didn't have that when she sang with us that first day for example. She was nervous and that, but when she sang it was with this really big wide open, beautiful voice. Strong, but not like when you think of Janis Joplin singing, it wasn't that way. It took her a while to learn how to do that and I think we gave her that. We gave her that energy thing.

 Once again, dates vary regarding BBHC's first gig with Janis Joplin. Some sources say February 1966 while others say it was June 1966. 

Well, I remember her coming in the Spring. Our webmaster is really up on the exact dates and he's been correcting them now for two or three years. We'll all think something happened and then we'll find out, oh no, it was really another day.

 That's one of the wonderful things about rock and roll and the detailing of the important events. You can read three different books and get three different accounts of the same event.

That really applies to anything. That was one of the most educational things about going through that. At first, a real important conversation would happen and two or three journalists would be standing around and they would all write about it and you would see how different their perceptions are. At first it was just a localized insight and then you realize it's always been that way. Who's going to know what Jesus Christ was really like? Four guys sitting around and they all wrote it down a little different.

And as more time goes on the stories get a little more romantic and sometimes exaggerated don't they? 

That's what I was saying before. Every thing was much more confused and transitory and shallow than you tend to think of it now. Now we're adding this crust of revered antiquity and it just wasn't that way. It felt like a bunch of messy kids kind of stumbling around for most of the time and I think that's what it was. 

The communal living the band did at 'Argentina' in rural Lagunitas, California. Was that the real name? 

That's the real name although we didn't know it as that. There was this water tank and it said "Hitler's alive and well in Argentina", something you saw a lot at that time. Some goofy statements and it was just written on the water tank and later, after we moved out, that's what the house was known as but not when we lived there. 

 Where is Lagunitas exactly?

It's a little north of here, it is a very beautiful spot. It's kind of northwest of San Francisco, maybe twenty miles or something like that. 

 You were living there as a family and doing a lot of rehearsing as well. Was it before this point or was it while you were living together that a sense of family was created?

Yeah, I think it was right there although it was from day one when Janis came to the band. We were all living there real close, some of them too close to each other. I had a little cabin out in back so I was a little isolated. Privacy is a great thing. It was hard to come by then. 

How did the dynamics of the band change when Janis joined? How did it affect the overall structure of the band? 

We were more adventurous before she came. When she came, the songs became shorter and more to the point, more conventional in a way. A singer always operates within traditional forms more than an improvising musician. There became more songs in the set and they were shorter and with a bit more structure. But then she poured that passion into those ordinary forms. When we would say in rehearsal, "OK we're going to play A-B, A-B-C, A-B, that's what we would do on stage and never playing a D or playing one A-B instead of two A-Bs. Once we decided that that's the way it was, but there is a lot of room even within that. 

 The simpler the better?

The simpler the more easily understood that's for sure. It makes a definite statement that you can see right away. 

In March 1967, BBHC was in the movie "Petulia" with Richard Chamberlain and Julie Christie. Do you remember much about that? 

I remember it really clearly because it was a real big thrill. First of all just to be in a movie and then it was at The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and that was a big deal. And then it was made by Richard Lester, so we were all REAL aware of the guy who made The Beatles film and we thought, "Oh man, look at this." The first scene was shot in the lobby with huge red silk baroque, overly ornate hotel lobby. And we were on the stair steps and we were playing for this film. It's a strange film. It's about a doctor, George C Scott, and he abuses his wife who's Julie Christie. Kind of unusual and strong. Richard Chamberlain was in it and he turned out to be a great guy. We all thought he was going to be this plastic TV star. But he turned out to be this great guy and he came to a lot of our gigs. Julie Christie was really wonderful and Richard Lester was funny. So it was really a lot of fun.

Tell us about the making of the classic Cheap Thrills album and the live recordings at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. 

The idea was to do the thing live but it didn't turn out that way. It turned out to be a mixed artifact taken from nips of tape from here and there. It's definitely an artifact and I think really a brilliant job on the part of that producer who I didn't care much for personally. But John Simon I think did a good job on it. We recorded a weekend at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit and indeed in a lot of other places but yes, that's significant that you ask about that. We took the tapes back to New York and the band almost broke up right there, I mean the music was terrible. We were having a bad weekend. I came into our manager's office and said, "Does anyone have a joint?" The manager said, "No, no smoking" and I said, "Oh shit, here we go he's going to wrap our knuckles" and he did. We all sat around and had to listen to this very terrible playing. So, it was kind of unusable. Now, I think it probably sounds fine. It's just perceptions are funny and how they change over time. I think that there was something a little bit useable on there. So what wound up happening was that we recorded a lot of live shows and then we also went into the studio and recorded and this producer mixed it all in such a way that it all sounded live and in one place. But it was not. It was a total illusion. He put the room sound on, audience clapping and that. So it's just like an illusion. Cheap Thrills, I'm happy with that. I think he did a great job. I'd like to redo some solos on there but that's the way it is. That will always be the case. I can go back and change some stuff that's on the website but I know I will never do it. I just don't like to revisit and go back. I rewrite a lot. But even so, a little later I will wince at a lot of it. I wind up rewriting five or six times.

How did the success and the media attention following the release of "Cheap Thrills" affect you and the band? Was it a little overwhelming? 

Well, it was a lot of fun! The main thing was it takes a lot of time, success takes a lot of time. It can deflect you from what you were doing that made you a success and people in all fields report that. Whatever it is that made them a success took a lot of time and a lot dedication and then when the lights turn on they can be distracted by that and not have enough time to create new material or whatever it was. I think that's what happened to us. 

When Janis was thinking about going solo you were one of the first people she told. 

Yeah, she talked to me about it all the way along. I just thought, well no, you ought to stick to this and try it for a while and not make such a precipitous jump. She tried that for a while but she really wanted to leave. 

 And you were the only one she asked to join The Kozmic Blues Band.

Yeah, we sang well together. 

Was it tough for you to leave Big Brother and the history you had with the band? 

Yeah, it was. We were all pretty distracted at the time. I kind of agreed with her about some of her reasons for leaving. She wanted to go and add some instruments, or try some instruments, that kind of thing. She had asked the band and they said no, they refused, and I thought they should have tried that temporarily and kind of given her some latitude. So I kind of agreed with some of her reasons but in hindsight I wish I had been more forceful about trying to talk her out of it.

How different was the environment and atmosphere when recording "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama" with The Kozmic Blues Band as opposed to "Cheap Thrills" with Big Brother? 

Well, it was totally different. All of the musicians were maybe more facile. They were ready to record. With Big Brother it was always kind of a tortuous process. The musicians were changing all the time and there wasn't any kind of comfortable feeling about it that's for sure. I wasn't comfortable with Gabriel Mekler, the producer for Kozmic Blues. It felt more machine-like and formal. 

Would you agree then that Janis Joplin never enjoyed the same camaraderie with Kozmic Blues and Full Tilt that she did with Big Brother? 

That's right, certainly not with Kozmic Blues. 

 Shortly before Woodstock, you were thinking about leaving Janis and The Kozmic Blues Band. How did your departure come about?

Yeah, well everyone was. We didn't know from one time to the next who was going to be there. We went through a lot of drummers. We had a meeting about the album and I asked Albert (Grossman) and Janis if the band could have some points on the album, meaning if we could have a little percentage of the album as opposed to just being paid to go in and do it. And Albert and Janis kind of got a stern look on their face and the rest of the band wouldn't talk to me. They kind of shut me down. They were so indoctrinated. They were kind of going along with the program and I saw the writing on the wall right there. But I wasn't ready to quit the band then. Janis called me one day and asked me to come to her room and she said, "We won't be needing your services anymore". So really, I was fired. She said, "Do you want to know why?" and I said, "No, if you're firing me I don't need to know why, it's too late for that". She said, "Well I suppose your right". Today I wish I would have asked her what it was.

Was that the last time you saw her?

No, she lived in the same place, she lived like five miles from where I'm sitting right now. So she would come home off the road and we saw her a lot, I rode around in her Porsche and stuff. She actually played with us with her new band a couple of times. It would be a Big Brother/Full Tilt bill. So we saw her on that. She would sit in with the band but it really wasn't the same as before.

 Speaking of Janis' Porsche it is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's quite the shrine.

Yeah, it's odd to have Rock and Roll in a museum like that. 

After your time with The Kozmic Blues Band, you went back to school in New York…

Yeah, I went back to school. I studied music formally which I'd always done anyway just by myself. I like New York a whole lot. I would live there now in fact I would move there today with no trouble at all. I enjoyed the time that I was there. 

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