In mid-April, 1968, Janis Joplin, fronting Big Brother and the Holding Company, played the legendary Winterland in San
Francisco. It was a perfect moment to catch them. They'd just inked a major recording deal with Columbia Records.
They were playing great. They were starting to make some money. And the spotlight was only just turning squarely on
them.
Fueled by the trappings of their growing success, they took the Winterland stage with the energy and confidence of a
band on the brink of going big. As the staggering performances captured and released here for the first time clearly
attest, Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company were indeed, on their way.
The meteor that was Janis Joplin rose, soared, and fell in just three years, from the summer of 1967, when she
exploded into the national consciousness with Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey International Pop
Festival, to the fall of 1970, when she died in a motel room in Hollywood. This recording documents a peak, in the
spring of 1968, when the band headlined three triumphant nights in their hometown of San Francisco. To
accommodate the anticipated crowds, promoter Bill Graham scheduled the last two nights not at his usual stand, the
Fillmore Auditorium, but at nearby Winterland, an ice show arena.True to the era, it was a wildly eclectic bill, with Big
Brother headlining over those masters of Memphis soul, Booker T. & the MG's, and a Los Angeles heavy-metal band
on the verge of their one and only hit, "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida." (--Ben Fong-Torres)
This performance is an accurate document of that moment and it is also the best and most accurate recording I have
ever heard of what Big Brother with Janis was really about as a band. For me it has more of the pure, insane, raw
energy that was Big Brother's stock and trade and which had to be toned down on "Cheap Thrills" .. which was mostly
done in the studio and then made to sound live. This, at long last, is the real deal. (--Dave Getz)
Booker T. and the MGs were playing with us that night. I ran into Steve Cropper who looked like the vice president of a
small Southern bank, clean cut, blonde and very polite. "I enjoy your guitar playing and would you care to do some
playing sometime?" he asked. Would I? He was one of my heroes, him with his razor blue steel guitar licks cutting into
just the right place on all of those deliciously funky tunes from Stax-Volt in Memphis. Yes, I would be up for playing. It
took us a year or so but we finally got together at a Christmas party down in Tennessee. (--Sam Andrew)
Janis Joplin wasn't anybody's yellow rose. Better to call her Texas' most enduring thorn. Born, a fifth generation Texan,
in the deepwater anchorage town of Port Arthur, Joplin always had one foot on the highway, telling anyone who would
listen, "Texas is okay if you want to settle down, but it's not for outrageous people, and I was always outrageous." All
this in the era where young women were groomed and coifed within an inch of their life, and made to think that they
had to either aspire to be Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt. Janis offered another choice. A
harbinger of the burgeoning cultural revolution, she turned her back on the life that was sketched out for her in this
small town that was more Louisiana than Texas. After one false start back in 1961, she tucked all her worldly
possessions under her arm, and stuck out her thumb, along with the equally atavistic Chet Helms (who would play an
important role in her destiny--hooking her up with Big Brother and the Holding Company) making the long fifty hour trip
hitchhiking to San Francisco to start her a new life and help usher in a new epoch. (---Jaan Uhelszki)
Janis Joplin With Big Brother and The Holding Company Live At Winterland '68, the first completely unissued full-length
concert to capture the group at its peak in the months leading up to the appearance of their Columbia debut album
Cheap Thrills, has been scheduled for release in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the band's signing to
Columbia Records.
The 14-track, 75-minute Live at Winterland '68 is packed with live touchstones of the band's "progressive-regressive
hurricane blues style," as guitarist Sam Andrew characterizes their sound in the liner notes written by Ben
Fong-Torres: "Down On Me," "Piece Of My Heart," "Summertime," "Bye Bye Baby," "Ball & Chain" and more. But the
new release also includes versions of four genuine rarities not recorded on the two original Big Brother LPs with Joplin:
"Flower In the Sun," "Farewell Song," "Catch Me Daddy" (formerly "Brownsville"), and folksinger Mark Spoelstra's
"Magic Of Love."
Recorded during Big Brother's triumphant San Francisco homecoming on April 12-13, 1968, Live at Winterland '68 is
the latest entry in the "Live From the Vaults" series of Columbia/Legacy, a division of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
In-store date has been set for May 5th - just over the thirty year anniversary when Big Brother first played the opening
night of Bill Graham's Fillmore East in New York on March 8, 1968, the same time their Columbia signing was officially
announced and they began to record their first album for the label.
Live at Winterland '68 is an appropriately first class package which includes the original poster art from the actual
concert. Dual sets of liner notes put the entire story of Janis Joplin and Big Brother in context, as written by Ben
Fong-Torres, former editor of Rolling Stone, and Jaan Uhelszki, formerly of Creem magazine. Additional notes by band
members Sam Andrew and Dave Getz provide an insider's perspective; and a 'Family Tree' by Pete Frame fills in the
gaps. There are personal quotes from Meredith Brooks, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Chryssie
Hynde of the Pretenders, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Patti Smith, and Ann and Nancy Wilson
of Heart.
From a technical standpoint, Live at Winterland '68 was remixed and remastered from the original eight-track masters,
utilizing 20-bit SBM (Super Bit Mapping). Reissue producer Bob Irwin and Sony Music Studios engineer Vic Anesini
worked closely with representatives of Janis Joplin's estate and members of Big Brother to insure the raw flavor of the
project. To that end, much of the between-song commentary is retained.
Big Brother and The Holding Company had solidified its lineup by early 1966: guitarists Sam Andrew and James
Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, and drummer David Getz; Janis Joplin completed the lineup when she joined in June.
Though rock lore has it that Big Brother was "discovered" at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, in
fact, they'd already recorded their eponymously titled first LP, which was released that August by Mainstream Records
(who subsequently sold it to Columbia in 1971). Four of the songs heard on Live at Winterland '68 date from that
seminal LP: "Down On Me," "Bye Bye Baby," "Easy Rider," and "Light Is Faster Than Sound."
In the heady aftermath of Monterey Pop and the Columbia courtship that followed, which was negotiated by the group's
newly acquired manager Albert Grossman, the star of Big Brother and the Holding Company rose meteorically. They
went from serving as house band at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco to headlining tours with B.B. King, Albert
King, Blood Sweat & Tears and others.
Big Brother arrived in New York in February 1968, established themselves on the East Coast, and soon began the
recording of Cheap Thrills with producer John Simon. Five of the songs heard on Live at Winterland '68 date from that
critically acclaimed album, which went to number one for eight weeks in the summer of 1968: "I Need a Man To Love,"
"Combination of the Two," "Piece Of My Heart," "Summertime," and "Ball & Chain."
When Big Brother and the Holding Company returned home to San Francisco, promoter Bill Graham booked them for
three nights, opening at the Fillmore and then moving to Winterland for the next two nights. This success set the stage
for the completion of Cheap Thrills and its release on Columbia in August. Ironically, although the album had sold
enough within a month to become an RIAA gold record, Joplin and Grossman announced her departure from the band
in September.
"After a final gig in December [with Big Brother]," writes Ben Fong-Torres, "she would put together one ensemble
[Kozmic Blues Band], then another [Full Tilt Boogie Band]. She enjoyed some highs, both personally and
professionally, but the end came far too soon." Janis Joplin died on October 4, 1970. And although the members of Big
Brother have kept the band going to this day with a succession of lead singers, "it is inevitable," Fong-Torres
concludes, "that people are thinking about the singer who isn't there." |
