Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin by Myra Friedman

Author:Myra Friedman [Friedman, Myra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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And up they would be, much to the consternation of the guards and sometimes a nervous promoter. That is, as Janis used to say, what rock ‘n’ roll is all about and she meant it when she’d yell, “What I’m tryin’ to tell you is get off your butt and feel.”

More than that, she was after that symbolic embrace, and she would pull it out, even if it were impacted in the recesses of torpor. Janis’s concerts gradually became spectacles, with audience participation a kind of theatrical routine. Never was there the violence that later became associated with rock, although that might have been just plain luck. Even so Janis did seem to have a remarkable ability to contain the more negative aspects of letting loose. Tensions, when they occurred, were usually the result of the uniformed garrisons who gathered to “protect” the stage. But property damage was another story, and as early as the summer of 1969 some promoters were starting to get wary of what a Joplin concert might mean. For the most part, however, they looked the other way. One reason was that the economy had not yet declined, and the dollars that could be reaped from Janis’s performances were a great inducement to overlook the possibility of chaos. The other reason lay in the psychological power of the rock culture. That power was what reached its peak at White Lake, New York, town of Bethel, where the Woodstock Festival was held that August.

That power was what made the festival’s myth.

Woodstock Wonderland. The festival, the press proclaimed, had been a triumph for music and peace over the somewhat difficult conditions of overcrowding and inclement weather. The sweetness of the kids had evoked the goodwill of the surrounding communities, who’d helped to avert a “national disaster.” A few off duty cops had been present, but no one had even known. As for the state troopers, they’d smiled and stuck to directing traffic. The young were free to smoke their dope, and what wonders that had brought. Left to their own devices, nearly a half million young people had set an example for the entire country, conducting themselves like lambs under circumstances that would have turned a Kiwanis Club meeting into a massacre. The Woodstock film amplified its glories, giving the impression that the promoters had bestowed the weekend as a loving gift from their ever-loving hearts. The festival, in fact, was a cosmic moment in history. Only thirteen miles from Grossinger’s!

Actually, a series of events had demolished the plans of the promoters to make themselves a mmt.

The fences were torn down early in the game, and except for those who’d bought tickets in advance, the festival was “free” by default. By the second day, it was a behemoth of four hundred thousand people with tentacles squirting out to choke the roads with crazy convoys that went as far back as forty miles on the New York Thruway. The stage looked like a tiny dot in the opening of a freaky forest glowing all over with flecks of orange, an asteroid belt of lit-up joints.

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