On the Road with Janis Joplin

I finished this book last night and it was a clear 5 out of 5 stars. Few know that John Bryne Cooke is the son of Masterpiece Theater's host, Alistair Cooke. His first job after graduating from Harvard was Janis' road manager.Few also know he quit the job when Janis would not quit heroin and only came back after she had stopped using. I think I've read every biography of Janis ever written, and this is not just a biography of Janis, but of all the people around her as well.Without a doubt, the best biography I've ever read on just Janis alone is the recent one by Holly George-Warren called Janis. It tells her life in chronological order, which was very refreshing and easy to follow, so much better than flip flopping around from one time in her life to another without any continuity like so many other biographies.I checked into the Highland Gardens hotel and immediately realized I had heard of it before and it dawned on me that it was the new name for the old Landmark Hotel. I was in room 102 and Janis died down the hall in room 105. They have a plaque on the wall next to door 105 stating, "Janis Joplin lived in this room 1968-1970".I own her bluebook exam where she got the highest grade in the class, 99%. I think she would have gotten a 100 but she took a swipe at the Professor when answering the last question, so in character.Unfortunately I got no vision from her when I stayed at the old Landmark hotel or when I touched her Blue Book exam from Lamar Tech...and Houdini never got in touch with his wife psychically, like he said he would if he could, if he predeceased her, and he did die first. When we're gone, we're gone.Long live the memory of Janis Joplin, member of the slide rule club in H.S. (most of you don't even know what a slide rule is) and a friend of Blacks and Whites alike, which got her labeled as a "N_____-lover"...but nobody pushed her around and she was their intellectual superior.

Janis and I came of age in the 60s. I hitchhiked up or down the coast to see her play in Golden Gate Park, at the Fillmore and at Winterland. I jumped the fence to get into the Monterey Fairgrounds and stayed there all 3 days of Monterey Pop.I loved her spirit and thought I understood her sensitivity at having grown up in a place where she was the misfit, since I am as well. What I didn't know was how smart she was, and I never fully understood how well she was doing when she died of a heroin overdose. WTF? How can a person be doing well artistically and emotionally, be in love and engaged to be married, and yet die of an overdose? This book explains.Cooke also is a revelation into other fond states of mind, such as Big Sur, the Big Sur Folk Festival, many more musical directions, and he opens the book with a finely detailed description of D. A. Pennebaker's filming of Monterey Pop, which I'm in. Just me, having slept under a tree outside the steer barn where Jimi Hendrix (unknown to any of us who watched him play all by himself the evening before; he blew the audience away the next night), brushing my hair and glancing at the camera with a bit of attitude, because the shooter spent a long time setting up, which is what awakened me.Cooke was a shooter for Pennebaker at Monterey Pop and who knows? Maybe he was the one who woke me up. He certainly is the one who opened my eyes to the rest of Janis, and the book is a delightful journey.Surprisingly, it gets better, and happier, the closer it gets to the end, which is devastating. Cooke repaired to friends' at Big Sur after Janis' death and stayed a month. I would grow up, live many lives with my own businesses before starting and running the Monterey Bay's first and only conservation-based whale watching company, Sanctuary Cruises. As with Janis, I was captain of a wondrous, sometimes heartbreaking, often breathtaking experience, and I took a lot of people for the experience of their life. How I wish she had lived on to see what else was down the road for her. John Cooke did her proud.

It has been over forty years since Janis Joplin passed and, fitting for the impact she made with music as well as a generation, many books, articles and tributes have been dedicated in her honor. David Dalton's book came closest to understanding this highly talented yet complex individual, an empathy I found lacking in Myra Friedman's study that seemed to be more of a maternal reprimand than anything else. But John Byrne Cooke, to his credit, gave his experiences and interactions with Ms Joplin time. Time to heal, to reflect and review the years that he acted as a road manager and friend to a woman who would eventually become a legend, especially to a generation that was born long after her passing. I thanked Mr Cooke for providing me with the closure I needed by providing facts, observations and evaluations of this highly complex artist that were both objective and subjective yet had one commonality: his love for Ms Joplin as a talent and as a friend. I still feel her loss but Mr Cooke's tribute makes me celebrate the passion and life force Ms Joplin so unselfishly shared with us. She is very much alive on the radio waves, on the compact discs and vinyls in our music collections, on the all too brief YouTube videos and in the best biography ever written about Janis, ON THE ROAD WITH JANIS JOPLIN.Again, I thank you, Mr Cooke.

John Cooke was there. He writes with sensitivity, humour and love about the time in his life as the road manager for Janis Joplin and her bands. As a musician himself, he understands the call of the road in order to hone live performance, while building a career. His empathy and respect for Janis show how deeply she touched the people in her life. Janis was lucky to be loved by so many good people. The tragedy of her addiction(s) and her death at a young age still resonate. Thank you, John Cooke for sharing this part of your life.

What you get here is a very readable and personal biography from John Cooke, the guy who managed Janis and Big Brother from the time of their Columbia signing. He was the straight guy who phoned for the transport and booked the hotels, took the money from the concert venue's. Someone Janis could lean on to get things moving, so she got quite attached to him but only over time as at first he didn't quite fit in to the 'family' ethos of the band. With Cooke there is a definite attachment to Big Brother as a band here with quite a few positive reviews of their music and them as people. It seems as things went on Cooke got more distant and it was more of a job, changing from BB was also a factor. Janis had to move on from Big Brother musically for her own development. Sadly Janis was just getting to where she wanted to be when when she died. There are some good reflective remarks by those who knew Janis at the back of the book,

A good read,written by their road manager.would recomend.

Looking forward to reading the book.

Good reading.

A must read for any Janis fan!