Janis Joplin’s Secret Opinion of Jimi Hendrix (The Truth She Hid from TV). D

On the morning of September 19th, 1970, a housekeeper at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood knocked on room 105 to deliver towels. Janis Joplin opened the door. The housekeeper said later that she had seen Janis many mornings during that stay. That morning was different. She said Janis looked like someone who had been awake all night and had not been alone in the way that people are alone when they are simply by themselves.

She had been alone in the way that people are alone when they have just lost someone. She took the towels. She said thank you. She closed the door. Jimi Hendrix had died the previous morning in London. Janis had found out at midnight. She had been sitting in room 105 when the call came.

Not from management, not from the label, from a friend who had heard it on the radio and needed someone to tell. Janis sat on the edge of the bed after the call ended and looked at the wall for a long time. The wall did not have anything useful to offer. Walls rarely do in moments like that. She thought about the last time she had seen him.

It had been at a party in Laurel Canyon sometime in the spring. They had stood in the kitchen for 20 minutes talking about nothing in particular, about a guitar tuning he was experimenting with, about a city she had recently played, about something funny that had happened on the road. 20 minutes in a kitchen at a party.

And then someone had pulled him into a different conversation, and someone else had pulled her into another room, and they had not found each other again before the evening ended. She had thought, “Next time.” There is always next time when you are 27 years old and the world is full of parties and the same people keep turning up in the same rooms because the world you both inhabit is smaller than it looks from the outside.

There was not a next time. There was a wall in room 105 of the Landmark Motor Hotel and the specific silence of a phone that had just delivered the worst kind of news and now had nothing left to say. She picked up the phone again. She called a woman named Carol. Carol had been one of Janis’ closest friends during the Big Brother years, one of the people who had known her before the fame arrived and had remained after the fame changed the temperature of every room Janis walked into.

They had not spoken in eight months. Not because anything had happened, because life moves fast at the speed Janis moved it, and eight months had accumulated the way eight months accumulates when you are always on the road or in the studio or moving from one version of yourself to the next version without much time in between.

Carol answered on the third ring. She said later that she knew immediately from the quality of the silence before Janis spoke that something had happened. Not a small something. The kind of something that changes the shape of an evening into a before and an after. Janis said, “Did you hear?” Carol said, “Yes.

” Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Janis said, “I need to talk to someone who knew what it was like before all of this.” Carol said, “I’m here.” They talked for 2 hours. Carol kept what was said on that phone call private for 30 years. She did not tell journalists. She did not tell biographers.

She did not appear in the documentaries or the retrospectives or the anniversary features that accumulated around Janis Joplin’s life and death in the decades that followed. She kept it the way you keep something that was given to you in a specific context and that belongs to that context and not to the world.

In 2001, 31 years later, Carol gave a single interview to a small music journal based in San Francisco. The journalist was writing about the summer of 1970, the specific cluster of losses that defined that period, the way the era seemed to be consuming itself from the inside. Carol agreed to speak on the condition that certain things would not be published in her lifetime.

She is still alive. So, what follows is what she allowed to be said. Janis talked about Jimi the way she talked about very few people, without the performance of opinion, without the careful management of what she was saying for the consumption of whoever was listening. She talked about the first time she had seen him play.

It had been 1967. She had been standing in the back of a room. She could not remember which room. She had been in so many rooms that year. And someone had pointed at the stage and said, “You need to watch this.” She had watched. She said she had understood in the first 30 seconds that she was watching someone who had made the same decision she had, the decision to give everything, to hold nothing back, to treat the full measure of what you felt inside as the only acceptable offering.

She said, “We were doing the same thing, just with different instruments.” Carol said, “Yes.” Janis said, “The thing that nobody understands is that it costs.” She said, “Every time, not just sometimes, not just on the hard nights, every time.” She said, “The nights when it looks easy from the outside are the nights it costs the most.

Because looking easy from the outside means you went deep enough that the audience could not see how far down you had to go to bring it back up.” Carol said, “I know.” Janis said, “The thing about Jimi was that he went further than anyone.” She said, “I watched him play and I could see how far he was going and I thought, ‘How does he come back from that every single night?'” She paused.

She said, “I think the answer is that you don’t always come back the same way you went.” She said, “I think every time you go that far, you leave a little of yourself in the place you went. And eventually there is not enough left to make the return trip.” Carol did not say anything. Janis said, “Do you think he knew?” Carol said, “Knew what?” Janis said, “That he was paying too much, that the cost was going to collect everything eventually.

” Carol said, “I don’t know.” Janis said, “I think he knew.” She said, “I think we all knew.” She said it quietly, not dramatically, not in the way of someone making a statement for an audience, in the way of someone saying something true in the dark to someone they trust. Carol heard it the way it was said.

She did not ask what Janis meant by we. She understood what Janis meant by we. She said, “Are you all right?” Janis said, “I’m always all right.” She said, “That’s the thing about knowing the cost. You pay it anyway. Because the alternative is not paying it. And not paying it means not going. And not going means not making the thing that is the only reason any of this makes sense.

” She paused. She said, “I just wish I could call him. I keep thinking I should call him. And then I remember.” Carol said, “I know.” Janis said, “We never talked enough.” She said, “We were always in the same rooms and there was always too much happening and the conversations kept getting interrupted and I kept thinking there would be time later to say the things that were worth saying.

” She stopped. She said, “There is not always time later. This is the thing that everyone knows and nobody actually knows until they need to know it. And by then, it is too late to do anything about it.” Carol said, “What would you have said?” Janis was quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that is not the absence of thought, but the presence of too much thought all arriving at once.

Then she said, “I would have said that I saw him.” She said, “Not the performance, the person inside the performance, the one who had to go all the way down to bring the music back up. I would have said that I understood what it cost, that the music was worth it, that I was glad he existed.” She said, “Everyone deserves to hear that from someone who actually knows what they are talking about, someone who has been to the same place and understands what the going costs.

She said, “I never told him.” She said, “I thought there was time.” Carol did not speak. Janis said, “He wrote things that nobody else could have written.” She said, “Purple Haze.” She said, “The way he played Little Wing.” She said, “There is music that exists in the world now that would not exist if he had not been willing to go that far.

” She said, “That has to count for something.” She said, “I believe it counts for something.” She said it the way people say things they are trying to believe hard enough that the believing becomes real. Carol said, “It does.” Janis said, “Yes.” She said, “I know.” She said, “I just wish he was still here to hear me say it.

” They stayed on the phone, not talking much, just present. Carol in her apartment in San Francisco, Janis on the edge of the bed in room 105 of the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood. Both of them in the specific quiet of people who are staying on the phone because hanging up means being alone in a way that the call is holding off.

At some point during that quiet, Janis said, “Tell me something.” Carol said, “What?” Janis said, “Tell me something ordinary. Something from your day that has nothing to do with any of this.” Carol thought about it. She told Janis about something small, something that had happened that afternoon in the city, an ordinary thing that had made her laugh for no particular reason that she could explain.

Janis listened. She laughed. Not the performance laugh, the real one. The one that came from finding something genuinely funny in the middle of everything that was not funny at all. She said, “Thank you.” Carol said, “Always.” They talked for another 30 minutes about nothing important, about Cass, about San Francisco, about a restaurant they had both been to years ago and whether it was still there, about the ordinary texture of a life that contained everything they had both been through and still managed to include restaurants and ordinary afternoons and small things that made you laugh for no reason you could explain. At some point before 2:00 in the morning, Janis said, “I should try to sleep. I have a session tomorrow.”

Carol said, “Yes.” Janis said, “Thank you for answering.” Carol said, “Always.” Janis said, “8 months was too long.” Carol said, “Yes.” Janis said, “Let’s not do that again.” Carol said, “We won’t.” Janis said, “Good night.” Carol said, “Good night.” The call ended. The next morning, the housekeeper knocked on room 105 with the towels.

Janis opened the door. She looked like someone who had been awake all night. She took the towels. She said, “Thank you.” She closed the door. She went back to work. On the Pearl sessions, on the album she had said was the best thing she had ever made, on the voice tracks that remained, including the one scheduled for October 4th, Buried Alive in the Blues, which she was saving for last because it was the most important one and she wanted to be ready for it.

She went back to work the way she always went back to work, completely, without managing the distance, without protecting herself from whatever the work required of her. Dick Cavett asked her about Jimi Hendrix on his television show in the weeks that followed. She paused. She smiled the specific smile of someone who has said the true thing in private and is now preparing to say the manageable version in public.

She said, “I wonder if it’s possible to burn that hard and not burn out?” The studio went silent. It was the public version of what she had said to Carol on the phone at midnight. The version that could be broadcast, the version that did not contain the parts that belonged to the dark and to the phone and to the woman in San Francisco who had answered on the third ring.

The private version was different, shorter, truer. I would have said that I saw him, not the performance, the person inside the performance. I would have said that I understood what it cost, that the music was worth it, that I was glad he existed. She never got to say it to him. She thought there was time.

There was 16 days. On October 4th, 1970, John Cook went to room 105 of the Landmark Motor Hotel when Janis did not appear for the recording session. He found her. She had been dead for several hours. Carol found out the way everyone found out, suddenly, in a moment that divided everything into before and after.

She sat with the phone in her hand for a long time after. She thought about the last thing Janis had said, “Let’s not do that again.” She thought about the 8 months before the call. She thought about all the calls that had not been made in those 8 months and could not now be made at all. She thought about what Janis had said about Jimmy.

Everyone deserves to hear from someone who actually knows what they are talking about, that they were seen, that the cost was worth it, that you were glad they existed. Carol thought about whether she had said that clearly enough on the phone that night. She decided she had not said it clearly enough.

She has been thinking about that for 55 years. Jimi Hendrix died on September 18th, 1970. He was 27 years old. Janis Joplin died on October 4th, 1970. She was 27 years old. 16 days between them. Two people who had made the same decision to give everything, to hold nothing back, to treat the full measure of what they felt inside as the only acceptable offering.

Two people who had understood what it cost. Two people who had paid it anyway because the alternative was not paying it. And not paying it meant not going. And not going meant not making the thing that was the only reason any of it made sense. Janis said, “I think we all know.” She was right. She was always right about things like that.

She just thought there was time to say it out loud to the people who needed to hear it. There was 16 days and then there was not.