by Charly Mann

This article is about my 1970 summer vacation which led to me interviewing Janis Joplin, and seventeen years later to a great concert in Chapel Hill by legendary singer-songwriter Eric Andersen. Included is a wonderful story about former Chapel Hill resident Carey Raditz, the subject of Joni Mitchell's great song Carey.

My interview with Janis Joplin took place three months before she died 

In 1970, I was twenty years old and had spent most of the previous two years working at the Record and Tape Center on West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. That summer a friend and I decided to take a month off to drive across the United States. We did not have any planned itinerary, but I think we knew we would be heading to California. In Los Angles we attended several concerts at the famed Troubadour club where I got to see concerts by Ian and Sylvia and Eric Andersen. I also convinced Ian and Sylvia to do an interview with me which I intended to submit to Atlanta's underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird.

This is my press pass for the Festival Express in Calgary in July 1970

The name of Ian & Sylvia's band then was coincidently the Great Speckled Bird, and included Buddy Cage (later of the New Riders of the Purple Sage) on steel guitar. I became friends with Buddy, and he took us to a fine Italian restaurant where we sat next to Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo, Rebel Without a Cause). Buddy told us during the meal that in a couple of weeks they would be playing in series of concerts throughout Canada with a number of other artists including The Band, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Delaney & Bonnie, and that he could get us press passes to attend.

Eric Andersen performing in Calgary on July 4th, 1970. Other performers that day included The Band, Janis Joplin, Delaney and Bonnie, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, Tom Rush, Sha Na Na, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Good Brothers.

We soon left Los Angles and headed up to the coast to enjoy the San Francisco music scene which included attending several shows at Bill Grahams' Fillmore West, before heading to Calgary on the Fourth of July to meet up with what was billed as the Festival Express Tour. As we entered the hotel in Calgary where the musicians were staying we first encountered Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir sitting in the lobby jamming with a couple of local musicians on acoustic guitars.

Before performing with the Grateful Dead at the Festival Express concert Jerry Garcia played steel guitar with the New Riders of the Purple Sage 

After securing our press credentials I decided to see if I could find some of the musicians on the tour to interview. I noticed that Eric Andersen, who we had recently seen at the Troubadour, and was also one of my favorite singer-songwriters, was one of the several dozen performers on the tour, and I decided to try to interview him. I ran into Buddy Cage at the hotel bar and he suggested I go into the hotel restaurant which he said been taken over by the musicians. I soon spotted Eric Andersen standing at the restaurant bar and asked if I could interview him. He agreed and said we should talk to all the people at the table he was sitting at, and invited us over.

All the musicians I met who took part in the Festival Express concert were friendly and talkative except for the members of The Band. Rick Danko, the Band's bass player, and years later a member of a trio with Eric Andersen, told me I would have to get approval from the band's guitar player Robbie Robertson before any member of that group would talk to me.

As I sat down next to Eric I noticed on my right was Bonnie Bramlet. Across from me was Eric and his new "very good friend" Janis Joplin, who just happened to be the most popular female rock singer in the world at that time. What a journalistic coup I thought; part of my interview could be with Janis Joplin. As it turned out Eric soon graciously bowed out, and I had a ninety minute off the cuff rollicking conversation with Janis Joplin. During the interview she talked at length about her future and how she envisioned the music industry in ten years. She also told us all about her current musical interests, the breakup of Big Brother, and lot about her personal life - which included showing us her latest tattoo on a fairly private part of her body.

This is Ian and Sylvia on the left with Eric Andersen and Bonnie Bramlett singing Will The Circle Be Unbroken in Calgary 7-4-1970. Jerry Garcia is playing the steel guitar.

Sadly exactly three months after this interview, on October 4, 1970, Janis Joplin died, and I believe this was last full length recorded interview with her. In 1975 I sold the master recording and the rights of the interview to "The Estate of Janis Joplin Deceased." I have however included the beginning of the interview here for you to get a sense of what a wonderful time was had by all.

Eric Andersen and me at my house in Chapel Hill in 1987, shortly before he performed at the Cat's Cradle

While I enjoyed talking with Janis Joplin, for the next seventeen years I felt bad about not getting the interview I had intended with Eric Andersen, so in 1987 I invited him to perform at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill. For the last two decades he and I have remained friends and he has several times stayed with me in my homes in Chapel Hill and Austin.

Poster for the Eric Andersen concert I produced in Chapel Hill on April 5, 1987 partly to make up to Eric for interviewing Janis Joplin instead of him in 1970

Included in the audio portion of this article is the first part of my interview with Janis Joplin, the tribute song Eric Andersen wrote about his friend Janis Joplin called Pearl's Goodtimes Blues, a Chapel Hill radio interview with Eric Andersen from 1987 in in which he talks about Carey Raditz, Joni Mitchell's song Carey, and a story about Townes Van Zandt and his signature song Thirsty Boots from the April 5, 1987 Eric Andersen Cat's Cradle concert.

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