By Paul Freeman [February 2012 Interview]

Of all the rock bands that emerged in the ‘60s, few could generate the level of electricity managed by Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The group was born in 1965, when guitarists Sam Andrew and Peter Albin met in San Francisco. They were introduced to guitarist James Gurley by Chet Helms, Avalon Ballroom operator and a driving force in the emerging Bay Area rock scene. Albin shifted his focus to bass. David Getz joined on drums.

In ‘66, when band manager Helms brought in Texas blues wailer Janis Joplin, Big Brother was ready to shake up the music world. Joplin’s searingly soulful voice and the innovative, psychedelic guitar interplay between Andrew and Gurley gave the band a fiercely distinctive sound.

A ‘67 performance at The Monterey Pop Festival led to a contract with Columbia Records and a management deal with Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Odetta). International renown was inevitable. Big Brother’s ‘68 album, “Cheap Thrills,” became an instant classic.

In December of ‘68, Joplin left Big Brother and the Holding Company. Andrew joined her in The Kozmic Blues Band.

Though Joplin’s story ended tragically, the impact continues. On March 13, Columbia/Legacy releases, “Big Brother and The Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin - Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968.” Recorded and produced by the legendary Owsley “Bear” Stanley, it’s a riveting, full-length concert. On April 17, the label issues a double-disc set, “Janis Joplin - The Pearl Sessions.”

Today, Andrew, who wrote such classics as “Call On Me” and “Combination of the Two,” teamed with original band members Peter Albin and David Getz, continues to perform as Big Brother and The Holding Company. (www.bbhc.com)

Pop Culture Classics talked with Andrew, about the group’s heyday.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
The ‘Live at the Carousel’ album exudes such energy and excitement, what sort of memories does that date bring back to you?

SAM ANDREW:
Well, I had all my girlfriends there. They were really nice people. And I still know them. And they’re still really great people.

The Carousel was at Market and Van Ness, on the south side of the street. It was huge and hollow. I don’t know what it was before, maybe a car showroom. It had a kind of a ramshackle feel to it, the Carousel. It reminded me of the Longshoreman’s Hall, which was also a very odd venue. The Longshoreman’s Hall was concrete, and kind of modernist architecture, down by Fisherman’s Wharf. And the Carousel was kind of like that. It was an odd place to visit. I think its longevity was only about a year long.

PCC:
And this new release was mastered by Owsley Stanley. What was his special magic and his contribution to the scene?

ANDREW:
Mastering and recording. He was there, climbing all over everything. He was very hands-on. But kind of what you’d call a crazy genius, not grounded in reality a lot of the time [Laughs], which is really strange for a person who digs sound, you know. He was always talking about decibels and things like that. We were speaking a different language. But he was a friendly chap and always had this nice girlfriend, Melissa, with him. He was very personable.

He recorded a lot of The Dead. I mean, he practically made a vocation out of that. Frankly, I’m surprised that we are his first posthumous project. His family loved him a lot, which speaks a lot for him. And I think they see this as some kind of legacy. They’re doing it for him. That’s nice.

PCC:
As for the roots of the band, is that true that you connected with Peter, when you heard his guitar playing upstairs, as you were walking down the street?

ANDREW:
[Laughs] Have you ever heard of a movie called ‘Rashomon’? Japanese film. It shows how everyone involved has a different view of what happened. So, Peter Albin would say,’ No, that’s not the way it happened at all.’ [Laughs] But damn it, it’s my interview, so I’m saying, ‘Yeah, I was walking down the street.’ He says I knew people in the building, I was hanging out there and I came up after playing with them and heard him. But it’s kind of immaterial. The point is, I heard him play. And he sounded really good. And I asked him to start a band... and he said no. [Chuckles] He doesn’t remember any of that. But I do.

I was the rejectee... To this day, I have that relationship with Peter. If I called him and said, ‘Hey, do you want to talk to me on this interview with Paul?’ He’d say, ‘No.’ [Laughs] And after a while, he kind of comes around to it. But it takes him a while. He’s always had his foot on the brake and I’ve had my foot on the gas. But we did wind up together.

PCC:
You balance each other, I guess.

ANDREW:
Yeah, it’s like a husband and wife. I like romantic comedies and she likes vampire movies.

PCC:
How did you bring James Gurley into the mix?

ANDREW:
Chet Helms did that. He was the manager. And he ran the Avalon Ballroom. And he gave us our first gigs. And he named the band. And he brought Janis to us. So he brought James over to us one day. Peter and I were rehearsing in the same house, where I’d first heard him. Then we started rehearsing in the basement. Chet and all the Family Dog people knew James Gurley and his wife Nancy. He and his wife had a German shepherd and a baby. So Chet came walking in with James. And it was great.

PCC:
The unique guitar interaction you had, was that an instant chemistry? Or something you had to develop?

ANDREW:
It was instant non-chemistry. James was really suspicious of me. And perhaps saw me as a rock ’n’ roll hack from the late ‘50s, because I played in a band and I played professionally and put out a record and all that stuff. Whereas he was the most unusual person I’ve ever met. He would sit in a closet with a stethoscope taped to a Martin acoustic guitar. He would play for hours. But he didn’t want anyone to hear him. He was really into music as sound, the physical sound. And he reminded me of John Cage in that way.

And there could not have been two more different people. Like I’d say, ‘Okay, can you play a C chord here?’ And he wouldn’t know what a C chord was. I’d have to go over and put his fingers on the frets. But he could play really unbelievably unusual. He was like the intuitive mind and I was like the analytical mind. And it took a while to work it out. But tension was good. And it was good to have two different approaches.

PCC:
The San Francisco scene at that time, was that competitive or was there a sense of camaraderie?

ANDREW:
The whole town had a cartoon quality to it. It was like a provincial town, small. There was a Wells Fargo building down on Market Street. And I used to work in the mailroom there. It was the tallest building in town. Now you can’t see it. It’s buried by all these skyscrapers that went up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But this was the ‘60s and there was a real small town-ish feel.

Everyone who had a resume and a record out would go to Los Angeles or New York. Those were the professional towns. But San Francisco was for people like James and I, I guess.

PCC:
The sense of adventure musically, how important was the drug experimentation in the expanding of the musical consciousness?

ANDREW:
Well, I think it was really important. Peter, who was our bass player, didn’t take any drugs at all. And, in many ways, he was maddest one among us. So it’s hard to say. To truly answer a question like that, you’d have to live through it once without drugs and once with drugs [Chuckles]. And that’s impossible.

But I think the influence of drugs was pervasive. I’ve been looking at the old concert posters, as I’m putting together a book on Big Brother, and all those artists like Mouse and Kelley and Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, all those great people. And I was just thinking, that morning, I was in their studio with them when they were doing these things. You’d be smoking a joint or taking peyote or dropping acid. So I think the influence of drugs was essential to it.

PCC:
For you, it did open things up, musically?

ANDREW:
Yeah. I’m looking at my cat right now. And I wrote an article about cats. And I used to take LSD and just look at cats, because they were around. They were near and they were fascinating, how they’re engineered and what they can do that a dog can’t, and vice versa. It was real interesting to take drugs like that, like peyote, the psychotropic drugs, and think about the world like that. I would think, ‘Okay, we’re in the forest, or in these caves, and all of a sudden, there’s a 1957 Buick.’ [Laughs] How did we get from being in the forest to the Buick? If you really think about all of that, it’s amazing.

PCC:
You mentioned Chet Helms bringing in Janis. Was the band looking for a new lead singer? Or was that all his idea, to add a female singer?

ANDREW:
Well, I think Peter, who was the leader of the band, the bass player, I think he wanted to imitate the Jefferson Airplane, because they had a woman singer. And the Great Society, they had a woman singer. But that wasn’t in my mind at all. I had no idea about that and didn’t care. Peter and I sang. We both sang okay. But we’re not lead singers. Definitely not. Later, we would only sing on stage to give Janis a break.

So we were conscious that we weren’t singers, but we could probably have gone on and done it. I’ve also often wondered what it would have been like if Chet had brought a man to this thing. But he brought Janis. And she could really sing. Especially then. She sang in this coffee house. And it was big, wide open. Pure voice. Right on the money. Right on pitch. And it was good to work with her.

I’m making the point that, for Peter it was kind of like a business decision. ‘Hey, if we get this woman, we’d be like the Jefferson Airplane.’ But I don’t think the rest of us were thinking that way. I know I wasn’t.

PCC:
And did she fit in personality-wise right away?

ANDREW:
She fit in personality-wise right away. She worked with the band. When came to the band, we would do these instrumentals that were very long. And she’d just play tambourine or any other musical instrument or just make cries, non-verbal cries. And she was really a trouper. She was like really a musician. Well, she played the guitar. She was a good guitar player. And she was a real musician. So she understood what we were doing. And she really worked with us. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, I’m going to sing ‘Down On Me’ and you stand over there.’ [Laughs] And so it was great.

And then, when she did sing ‘Down On Me,’ she sounded really great and we were happy to stand over there. So it was very cooperative.

PCC:
It must have been a great feeling, when she sang songs that you had written?

ANDREW:
Yeah, it really was. It was like having the best possible person deliver these words.

PCC:
Going into Monterey Pop, was there a sense that this might be an iconic event?

ANDREW:
That was one where we actually felt that it was going to be important. And we actually rehearsed. We rented a studio down by Embarcadero. And we went in there and rehearsed quite a few hours every day. And still didn’t sound good, when we got to Monterey. Maybe we were overwhelmed by the occasion. But we didn’t perform that well there.

It’s funny. When you do something every day, one day it’ll be really good. The next day, it won’t be that good. And it’s hard to predict which was it’s going to go. Usually, what’ll happen, if you’re doing it in front of 25 people, the set’ll be really good. [Laughs] And then, if you’re doing it in front of 25,000, it won’t be so good. Probably from nerves, overcompensating, maybe self-medication before the show.

PCC:
And yet that show was a breakthrough for the band, wasn’t it?

ANDREW:
Yeah, it was great meeting all those people, international artists. I mean, Jimi Hendrix came from London. He’s from Seattle. But he came from London. Paul McCartney had sent him. And Ravi Shankar was the biggest thrill - a real classical musician. And we’d been listening to a lot of South and North Indian music. James and I had, in particular. So we were real grounded in that kind of thing. And Otis Redding. So just being there with them, that would have been enough. I mean, that would have been way more than enough.

But then we got Albert Grossman as a manager. And, yeah, it just went into second gear, the whole thing.

PCC:
Big Brother was the first band to play Fillmore East?

ANDREW:
Yeah, we opened it up. It was an example of billing of that period. We played the first night there and on the bill was Tim Buckley, Jeff Buckley’s father. Both of them died early. Both of them really good. So he opened up. And then Albert King came on. One of the truly greats. I mean, we learned how to play by listening to the three Kings - that’s Freddie King, Albert King and B.B. King. And then us. So it was really intimidating to go on after those people. But we had a good time. It was exciting visiting the Lower East Side. Very Jewish and really colorful and ethnic and like another world. It was really fun to go down there.

PCC:
So once the band started really taking off, were you able to enjoy this time or was it just crazy?

ANDREW:
Both. We really enjoyed it and it was really crazy. I think what happened, we played so much, we didn’t have time to write any more songs. And that’s what got to Janis, over time. It wasn’t happening. We didn’t have time to create anything new. Sometimes we’d play two gigs a day. And definitely almost once every day, we’d play. And places like Pocatello, Idaho and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Always traveling. It takes it out of you.

It was before AIDS. And it was after the birth control pill [Laughs]. And we were all 25 years old. So it was an insane time. Totally crazy. Really had a good time.

PCC:
And so, Janis’ decision to leave, was that primarily an artistic decision, or financial?

ANDREW:
That’s a good question. She’s a Capricorn. What that meant, to people in the ‘60s, Capricorns were more materially oriented, and were real interested in money. And Janis definitely was. You know, we were splitting the money five ways. So, I know her. That’s got to mean a lot to her. And it was artistic, too. She wanted to have a soul band, like Tina Turner or Aretha Franklin, whom she really admired. All those soul singers, Carla Thomas.

And she asked the band if they would add extra players, a horn section and so on. And they said no. She talked to me about it. Also, we were both kind of workaholics. It was all about the band, all about the music. And the other guys were more interesting. They had full lives. They’d go home and they wouldn’t think about the band anymore. They’d think about something else. They were more well-rounded people, as a result. But, on stage, they would let down a little bit. It just wasn’t the same. And she would talk to me about that. And she wanted to form a new band. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll help you do it.’ And I called Jerry Miller from Moby Grape. Other really good guitarists. Bobby Womack. I worked on that with her for a couple of months. Then she asked me to go with her. And I was so curious to see what would happen, I did.

PCC:
As for the tragic aspect to her story, did you you sense the self-destructive tendencies? Or was she just caught up in the moment?

ANDREW:
She was always self-destructive. She had huge appetites. Whatever it was, she had to have the most of it. If it was Mexican food, she had to have the most. Or drugs. Or this or that. She was very self-destructive.

Do you know the story, ‘Brideshead Revisited’? It’s a novel by Evelyn Waugh. He describes a person going down, sinking down into alcoholism. And the narrator says, ‘I loved alcohol, too. I loved to drink, too. But with Sebastian, it was a different thing.’ And that’s kind of the way I felt with Janis. I mean, I was right there with her, doing everything she was doing, but there was this hunger in her and this self-destructive thing.

I mean, she came out to San Francisco before she came to Big Brother. For a couple years. And she almost died then. She was doing a lot of methedrine. Abusing a lot of things. So she just had that character. Even though she was very happy at the same time. Life is very complicated. And she was a very complicated person. She laughed a lot.

PCC:
With the impact she had with the public at the time, did you have a feeling there was going to be an iconic status and a lasting influence? Or did that surprise you?

ANDREW:
It surprised me. I thought the whole thing was going to last about two years, then we would all get back to the path that we were on before. Just as soon as we get gay rights and civil rights and the war in Vietnam to end and equal opportunities for everyone, as soon as that happens, then we’ll quit [Chuckles]. We’ll go on with our lives. I had no idea I’d be talking to you in 2012 about this. That would have surprised me a lot.

So her own iconic status, that happened to everyone, didn’t it? I mean, it happened to Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis. I mean, they all make more money now than when they were alive.

PCC:
You were musical director with the stage musical ‘Love, Janis.’ There’s been a lot of talk about movie biopics over the years, do you think Janis could ever be captured in a dramatic film?

ANDREW:
Well, they need a really good script, which they don’t have. I’ve read every one they’ve had. And they don’t have it. Then, if they get that and then they get the right person... It’s so hard to make a film. You have to have so much money. I’ve seen so many people try it. People I thought could have been good as Janis were Melissa Etheridge, who is talented. But then her girlfriend wrote the script. And that was terrible. And maybe Brittany Murphy, who’s dead now, of course. She might have been able to do it. She had that sensibility.

PCC:
Do you think, if Janis had survived, she might have gone on to do a lot of other great things, musically?

ANDREW:
Yeah, I think she would have put out an album of jazz standards, because she did ‘Little Girl Blue’ and ‘Summertime’ so well. I think she would have done a whole album of that kind of thing and I would have loved to have done it with her. And she could have done theatre. She was bright. Very bright and articulate. She could have done a lot of things.

PCC:
You still have Big Brother going. What do you see as the legacy of the band?

ANDREW:
I don’t know [Laughs]. I think we’ve kind of shot our shot. Now we’re just playing and having fun. The music is great. We recreate it all the time. It’s always alive, literally. It’s not like a painting, where you paint it and then set it over in the corner. When we play that music, when we play ‘Piece of My Heart,’ we very often do it better now than we ever did. For one thing, because I hired these young, talented kids. And they’re really great. They put a whole new wrinkle on it. The main thing is, we’re having fun. And the audiences seem to be having fun, too.