From Bonnie Bramlett to Janis...they were competitors in more ways than one. I got yelled at once because I wrote about them and a limo ride with a man...but here, she was on a train with a bunch of wild guys: members of the Band, the Grateful Dead, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Buddy Guy, Mountain, and more.
And below, here's what Bonnie told me about that infamous train ride and what took place between Janis, Bonnie, a friend, and an unwelcome follower.
Soundboard; 320kbps/mp3 & thanks to the original source
Janis Joplin
Festival Express Tour
Toronto, 1970
01 - Tell Mama
02 - Half Moon
03 - Move Over
04 - Maybe
05 - Summertime
06 - Little Girl Blue
07 - That's Rock 'N' Roll
08 - Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)
09 - Kozmic Blues
10 - Piece Of My Heart
11 - Cry Baby
12 - Get It While You Can
13 - Ball And Chain
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YY729TCH
Would you tell me the rest of the story about a train ride? We talked about this at the studio in Muscle Shoals, about the Canadian tour via train in 1970 that had the Grateful Dead, Mountain, The Band, Janis Joplin, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Buddy Guy and his band, Tom Rush, Ian and Sylvia, and of course, Delaney and Bonnie & Friends.
(Laughs gleefully) You mean when we dosed that poor girl? With the Murine bottle? We dosed her with the Notorious, Infamous Murine Bottle—(mischievously) that carried the incredible, liquid, clear Owsley acid. You’ve gotta get the names right: she gave me the drink, and she gave it to Sylvia (Tyson), from Ian and Sylvia—but the other girl who was there with us was ‘Frankie’ Weir, who was Bobby Weir’s wife (of the Grateful Dead), who used to be George Harrison’s secretary before that. That’s how I met her, when she was working for George Harrison.
So she and I were girl friends, (carefully) but because she wasn’t a singer, this girl didn’t want to give her (Frankie) that bottle. That was so rude, wasn’t it?
Would you tell it from the beginning?
Well, it started with Janis, and now she’s drinking vodka, ‘cause she’s mad at Southern Comfort because they gave her this hair coat. They gave her a full-length mink coat, but she hated that—she said, (angrily) “All the fuckin’ money I’ve for them, what do they give me? A fuckin’ hair coat! I’ll never drink it again!” So she was drinking vodka. And she always had her own bottle because she didn’t share it with anyone—she was afraid she’d get dosed! And she was a juicer—she didn’t do drugs—although she did die of heroin, she didn’t do acid, or speed, smoke pot—she didn’t do none of that.
Then all of a sudden there was this little follow-cat girl—I used to call them band-aids, I don’t care what they say in this new movie; I call them these little chicks who were there for the aid of the band! They don’t care who the band is—so this is a little band-aid who was following—as opposed to groupies, who love you and know every song you wrote, and know where you wrote it, when you cut it—those are groupies. They have certain groups that they follow around, not just any band. That’s what a band-aid does.
So this girl latched onto Janis, and she had her little bottle of vodka, too, so she came over to give us a drink out of her bottle. So she gave me a drink: “Oh, Bonnie Bramlett!” and she gave some to Sylvia, and she looked at Frankie and she said, “Are you a singer?” Frankie goes, “No.” The girl says, “Well, then you don’t get a drink.” And Frankie just looked at her—is that rude or what?
So Frankie says, “Oh, Bonnie, let me give her a drink out of your bottle,” and goes wink-wink with her eye at me. Now, I know what she’s doing because she’s the holder of the Murine Bottle (chuckles). So I said, “Can I have me another drink out of that bottle,” and she said, (sweetly, drawing out the word) “S-u-u-r-r-e!” So I turned around, had me another big ol’ drink, and then passed the bottle to Frankie—and she just (deep voice) squirted it. Usually, you just put a drop on your hand and licked it, and you’ve taken a full dose, but she squirted it (blurts): ‘Squirt!’ Boy, I’ll tell you, we saw that girl about three hours later and she was like, electric!
(c) MDLOP8 2010
