Free On the Road with Janis Joplin by John Byrne Cooke Page A

in a style to which we’re quickly accustomed, lulled by the rhythm of the waves and dazzled by the view of the Pacific out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The album of the month is
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
and the grass of the month is a particularly elevating harvest called Ice Bag, so named because it comes packaged in plastic bags intended for ice-dispensing machines. Two hundred bucks a key. Peter’s folks’ liquor cabinet features Jack Daniel’s, which we sip at first, then tap more liberally. (I hope wereplaced it.) Evenings after the Ash Grove, we often end up paralyzed on the living room floor by a combination of the two, trying to detect the exact moment when the perpetual chord at the end of “A Day in the Life” finally evaporates in the sound of the surf.
    The day we arrive in town, we’re driving along the Sunset Strip in Peter’s VW bus when Neuwirth suddenly shouts, “Stop! Stop the bus, man! Pull over here!” He has spotted, walking on the sidewalk, a stunning model whose acquaintance he made in New York, back in the spring. The unlikelihood of seeing someone you know walking along the street in L.A. is astronomical, given that nobody in L.A. walks anywhere. In the residential sections of Beverly Hills, a pedestrian is likely to be stopped by the police and questioned as a suspicious character. The Sunset Strip, for a mile or so, is a stroller’s sanctuary.
    Bobby intercepts Phyllis, their relationship blooms in the California sunshine, and they take over one of the guest rooms in Malibu. Phyllis is cheerful, gorgeous, and very fond of Bobby. He gives her a nickname, Tonto, which she accepts and invites us to use freely. For Bobby, it’s an ironic way of admitting that he is modifying, for now, the Lone Ranger’s role that he has so carefully refined. I have never seen him so much at ease. Witnessing the flowering romance is one more intoxicant that lightens our Malibu days. For my own part, the ladies of the canyons find the beach house a pleasant place to visit, and I am warmed by their company.
    Joe Val declines to share our beachfront idyll, choosing instead to keep himself at a safe remove from the goofy hippies his bluegrass cohorts have become. It’s bad enough that Bob Siggins and I took to wearing psychedelic shirts onstage in Berkeley. What gives Joe real concern is that we might get him arrested for being in company with a bunch of potheads. In Cambridge, nobody smokes dope in the Club 47 and Joe finds it fairly easy to distance himself from the illicit practices of his fellow musicians. In Northern California, he was eating and sleeping in the same premises where we indulged ourenhanced explorations. Assuring him that the cops can’t be bothered busting everybody with a joint in his hand hasn’t brought Joe peace of mind. In L.A., Joe looks up a musician friend who has fled the freezing slush of Boston winters for the land of swaying palms. He never sets foot in the Bergs’ Malibu house. During our gig at the Ash Grove, Joe sleeps safe and sound, far from the surf and the scent of Ice Bag. Each evening, properly attired in black jeans, dress shirts, vests and string ties, we meet Joe at the Ash Grove and belt out our own mix of breakdowns, heart songs, gospel tunes and Beatles songs.
    “I thought [Joe Val] was a really good steady guy, and a good musician. . . . Either through maturity or good character, he put up with all our craziness with very great equanimity, and didn’t give anybody a hard time about being strange. I thought that was absolutely wonderful.”
    Peter Berg
    Joe’s day job compels him to fly back to Boston before our last night at the Ash Grove. With our straight man homeward bound, we cast off the last restraints we’ve kept in place out of love and respect for Joe. Chris Darrow, of Kaleidoscope, sits in on mandolin. On the whole, I don’t perform bluegrass stoned, not since the night a few years earlier, at the Club 47, when the words to