15 hits @ 8:18 pm in 18 minutes
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Janis Joplin is one of my all-time favorite performers, if not my favorite, in the top 5 with Lou Reed, Tommy James, The Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
Marty Balin, who passed away last week, worked with me on and off since 1986 when a colleague introduced me to him.
THE UNRECORDED MASTERPIECE
We almost pulled off an album in 1988
The Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin produced by Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller, but a business partner of mine, whose wife nicknamed him "BD" for Brain Dead, was too stupid to come up with the financing because I had managed to get FREE RECORDING TIME at a Major Recording Studio for just the thought of pairing the two icons.
Good old brain dead thought Marty should fly himself in and get the free recording time so that brain dead didn't have to write the check. So, pray tell, why should brain dead get a percentage if he's letting me do all the work!*
*brain dead did finance the Jo Jo Laine project after Clive Davis at Arista wrote us a letter that he was interested. Guess he learned his lesson.
C'est la vie.
The wife couldn't sing and when she forced herself into a session I put her in a room with a microphone that wasn't plugged into the recording deck! That's why I am genius!
She took his money and got the hell out of Dodge.
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I got Marty another deal with CD Review magazine when I was A & R for their label and thus BETTER GENERATION was born
You can thank Joe Vig for making these things happen!
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So Marty is telling me about his good friend Janis, my all-time favorite singer, and that he was with her the night that she died. If only he had stayed in the hotel room with her, but they were platonic friends.
So Marty was dating a woman - Peggy Caserta (who wrote the book Going Down With Janis, clever double entendre title) and he's talking to Janis Joplin ...suddenly a motorbike chick shows up, it's his girlfriend Peggy. He thought she was coming to see him. Suddenly, Janis jumps on the motorbike and takes off with Peggy. Turns out Peggy was Joplin's girlfriend as well as Marty's.
He said he was shocked as they drove off without him.
Rock stories you won't read anywhere else
photo of Peggy and Janis
https://www.google.com/search?q=janis+joplin+peggy+caserta&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM466equXdAhWpVN8KHSkECQ4QsAR6BAgDEAE&biw=943&bih=476#imgrc=quxGJTkoIWT1hM: