MICHELLE MARGETTS
JIM MARSHALL and JANIS JOPLIN backstage at Winterland, San Francisco, 1968
Jim seemed on good terms with Grace Slick—he respected her, recognized her talent and beauty and thought she was a class act. But his real connection was with Janis Joplin. Maybe it was just the alchemy that occurs when one mercurial soul magnetizes another, or his admiration for the sheer raw power of what Joplin did on stage, but I think it was the trust she showed him.
With those old Leicas firing away, Jim seemed able to capture Joplin’s light, whether onstage or posed—nowhere more powerfully than his now-famous images of her holding the Southern Comfort bottle on the ratty couch backstage. In one frame she’s smiling, and in another sprawled and despondent. To her eternal credit, Joplin never once told him when to shoot or what to print, according to Jim. Zits, bad hair, fat thighs, exhaustion—how many of us could have such faith in a man that we would let him see that “realness”?
When Jim showed Joplin the sad-seeming vertical frame from that after-show backstage shoot, she said, “Jim, this is how it is sometimes. Lousy.”
Jim always seemed so wistful when he spoke of Joplin, even after all the years that passed since she died at age twenty-seven. It was like he was permanently sad at the world’s loss. “Janis was wonderful, not the prettiest girl in the world but she was not afraid of the camera. I could’ve shot her anytime at all, ‘Go ahead, baby, and take a picture.’ Janis was very important to me, real and honest.”
The shots of Joplin and Slick show the Jim who’s fascinated with their friendship, determined to debunk the warring rock ’n’ roll Queen Bee myth promoted by record labels and publicists to heighten the hype.
In his book Not Fade Away, Jim recalls the only formal portrait shoot of Janis and Grace:
It was in 1967 for Teen Set magazine for an article on the two Queen Bees of San Francisco Rock. That morning I went over to Grace’s house and then had to pick up Janis. Janis wasn’t in the mood to do any pictures that day, but I begged her and she came along. Everyone always thought there was a huge rivalry between Janis and Grace, but they were dear friends. This is the only time they were photographed together, and by the end of the session, we were all getting pretty silly and clowning around.
Anybody who spent any amount of (positive) time with Jim realized the man had an intense need for you to see what he saw, hear what he heard, and, ultimately, love what he loved. I always thought it was his rather isolated childhood that made him that way; he really would have benefited from some siblings, especially a sister or two. Instead, he went about collecting them and their moments, and the world is richer for it.
JANIS JOPLIN “sad” backstage at Winterland, San Francisco, 1968
“The Two Queen Bees of San Francisco Rock,” GRACE SLICK and JANIS JOPLIN, San Francisco, 1967
JANIS JOPLIN mock-choking GRACE SLICK
SLICK and JOPLIN laughing, San Francisco, 1967
