Secret Agent Man

While I was traveling, I often felt a bit like a double agent. Inside I could be feeling like a groupie or hanger-on, but outside I was being viewed as a Rock and Roll star. The line became a little blurred sometimes, like the time I met Janis Joplin, where it was all I could do to not come off like a gushing little teeny-bopper. Many times, though, I would waltz onto the back of the stage and nod, as coolly as possible, to someone like the drummer of a group such as Santana, and make connections by being more of a peer than a fan.

More than once we got a chance to jam with big stars, like Steve Miller, Boz Scaggs, Buddy Miles, Duane Allman and other traveling musicians of the time, when we were on the road. If we were staying in our home-base of L.A., waiting for the next tour to begin, we would sometimes end up getting together with other musicians at their homes or rehearsal studios, clubs in town or at Columbia studios, where we did most of our recording. There was never a shortage of players or road people to hang around with, jam with, drink or smoke with or engage in other diversions.

Speaking of diversions, I once had an L.A. studio musician ask me if we were freaks. Though he was a little sinister looking, with dark eyes, long black hair and a goatee, I just guessed that he was asking if we partied or something. When I answered that we were, he said, "We're gonna whip this chick down in Studio B at Columbia tonight and get it on film and tape, if you want to come by." I think he saw the shock on our faces, much as we tried to hide it, when he added, "It's cool; she's into it." I don't remember for sure about the other guys, but I took a pass.

Meeting Janice

While I was on the road, I was still the star-struck kid. Even though we had a hit record and were hearing ourselves on the radio on a daily basis and signing autographs regularly, I wasn’t so impressed with myself that I couldn’t get excited with seeing a rock star in person; especially someone with the renown of Janis Joplin. As an aside, I should mention that many of my experiences from those days have been hidden in the recesses of my memory and rarely spoken of, since I always fear that someone will take me for a pathological liar. But, on to the tale.

At Sicks Stadium, in Seattle, we were to play a festival that included name acts like Janis, The Youngbloods, The Allman Brothers and more. I had heard through the grapevine that Janis was resting in her trailer, which was no surprise since we were all pretty worn out from the road in those days. After watching one of the guitarists from the Youngbloods (of the hit song “Get Together”) cut the old strings off his guitar in a way that made me wince, and start to restring it, I took a little walk around the park. That was when I saw that flaming star. It was almost a magical moment for me.

Janis was dressed head to foot in an expandable knit purple outfit, with matching hat and feather boa; pretty much just how you’d expect her to look. I was nearly breathless. Trying to hide my excitement (and act cool, I suppose), I approached her until I got close enough not to totally invade her space and waited for her to look my way. She turned, smiling, and I immediately blurted out something like, “Janis, you don’t know me but I’m Kenny from PG&E and I have been a fan of yours long before I got on the road with them.”

She was so gracious. She started chatting with me like an old friend. She asked if I had heard the ‘Full Tilt Boogie Band’, which had recently replaced Big Brother as her backup band. I admitted I hadn’t. At that point she began praising them and told me to be sure to stay and hear them play that evening at the concert.

I noticed that she was very animated, and not high or drunk as I had expected. She almost sparkled. Nevertheless, she was periodically swigging off of what appeared to be a pint bottle of something from a brown paper sack. Trying to keep the conversation going, I asked her what was in the sack. Without speaking, she handed me the bag-wrapped bottle and indicated that I should take a taste. In those days, I never refused anything drinkable or smokeable, so I took a good-sized slug. The rush I got from the potent liquor reminded me of a cough medicine from my childhood known as Terpin Hydrate, which had a high alcohol content and a bizarre form of cherry flavor. When I told her this, she chuckled with the exact same laugh as the one at the end of her recording of “Mercedes Benz”, and told me in that raspy Janis voice, “It’s Southern Comfort, baby."

So, on that sunny day in Seattle, Washington, Janice Joplin gave me my first taste of Southern Comfort.

Poker With The Allman Brothers

Since the band often played large college towns, on the same bill as other name groups of the day, we eventually got around to doing a gig in Austin, Texas. On the bill, and probably sharing the headline, was the Allman Brothers.

I wasn’t as awe-struck this time, as I was with some of the other big names that we shared the stage with, but I had certainly heard Duane’s guitar playing on albums and the radio and was looking forward to hearing them play live.

Somewhere along the way, someone got us chatting together with a few members of Duane and Gregg’s band, in the hotel lobby of the Austin Holiday Inn. I think it was Gregg who mentioned that they were having a poker game in their hotel room that evening, and that any of us who wanted to show up were invited.

Around 10:00 p.m. that evening, Frank called my room and asked if I wanted to go to the poker game. Being the new guy in PG&E, I needed to have someone with some balls to tag along behind, and Petricca may have known that. In any case, I gladly accompanied him to the Allman’s hotel room.

After arriving, and some niceties, someone suggested that we get some drinks and snacks. I made the first of a number of runs to the snack machines, and loaded up on a variety of soda pop and vending machine snacks. That actually is one of the things that sticks out in my mind the most, other than how down-to-Earth and genuinely nice these Southern gentlemen were. Not once during the night did any alcohol or drugs come into the picture. It was a very sedate meeting of the road-musician minds, centered around a very friendly poker game. I say very friendly, because the rules were set from the beginning that there would be a fifty-cent maximum bet. With any winnings or losses set to that level, the likelihood of hard feelings was pretty much zero.

At about 7:00 a.m. that next morning, the game finally broke up. As I recall, I either lost or won around three dollars. The amount sticks in my mind, but not which way it went for me. Nobody else could have been heavier or lighter in the wallet than I, and we had become great friends. That’s actually one of the things about living on the road, as a musician back in those days: You became fast friends (or enemies), due to the speed your life was travelling. Everything happening to us, during that time, was in exaggerated time. So, the new friendship, although it was arrived at in “road-speed”, was very genuine. I saw confirmation some two weeks later, when Duane Allman himself came up to me--at a gig we did with them in Athens, Georgia--and gave me a big bear-hug.

Over the next couple years, Duane and I would cross paths, play music together, and ultimately witness our mutual decent into alcohol and drug abuse. I sure miss him today.