Gary James' Interview With Drummer Dave Getz Of
Big Brother And The Holding Company





Dave Getz was the drummer for Big Brother And The Holding Company, which just happened to include Janis Joplin at one point. That band would record an album called "Cheap Thrills" which in the Summer of and into the Fall of 1968 became the number one record in the world for eight weeks. Janis Joplin's tenure with Big Brother would last until the end of 1968, at which time she would leave the band. Dave Getz would go on to join Country Joe And The Fish. We spoke with Dave Getz about one of those times in musical history that we'll never see again.

Q - Dave, let's start at the beginning. You were a professional musician at the age of 15. You weren't playing in bars and nightclubs then, were you? You were performing in places like schools?

A - When I was 15 I was playing in hotels in the Catskill Mountains mostly, like Jewish resorts that were there, smaller places. From the time I was 15 'til the time I was 18, three years in a row, and partly in the fourth year I played in hotels in the Catskill Mountains. Then during the year when I was in school, I would play all kinds of things like fraternity parties. It was basically in New York, what was called a club date musician. You played what they called club dates. Club dates could be anything from a fraternity party to a bar mitzvah to a wedding to someone's private party, events. Most of the events I played were like dance band kind of things. Not Rock and not much Jazz, although sometimes I played Jazz gigs. Between the time I was 17, 18 and 19 I played at Columbia University. Mostly traditional Jazz I would say. New Orleans, Dixieland, what ever you want to call it, traditional Jazz groups.

Q - I'll bet when you were performing in the Catskills you were performing in places like Grossinger's.

A - Grossinger's was a big place and very expensive. They had really pretty well-known, New York dance orchestras that played there. The gigs that I had were mostly smaller hotels, some medium size hotels. There used to be a lot of them. I don't know what it's like anymore. It's changed probably. At one time in the 1950s there were probably like a hundred hotels in a certain area between Monticello and Liberty and Swan Lake, all of those towns sort of around the Catskill Mountains area. A lot of resorts, kind of like B and B places (Bed and Breakfast) to places like Grossinger's and everything in-between. The bigger places had like dance bands, anywhere from eight to twelve pieces, and a Latin band sometimes and sometimes even a lounge band in the bar. Then the smaller hotels had one band that did it all. I was in more of those kind of gigs.

Q - The Beatles probably changed that whole Catskills, supper club scene. The Beatles' shows were referred to as concerts.

A - Well, maybe. The Beatles changed everything. See, for me I grew up in that whole scene of New York and club date musicians kind of thing, of want-to-be Jazz musicians. Then I kind of stopped. I didn't do it for a long time. I just didn't want to be a musician. I went to California when I was 20 and really went to art school. I didn't play stuff like that anymore. Then when Rock 'n' Roll came along I got back into it. What I was talking about in the beginning, the kind of thing in the '50s when I was a teenager, wasn't Rock 'n' Roll. It was pre-Rock 'n' Roll. We didn't even play much that was on the radio. Rhythm And Blues didn't hit that world. It wasn't in that world I was working in.

Q - Do you ever think about the fact that if you had spent a longer time living in Krakow, Poland you might not have had that chance encounter/discussion with Peter Albin (of Big Brother)? Timing is everything in life!

A - Yeah. Well, that's true. I don't know why I would've spent more time in Poland. I couldn't wait to get out of there at the time, but it was a pretty interesting experience. It was tough being there. Anyway, the question you propose is very hypothetical 'cause I was on a grant. I was on a fellowship and it lasted only a year. So, when it was up, it was up. There would have been no way for me, even if I wanted to, and I don't think I could've stayed in Poland. It was a Communist country. Totally behind the Iron Curtain. A really different world.

Q - Before you joined Big Brother you told Peter Albin you had heard of the group. What had you heard about the group?

A - Nothing really. I was at the Art Institute in San Francisco. I was actually teaching then. I had come back from Poland and my Fulbright (Scholarship) and I was teaching there. These dances were starting to happen in San Francisco, these psychedelic dances then. They were just like events. They were happenings. At one point I saw this poster and it said Big Brother And The Holding Company at the Open Theater in Berkeley. It was a yogi sitting on a bed of nails. I thought that's really cool. It's like an ad for a band, a music event and there's this yogi sitting on a bed of nails. What do the two things have to do with each other? It was very odd. It was great! It was all of a sudden a new kind of thinking. So, I'd heard of that about the band, but I hadn't heard the band. I didn't really know much about it until I talked to Peter. When I talked to Peter he said, "We have this really great guitar player." That was what I think he said. Not much else. When I heard them it was really like a shock. I didn't know what to expect.

Q - And so when Janis Joplin joined the band, what went through your mind? Did you think the band needed a girl singer, or did Janis need Big Brother?

A - Well, in the way you're phrasing that question, I don't know if it's a valid question. The band was looking for a female singer, definitely. Peter Albin more than anybody else was on that. I think Chet Helms, who was our manager then, was also pushing (in) that direction. The top band in all of this was the Jefferson Airplane and the Jefferson Airplane started out with a female singer named Signe Anderson. Then Signe quit and they got Grace Slick, and it made them very strong. It made them something really different. It gave them like an edge. I'd say Peter didn't really think he was that good of a singer. Sam (Piazza) really wasn't singing at all. James didn't sing much at all. There was really no strong voice in the band. We just thought to be competitive in some way, to keep going as a band, it would be great to get a singer. We tried out a few different singers. I remember we tried out Lynn Hughes, who was singing at that time with a band called The Charlatans sometimes. Most of the singers we tried out were like Folk/Blues singers and they weren't strong enough to really play with the sound that we had at the time. So, when Janis came along, to answer you question, Janis didn't have that type of voice that she developed later. She was also like a Folk/Blues singer, but she was strong. She had a strong voice and a strong presence. She in a way needed to put herself in front of the sound of an electronic Rock 'n' Roll band to develop something else. I think Big Brother had something else that Janis needed, which was kind of the desire to go way out, the desire to go for it in a way that she hadn't gone for it before, in the sense of really stretching her emotional connection, her emotional involvement in the music, because that's what James was doing. James Gurley, for whatever it's worth, he was really an interesting figure. He was really somebody who had a way of playing the guitar that nobody was doing at that time. I would say it was almost like somebody who couldn't really play in a certain way. He couldn't play like Eric Clapton or even like Jerry Garcia or somebody like that. He didn't have that kind of technique, but he had some kind of thing that he was going for a hundred and fifty per cent of what he was doing. That was something I think Janis came into and saw that and saw that kind of thing that Big Brother was going for. It was this guise that they were just going for it, like really giving themselves completely to it, really committing on a higher emotional, expressive level that she had ever done before. She was very expressive as a singer, but she just had to go much further. She had to stretch herself further to be in Big Brother. It wasn't the kind of a thing where she needed, the way you put it, did she need Big Brother? Well, she didn't. She could have gone on and been a very competent, really good Blues singer and she could have even been a Folk/Blues singer. But, let's say she didn't join Big Brother. Let's say she went in some other band and let's say she joined some Blues band that was like a really good Blues band, guys who could really play nice Blues, Chicago Blues. She probably would have wound up being a very good singer, probably something much closer to what Tracy Nelson was or what Bonnie Bramlett was or even maybe Bonnie Raitt was. Something a little more contained let me say. Big Brother was this thing that was uncontained. It was like really wild and crazy. It was different then other bands in that way, so that kind of influenced Janis and made her really stretch herself way further in terms of emotional expression.

Q - In the time you were with Janis, the road band also played in the studio with Janis, correct?

A - Yeah.

Q - The records that you participated in, were they made in a rather quick fashion or did the record company allow you to take as long as you wanted in the studio?

A - The first record we did in Chicago, mostly in Chicago. We were on the road and we were in Chicago, really actually down and out. We were playing in a club that we were supposed to be playing for months. We weren't getting paid. We didn't have any money. Basically a record guy just came along. We were, for a lot of reasons, thinking we should just get something out, you know, make a record. Everybody's making a record, we should make a record. So, we made that and that was what would be the first example of someone where there was no freedom at all. It was just two takes. That's it. We'll get something. It was one or two takes for each song and most kind of 'live' in the studio instrumentally with the vocals being put on after and then doubled. It was a four track and it was really hurried and rushed. That whole first record, that "Big Brother" record was like that. What happened when we did "Cheap Thrills" was different. We had all the time in the world that we wanted to have because we were in some way, most of it, being charged for it. There was no like limitations. No one was saying, "Okay, you can't do anymore takes. There were some things we had sixty takes. It got really crazy. Sometimes it was just false starts or someone would hit a wrong note in the first couple of seconds. So, that was considered a take. But it just went on and we could do as much as we wanted. At the same time there was a pressure to get something out. We knew Columbia, the record company, had signed us and were putting up a lot of money and there was a list of expectations to have a record out. So there was that kind of pressure, psychological pressure. We just wanted to get something out that did sound representative of what we were, but we didn't experiment a lot. It wasn't like a kind of thing where you could go after you've made a whole bunch of records that had been successful and you go into the studio and say, "Well, let's just create something new in the studio." We didn't have that luxury. We mostly were trying to record the songs that we played 'live' and make them sound 'live' and good, free of mistakes and representative of the best we could do in the studio with what we had.

Q - Before recording that first album, did you rehearse the songs you were going to record?

A - No, we didn't. It was also the same thing. We were playing in a club five nights a week, maybe even six nights a week. Three or four sets a night. We just went into the studio and did stuff we were playing already. We didn't have to rehearse. We were playing all the time, every day.

Q - I know this is a general question, but what was Janis Joplin like to work with, travel with and be a friend to? Can you give any insight into that?

A - You know, that's too general of a question really.

Q - That's what I thought you would say.

A - Yeah. It's too general of a question. Really, you have to kind of find a way to answer your question like that by somehow narrowing down to a certain topic. You're talking about a person that's very complex and had a lot of different sides to her personality and could be one way or another way. All of that, you know?

Q - When you're a star like Janis Joplin, you've got a lot of people around you, a tour manager, a road manager, roadies, a business manager, a personal manager and you want to get something illegal, how do you go through all those people to get it?

A - You know, I don't know. The kind of question you're asking pertains to a time more after I would say Janis left Big Brother, where she did have more people around her personally. With Big Brother, when we were out there performing in 1968 and put out "Cheap Thrills", and really were one of the top touring bands in the country, even at that time we only had two roadies, maybe sometimes three, and one road manager. And that was it. That was what we traveled with. Most of the time we didn't travel with wives or girl friends. Very occasionally someone would come along, but mostly it was very compact. We didn't have a scene like you're talking about. That was much later and that was when Janis sort of went solo. I wasn't around that. She had all kinds of people around her like an entourage, but she only had one road manager. She had more like an an entourage I would say. I can't really answer that question for you. It's out of my world actually.

Q - You taught drums at a California high school or maybe you still do, I don't know. Did the kids know your background? And if they caught on, what did they say?

A - (laughs) It was really funny because I wasn't teaching drums. A number of years back, in the late '90s, 1997, I was teaching art at two Marin County high schools. At one of 'em, San Marin High School, a lot of students kind of knew who I was. They knew I had played in a famous band with Janis Joplin and they knew who she was. It was a little later than their time. At one point I did an interview for their school newspaper. It was pretty interesting to do that and talk about things that usually an art teacher wouldn't be talking about. As for your question about drugs, you can talk about that, but every has their own connections. It's not the road manager's job or the roadie's job to procure drugs in any of the bands I've ever been in. Everybody has their own friends. They get whatever they get that way, through their own channels.

Q - I guess what I was trying to ask is when you're a Janis Joplin and surrounded by business people who are viewing her as business investment, how do drugs get to her? But then when you're a star like Janis Joplin, what Janis wants, Janis gets. And she was paying these people to do a job for her.

A - I think there's truth to that. A lot of people stepped back and didn't want to be the one, in the case of Janis, that might've known she's using again or she's drinking too much. Everybody was in her service as so in awe of her and she was such a strong personality too, that nobody wanted to confront her or intervene like the way people talk about it now. You're talking about something fifty years ago. It was a very different attitude and I think there was less sense of intervention or awareness that people could kill themselves or O.D. or what could happen. That sort of started to happen at that time. People started to drop by the wayside from drug deaths. I don't think it was so much people saying anything about it or the kind of social awareness there is in retrospect.

Q - It's something that continues to this day. Singers, musicians still haven't gotten the message.

A - There's something about it. A guy that I knew very well and was part of this whole musical story, Nick Gravenites said, "People who love Blues music want their Blues musicians to kind of almost be like tragic figures, like drink themselves to death or overdose." It sort of adds in someway to their romantic image of their heroes or heroines. There's a certain truth to that. There's a certain kind of romance about it like the Billy Holiday sort of thing, Charlie Parker and all of these sort of great Jazz musicians that self destruct in front of their audience in a way, and then it creates an mythology about it and the media in some way feeds on that mythology and the fans feed on that mythology. There's a certain kind of romantic notion to it. At the same time, when you get close up to it, it's not as pretty as the myth.

Q - And you're left wondering, "What if?"

A - Right. What if somebody had said, "Stop!" What if Janis' management had said, "Okay, we're not going to manage you anymore until you get clean and sober." What if? It would've been great, but they didn't.

Q - You didn't go to Woodstock, did you?

A - No. It was long after Janis left Big Brother. I could've been at Woodstock with Country Joe And The Fish. After Big Brother, Peter Albin and myself joined Country Joe And The Fish. We were on the road with them. We went to Europe with them. We were part of that band. Came back to the United States, and in the Spring of 1969 I think it was, we quit the band to try and start Big Brother again. If we had stayed with Country Joe And The Fish, which we should have, we couldn't start Big Brother. It didn't work at that time. It was too soon to restart it. We didn't stay with Country Joe and then he played at Woodstock. He got a different rhythm section. So, I kind of missed out on that. (laughs)

Official Website: www.DaveGetz.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.