Rhapsodic and cathartic, psychedelic music came roaring into existence in the mid-1960s. The style’s guitar-centric, anything-goes approach ushered in an era of extended solos, wild sound effects, ringing eardrums, and an unprecedented merging of influences – from American blues, jazz, folk, and rock to sounds culled from Africa, India, and other parts of the world. “Certainly drugs played a role – that’s way up front,” remembered Sam Andrew, co-guitarist in Big Brother and the Holding Company, one of San Francisco’s seminal psychedelic bands.*
In its earliest incarnation, Big Brother and the Holding Company performed as a four-piece, with Sam Andrew and James Gurley on electric guitars, Peter Albin on bass and acoustic guitar, and Dave Getz on drums. By 1966 this lineup had become the house band at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom, devoting most of its sets to long, exploratory instrumentals. During this period Andrew and Gurley immersed themselves in the recordings of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Indian vina and sitar players. Gurley, often credited as the seminal psychedelic guitarist on the San Francisco scene, was especially impressed by Coltrane. “I thought if I could play a guitar like John Coltrane played the sax,” he explained, “it would really be far out. So that’s what I was trying to do. Of course, nobody understood it, especially me!”
Concert promoter Chet Helms suggested that they expand their lineup and recommended Janis Joplin, whom he’d seen singing traditional blues and folk songs in Texas coffeehouses. The 23-year-old completely transformed her style soon after joining Big Brother. “The moment Janis heard the volume increase, she had it,” Andrew remembered. “It was like she switched a channel that brought out the power. And the music was louder by a quantum leap than what went before. It made everything different. It took away all the rules. And the velocity was something too – it would just shift into overdrive.”
James Gurley shared this viewpoint: “As much as Janis made us as a band, we made her as a singer. She had to sing the way that she did in order to sing with us. We didn’t say, ‘You have to sing like this,’ but we said, ‘This is the way we’re gonna play. How are you gonna sing?’ And she went, ‘Whoa! Okay. Here’s this. [Imitates Janis] Whaaaa!’ It went on from there. She had a lot of power.”
Weeks after Janis joined, Big Brother rushed into a studio to record their eponymous debut album for the short-lived Mainstream label, to little acclaim. Soon thereafter, though, their mind-blowing performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival brought them worldwide attention. A Columbia Records mega-deal led to the band’s landmark Cheap Thrills album, recorded between March and May 1968. Dubbed-in audience noise gave listeners the impression that the whole album was a live recording, but only “Ball and Chain” was recorded onstage. The other six tracks were taped in studios in New York and Los Angeles. Robert Crumb, the preeminent underground comic book artist, created the hippie-influenced cover artwork. From: https://www.foundsf.org/Big_Brother_and_the_Holding_Company:_Cheap_Thrills
