I sold tickets at the Fillmore West for 3 years, 1967 to 1969, every show. Tuesday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, the whole run. I was 21 when I started, fresh out of SF State, no particular plan, answered an ad in the paper. The job paid fine and I got to hear the music through the walls and I liked the people and I stayed.
Now, I want to tell you about something that happened at my ticket window. Not once, not twice, every single show that Janis Joplin played at the Fillmore, she stopped at my window before she went on. Every single time. I never fully understood why, but she did and I want to tell you about it. The Fillmore in ’67 was something I didn’t have words for then and I’m still not sure I do now.
It was a converted dance hall in the Western Addition. Bill Graham ran it. He was not a warm man, exactly, but he had an instinct for what was happening that nobody else had. He booked everybody, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Cream, The Who when they came through. If it mattered, it played the Fillmore. And I was the person in the ticket window, which meant I saw everyone, not from the audience, from the window, the arriving side, the before side.
Most artists came in through the side entrance, past my window on their way to the back. You’d see them for 3 seconds, maybe 5, just a glimpse, just a person in a coat carrying something, moving toward the building. It was enough to understand that what they were before a show and what they were during a show were often two very different things.
Some of them looked terrified. Some looked bored. Some looked like they were doing a job, which I suppose they were. And then there was Janis. The first time she stopped at my window, it was the fall of ’67. She was already Janis Joplin by then. Monterey had happened. The word was out. The shows were selling out.
She wasn’t unknown, but she also wasn’t yet the Janis Joplin of the magazine covers and the number one album. She was somewhere in between. She came in from the side, the way the artists came in, and she was passing my window, and she just stopped. She looked at the window. She looked at me.
She said, “You’re here every show, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. She’d clearly been noticing me the way I’d been noticing her. I said, “Yes, every show.” She said, “Then you see everyone before they go on.” I said, “I see everyone before they go on.” She said, “Good. Then you know what it actually looks like.” And she went inside.
I thought about that for a long time afterward. “You know what it actually looks like.” I think what she meant was you see the real version, the pre-performance version, the person before they become the performer. And in some way that mattered to her. After that, she stopped every time. It became a ritual. I didn’t ask for it.
She didn’t announce it. It just was. Every show, a few minutes before she went on, she’d come past and stop at the window. Sometimes she talked. Sometimes she just stood there for a moment and then moved on. When she talked, it was always something small. The weather, something funny that had happened that day, whether I’d seen a particular band recently. Nothing important.
I understood after a while that the content wasn’t the point. The point was the stopping. The point was here is a person who sees me as I am right now before I go become the other thing. And I am going to stand here for a moment in that seeing before the other thing begins. That’s what I think it was.
I can’t be certain. I never asked. Some things you understand without asking and asking would change them. I got to know her in the small specific way you get to know someone through a ticket window over 2 years. She was funnier than the public version suggested. Not performing funny, actually funny. Observational, quick.
She’d notice something about the line outside or something about the neighborhood and make a comment that would make me laugh. She was also more nervous than I expected. Not stage fright exactly, something more existential. Like she was always checking, am I still here? Am I still real? Is this still the thing I think it is? The stopping at the window I think was part of that checking.
I was real. The window was real. The 3 seconds of ordinary conversation before she went to become Janis Joplin was real. I was her anchor to the ordinary. Or at least, that’s how I’ve understood it. The best conversation we ever had was in the fall of ’68. She stopped at the window and she seemed different that night.
Something on her mind. She said, “Can I ask you something weird?” I said, “Go ahead.” She said, “Does it bother you watching everybody go in and not going in yourself?” I said, “I hear it through the walls.” She said, “That’s not what I mean.” I said, “I know. No, it doesn’t bother me. My part is out here.” She thought about that.
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She said, “Your part is out here.” I said, “Somebody has to make sure people get in. That’s not nothing.” She said, “No. That’s not nothing.” She stood there for another moment. Then she said, “I think about that sometimes. All the parts that aren’t the center. All the people who make the thing possible without being the thing.
” She said, “I couldn’t do what I do without all of that. And most of them never get acknowledged.” I said, “I don’t need to be acknowledged. I’m warm and I can hear the music and the people going in are happy. That’s enough.” She looked at me. She said, “You’re lucky, you know that? To know what’s enough.
” Then she went inside. And I heard the show through the walls. And it was one of the good ones. At some point in ’69, the shows at the Fillmore changed. Different lineup, different era beginning. She wasn’t there as regularly. And then she wasn’t there. I don’t remember the last show specifically. I wish I did.
But last times rarely announce themselves. One night she stopped at the window. And then the next time the Fillmore had a show, she wasn’t on the bill. And then the shows kept coming and she wasn’t on any of them. And then October 1970. I heard it on the radio that morning. I sat in this kitchen, this same kitchen. I’ve lived here since ’64.
And I sat with it. I thought about the window, the ritual, the 3 seconds before every show. You know what it actually looks like. I thought I did know. I knew the before version, the nervous, funny, checking if she’s still real version. I’m glad I knew that version. Not instead of the stage version, in addition to it.
Most people only got the stage version. I got both. I still walk past the Fillmore sometimes. It’s still there, still operating, different shows now obviously, different era. I walk past the ticket window area and I think about standing there for 3 years in my early 20s selling tickets to everything that mattered.
And I think about her stopping every time. When she didn’t have to. When nobody was watching. When it would have been easy to just walk past. She stopped. She said, “You know what it actually looks like. I did. I do. It looked like a person who needed, before every show, to stand for one moment in front of someone ordinary who saw her as ordinary.
And then go be extraordinary. Every single time. That’s what I wanted to tell you.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
