I’ve been recording music for 61 years, hundreds of sessions, thousands of hours of tape. I recorded people you know and people you don’t. I recorded some of the most important records of the 1960s and 1970s. And I recorded some records that nobody ever heard. In 61 years, I have never released a recording without permission.
I have one tape that I have kept in that drawer for 55 years. It is a recording of Janis Joplin speaking, not singing, in a recording booth alone, believing the microphone was off. The microphone was on. The tape was running. I heard everything. I am never going to release that tape. But I am going to tell you what was on it.
Because she has been gone for 55 years. And what she said in that booth, what she said when she thought no one was listening, is the most honest thing I have ever recorded. And I think it is time someone heard it. He has been a sound engineer since 1963. He started as an assistant at a small studio in Chicago. He was 22 years old.
He had an ear, the specific ability to hear what a microphone was capturing and what it was missing, to understand the relationship between a voice and a room, to know when something was right. He moved to San Francisco in 1966, the right city at the right time. The music was happening there in a way it hadn’t happened anywhere since New York in the early 1950s.
The Fillmore, the Avalon, the recording studios that were scrambling to keep up with the bands that were emerging faster than the industry could process them. he recorded Big Brother and the Holding Company before anyone knew Janis Joplin’s name. He recorded her in the booth the way every engineer records every singer with the technical attention to levels and frequency and room dynamics and with the other kind of attention that good engineers also have, the attention that knows the difference between a voice that is performing and a voice that is telling the truth. He says, “I’ve recorded a lot of voices, a lot of great ones, and most of them, even the great ones, you can hear them thinking. With Janis, I never heard her think. I only heard her feel. The session was in 1969. The details of which session, which album, which studio, which month,
he has declined to specify precisely for reasons that will become clear. What he will say is this. It was a working session, a professional session. She arrived prepared the way she always arrived prepared once she understood what she was making. The band had already done their parts on some tracks. She was there to do vocals.
Before the main recording began, there was a technical setup period. Levels to calibrate, microphone placement to adjust, the specific back and forth between the booth and the control room that precedes every session. She was in the booth. He was at the board. They had run a few test levels, her speaking, him adjusting, the standard procedure.
Then he stepped away from the board briefly to check something in the back of the room or to speak to an assistant or one of the dozen small tasks that occupy a sound engineer in the minutes before recording begins. The tape was still running. He had not stopped it. He did not realize until he sat back down that he had not stopped it.
She thought the red light was off. The red light in a recording booth means the tape is running. When it is off, the booth is dead. Whatever you say, whatever you do, goes nowhere. It exists only in the air of the room, and then it is gone. She looked at the light. She saw, or believed she saw, that it was off, and she began to talk.
He was at the board with his headphones on, and her voice came through. Not the performance voice, not the interview voice, not the voice she used when she knew someone was listening. The other voice, the one that existed in the absence of audience. His hand moved toward the tape machine to stop it. He paused.
He is honest about this. He does not make himself the hero of the story. His hand paused. And in the pause, something in him decided to listen. He has thought about that pause for 55 years. He says, “I could justify it technically. I could say I needed to know if the levels were right, if the room was picking her up properly, and maybe that was part of it.
But the honest answer is that what was coming through the headphones was something I had never heard before, and I wanted to hear it.” She talked for 11 minutes. He sat at the board and listened to 11 minutes of Janis Joplin speaking in a recording booth to no one. This is what was on the tape. She started by talking about the previous night.
A show, or a conversation, or something that had happened that she was still processing. He does not remember the specific details, the specific grievance, or the specific joy. What he remembers is the quality of it. She was talking the way you talk when you are working something out. Not for an audience, for yourself.
Then she started talking about something else. She started talking about what she was afraid of, not performing. Not the normal fears that performers talk about in interviews, forgetting lyrics, losing the voice, the audience turning against you. Something underneath all of that, she said, and he has the words memorized the way you memorize the things that matter.
She said, “I’m afraid that one day I’m going to get up there and give everything I have and the room is going to be full and the band is going to be right and everything is going to be technically perfect and it still won’t be enough because it’s never actually enough. It gets close. Sometimes it gets so close.
But the thing I’m trying to give them, the real thing, the thing underneath the song, I’m not sure that can ever really travel from me to them. I’m not sure the distance can be closed.” She was quiet for a moment after that. He sat at the board and did not move. Then she said, “And I think that’s why I keep going back out there because I have to know.
I have to try again because maybe the next time I’ll close the distance. Maybe the next show is the one where it actually gets all the way through.” He says, “I recorded hundreds of sessions. I heard people say remarkable things in those rooms, but I never heard anything like that because what she was describing, the gap between what the artist feels and what the audience receives, that is the thing that every musician knows and almost no one says out loud.
” She said it out loud alone to no one. To a microphone she thought was off. Then she talked about Port Arthur. She talked about it without bitterness, which surprised him. He had read the interviews. He knew the public version of the Port Arthur story, the town that laughed her out, the cruelty of adolescence, the specific Texas rejection.
But alone in the booth, she said something different. She said, “I think Port Arthur gave me something I didn’t understand at the time. When you’re not wanted somewhere, you spend a lot of time alone. And when you spend a lot of time alone, you develop a relationship with music that is different from people who were always surrounded.
It becomes the only thing that’s real. Not a hobby, not entertainment, the only thing that’s real. And I think that’s what I’m trying to give back, the realness, the thing that it was for me when there was nothing else.” He says, “I grew up in a normal family. I always had people around. I have never been lonelier than mildly inconvenienced.
And sitting in that control room listening to her describe what music was for her, I understood for the first time in my career why some voices have it and some don’t. It’s not talent, it’s not technique, it’s what you needed the music to be. And she needed it to be everything because for a long time it was everything.
” At the 11-minute mark, she looked up and she saw the red light. It was on. He watched her face through the glass. The specific frozen moment of understanding. Then her eyes found him through the window. They looked at each other for a long moment without speaking. He reached for the intercom. He said, “I’m sorry.
I didn’t realize the tape was still running.” She looked at him for another moment. Then she said, “How much did you get?” He said, “About 11 minutes.” She was quiet. Then she said, “Are you going to do anything with it?” He said, “No.” She looked at him for a moment longer. Then she nodded and she said, “Okay, let’s record.
” And they recorded the session and neither of them ever mentioned the tape again. He kept it. In 55 years, he has never played it for anyone. He has never described its contents in detail to anyone. He has never sold it or offered it or mentioned its existence in interviews. He says, “She knew I had it. She decided to trust me with it.
That trust didn’t end when she died. It doesn’t have an expiration date.” He opens the drawer. The tape reel is there in a cardboard box, a date written on the label in faded ink. He holds it for a moment, then he puts it back. He says, “The tape stays in the drawer, but the words don’t have to.
” She said, “The thing I’m trying to give them, the real thing, the thing underneath the song, I’m not sure the distance can be closed.” She said, “Maybe the next show is the one where it actually gets all the way through.” She said, “I needed it to be everything because for a long time it was everything.
She went out there every night, eight years of going out there trying to close the distance. Maybe she closed it sometimes.” The tape stays in the drawer, but now you know what was on it. Subscribe. The next story goes somewhere nobody has taken you before.
