In 2012, Pete Townshend published his memoir. He called it Who I Am. It covered 60 years of music, the detours, the high numbers, The Who, Tommy, Quadrophenia, The Smothers Brothers controversy, Keith Moon, all of it. And in the Woodstock chapter, he wrote about Janis Joplin. He wrote, “She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn’t at her best, due probably to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she’d consumed while she waited.
But even Janis on an off night was incredible.” Read those last eight words. “Even Janis on an off night was incredible.” Pete Townshend watched Janis Joplin perform twice, once at the beginning of everything, Monterey 1967, when nobody outside of San Francisco knew her name, once in the middle of everything, Woodstock 1969, 400,000 people, 2:00 in the morning, a night that was not her best.
He remembered both performances for 45 years. He wrote about both in his memoir. This is that story. June 1967, Monterey Pop Festival. The Who were on the bill. Pete Townshend was 21 years old, the same age as Robert Plant when he met Janis in 1969. He had been performing with The Who since 1964. He had already developed the guitar-smashing stage show that would make him one of the most recognizable performers in rock history.
He had already written I Can’t Explain and My Generation and Substitute. The Who performed at Monterey on Saturday night, June 17. Their set included a full guitar-smashing finale, the calculated theatrical violence that was their signature. Janis Joplin performed on Sunday afternoon, June 18. The Who and Big Brother were both at the same festival the same weekend, both backstage in the same area, both at different stages of the same journey.
Townshend, a young British performer who had already found his voice. Joplin, a young Texas woman who was finding hers. He watched her perform. She had been amazing at Monterey. That is what he wrote 45 years later. Not she was good, not she was impressive, amazing. The word he chose, reaching back across four decades, was amazing.
What did it mean to watch Janis Joplin perform at Monterey in 1967 from the specific vantage point of Pete Townshend? Townshend was, then and for 50 years afterward, one of the most thoughtful and articulate people in rock music about what rock music was. He thought about it constantly. He wrote about it. He argued about it.
He had ideas about what performance meant, about what the relationship between performer and audience was supposed to be, about what separated a great rock performer from merely a good one. He watched Janis Joplin at Monterey and he saw something he did not have a complete framework for.
Not the technique, he understood technique. Not the stagecraft, he understood stagecraft. What he did not have a framework for was the specific quality of a performer who had no gap between the feeling and the performance. Who did not perform pain, who reported from inside it. He was, by every account of his own work, a performer who thought about what he was doing while he was doing it.
The windmill arm was conscious. The guitar destruction was planned. The intelligence was always present. Janis Joplin’s intelligence was also always present, but it was not visible in the same way. It did not show as calculation, It showed as the absence of calculation, and that was the thing he was watching, the specific thing he would remember for 45 years.
She had been amazing at Monterey, August 17th, 1969. Woodstock, 400,000 people, 2:00 in the morning. The longest day in the history of the festival stretched by rain and sound equipment delays and the specific chaos of an event that had exceeded every projection by a factor of four. Janis Joplin had been waiting backstage for hours.
Pete Townshend watched her perform. He was 24 years old now. The Who had already released Tommy, the album that would define what a rock opera could be. He was no longer the young British performer who had watched Janis at Monterey. He was one of the most important figures in rock music, and he watched Janis Joplin perform at 2:00 in the morning at Woodstock.
Not at her best by any assessment, including her own, and he wrote down what he thought. She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn’t at her best, due probably to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she’d consumed while she waited. He named it directly, not euphemism, not deflection.
She had been drinking and using during the wait. That was the reality. He said it as a fact, not as a judgment, but even Janis on an off night was incredible. That word again, not good, not impressive, not moving, incredible. The same word essentially for both the best and the off night.
That is what the standard was, even diminished, even not at her best, still incredible. There is a specific quality to being recognized by a peer, not by a fan, not by a critic, not by someone who has no framework for comparison, by someone who does the same thing you do, who has the same knowledge of what it costs and what it demands, who can hear the gap between what you are doing and what you are capable of, and who tells you, even knowing the gap, that what you are doing is incredible. Pete Townshend did not tell Janis this while she was alive. There is no documented conversation between them where he said the sentences he would write in 2012. He watched. He assessed. He carried the assessment. He put it in his memoir 43 years after Woodstock. She had been amazing at Monterey. Even on an off night, she was incredible. That is the testimony of a
peer. That is the specific weight of recognition from someone who would know. Janis Joplin died on October 4th, 1970. She was 27 years old. Pete Townshend is 80 years old. He is still performing with The Who or with what remains of The Who after Keith Moon’s death in 1978 and John Entwistle’s death in 2002.
He watched her perform twice. He remembered both performances for the rest of his life. He wrote about both of them in a memoir that anyone can read today. She had been amazing at Monterey. Even on an off night, incredible. That is the record. That is what Pete Townshend, who destroyed guitars on stage, who wrote Tommy, who argued about rock music for 60 years, that is what he put in his book about Janis Joplin.
Here is what this story asks you. Who watched you perform? Not at your best, knowing it was not your best, and still found you incredible. Who held the standard high enough to know the difference between amazing and off night, and valued both? Pete Townshend watched Janis Joplin at Woodstock at 2:00 in the morning after a long delay, not at her best, he watched her give everything she had to 400,000 people in the dark.
And he carried the sentence for 43 years. Even Janis on an off night was incredible. She did not know he was watching. She did not know he was carrying that sentence. She was just trying to give what she had to give on a difficult night to the people who had waited. That was always enough. That was always incredible. Subscribe.
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