Janis called me one day, and I'd never met her, ever. "Hi, Bobby," she goes, "this is Janis Joplin." Now, obviously I'm thinking, someone's playing a joke. So, I say, "Hi, this is James Brown, how're you doing?" But she wanted to record one of my songs with me, and asked me down the studio… I remember her coming and sitting in my car, asking me, where you get a car like this from? And I said, from recording with people like you, honey. And she laughed, and started singing, "Oh Lord, won't you buy me… " Twenty-five years later I heard that on a commercial, and that was mind-blowing because the first thing I thought about was her sitting in the car, going, let's go back into the studio and cut this. And I remember Paul Rothchild, her producer, saying, "Janis, can't we just do this another time?" And her going, "Ahhh, lets just do it now." I remember going to her hotel with her, and we stayed up all night, just talking about music… and I've got to be honest, I did have drugs with me, but it wasn't what she did. She was into girls [heroin], and I was into boys [cocaine]… and suddenly the phone was ringing, and whoever the guy was, asked: "Janis, is anyone with you?" And she said: "Bobby Womack", and he said, "I'm not coming up unless Bobby leaves." I've never understood that. She said, "You've got to go." We'll get together tomorrow, whatever. And as I was going down on the elevator, I remember hearing him running up the steps. I often wonder to this day who that was … a couple of hours later Paul called me … and said, "Bobby, she's dead." Stories like that, true stories, make you write, have something to say, have something to live for. They turn your life around.
No comments:
Post a Comment