Two Teenagers Snuck Backstage to Meet Janis Joplin Next Day She Played a Free Concert Just for Them
August 9th, 1968. St. Louis, Missouri. Keel Opera House. Janice Joplain and Big Brother and the Holding Company were on tour. They had played a paid show at Keel, a big formal concert hall, plush seats and velvet curtains. Not at all the kind of place they were used to, the kind of place where you sat down and applauded politely, and didn’t stand on your chairs.
Before the Keel show, two teenagers had snuck backstage. Their names were Charlie Beard and Skip Goes, both 17 years old, students at Webster High School. They had wriggled past whatever minimal security existed and found their way to the legendary singer’s dressing room. What they found was not what they expected. There she was, just sitting there alone.
No bodyguards, no security, just Janice. She was sitting on a large wooden nail keg, southern comfort bottle in hand, completely unbothered, not performing anything, not managing any image, just a woman waiting to go on. She looked at the two teenage boys who had appeared in her dressing room.
“Hey honey,” she said to Skip, “Go get me some cigarettes.” Skip ran. He left the backstage foyer looking for a cigarette machine, which left Charlie entirely alone with Janice Joplain. He had things to say. He had prepared in some part of his teenage brain things that would be cool to say to one of the most famous people in the hippie movement.
What’s San Francisco like? Do you like being on tour? I really love that song. Nothing came out of his mouth. He stood there. She paced. She drank from the bottle. She was bigger than life. An RC crumb comic book vixen in person, Charlie said later. And he was 17 and completely tongue-tied. Skip returned. He had the cigarettes.
He handed them to her. That moment, giving Janice Joplain a pack of Marlboroough Reds backstage was something he would remember for the rest of his life. She chatted with them briefly. She was very approachable, just this woman sitting on a nail keg. Then she said, “Okay, I got to go.
” And she walked out toward the stage. Charlie kept the nail keg. The Keel show was, by Charlie’s honest assessment, nothing to write home about. A mediocre set in an uptight venue. The kind of show that happened when a performer built for the Filillmore Ballroom was put in a formal concert hall with plush seats and a crowd that didn’t know it was allowed to stand up.
But Charlie and Skip had their ears to the ground. They suspected that wasn’t all they were going to get from Janice. Something like a free concert, Charlie said later, was almost to be expected. Sure enough, the next day, word spread through St. Louis. Janice Joplain and Big Brother and the Holding Company were going to play at the World’s Fair Pavilion in Forest Park for free.
Nobody had organized it. There was no promoter, no ticket sales, no press announcement, just word of mouth moving through the city on a cold, rainy Sunday morning in August. Something is happening in Forest Park. Go now. August 10th, 1968. Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. It was cold. It was raining. It was a Sunday.
About 300 young people came out anyway. They gathered under the roof of the World’s Fair Pavilion, an open-sided structure in the park, enough cover to keep most of the rain off most of the crowd. Some of them had umbrellas. Some of them were getting wet and not especially caring. Janice Joplain walked onto the makeshift stage.
This was 2 days before the release of Cheap Thrills, the album that would go to number one and stay there for eight weeks. the album that would make her face recognizable across America. Two days before all of that, she was in a park in St. Louis in the rain for 300 people who had heard something was happening and came. And she gave them everything.
Not the mediocre formal venue version of herself from the night before. The real version, the Filillmore version, the version where the crowd wasn’t sitting in plush seats, but was pressed up against the stage in a public park in August Rain. She opened, she built, she screamed. Peace of my heart, the song that was about to be on every radio in America, in a pavilion in Forest Park for free on a Sunday afternoon.
The crowd lost its mind. Photos from that day show something specific. Kids of different races enjoying the music together. That’s the nature of the park, Charlie said years later. It’s a park for everyone. The kids heard something was going on and they just came out for the joy of the music. No tickets, no payment, no plan.
Just Janice Joplain and a park and whoever wanted to come. Skip goes had thought to bring something. He had a pint bottle of Southern Comfort. He had watched her drink from one the night before in her dressing room. He knew what she drank. He brought it. He and Charlie got right to the front of the stage, an arms reach away from Janice Joplain.
When she got to the microphone, Skip held the bottle up toward the stage. She looked down. She looked at him and she said, “Hey, I remember you.” 17 years old. snuck backstage the night before, stood there mute while she paced and drank, said nothing, left no impression worth noting. She remembered him. She took the bottle, she played the show.
Charlie Beard stood in arms reach from her for the entire performance. The music was fresh, he said, especially piece of my heart. That screaming take it three feet in front of him. Sam Andrews guitar sliding up the fretboard. It’s something I will always remember, he said. He was right.
55 years later, he still talks about it. Here is why this story matters. On August 9th, 1968, Janice Joplain played a paid concert at Keel Opera House. She was compensated for her time and her voice and her band’s work. On August 10th, 1968, she played a free concert in a public park for 300 people in the rain. Nobody made her do it. No manager called and said this would be good for her image.
No publicist arranged it to generate press. No record label suggested it would help sell albums. Cheap Thrills was coming out in 2 days. Any marketing consultant would have told her to rest her voice and prepare for the promotional obligations that would follow. She played the park anyway because there were people who wanted to hear it.
Because Forest Park was a park for everyone. Because the version of the concert that happened in formal concert halls with plush seats and no dancing was not the version she had moved to San Francisco to make. The version she wanted to make was this one. 300 people in the rain, an arms reach away from the stage. A bottle of Southern Comfort handed up from a teenager she remembered from the night before.
That was the concert, the free one, the one nobody paid her for. The one Charlie and Skip still talk about 55 years later. The Keel Show was forgettable. The Forest Park show lives. That is in some compressed and obvious way the entire story of Janice Joplain. The formal version, the one the industry wanted, the plush seats, the polite applause, the contract, and the payment was forgettable.
The real version, the park, the rain, the free admission, the bottle passed from the crowd to the stage. That was the one that lasted. That was the one she actually wanted to give. Janice Joplain died on October 4th, 1970. She was 27 years old. Cheap Thrills had gone to number one 2 weeks after the Forest Park concert.
It stayed there for eight weeks. Pearl was almost done. The best was still coming. Charlie Beard died on October 4th, 1970, his 19th birthday. He found out later that morning what had happened in Los Angeles. He had been an arms reach from her in Forest Park. He had stood there mute when she sat on the nail keg. He had watched her give everything to 300 people in the rain for nothing.
Skip goes kept the memory of handing her the southern comfort. The moment she looked down, looked at him and said, “Hey, I remember you.” The famous person who remembered a nobody in a park in the rain for free. Here is what this story asks you. When was the last time you gave something, your time, your talent, your presence to people who couldn’t pay you for it in conditions that weren’t ideal just because they wanted it and you could give it.
Janice Joplain was two days from having a number one album. She was on tour. She had a voice she was supposed to protect. It was cold and raining. She played the park. 300 people came out in the rain to hear her. She remembered the kid who had given her cigarettes the night before. She took the southern comfort he brought.
She gave them everything she had. That was free. That was the real concert. That was Janice Joplain. Subscribe.
