When we walked up the stairs to the Avalon as a family, Chet was standing at the top of the stairs to greet us.
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We’d all heard of Chet, and we’d met him way back. Michael Joplin: I remember the Summer of Love. It made her so human, and because we also had a dog, it made her the person I grew up with. It sounds silly, but one thing I really enjoyed in San Francisco was seeing Janis’s dog. There was a lot of trying to take all that in. San Francisco was cool, with mountains overlooking it. In Port Arthur, we had three or four buildings that were more than two stories high, but San Francisco was huge. LJ: Everything was so different: the music, the sound, the styles, the city itself. To go to San Francisco and hang out with Janis was special. We weren’t a family that traveled and we hadn’t really been out of Port Arthur, so to travel all the way across the West was incredible. Laura Joplin: That was the first time we’d been out of the state. What was it like when your family went to San Francisco in 1967 to visit Janis?
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Photo by Joan Marcus.Īs San Francisco kicks off its celebration of the Summer of Love-featuring A Night with Janis Joplin at The Geary Theater-we look back on the events of that summer from those who knew Janis best. Kacee Clanton in A Night with Janis Joplin. For Janis’s siblings, Laura and Michael, the trip was life-changing. They had driven across the US from Port Arthur, Texas to see 24-year-old Janis perform with her new band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Among the thousands flocking to San Francisco for the Summer of Love in 1967 was the Joplin family.