Janis Joplin and Peter Tork in the audience at Monterey Pop Festival, June 1967. Photos by Jim Marshall (?).
“On my birthday we were in L.A. playing a club & everyone was so nice! The owners of the club sent me 3 dozen red roses — all over the stage when I came in, the band gave me 2 doz. […] Peter Tork sent me 1 doz. red roses. And after the show we had lots of champagne & a birthday cake. Really nice.” - From a 1968 letter sent by Janis Joplin to her family, via Genesis Publications
“‘My favorite guest star [on The Monkees TV show] was the one that was never on the show,’ Tork said. ‘I always wanted Janis Joplin,’ [Tork] said.” - The Defender, February 21, 1996 (x)
“At a gig in Los Angeles Janis picked up a busboy, a young Peter Tork, at the Golden Bear club, and it took a bit of convincing, but Tork, who later became one of the Monkees, told me about their off-and-on relationship. ‘Janis made no particular point of displaying her intelligence,’ he said, ‘but this came up and she couldn’t help setting me straight. She had her bottle of Southern Comfort right there, and I told her she would get “sclerosis” of the liver. She corrected me on my usage of the word, “No, it’s cirrhosis of the liver.”’ Peter laughed. ‘In those days acts were booked for a week, and there we were! For a while every time I saw Janis, she was happy to see me, hugged me, gave me that great big old laugh, and the next thing I knew we were rolling in the hay together. Then one day I caught up with her at a Who concert and she wasn’t friendly to me at all, and I said, “Okay, I get it, she’s after one of these other guys!” That was that.’” - Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon by Pamela Des Barres (1996)
“She was wonderful to know and to hang out with, and of course it was wonderful to enjoy her fabulous talent.” - Peter Tork, askpetertork dot com, July 2010
“Janis should have been knocking ‘em down into her sixties.” - Peter Tork, Headquarters radio, September 1989
Peter Tork: “Actually, Janis and I knew each other before we both broke, before either of us broke. I was a bar — I was a busboy and a beer jerk at a pub called the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California. I had just gone to California. And Janis was in Big Brother and the Holding Company, and they were a pretty well-known San Francisco band, but Janis hadn’t broken as big as she became later. And they came through, and Janis and I just fell to talking. We had a lot in common, I mean, there was something in common, I — spoke to her about her drinking, I said, ‘You might get sclerosis,’ she said, ‘Cirrhocis!’ I got corrected. I didn’t mind being corrected. and, you know... And, and we just became —” Q: “You bonded. You had a connection there.” PT: “Pretty close. [...] We lost contact. Then, a couple of years later, The Monkees were already rolling, I’m watching 2001: Space Odyssey [released on April 2, 1968]. And Janis is in the audience, too, and she, ‘Hey! How ya doing?’ She’s so raucous, you know, ‘Hey, how ya doing, honey?’ She was fabulous. And so we hung — ”