Dick Cavett and Janis Joplin’s lover David Niehaus one-upped each other with Joplin tales at a New York premiere of “Janis: Little Girl Blue” on Sunday.
Cavett recalled of the rocker’s first time at Elaine’s: “When Janis went in, [the busy place] stopped. It’s said to have done that only one other time, when Mick Jagger walked in.”
When a Joplin song came on as they sat at a table for two, Cavett said, “ ‘What’s the name of that?’ And she said,‘Down on Me.’ I said, ‘Wow, I guess that’s one you can’t sing on television.’ ” Joplin joked to dirty-minded Cavett, “It’s a gospel!”
Niehaus recounted a tale of when some Hells Angels woke them in the middle of the night: “We hear all this noise in the living room and she goes, ‘Honey, go see what that is.’ And I go out there and there’s five Hells Angels, two of them have guns in their belt . . . I go back and she says, ‘Get rid of those boys!’ And I go, ‘Babe . . . they’ve got guns.’ ” Janis went and threw them out. “Thank God I didn’t have to try to do that,” Niehaus said.
Clive Davis recalled the night he signed Joplin and she told him “she has to go to bed with me because she didn’t feel a corporate signing was sufficient.” (He turned her down.) Guests then headed to an Electric Lady Studios party, where they had to use the roof because Ryan Adams was recording.