So Long Saint James (Tribute To James Gurley)

I suppose some people can say it about the places they grew up in. I might even be accused of exagerrating my sense of pride of having grown up in the Bay Area. But there is something very special about San Francisco that no other place exibits. If you are sensitive and open-minded enough to allow yourself to develop an intuitive inner sense of San Francisco's surroundings, you can sense the spiritual presence of the artistic burst of epic proportions that took place there back in the '60s. You can feel it among those who have since died and those who are still living and have left a mark for other spirits to pick up on and allow people to communicate with their inner artistic and spiritual intuitions.
When I walk around San Francisco, I have always felt an almost damn near tangible feeling that I was among spirits both angelic and artistic who weave both elements together. I don't know if it's the fog that does it or if it's in the air or the ground you walk on. Perhaps it is a combination of all of them or none at all.
The thing of it is that you didn't have to be from the Bay Area to become a fixture there if you became a part of the landscape and you had the gift of expressing yourself through some kind of art form. Once us Bay Area people knew who you were and accepted you as among kindred open-minded spirits in touch with the artistic muse that we could never explain clearly (but knew existed), you were considered a member of our society. Janis Joplin may have hailed from Texas, but she became one of our own. Well, James Gurley came from back East as well. He met a kindred spirit in Janis Joplin and then Big Brother & the Holding Company became an even greater entity than it was before Janis arrived.
Like Jerry Garcia, fellow Big Brother bandmate Sam Andrew, Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina and Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen (Carlos Santana would follow along slightly afterwards), they were breathing the same air. As a result, something was definitely right because these guys all became trailblazers in the sound department. Apparently, James was one of the first to tell people that it was o.k. to stretch the boundaries as he was doing it with no feeling of guilt himself.
In the wonderful DVD called Nine Hundred Nights (a documentary on Big Brother & the Holding Company from back when Janis was a member of the band), there is an interview segment of James Gurley talking about being influenced by Jazz great John Coltrane and how he exploded past musical boundaries. James took that mindset and made it a part of the spiritual mindset of the San Francisco scene as well as in the essence of his guitar playing.
What he did in his time with Big Brother is something which will never be taken from him. Over the years, revisionist critics made it a point of slagging Gurley and Andrew for being sloppy and for letting the songs go on too long instead of tightening up the structures of the music. Gurley led the way in making an art form out of strangling your guitar and to make feedback a normal part of expression. How can anybody fault him for this? What exactly is wrong with this? What James Gurley did was embody freedom through the breaking of barriers. He wasn't the only one doing it, but he was doing it and he did it well. It would really be nice to see some of these critics who have taken the piss out of Gurley and Andrews and try to do what they did. Let's reverse the roles and see if they'd like to recant some of their statements.
The Cheap Thrills album is the one which broke Janis into the big-leagues. The first album was a very underrated album and it contained the seeds of the multi-colored explosion to come with Cheap Thrills. Cheap Thrills was the album which changed the landscape in San Francisco along with the word of mouth news of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane live shows. Listen to the album. The whole point wasn't to be perfect. If there was a point, it was to be free and show people just how mindblowing and beautiful freedom is. Though Cheap Thrills isn't a true live album (it was made to sound like one), it really shows you what happened when they really cut loose as a band. It was alos the album where Jnais was part of band. They were not billed as Janis Jpolin with Big Brother & the Holding Company back then. They were a team. It took for Albert Grossman to get Janis to take on becoming JANIS and then everybody else took second to her billing after she left Big Brother.
And if you really want to get a treat and you own either an SACD or Universal player, then get the SACD version of Cheap Thrills and get completely blown out of your socks by the extra couple of minutes of feedback that Gurley and Andrew added to the classic "Piece of My Heart" back then that you won't hear on the old LP's or even any of the CD reissues. Add to the fact that this period of time in the '60s was not a mono type environment, it was a multi-layered multi-colored stereo experience, listening to this work in 5.1 is downright trip inducing unto itself.
And if you want to go beyond Cheap Thrills, then pick up the Columbia/Legacy CD Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company-Live at Winterland '68 and listen to this non-studio work of two shows. You'll get to hear the gloriously distorted Gibson SG of Gurley's in all of its glory.
I am going to miss James Gurley a tremendous deal because he was also a character. I have seen interviews of him over the years and he always seemed like someone you'd want to know because he wasn't dull. I privately carried with myself the hope that I would meet him. Sadly, it never happened. I have a big hole in my heart right now because he has passed away. I'm sure that he has seen Janis again and that he's going to get to hang out with John Coltrane too.
The next time I have the great fortune of walking around in my dearly beloved San Francisco, I know I am going to feel his spirit and what he left among the spirits and in the fog. I will feel that history almost breathing and whispering to me. And I'll know that the history and the spirits will be fuller because James added to the legacy of the San Francisco which still lives if you still your mind long enough to hear it within your heart.
So long, Saint James. You are already sorely missed.