Janis Joplins Mercedes Benz Lydia Hutchinson | January 19, 2014 | 30 Comments Writers: Janis Joplin, Michael McClure and Bob Neuwirth

Recorded: 1970 Its Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Sunset Sound recording studio in Los Angeles. Janis Joplin asks producer Paul Rothchild to roll tape. She has a song shed like to sing. She says it wont be necessary the presence of the backing band Full Tilt Boogie. Joplin steps to the microphone and makes a declaration. Id like to do a song of great social and political import, she says. It goes like this. Then she begins to sing, with her whiskey-soaked voice: Oh Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? / My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends Mercedes Benz is a lonely blues tune about the illusory happiness promised (but rarely delivered) by the pursuit of worldly goods, a hippie-era rejection of the consumerist ideals that Joplin saw growing up as a self-described middle-class white chick in Port Arthur, Texas. She had come to California in the early 60s and earned a place as one of the leading musical lights in a generation that shared her utopian anti-materialism. When Joplin sang, in the second and third verses of Mercedes Benz, for a color TV and a night on the town, she knew all too well that would not bring her peace. Its the want of something that gives you the blues, she once said. Its not what isnt, its what you wish was that makes unhappiness.

She began finding the words to express that complex impulse while on tour on the opposite side of the country: in New York City, during a game of pool with friends Rip Torn and Emmett Grogan. The two were singing a version of a song by poet

Michael McClure. Mostly what they remembered was the first line: Oh Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Joplin loved it and began singing along herself. Once back in California, Joplin and friend Bob Neuwirth took the fragment of McClures lyric and complemented as a full song. Joplin called McClure at his home in San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district, for his approval. Would you sing me your version? he said. She did. Well, I prefer my version, he responded, and sang his original version on the telephone line. I prefer my version! she informed him with a loud laugh. It was determined: The two interpretations would coexist in peace. Joplin was preparing to record a new album in late summer 1970. She had made her name as the frontwoman of San Franciscos Big Brother and the Holding Company from 1966 through late 1968, but her subsequent solo career had not been as well received. She now had the Doors producer Rothchild, who began by insisting that she record at Sunset Soundnot at her record label CBSs own studio. In the following weeks, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie recorded new songs like her own Move Over and Kris

Kristoffersons country-flavored Me and Bobby McGee. By Oct. 1, 1970, the album was practically ready. It wasnt a sad and tragic time, Rothchild recalled in 1992 (three years before his death). But the jovial atmosphere in the studio hid a secret: After a period of abstinence, Joplin started using heroine again. She explained to a friend that she was only using it to keep from drinking so much during the making of the album; alcohol hangovers delayed her performance in the studio. On Oct. 3, 1970; Joplin finished work at around 11 p.m., and the star returned to her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel. There she passed away from a heroin overdose during the night. She was 27. Rothchild and company fought through their shock and grief to spend the next two weeks applying the remaining overdubs needed to complete the album. The result was dubbed Pearl, after a nickname she had lately adopted. Outside the hotel on the night of her death sat Joplins car: not a Mercedes, but a Porsche she had bought in 1968 and paid friend Dave Richards $500 to paint in psychedelic colors. The hippie icon who sang, My friends all drive Porsches,. By Chris Neal

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, So Lor d, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ? Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me. I wait for delivery each day until three,

So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town ? I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.

Prove that you love me and buy the next round, Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town ?

Everybody!

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,

Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, So oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?