How Kris Kristofferson brought Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen together
“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,” begins Leonard Cohen’s ode to the memory of Janis Joplin. But ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ isn’t just about the singer. It’s an ode to an entire scene and a moment in time when a generation of talent revolved around one axis and buzzed through the same hallowed hallways of a single hotel. Where punks met poets, musicians met superstars, and Cohen met Joplin with the help of Kris Kristofferson.
There are countless incredible stories that echo out of the Hotel Chelsea in New York. They range from the weird and wild to the utterly silly, from murders to petty arguments between stars like a minor battle between the Grateful Dead and Andy Warhol, from love affairs to tumultuous breakups. But Cohen’s story of his time at the Hotel is beautifully humanising, revealing a shy side to the legend.
In 1966, Leonard Cohen landed in New York. Up until this point, he had been set on being a writer and only a writer. He was away on the Greek island of Hydra, happily writing away at novels in a state of relative obscurity. But music had always been a mistress. So when Judy Collins recorded his song ‘Suzanne’ and suddenly shot his name to notoriety, he followed it off the island and into the city, planting himself amongst the bustling countercultural scene.
But unlike any grand story of a young, hot-shot writer coming to the big city and finding fame and fortune, Cohen’s tale is distinctly normal. He came to New York and felt totally lost. He didn’t know anyone, no one knew who he was, so for a while he was just lonely and desperate for friendship or romance or really any interaction at all.
That was the energy of one Spring night in 1968. “It was a dismal evening in New York City,” he reminisced decades later at a concert. “I had a cheeseburger; it didn’t help at all,” he continued, “I went to the White Horse Tavern looking for Dylan Thomas, but Dylan Thomas was dead.”
Downtrodden, he made his way back to the hotel to do the same boring and lonely journey up to his room on autopilot as he walked into the Chelsea’s iffy elevator. “I was an expert on the buttons of that elevator,” he joked, “One of the few technologies I really ever mastered. The door opened. I walked in. Put my finger right on the button. No hesitation. Great sense of mastery in those days.”
All of that is to say that Cohen was in need of a moment of glory. He was waiting patiently for his music career to break through to the success he would later get. He was waiting to gain his lady’s man reputation, his renown as a writer, and his grand legacy as one of music’s finest poets. All of that was still to come, but that night in 1968, fate stepped in with the opportunity to fake it, even for a moment. Fate gave him the chance to leave behind his stagnant self and step into celebrity shoes.
“‘Are you looking for someone?’” he recalled saying to a lady in the elevator, trying to strike up a conversation. “She said, ‘Yes, I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’” The chance was there, and he took it, “I said, ‘Little lady, you’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.’”
The “little lady” in question was Janis Joplin, and the night in question inspired ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ as the couple exited the elevator together and spent a night tangled up in the now infamous “unmade bed”. A few years later, Joplin would actually meet the real Kris Kristofferson, and the pair would strike up a short yet intense romance. But for now, Cohen was happy to be a stand-in.
“Those were generous times. Even though she knew that I was someone shorter than Kris Kristofferson, she never let on. Great generosity prevailed in those doom decades,” Cohen recalled fondly of the night when the country rocker’s reputation preceded his own, allowing him a chance at love that would inspire a beloved anthem of loss.
