Part Three: High Altitude and Turbulence

Excerpts from Joe Cocker - With A Little Help From My Friends - The Authorized Biography by J.P. Bean, published by Omnibus Press, London and Hannibal Verlag, Vienna

America loved Joe Cocker from his first television appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1969. The Press seized upon him. Life Magazine called Joe "The voice of all those blind criers and crazy beggars and maimed men who summon up a strength we'll never know to bawl out their souls in the streets."

However, Joe wasn't singing in the streets. He was singing at all the major rock festivals of that summer, culminating in the filmed triumph of Woodstock before half a million people (a phenomenal rip-roaring testimony to Joe Cocker in his absolute prime).

Of the ensuing "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," Joe has said: "my thoughts were off to Venus, heading for outer space." Along with Leon Russell and a menagerie of musicians, managers, roadies, wives, girlfriends, hangers on, children, a spotted dog plus a film crew, Joe played forty-eight cities in fifty-six days, to rapturous receptions everywhere.

The tour left Joe battered, exhausted, and far from Venus. He ended up, per his own words, "in a heap in Los Angeles, very disillusioned with the rock business."