So when I came back to Nashville, I went into the Combine building late at night, and I played it over and over again, so I could get used to it without breaking up. I couldn’t listen to the song without really breaking up. Afterwards, I walked all over L.A., just in tears. Paul Rothchild, her producer, asked me to stop by his office and listen to this thing she had cut. “The first time I heard Janis Joplin’s version was right after she died. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.
Pink me and bobby mcgee free#
He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He’s drunk and ends up howling at the stars on the beach. That night, Quinn goes to a bar and gets in a fight.
He asks, ‘Where did you hear that song?’ And she tells him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from, and later she died. Later in the film, he sees this woman hanging out the wash and singing the melody that the girl used to play on the trombone. He got to the point where he couldn’t put up with her anymore and left her by the side of the road while she was sleeping. “For some reason, I thought of La Strada, this Fellini film, and a scene where Anthony Quinn is going around on this motorcycle and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded girl with him, playing the trombone.
“There was a Mickey Newbury song that was going through my mind-‘Why You Been Gone So Long?’ It had a rhythm that I really liked. How does that grab you?’ ( Laughs) I said, ‘Uh, I’ll try to write it, but I’ve never written a song on assignment.’ So it took me a while to think about. Then Fred says, ‘The hook is that Bobby McKee is a she. It’s “Me and Bobby McKee.”’ I thought he said ‘McGee.’ Bobby McKee was the secretary of Boudleaux Bryant, who was in the same building with Fred. He called one night and said, ‘I’ve got a song title for you.
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