The Wild Story of Janis Joplin Fighting Off Jim Morrison With a Glass Bottle (Maybe More Than Once)

As rock stars of the same musical era and fellow members of the 27 Club, we often associate Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison as kindred contemporaries: two artists who were groundbreakingly devoted to their craft but, tragically, too susceptible to the hedonistic whims of the rock ‘n’ roll world. But if you were to ask Joplin, she might have had different opinions about being lumped into a group with Morrison.

While flowing booze, plenty of drugs, and the passing of time can make it difficult to separate fact from fiction, several witnesses have attested to Joplin having to correct Morrison’s lewd, raucous, and inappropriate behavior via a glass bottle of Southern Comfort.

Depending on which stories you choose to believe, she might have had to take this disciplinarian action more than once.

Janis Joplin Fighting Off Jim Morrison At Los Angeles Party

The creepy, cringey, and painful story of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison’s violent encounter begins with a seemingly innocuous party invitation from producer Paul Rothschild. Rothschild thought Joplin and Morrison could find common ground as fellow rockers and used his party at Hidden Hills in Los Angeles to facilitate a meet-up. As was the norm at rock ‘n’ roll shindigs in the 1960s (and, let’s be honest, beyond), alcohol and drugs quickly began flowing freely.

Morrison’s reputation for lewd and crude behavior certainly preceded him, and alcohol only made this type of behavior worse. According to Rothschild, the Doors frontman tried to move his meeting with Joplin toward something more like a one-night stand than a mutual meeting of the minds. Joplin, famous for her frontwoman work with Big Brother and the Holding Company, had none of it. Eventually, Morrison’s behavior got so intolerable that she asked Rothschild to take her home in his car.

The “Riders on the Storm” singer followed Rothschild and Joplin to the car, even going so far as to try and pull Joplin out of the car by her hair. Joplin took her handy glass bottle of Southern Comfort, a sweet whiskey she always kept close by, and hit Morrison over the head, knocking him out cold. Even after this violent incident, Morrison still tried to pursue Joplin. “I had to say, ‘Jim, Janis doesn’t think it would be a good idea for you two to get together again.’ And they never did. He was crushed,” Rothschild remembered (via Society of Rock).

The L.A. Party Might Not Have Been The Last Time

According to other accounts, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin had a similar encounter on the East Coast, too. Per this sordid story, the two rockstars found themselves in the same room at a star-studded jam session in Manhattan’s The Scene, a nightclub run by talent manager Steve Paul. On one fateful night, Joplin, Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, the McCoys, and other staples of the 1960s rock scene were all in attendance. Morrison, naturally, had already tied one off.

While Hendrix was performing on the small nightclub stage, Morrison began his usual routine of lewd showboating. “It was a tasteless exhibition of scene-stealing, something Morrison was really into,” Danny Fields, Elektra Records publicist, later recalled to Louder Sound. “To top it all off, Janis, who had been sitting in the back of the room, saw this happening and suddenly appeared at the edge of the stage with a bottle in one hand and her drink in the other.”

“Janis stepped in and hit Jim over the head with the bottle,” Fields continued, “then she poured her drink over him. The three of them started grabbing and rolling all over the floor in a writhing heap of hysteria. I swear there was, like, fur flying, like a cloud of dust around them, as if they were in a dry river bed. They were in a tangle of broken glass, dust, and guitars. A lot of dust and feathers and leathers and satins went flying around.”

Interestingly, all three musicians involved in the alleged scuffle tragically died at 27 years old. While it’s difficult to differentiate between telephone gossip and fact, the stories are a testament to the fact that when you put three lightning-in-a-bottle personalities in the same room, there will be explosive consequences.

Photo by Estate Of Keith Morris/Redferns/Getty Images