Los Angeles, 1967. Hidden Hills, a party, late afternoon turning into night. Two of the biggest names in rock music are in the same room. Jim Morrison, Janice Joplain. The producer who arranged it thought he was doing something good. He thought two forces of nature would recognize each other, that something extraordinary might happen.

 Something extraordinary did happen, just not what he planned. By the end of the night, Jim Morrison was on the ground, knocked cold by a bottle of Southern Comfort, swung by the woman he had just grabbed by the hair. This is that night. The man behind this night was Paul Rothschild. Producer, the Door’s producer, one of the most respected ears in Los Angeles.

Rothschild had a theory. Janice Joplain and Jim Morrison were the two most electrifying live performers in America. Both raw, both dangerous, both capable of making a room stop breathing. In his mind, they were made for each other. He arranged a party at a house in Hidden Hills, invited both of them, and gave them one instruction. Arrive sober.

Remember each other in the morning. They both listened. They both arrived sober. For approximately 45 minutes, Roth’schild’s theory was correct. Janice and Jim talked, really talked. There was something between them immediately. The specific recognition that happens when two people who have both been told they are too much finally meet someone who understands what that means. He gets it.

He gets what it costs. the stage and the room after the noise and the silence. He gets the gap. Then the drink started and Jim Morrison disappeared. Not physically, he was still in the room. But the man Janice had been talking to was gone. In his place was something else, something that Rothschild would later describe with one word, a cretton.

 And then Morrison found the pool table, the wreck room, pool table, drinks everywhere. Morrison joined the game. Janice was there. Exactly what he said is unclear. Accounts differ. What everyone agrees on. Morrison offended her. The most likely version, the one that matches everything known about him, is that he told her she couldn’t sing the blues.

Four words. You can’t sing blues to Janice Joplain, the woman who had grown up on Bessie Smith, who had listened to Big Mama Thornton until the records wore out, who had been singing the blues since she was 17 in Texas bars, who had stood on the Mterrey stage and stopped 7,000 people cold with 4 minutes of blues.

 He doesn’t know what he just said. He has no idea what he just said. He thinks it’s an insult. He doesn’t know it’s the one thing you do not say. Janice said something back. Sharp, direct. Morrison pushed harder. She pushed back. The room felt it. Morrison kept going. Janice turned away. That should have been the end. It wasn’t. She nearly made it.

 Roth’schild walked her out. She got to the car. The door was open. She was getting in. Then footsteps behind her. Fast, unsteady, loud. Morrison had followed her out. He was still talking, still pushing. The drunk logic of a man who cannot hear. No. Janice ignored him, got in the car, reached for the door. Morrison reached into the car window, and grabbed her by the hair hard. He pulled. Don’t think.

Don’t think about it. Your hand knows what to do. Your hand already knows. Janice had a bottle of Southern Comfort. She always had a bottle of Southern Comfort. It was her drink, her trademark, her constant. Her hand found it. She didn’t hesitate. She swung. The bottle connected with the side of Jim Morrison’s head.

 He went down cold on the ground outside the party in the driveway of the hidden hills house, knocked out by a woman he had underestimated in every possible way. Roth’schild stood there. He didn’t know what to say. Janice looked down at Morrison on the ground, then at Rothschild. Don’t give him my number. She got in the car. She left.

 And here is the part nobody expects. The next day, Jim Morrison showed up at rehearsal, head probably pounding, dignity completely gone, and he asked Paul Roth’schild for Janice Joplain’s phone number. Not once, multiple times. He was smitten. I had to say, Roth’schild remembered, “Jim, Janice doesn’t think it would be a good idea for you two to get together again.

” Morrison was crushed. David Crosby had a theory about Morrison. He thought Jim was a masochist who got drunk and picked fights specifically so he’d get hurt. If that was what he was looking for, Janice had obliged. They never saw each other again. Both of them would be dead within 3 years. Both of them 27 years old.

 But that wasn’t the only time. Spring 1968, New York City. Steve Paul’s The Scene. A small underground club, 100 people maximum. On one particular night, Jimmy Hendris, Jim Morrison, Janice Joplain, Johnny Winter, Buddy Miles. The greatest concentration of raw musical power in one small room in the history of rock and roll.

 Hrix and Morrison got on the tiny stage together. It should have been legendary. Morrison was drunk again. He kept interrupting Hrix, talking over him, grabbing the microphone. Hrix kept playing, patient in the way that only truly great musicians can be patient. And then Janice Joplain, watching from the crowd, had seen enough.

 She picked up a bottle. She walked toward the stage. What happened next cleared the room. But here is what both of these nights actually tell you. The story that gets told is about a fight. A bottle, a driveway, a man knocked out, a woman driving away. That’s the version that gets remembered. But the real story isn’t the bottle.

 The real story is what happened before the bottle. 45 minutes at a party where two people who had both been told they were too much found each other. Where Janice Joplain saw something in Jim Morrison that she recognized. The gap between who you are on stage and who you are in the room after. She saw it because she lived it. And then he got drunk and threw it away.

The bottle wasn’t anger. The bottle was a boundary. The bottle was a sentence that said, “You do not get to do this.” Port Arthur had taught Janice Joplain that she was too much, too loud, too visible, too everything. But Port Arthur had also taught her something else. She knew exactly what she was worth.

 And nobody nobody got to tell her otherwise. David Crosby said it best. Two of a kind. They hated what they saw in each other. Maybe. Or maybe Janice just understood something Morrison never did. You can be everything the stage needs you to be and still know when to put down the drink and pick up a bottle. Jim Morrison grabbed Janice Joplain by the hair in a driveway in Los Angeles in 1967.

She picked up a bottle and knocked him cold. She told Roth’schild, “Don’t give him my number.” She got in the car. She left. Three years later, both of them were gone. Both 27 years old. Both still arguing in every song they ever made with a world that had told them they were too much. Janice Joplain never talked about this story publicly.

 She didn’t need to. The bottle said everything. There is a version of this story where people feel sorry for Morrison. There is another version. The version where a woman from Port Arthur, Texas, who had been told her whole life that she was wrong and too much and not enough, stood in a driveway in Los Angeles and said, “Not this time, not with my hair, not with my body, not with me.” That version is also true.

 You decide which one you want to remember. Subscribe. The next story is already waiting.