Oh, you know, I love you. The cop dang or away. They sometimes they overreact. >> For decades, fans believed Janice Joplain and Jim Morrison as the wild twins of the 60s. Appairing so explosive that a single collaboration could have shaken the entire world. But the truth was the exact opposite.
Janice despised him so deeply that even her closest friends hesitated to say his name around her. It all started with a single night, one accidental moment side by side. And from there, the two icons turned into sworn enemies. No apology ever came. No forgiveness ever followed. What happened between them? Stay with us because the truth will leave you speechless when the world thought they belonged together.
In early 1968, long before their names became tangled in rumors, Janice Joplain actually spoke highly of Jim Morrison. At the time, she was still performing with Big Brother and the Holding Company, often bouncing between San Francisco and Los Angeles for shows. In that summer, in the KFRC Fantasy Fair event, she watched Morrison command a crowd with a kind of raw theatricality she hadn’t seen before.
She leaned toward a musician standing beside her and said quietly, “He’s out of his mind, but he’s good.” That was the first seed of curiosity. A few weeks later, they ended up together again at a private gathering in Laurel Canyon. This meeting became the first time Janice and Morrison spoke directly. The conversation started simple.
Blues influences, performing exhaustion, how the industry braced them into roles they never asked for. Janice was surprised by how soft-spoken Morrison was when sober, how he listened without interrupting, how he seemed genuinely interested in her stories of Port Arthur and the road. She told a friend afterward, half amused, half impressed.
I didn’t expect him to be polite. For Janice, that was high praise. In those early interactions, nothing hinted that she would one day despise him. In fact, when Morrison complimented her performance at the Mterrey Pop Festival replay earlier that year, Janice blushed slightly and joked that she would steal his audience if he didn’t keep up.
He laughed, told her he doubted anyone could outsc her. And for a brief moment, the two rising stars seemed strangely in sync. When producer Paul Rothschild, who worked with both Janice and the Doors, noticed this unexpected warmth, he became convinced the two would click creatively. He told Janice in late August 1968 that he wanted to introduce them properly, somewhere quieter than Laurel Canyon, somewhere they could actually talk instead of shouting over guitars.
She didn’t hesitate. She agreed. And that decision made casually and without caution put everything in motion. Janice walked into that upcoming meeting with curiosity, maybe even a glimmer of respect. She thought Morrison was unpredictable but brilliant, troubled but interesting, someone she could spar with, laugh with, maybe collaborate with one day.
She had absolutely no idea that the next time they met, admiration would turn into shock, and that shock would turn into a hatred so deep she never forgot it. The night everything between them exploded. The meeting Rothschild arranged took place on the evening of September 13th, 1968 inside a hidden hills house that musicians often used whenever they needed privacy away from Hollywood.
The sun hadn’t fully set when Janice arrived. She expected a quiet night, conversation, maybe a few songs, and certainly nothing that would make her regret showing up inside. The atmosphere was calm. Jim Morrison stood near the back door, leaning against a post with a glass of wine that looked untouched. Janice noticed immediately.
She even teased him lightly about behaving himself. Morrison smirked, lifted the glass, and promised he was saving the wild part for later. For the first hour, there was no sign of trouble. Janice and Morrison sat on opposite ends of the same table, both engaged in the kind of artistic conversations Rothschild always hoped to record someday.
They spoke about blues phrasing, why Janice admired Bessie Smith, why Morrison felt trapped by the Lizard King persona fans forced onto him. It felt genuine, honest, human. Then reality shifted. As the room grew louder, Morrison moved from wine to bourbon, his demeanor changed with stunning speed. He pushed his chair closer to Janice, his voice thickening, his sentences drifting into rambling provocations, his earlier sensitivity vanished.
He stared at Janice with a boldness she recognized instantly. She tried to deflect with humor, something she used whenever a man became too persistent. She joked that she needed fresh air and stood up to walk toward the sliding door. Morrison followed her, shadows stretching across the living room floor as he moved. Morrison cornered her near the back porch, placing himself between her and the exit.
He leaned in, speaking close to her ear, insisting she match his intensity. Janice didn’t answer. She stepped sideways, reached for the door, and excused herself with a calmness that masked a growing unease. Once outside, she inhaled deeply and walked straight toward her station wagon parked beside a sycamore tree. She opened the driver’s door, intent on leaving before the situation escalated any further. But Morrison followed.
He stumbled across the dirt driveway, calling her name with a slurred mix of charm and entitlement. Janice climbed into the wagon, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. Then the moment struck. The moment that rewrote her opinion of him permanently. Morrison reached through the open window and grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking her backward with such force that her body twisted sideways.
The sound she made wasn’t fear. It was shock. Pure shock that anyone, let alone someone she respected hours earlier, would touch her that way. Her reaction was instantaneous. Janice’s hand darted toward the bottle resting beside her on the passenger seat. She swung with a precision that came from instinct rather than intention.
The glass exploded against Morrison’s temple, sending him collapsing onto the dirt in a motion so abrupt. Morrison lay stunned, eyes halfopen and disoriented. Blood trickled down his eyebrow, mixing with spilled liquor and dust. Janice didn’t wait for anyone’s reaction. She kicked the door shut, started the engine, and peeled away from the house with a fury that left tire marks in the gravel.
In the stunned silence afterward, witnesses struggled to process what had happened. Not because Janice fought back, but because Morrison’s aggression had revealed a side of him that even the legends rarely addressed. That night didn’t just mark the start of a feud. The truth that made her hate him forever.
Janice thought the nightmare ended the moment she sped out of that Hidden Hills driveway. But the real shock arrived the very next morning. While Janice spent her day shaken and furious, trying to make sense of Morrison’s sudden violence, he walked into the door’s rehearsal studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. He touched the bruise on his temple, laughed in front of his band, and delivered a line that would later reach Janice’s ears like a slap. She’s wild. I think she likes me.
That single sentence sliced deeper than the hair pulling itself. To Janice, it proved something far more chilling than aggression. Morrison didn’t just ignore boundaries. He recreated entire events in his mind until he became the victim, the seducer, or the hero. She knew men like that from her hometown.
Men who could twist a woman’s fear into their own fantasy. Men who believed resistance made the story better. Her hatred began exactly there. Over the following week, the story mutated. At a recording studio on Laxeneaga, someone casually mentioned that Morrison had been telling people Janice lost control from excitement.
Another musician repeated a different version. She cracked the bottle because she couldn’t handle the chemistry. Each retelling painted Janice as hysterical or infatuated. Morrison had stolen the truth of that night and sculpted it into entertainment. And the worst twist came at the Scene nightclub in New York during the East Coast Run later that year.
Janice walked in with a few friends after a set at the Fillmore East, only to hear Morrison loudly recounting the bottle incident to a circle of people who were half amused, half confused. He gestured dramatically, acting out her swing like it was slapstick comedy. When he noticed her across the room, he raised his drink toward her and smirked.
Janice froze in place, then turned and left without a word. That moment cemented everything. She realized Morrison wasn’t dangerous because of his temper. He was dangerous because he believed the world owed him the right to rewrite any woman’s truth, even when it came at her expense. From that point forward, Janice didn’t just avoid him.
She despised him with a clarity that never softened. Not even months later when their paths crossed again backstage at a festival and she refused to look at him. After that night, nothing could ever be fixed. After the scene nightclub humiliation, Janice cut Morrison out of her life with absolute precision. She didn’t want to give him even one more opportunity to distort reality.
Whenever she heard he was scheduled for the same event, she rerouted. Whenever a journalist asked about the doors, she offered a polite nod and nothing more. What people didn’t understand was that Janice never hated easily. She forgave slights quickly, dismissed insults gracefully, even laughed off rumors when others would explode.
But Morrison had crossed a boundary deeper than violence. He took her fear, recast it as desire, and performed it like a stage act. That violation of truth was the one thing she could never overlook. Ironically, both continued rising to fame in the months that followed, passing each other like nothing happened.
At the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969, Morrison arrived backstage moments before Janice someone suggested they greet each other like old friends, but she simply walked past him, eyes fixed ahead, expression unreadable. That silent dismissal carried more weight than any confrontation ever could. There was never a reconciliation, no apology, no final conversation.
When Janice died in October 1970, Morrison was reportedly stunned into quiet disbelief. Yet even then, he never corrected the stories he had spread, never acknowledged what actually happened. 9 months later, he was gone, too, leaving behind legends, music, and a feud frozen in unfinished tension. Now that the truth behind their feud is finally clear, how do you see that infamous night? Do you think Janice did what anyone in her position would have done? Or was the industry too willing to protect Morrison? Share your thoughts
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