The disastrous night Jimi Hendrix jammed with Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin
Some stories in musical history get lost amidst the drama of it all. With countless big moments, small interactions, and strange goings-on, some of the most interesting incidences slip away in the passing of time. One of them comes from a fateful night in New York City when Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin found themselves on a stage together.
The 1960s were a time of intense creativity. As counterculture boomed, new artists were popping up every week and seeming to rise swiftly to godlike status as they wrote themselves into history. The Doors frontman Jim Morrison, legendary guitar player and singer Jimi Hendrix, and powerhouse vocalist Janis Joplin were three of those gods. All three lived sadly short lives, but all three burned bright, even if it was fast, leaving behind powerful legacies that has made them endure as three of the most influential names in music.
The 1960s were also supposed to be a time of peace, love and togetherness. You might think that’s the atmosphere that would have filled the room during this spontaneous jam session. But no, the air was full of fighting as the night descended into chaos.
It was the spring of 1968. New York was bustling with its thriving music scene, and in one of its most beloved musical dives, Steve Paul’s The Scene, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix were enjoying a night on the tiles. The Scene was a popular place with the new music elite, with the likes of John Lennon, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and Sammy Davis Jr often among its regular crowd.
It became the famed location of late-night jams where the top musicians around could let loose. “When the late shows finished, the waitresses would begin their clean-ups, and the participants of that night’s jams would gather in the dressing rooms,” Al Kooper said of the nights. “The unknowing, paying customers would settle their bills and set out for the suburbs, and then the action would begin. We’d slowly come out, like bats in the night, and take over the stage.” Little did those common customers know that the leaders of the music world would take to the stage moments after the doors closed.
On this one evening, Morrison and Hendrix were among the gaggle. Hendrix was a regular, as Kooper remembered, “Hendrix loved this. He would show up more often than not, always with his guitar and his trusty Nagra [reel-to-reel tape recorder] in tow. He would fastidiously set up the Nagra next to him and record every jam he participated in.”
It was also a frequent haunt for Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, who would visit The Scene whenever they were in New York. On this fateful night, Hendrix and Joplin were enjoying the sights and sounds of their favourite bar when the wild Jim Morrison walked through the door. Usually found haunting the California crowd, his appearance on the East Coast was somewhat surprising.
Instantly, it felt like something could go wrong. One crowd member recalled: “When Morrison showed up he was very intoxicated, God knows on what, and he was slurring, very stoned. Jim was an ornery character when he wanted to be. He was very in-your-face. But everybody was at that time”. But it was less an issue of intoxication and more a clear clash of personalities. As Morrison clambered on stage with Hendrix, with Joplin watching from the audience, there was a disconnect immediately.
“Jimi was very different from Morrison,” an audience member said. “He had a lovely vibe about him. He was very shy and reserved. He was the same soft-spoken guy when he talked to women. Morrison was very abrupt, he said whatever he wanted to say.” It didn’t take long for Morrison to prove his aggressive nature as he seemed to make a bee-line for Joplin. Her guitarist remembered, “Jim swaggered over to where Janis and me were sitting and, without any provocation at all, he just yanked her hair down to the floor,” describing it as “almost like a Vaudeville act” as Joplin retaliated by smashing a glass bottle over his head.
Who knows what happened to start with, but there had been a long-running hatred between Joplin and Morrison. A label publicist remembered, “If you mentioned Jim’s name she would say: ‘That asshole’. She was not going to put up with what she thought was his childish, disgusting, rude behaviour, wherever she encountered it. It riled her. She was past giving him a chance.” It seems that in a world that has heralded Morrison as a kind of mythical figure, Joplin might have been the only one to try and cut him down to size as she saw right through his messiah act to simply see him as a bad guy.
Making one enemy that night wasn’t enough for Morrison, so he continued his tirade. He hopped back on stage as Lesley Chambers remembered, “He made a couple of ‘Oh-wow-wooooh’ kind of noises. He was so drunk he had to hold on to the mic stand, and every once in a while, he’d go: ‘Oooooooh! Waughhhhhh! Awoweee!’” Wailing and flailing around, it wasn’t the kind of light-hearted yet inspiring jam sessions The Scene usually houses. As a dedicated regular to the bar, it wasn’t what Hendrix was there for. He passive-aggressively remarked, “Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard the sound of Jim Morrison”. Clearly, he wasn’t a Doors fan either.
Still, it didn’t end there. Seemingly on a mission to make the stars of the music scene hate his guts, Morrison then dropped to his knees and essentially sexually assaulted Hendrix. “So Morrison has his arms wrapped round Jimi’s legs and he’s still screaming: ‘I wanna suck your cock!’” an audience member recalled. “He was very loud. And Hendrix was still attempting to play. Morrison wouldn’t let go. It was a tasteless exhibition of scene-stealing – something Morrison was really into.”
Then appeared Joplin as a kind of vengeful vigilante to protect the guitarist. With a bottle in one hand and a drink in the other, she hit him with the glass and threw the booze all over him. Chaos, naturally, ensued.
“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,” the crowd remembered. It was a scene so wild that the bar’s staff jumped in to protect Hendrix, who was part of the family there.
After the incident, they closed up shop for a few months. So, while a jam night between Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin might sound like a musical dream, it was actually a fun-ending thing of nightmares.
