Song of the Day — March 18
The Doors — “The End” — 1967
The Doors — “The End” — 1967
18.March.2021
The Doors
“The End”
1967
A long and fabled history surrounds The Doors and this song from The Doors self-titled debut album.
Like many songs, “The End” has its origin in heartbreak.
Originally written by lead singer Jim Morrison about his break up with his girlfriend Mary Werbelow, it evolved (or devolved, depending on your perspective) into a 12+ minute peculiar opus. At the same time, The Doors served as the house band at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.
Even the songwriter himself has no clue what the song is about. In an interview with Rolling Stone, from 1969, Morrison said:
“I really don’t know what I was trying to say. It just started out as a simple goodbye song … Probably just to a girl, but I could see how it could be goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don’t know.”
However, in the same interview, Morrison did cop to some meaning behind one of the signature lines: “My only friend, The End”:
“Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah — I guess it is a friend.”
The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, a man who was convinced Jim Morrison was the progenitor of art, literature, and rock music, ascribed the setting of “The End” as a classic bit of Greek drama.
Let me clarify.
Manzarek is referring to the provocative spoken words of the fifth verse, also called the Oedipus section:
The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived
And then he paid a visit to his brother
And then he walked on down the hall
And he came to a door
And he looked inside
“Father?”
“Yes, son?”
“I want to kill you.”
“Mother? I want to…”
We can’t hear exactly what he wants to do to his mother through the original studio version's unintelligible screaming. That said, it can be heard on any of the numerous live recordings.
Morrison is screaming: “Mother? I want to fuck you.”
A remixed version of “The End” emphasizes the Oedipal section and other Morrison scats and expletives in the song can be heard in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.
Manzarek asserts Morrison is giving voice in a rock ’n’ roll setting to the Oedipus complex. At the time, 1967, the Oedipus complex was running rampant among those who practiced Freudian psychology.
As you read what The Doors drummer John Densmore wrote in his autobiography — Riders On The Storm: My Life With Jim Morrison And The Doors — about Morrison’s explanation of “The End” keep in mind that psychedelics were VERY popular among the counter-culture — of which The Doors were firmly embedded.
Densmore wrote:
“…essentially boils down to this, kill all those things in yourself which are instilled in you and are not of yourself, they are alien concepts which are not yours, they must die. Fuck the mother is very basic, and it means to get back to the essence, what is reality, what is, fuck the mother is very basically mother, mother-birth, real, you can touch it, it’s nature, it can’t lie to you. So what Jim says at the end of the Oedipus section, which is essentially the same thing that the classic says, kill the alien concepts, get back reality, the end of alien concepts, the beginning of personal concepts.”
Jim Morrison’s insolent and rebellious nature, and heavy use of LSD, made the recording of “The End” and The Doors challenging for producer Paul A. Rothschild.
Morrison was lying on the studio floor mumbling during one recording session, “Fuck the mother, kill the father,” before he suddenly rose and threw a TV at the control room window. Rothschild sent the singer home.
However, allegedly very high on LSD, Morrison returned late at night and broke into the studio and soaked it with a fire extinguisher.
Critic’s largely rank The Doors as a seminal album of the era.
Crawdaddy, America’s first magazine of rock criticism, Crawdaddy founder Paul Williams called The Doors “an album of magnitude, with which ‘contemporary ‘jazz’ and ‘classical’ composers must try to measure up.”
Everyone’s favorite curmudgeon, Robert Christgau, was less enthusiastic (shocking). He did call “Break on Through” a “great hard rock original.” Still, He skewered more “esoteric” material like the “long, obscure dirge ‘The End’” for its “nebulousness” lyrics passing “for depth among so many lovers of rock poetry.”
Out of all of these that I have written, I can count on one hand the times I have found myself in agreement with Robert Christgau — this is one of them. I find the song marginally interesting but mostly insufferable.
“The End” ranked #336 on Rolling Stone’s magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Guitarist Robbie Krieger’s guitar solo on the song managed a #93 showing on Guitar World’s “100 Greatest Solos of All Time.”
And in a bizarre turn of fate, “The End” was the last song the original group performed at their last concert on December 12, 1970, in New Orleans.
Jim Morrison would die seven months later, in Paris, France.
Keyboardist Ray Manzarek would champion Jim Morrison until he died in 2013.
Guitarist Robbie Krieger was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. He continues to play guitar.
Drummer John Densmore continues to play drums and write. His third book, The Seekers: Meetings With Remarkable Musicians, was published in 2020.
Lastly, this concludes my Album of the Day, Song of the Day, Podcast of the Day, and/or TV Show of the Day exercise.
One year ago, I began writing these weekly, thinking that it would only be a few weeks of quarantine. As the weeks went by, I decided to do it daily. To keep things interesting for me, I started doing Songs of the Day and other stuff to keep me engaged.
I wrote every day for a few months, but as the pandemic raged around the world, I got exhausted — just like everyone else. At the same time, I did discover some new artists and re-discovered some old ones. However, keeping up that momentum just wasn’t possible. I put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself, which sucked the fun out of the discovery and the writing.
Right around the holidays, I decided that I would stop at the one-year mark.
Here we are. One year later.
The timing of ending this and the lessening of restrictions around COVID-19 and the rising vaccination rate is purely coincidental.
Many thanks to everyone who read and commented, but mostly thanks to those who might have been turned on to some new music or re-discovered some old music.
“People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.”
— Taylor Swift
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