‘The End’: The Doors controversial lyrical classic
The Doors and controversy went hand in hand when they started on the Sunset Strip. The ‘Summer of Love’ was already starting, but Jim Morrison’s sinister slant on rock and roll brought a glinting edge to Flower Power that had previously only left shadows in the darkest corners of the literary world. In between his poetic musings onstage, the band’s decision to stretch out ‘The End’ made for one of their most intense listens.
Spanning over ten minutes, the original context for the song was a simple one and primarily intended as a sad breakup track, with Morrison bidding farewell to his girlfriend. However, when the band got to playing the song live, the music would morph into something different, as Morrison would start improvising lyrics on the spot inspired by the poetry that was littering his internal creation.
When the band first played it, pianist Ray Manzarek talked about Morrison playing the improv for the first time at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, saying: “It’s packed, and Jim had lured the audience into a bit of a daze. Time was frozen. It felt like nothing was going on except the music. And he said, ‘the killer awoke before dawn’. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, what is he gonna do?’”.
What Morrison launched into featured a haunting story about a serial killer who takes a face from an ancient gallery and turns up at his childhood home. Though the macabre side of rock and roll has always been there, Morrison took things into the realm of high art as he recreated the Greek tragedy of Oedipus Rex. Within the lyrics, he delicately denotes desires to kill his father and fornicating with his mother.
Although the album version was full of expletives, engineer Bruce Botnik talked about the song needing that sexual energy. He said: “In the one version, the word ‘fuck’ needed to be edited out. But it enhances the performance. It’s almost like a percussion instrument going throughout the song”.
While the recording may have been drenched in the theatrical brilliance of the Lizard King, the studio energy would not fly in one of the most popular bars in Los Angeles. As soon as Morrison launched into his expletive-filled rant, The Doors were cut off and banned from playing the Whisky ever again.
While Morrison may have been looking to paint a dark picture, these lyrics would return to haunt The Doors. Being at the forefront of the Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, ‘The End’ became a stand-in for every dark thought running through soldiers’ minds in the Vietnam war. As we see Martin Sheen slowly descend into madness, the track plays out and, in turn, becomes a footnote for every horror we see henceforth.
In the midst of the poetry, Morrison also slips some of his philosophies on the life he saw around him. Though the line “lost in a Roman wilderness of pain/ and all the children are insane” may have fit in with the Oedipal nature of the lyric, it could easily be applied to the flower generation, looking to drop acid and see what would happen the next day.
Although Morrison seemed to have an agenda when writing this song, he mentioned the piece having many different meanings, saying, “Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don’t know. I think it’s sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be”. While censors may have latched onto the profane language, snubbed the serial killer references and done away with the incest at the core of the subject matter, the real darkness at the centre of this song is being forever unsure of Morrison’s honest meaning.
