The End (The Doors song)
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"The End" is a song by The Doors from their self-titled album. It was gestated through months of performances at Los Angeles' Whisky a Go Go, but was released in March 1967.
Influences
The spoken-word section of the song includes the lines "Father/ Yes son?/ I want to kill you/ Mother, I want to...fuck you," (with the last two words screamed unintelligibly). This is often considered an homage to Sophocles' Oedipus the King, a production of which Jim Morrison worked on while at Florida State University.Said Morrison in 1969, "Everytime I hear that song, it means something else to me. It could be goodbye to a kind of childhood." Morrison had also said that the song is an inside trip, and that "kill the father" means destroying everything hierarchical, controlling, and restrictive in one's psyche, while "fuck the mother" means embracing everything that is expansive, flowing, and alive in the psyche. This interpretation of his own lyrics recalls to us Morrison's lifelong passion for freedom. He may have been influenced by the Jungian concepts of individuation and archetypes, and was certainly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of going beyond the limited types of human beings that have so far existed by loving vitality and life ("the mother") while rejecting systems and traditions ("the father"). The lyrics' reference to "the Blue Bus" is almost certainly a reference to Indian mystic Meher Baba's "Blue Bus" tours of the 1930s. However, it may also be a reference to Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus public bus lines or Fetrow's blue bus which they took many trips in.
Music
Robby Krieger's slinky, haunting guitar lines over D drone in DADGAD tuning recall Indian drone and raga-based music, as has often been noted, and the vital, unpredictable rolling and dramatic crescendoes of John Densmore's drums recall Indian tabla rhythms. The music as a whole, though, does not sound entirely or even particularly "Indian". The sharp, ringing edge of the guitar recalls the 50s rock and roll style, while the fingerpicking attack may derive equally from the flamenco guitar style Krieger had studied as a youth and from alternate-tuned folk. Ray Manzarek's organ is used sparingly to provide the inconspicuous but essential bass line (I-V-VIII-V-I-V...) and fills. One may find a strong similarity to Chopin's "Funeral March" theme and also to Sandy Bull's guitar instrumental "Blend" - but this probably has more to do with the quality of the melodic minor scale than with influence.Structurally, the song rises to three separate mini-crescendoes separated by slower sections of half-spoken, half-sung lyrics before building to an enormous psychedelic crescendo right after Jim Morrison sings the "meet me at the back of the blue bus" verse. Previously, the song had been weaving along on its melodies to an encounter with the ruling powers of the mind, the controlling "father" structure and the longed-for "mother", or freedom. The final crescendo represents an attempt to break through to that freedom. Just afterward, "The End" departs on a wistful, post-orgasmic note when Morrison sings, "It hurts to set you free, but you'll never follow me. The end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die." In the context of Morrison's first interpretation quoted above, this lyric and the associated music that softly reiterates themes from the opening may mean that the comfort of childhood will be sacrificed for freedom.
In film
"The End" was famously used as a framing device for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, in which its dark, poetic passage marked the film's descent into the surreal. (The sound of helicopter rotors from the beginning of the film are often included in recordings of the song.)This usage has led to other, often satirical usages, ranging from a sequence on The Simpsons television series in which the song plays while Homer contemplates suicide to a Saturday Night Live sketch in which John McCain is driven to madness while campaigning for George W. Bush as a parody of Apocalypse Now. Another spoof of this occurred in 2006 in an episode of Adult Swim's cartoon The Venture Bros., but the original song was not used. Instead Hank says "Father?", Dr. Venture replies "Yes son?", and Hank says, "I want to kill you." Then Molotov Cocktease runs in and says "Hank nyet!" Hank then replies "Molotov I want to fuck you." But the "fuck you" is unintelligiable, and actually sounds quite like "kill a baby".
The song was also used in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, where it plays while the band explored drugs in the desert.
In 2000, controversial superstar Marilyn Manson used the lyrics "Mother... I want to fuck you" to end his cover version of another popular song by The Doors called 'Five to One' which can be heard as b-sides for the singles 'Disposable Teens' and 'The Fight Song' from the album Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death).
References
- Rated #26 on Blender Magazine's list of 50 worst songs of all time.
- [Lyrics]
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