10 Greatest Album Closers Of All Time
6. The End - The Doors (The Doors, 1967)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRzc4dPoDj0Sadly known to some of my peers as the band that wrote and recorded the original Light My Fire before it was butchered by Pop Idol triumphant, Will Young, The Doors were one of those bands (of which it can also be said of The Velvets and Love) who in their endorsement of Hippy idealism (free love, drug experimentation and freedom of expression) simultaneously hinted at the underlying cynicism and sinister nature of the era. And the Doors eponymous debut release embraces this dichotomy on songs such as Break On Through and Soul Kitchen, acid-fuelled odes to transcendence and liberty that howl with despair and pain underneath their organ-soaked soundscapes.
Before he became just another member of the 27 Club, Doors lead singer, Jim Morrison, was one of the figureheads of the mid-60s counter-culture. Becoming immortalised in music lore as the Lizard King, in recognition of his lanky stature and gyrating body parts, his vocals constantly shifted between a poetic baritone and incomprehensible ramblings. His lyrical aesthetic, influenced by the Beat stylings of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, also took inspiration from James Joyces own patented brand of stream-of-consciousness on an album that bleeds a literary sensibility.
The End itself is yet another of the bands two-faced songs, reflecting the 60s paradigm shift from dreamy optimism to the onset of conflict both at home (the continuation of the Black Civil Rights movement) and the American entry into Vietnam that left the baby-boomers and freedom fighters sickened and disillusioned with their countrys Cold War activities. Its beginning is enshrouded in a calm ambience but as soon as Morrison speaks the songs first four lines this is the end/beautiful friend/this the end/my only friend, the end we sense that the larger-than-life icon has already consigned himself to madness and chaos, foreshadowing his eventual suicide. A lyric that began life as a commemoration of a severed relationship, its hard not to read The End as a comment on the decimation and decline of the counter-culture. The elaborate plans reference the movements goals for change and waiting for the summer rain has connotations of the Napalm warfare that made all of the children (the dreamers, the U.S soldiers, the innocent Vietnamese civilians) go insane.
Morrisons tortured message of societys descent into irrationality is supplemented by the barely-coherent Oedipal musings that he embarks upon at the tracks end before inviting us to get onto the blue bus and ride into an acid haze, forgetting all of the worlds troubles. Complimented by classically-trained Ray Manzareks hypnotic organ, John Densmores jazz-infected drumming and Robbie Kriegers chameleonic, shifting guitar work, The End is a political, personal, emotional and sexual tour-de-force and a sonic manifestation of the impossible visions of hope and unity. This is hammered home in the opening credits to Francis Ford Coppolas Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, where the haunting closer to the Doors eponymous debut, soundtracks a grim back drop of Napalm destruction and swirling helicopters.