10 Perfect Rock Songs That Are Ridiculously Long

For all of the peace and love that was going around in the '60s, it wasn't always people with flowers in their hair. As much as people liked to imagine this kind of utopia where everyone was united at Woodstock, there was also the Vietnam War in the backdrop and people dying left and right. This was a tense time, and the Doors distilled that feeling of pure insanity into The End.

While this was originally meant to just be a track to finish up most of the band's setlist, it was always left open ended every time they played, with Jim Morrison at center stage looking to recite poetry over the top of the droning music underneath. What he ended up giving us on the record though sounds like you're hearing a man lose his mind, starting off as a breakup song before going into a story about a killer waking before dawn and having a bit of an Oedipus complex towards the end of the song.

In between the more dark passages in the lyrics though, Morrison also makes comments on the kind of behavior he sees around him, being lost in a world where all of the children are insane. This song eventually got the Doors booted from the Whisky for being too graphic, but this wasn't just an attempt to shock people. In just 11 minutes, we all had a clear picture of what the back half of the '60s was going to look like: violent, drug-fueled, and everything falling apart.