in
Music
—
From a Breakup to a Breakthrough: The Wild Transformation of The Doors' 'The End'
The Doors' 12-minute epic 'The End' is famed for its dark, Oedipal themes. But it began as a simple, sad song Jim Morrison wrote about a breakup with his girlfriend, Mary Werbelow, before live improvisation on the Sunset Strip transformed it into a mythological masterpiece.
When you hear the opening notes of “The End,” the final track on The Doors' 1967 debut album, you’re transported to a place of darkness, mystery, and primal energy. It’s a 12-minute psychedelic journey that has become synonymous with the Vietnam War thanks to its iconic use in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It feels ancient, mythological, and deeply unsettling. But this sprawling epic, famous for its shocking Oedipal climax, began its life as something far more mundane: a simple breakup song.
From Heartbreak to Haunting
In 1965, a young Jim Morrison was dealing with the end of his relationship with his first serious girlfriend, Mary Werbelow. To process his feelings, he wrote a song. It was a short, conventional, and melancholic goodbye. The original lyrics were straightforward, with lines like “This is the end, beautiful friend / This is the end, my only friend, the end / It hurts to set you free / But you'll never follow me.”
As Doors drummer John Densmore later recalled, the song was initially just that—a farewell. There was no hint of the sprawling, improvisational monster it would become.
“At one time, Jim said it was a simple goodbye song to his girlfriend, Mary. I thought, ‘Wow, a little intense for a breakup song, but okay.’” - John Densmore
The Crucible of the Sunset Strip
The song’s radical transformation began during The Doors' residency as the house band at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in 1966. Playing multiple sets a night, the band needed to stretch their material. “The End” became their closing number and a canvas for experimentation. The instrumental sections grew longer, with Robby Krieger’s Indian raga-inspired guitar weaving intricate patterns, Ray Manzarek’s organ creating a hypnotic drone, and Densmore’s drumming providing a fluid, cymbal-less pulse.
This extended musical space gave Morrison the freedom to improvise. Night after night, he would ad-lib poetry, adding new images and verses. The song became a living, breathing entity, morphing with each performance. It was during these nightly rituals, often fueled by LSD and the permissive atmosphere of the 60s, that the song began to drift from a personal lament into a universal myth.
The Night That Changed Everything
One fateful night at the Whisky, Morrison took the improvisation to a shocking new level. As the band vamped, he launched into a spoken-word section based on the Greek tragedy of Oedipus Rex, a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother. In a trance-like state, Morrison chanted the infamous lines:
“Father? / Yes son? / I want to kill you. / Mother? / I want to...”
He punctuated the final line with a primal scream that echoed through the stunned club. The band, caught off guard but locked into the performance, crashed and swelled behind him. While the audience and his bandmates were mesmerized, the club's owner was not. The Doors were fired on the spot. But the performance was a point of no return; the Oedipal section was now a permanent, terrifying fixture of the song.
Keyboardist Ray Manzarek later interpreted the moment not as a literal confession, but as a piece of performance art. He explained that Morrison was “giving voice in a rock ‘n’ roll setting to the Oedipus complex… He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre.”
Capturing Lightning in a Bottle
When it came time to record their debut album, capturing the song's live energy was a challenge. Producer Paul A. Rothchild had the band record in a darkened studio, lit only by candles, to replicate the atmosphere of the Whisky. The final 12-minute masterwork was reportedly pieced together from two separate takes. The result was a flawless, haunting recording that sealed the song's legacy. It was no longer a simple goodbye to a girl named Mary. It had become a goodbye to innocence, to certainty, and to the conventional structure of a pop song. It had truly become 'The End.'