It began as a simple break-up song for a lost love. It ended up becoming one of rock music’s darkest, strangest and most disturbing masterpieces. The haunting track “The End” by The Doors started life in the summer of 1965 after frontman Jim Morrison was dumped by his longtime girlfriend, art student Mary Werbelow. Heartbroken Morrison poured his feelings into a tender goodbye song. The couple had first met three years earlier on a beach in Clearwater, Florida. Their relationship seemed strong enough that when Morrison moved to University of California, Los Angeles to study film in 1964, Werbelow followed him across the country to California. Yet by the summer of 1965 their romance was cracking. At the same time fate intervened on another beach — Venice Beach — where Morrison bumped into fellow UCLA film student Ray Manzarek. Manzarek later recalled the chance meeting vividly in a 2013 interview. When he asked Morrison what he had been doing since graduation, the singer replied he had been “consuming a bit of LSD and writing songs.” Within an hour the two had decided to form a band. They even settled on the name — The Doors. That same summer, Werbelow’s life was heading in a different direction. Manzarek remembered her as “a fox,” and she had just been crowned “Gazzari’s Go-Go Girl of 1965” at a popular Sunset Strip nightclub. She dreamed of breaking into show business. Morrison was unimpressed. He urged her to focus on painting instead. Werbelow fired back with her own advice — suggesting Morrison should focus on his studies and pursue a master’s degree instead of chasing a rock band dream. The clash proved fatal for the relationship. Soon their three-year romance ended. Within days Morrison began rehearsing with his new bandmates: Manzarek on keyboards, Robby Krieger on guitar and John Densmore on drums. Out of heartbreak came the first version of “The End.” The early lyrics were deeply emotional but simple. “This is the end, beautiful friend,” Morrison sang. Originally the song lasted just two and a half minutes. But when the band began playing club gigs — often performing four or five 45-minute sets per night — the track grew longer. Morrison started improvising poetry during the extended instrumental sections. Then came the moment that shocked everyone. During a performance at the legendary Whisky a Go Go, Morrison launched into a bizarre new monologue. “The killer awoke before dawn…” he began. The speech spiraled into a shocking Oedipus-inspired rant involving violent and explicit references to his parents. The reaction was immediate. The club owner stormed upstairs and fired the band on the spot. “You’re fired! Don’t ever come back,” Manzarek later recalled him shouting. Despite the scandal, the song kept evolving. By August 1966, the band recorded “The End” at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. The final version stretched to more than 11 minutes. Manzarek later claimed Morrison was on “a huge dose of acid” during the recording session. By 1969 Morrison himself admitted he wasn’t even sure what the song really meant. Speaking to Rolling Stone, he said it began as a goodbye song “probably just to a girl.” But over time it seemed to grow into something much bigger. “It could be goodbye to a kind of childhood,” he said. “I really don’t know.” The singer also revealed he once met a young woman who had been admitted to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute after a drug trip. She told him “The End” was a favourite among patients there. Even Morrison seemed startled by how deeply listeners interpreted his lyrics. Years later the track gained another life in cinema. Director Francis Ford Coppola used “The End” at the start of his Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. The reason was surprisingly simple. Coppola reportedly liked the irony of opening the movie with a song titled “The End.” It was a twist Morrison himself might have enjoyed. What began as heartbreak on a beach had turned into one of rock’s most haunting creations. How a simple break-up song evolved into The Doors' darkest, weirdest and most disturbing freak-out
