Santa Monica Pier — Where Jim Morrison Wrote 'The End'

According to Ray Manzarek, The Doors' keyboardist, Jim Morrison wrote 'The End' beneath the Santa Monica Pier — sitting under the boardwalk, alone, working out the lyrics and structure of what would become one of the most unsettling songs in rock history. The claim comes from Manzarek's own testimony, making it a primary account from the person closest to Morrison during the band's formation. Morrison was living a semi-itinerant life on Venice Beach and the Santa Monica area in 1965 and 1966, sleeping on rooftops and beaches while the band was taking shape.

'The End' began as a relatively simple breakup song and evolved through the Doors' residency at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in 1966 into the sprawling, Oedipal psychodrama that appears on their self-titled debut album. The song runs to nearly twelve minutes on the record and was used by Francis Ford Coppola to open Apocalypse Now (1979), cementing its place in cultural history. The Whisky a Go Go famously fired the band after Morrison performed the song's most explicit passage live.

The Santa Monica Pier is a public landmark at the foot of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, at the western end of Route 66. The area beneath the pier — its dark pilings, the sound of waves — is freely accessible at low tide and unchanged in character from Morrison's time there. The broader Venice and Santa Monica beach community where Morrison lived in 1965–66 is the geography of The Doors' origin story.