The Doors, “The End” Live at Isle of Wight Festival

The Doors, “The End,” at the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK, 1970. From the album, Live at The Isle of Wight Festival 1970, not released until 2018, believe it or not!

Of course this is one of the greatest songs ever written, that’s obvious to anyone who’s ever heard it. This is the live version. I usually don’t like live versions better than album versions, but I’m familiar with the album version very well, and this live version was something special. He’s making a lot of stuff up here and there’s a lot of improvisational jamming but if ever a chaotic song was written about the beauty of chaos and entropy, this is it.

So this live version is really something special. I’ve heard this was a great concert, sort of the British version of Woodstock. Don’t know anyone who was there, though. The hippie movement was pretty big in the UK too, by the way.

It wasn’t just a US phenomenon. It was happening all over the most of the West to the best of my understanding. There were absolutely hippies in France, Sweden, and especially Denmark and Germany. Much of the rest of Europe was part of the Eastern Bloc, and they were not friendly to the movement.

Outside of the West, I’m not sure how big the movement was, but I suppose one can argue that some places in the world are just naturally “hippie,” so to speak. Aspects of Indian, Nepalese, and Moroccan culture absolutely come to mind.

The Beats headed to Tangier in Morocco, and India and Nepal were flooded with hippies in search of enlightenment and paradise. In a way, these were precisely the places to go. For when the hippies went to India and Nepal (or Afghanistan for that matter), after all, they were only going home again, to the Subcontinent, where the roots of the movement were birthed long ago.

There were definitely hippies in Peru in the 1970’s though, I can tell you that much. And no doubt in other parts of Latin America.

If anyone has any anecdotes about the hippie movement outside the West, let me know in the comments.

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3 thoughts on “The Doors, “The End” Live at Isle of Wight Festival”

  1. I believe Copenhagen still has a hippie area. I believe you wrote about hippies. That would’ve been a good time to visit the Middle East. A bj down the Nile would be a whole lot better if it were a hippie chick…………..

    1. Oh they absolutely have a hippie section of Copenhagen. It’s a whole large section of town full of squatters living in abandoned buildings, more or less open soft drug use, etc. No really cares and everyone just leaves them alone. I think it is called Christiana.

      A bj down the Nile would be a whole lot better if it were a hippie chick.

      Anything goes better with a hippie chick. They were pretty damn cool, most of them! I mean they were still women with all the problems that that entails, but their immersion in the permanent smiles, love everyone, good times, endless party hippie movement smoothed over a lot of the usual female drama bullshit.

      Very easygoing, cool chicks. Didn’t hate men at all. Feminism was dead back then. No one was into it. The men loved women and the women loved men and it was peace love dope all around, brother! We all loved each other, man! It was groovy!

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