![]() The imminent departure of the first of the ‘big four’ male players brought an unexpected if indirect urgency into play. One of the questions that had got me interested in this subject-things coming to an end, artists’ last works, time running out-was the long-running one of Roger Federer’s eventual retirement. A line from ‘The End’ floated through my head as I watched this gladiatorial athlete ‘lost in a Roman wilderness of pain.’ It was the end, Murray said, partly because there was no end in sight-to the training, the rehab, the pain no sign when he might begin to get back to his best. The whole thing made for harrowing and, of course, absolutely absorbing viewing. If it had made the pain go away then he’d be feeling great. Had he seen a sports psychologist? Yes, but that didn’t help because the pain was still there. As often happens in these press conferences his common-sense answers made the questions a little superfluous. Murray sat there describing how the pain, not just of playing top-level tennis but of pulling on his socks and putting on his shoes at home, was too much. Which meant that his match on Monday-my Sunday in Los Angeles-against Roberto Bautista Agut might be his last. When another journalist asked if this meant the Australian Open might be his last tournament, Murray said that was quite likely. He hoped to bow out at Wimbledon in July but was not sure he would make it even that far. It was the end, he said when he came back out. Unable to answer, he left the stage for several minutes to compose himself. The first, fairly innocuous question proved too much for him. More than moving, it was devastating to watch. I was dilly-dallying, unsure how to start this book about how things end, on Thursday 10 January 2019, when, at the press conference ahead of his first-round match at the Australian Open, Andy Murray announced what amounted to his retirement. On the boardwalk at least one busker is always playing ‘Break on Through’ or one of the Doors’ other big hits. All over Venice, in fact, there are traces of the Lizard King, tributes to the rock-god Dionysus. Recently another similar mural appeared, right on my street. On the wall of the barbershop where I have my hair cut on Main Street in Venice Beach-where the Doors started out-is a mural of Jim Morrison with his bare shoulders and luxuriant black hair that always looked like it never needed cutting. ![]() (The changes were made so late in the day that the record went on sale with the old sleeve, crediting only the original musicians.) He’s since performed it live, sometimes with major overhauls to words and music, on more than sixteen hundred occasions. Dylan continued to tinker with the song in numerous ways after a test pressing of the album had been made, prepared for release, and, at the last minute, rejected in favour of a more rhythmically insistent version of ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ rerecorded with different musicians, in Minneapolis. It’s the second verse of the long opening track of Blood on the Tracks. She’s right, it’s nowhere near the end when she says this. In a version of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ the unnamed lover tells Bob Dylan (or whoever the narrator of the song is supposed to be): ‘This ain’t the end, / We’ll meet again someday on the avenue…’ In March the following year the twenty-seven-year-old Morrison moved to Paris, where he was found dead, in the bathtub of his apartment, on July 3. ‘The End’ was the last song the quartet performed live, at the Warehouse in New Orleans, on 12 December 1970. From the get-go at the Go-Go, then, Jim Morrison was busy obsessing about the end-and not just in ‘The End.’ ‘When the Music’s Over’ ends with repeated assurances that music is your only friend ‘until the End.’ It’s a safe bet, contemplating or proclaiming the end like this eventually you will be proved right. It grew out of multiple live performances at the Whisky a Go-Go in Hollywood, though no recordings of these evolving versions of the song have survived. ‘The End’ is the last track on the Doors’ first album, released in January 1967, having been recorded the previous August, when the band had been together for just over a year. If it is so difficult to begin, imagine what it will be to end.
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