Driving near Schull yesterday one of those evocative tracks from the past comes up on Spotify – The End by the Doors. It was from their first and best album, The Doors, released in January 1967. I am immediately taken back to a baking afternoon in August of that year. I am heading to Clanricarde Gardens in Notting Hill with a friend to score some dope from a group of Irish friends we bumped into regularly around Earl’s Court - and with whom we shared an affection for the Warwick Arms on Warwick Road - where acceptable pints of Guinness were available. We arrive at their spacious ground floor flat and are let in after the customary paranoid interrogation (“who are you with”, “anyone around”). The room is in semi-darkness, the heavy, floor-length velvet curtains closed and a small lamp is fighting the murk. There is a heavy smell of hash. Pakistani Black was the most generally available form of marijuana in those days. It was a heavy, drowsy, high - conducive to listening to Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues and to crashing out. The End was playing as we entered the room. It was my first time hearing its Gothic doom-laden lyrics and dramatic musical pyrotechnics. The three occupants were Batt, Deke and Martin – all stretched out on comfortable armchairs and clearly stoned. Batt was the officer in command of their little drug-dealing triad. He was the son of a Garda sergeant in Clare and his drug-dealing would escalate to dealing heroin internationally and dying a few years later from an overdose in a hotel room in Toronto. He was a speedy, dashing guy who usually sported a beret and was always plotting the next move, the next rip off. His two companions Deke and Martin were very different types. Deke was a good-time Charlie with an endless capacity for booze and dope and little going for him except a striking physiognomy and a large muscular physique. He returned to Cork in later years and became reclusive due to a large growth on his once handsome face. He too is long gone – but his was a lingering, dying fall, played out in the corners of murky suburban pubs far from his old haunts. Martin was a slim, good-looking man with very long dark hair and sensitive features. He was a gentle soul, intelligent and well-read but much riven by a destructive cynicism about life in general and any form of endeavour or aspiration. He became a heroin addict and died choking on his own vomit about 10 years later. We were motioned to one of the abundant sofas in the room, a fresh joint was rolled and we too settled back and listened to that portentous Doors album on repeat. “This is the end, beautiful friends, the end.”
