Music / ↳ End of the Line

End of the Line

Written by: Credited to the full band; conceived by George Harrison Lead vocals: George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison share the chorus hooks; Tom Petty carries the verses (Bob Dylan does not sing on this track) Length: 5:35 Album: Vol. 1, track 10

The closing track on Vol. 1 was always going to carry some weight, structurally speaking: it's the song that has to send five enormous careers back out into the world feeling like something meaningful just happened. "End of the Line" earns that job. Built around a warm, train-like rhythm and a genuinely moving set of lyrics about survival, mortality, and taking the long view, it's the sound of a band that knows exactly how to land a plane.

The songwriting is credited to the whole group as usual, though the initial idea traces back to Harrison, and the arrangement gives nearly everyone a moment: Harrison, Lynne, and Orbison trade the big chorus hooks, while Petty handles the verses in between. Dylan, notably, doesn't sing lead or harmony on this particular track, one of the few moments on the album where he steps fully into the background.

None of that context prepared anyone for what happened next. Roy Orbison died less than two months after the album's release, and when the surviving band reconvened to shoot a video for "End of the Line" as the album's second single, they were faced with an impossible question: how do you film a performance video for a song built around five voices when one of those voices belongs to someone who just died. Their answer, an empty rocking chair with Orbison's guitar resting against it, appearing on screen exactly when his vocal lines arrive, remains one of the most quietly devastating moments in the band's short history. Read the full story of that shoot on our singles and videos page.

What was written as a warm, hopeful send-off became, almost by accident, something closer to an epitaph. It's a difficult needle for any song to thread, and "End of the Line" threads it without a single wasted note.

Previous track: Tweeter and the Monkey Man. That's the full Vol. 1 tracklist; see the album page or head back to all songs.