Quoth Brooks Ann Camper <bcamper@beta.centenary.edu>:

Ask me now I understand the words that John has said....

I have never had an experience quite like last night when i realized what "The End Of The Tour" is about. It is the absolute saddest song I have ever heard in my life. I cried for over an hour listening to it.

It is about a horrible car crash and a man's struggle to forgive himself for killing a car full of teenagers. It actually was not his fault because the girls were drunk driving but ever since the incidnt he has brutally blamed himself. He is finally finding the first bit of hope toward recovery from the horrible wreck that he was involved in.

Listen to the words....

There was a beautiful teenage girl who was at a party, under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She became bored of the party so she decided she could drive; she thought that she was able to "see herself". She takes her friends and they drive out on I-91. The man is driving also and it's late; he is distracted by many things. When on the overpass, he is hit. His car is mereley dented but the other car bursts into flames and the girls are killed. He watched the police take the bodies out. He saw how beautiful the children were and was scarred by this completely.

During the song he refers to the family of the beautiful girl and the horror that they must have felt when the police knocked on the door to tell them they had lost their child. He also breaks into the nursery type lyric about watching the police pull the bodies from the car.

He has blamed himself for the wreck from the beginning, but he has been ruining himself with it and finally decides to turn to God who helps him out. He finally finds a peace within himself saying that at the end of his life, if anyone will forgive him, he will meet the girl in heaven and apologize. Until then he must endure his own life, but one day he will be in heaven to ask for forgiveness.

He is beginning to realize that it is not his fault and he must go on and God has "let them go" for a reason. He will always be haunted by the experience and will never be the same. And he's never going to tour again.

There is actually a lot more I could say about the song but I just wanted to share my experience.

It is incredible. Thank you John.

Quoth Jim Kuemmerle <jkuemmer@trinity.edu>:

"Tour", to me, is a beautiful love song. Maybe it's partially because of my own circumstances (which I won't go into) that I see it this way, but objectively, it makes sense to me.

The first stanza (There's a girl with crown and a sceptre...) signifies just how fickle the pop-music scene can be. (See also, "Hey, Mr. DJ.") The radio stations play the new releases for the first couple of months, and then it gets old, and they go back to what they had before. This is nothing out of the ordinary, even for the evenfurtherouter stations (I don't know if there's an actual WLSD, but it sounds evenfurtherouter to me.) At any rate, they've stopped playing the songs, so it's time to get back and record again. (He can see himself at the end of the tour.) Note the particularly melancholy organ played behind the "old and it's totally over, etc." lines.

The refrain sets up the change in the mood. That melancholy organ has dropped out of the picture (the scene changes, so it went home?) to be replaced by a more straightforward, optimistic, acoustic guitar sound. At first, it seems still sad, (At the end of the tour, when the road disappears,) but the Johns turn the imagery slightly. By the end of the refrain, the song has become about somebody who has been faithful to the speaker long after the fad has passed.

Then the song switches scenes, so as to deal with this faithful fan. The speaker was driving on I-91, when he had a minor scrape with another car. I can picture it now: they get out, exchange heated words, insurance policy numbers, examine the minor damage (they only 'kissed' at the overpass, mind you -- a euphemism for 'a minor fender-bender'), laugh, exchange phone numbers, etc. ('Never to part since the day we met...') He was bent metal (perhaps a reference to Dig My Grave, Why Must I Be Sad?, and Stompbox, or perhaps just to the instrumentation change between refrain and verse?) she was a flaming wreck (well, hey, nobody's perfect) when they kissed at the overpass. (Perhaps a more literal meaning would be appropriate here as well.)

Then, suddenly, (Ack!) here comes that melancholy organ again. The speaker starts talking about what he had been doing before they met. On one level, it could be said that his sailing along, etc. is quasiliteral, talking about the act of driving his car on I-91, maybe thinking of meetings with producers or agents or what-have-you, all those people driving themselves to distraction inside him. On another level, he was doing that during the rest of his life, too... he was occupied with the people he was trying to please (perhaps becoming the pig who puts up ads in the subways!) and forgot about what was really important. (Forgive the cheese, but it's a love song!) At any rate, his run-in (literally) with the woman is the knock at the door, the wake-up call, that shocks him back to reality, abruptly changing the picture that he has. Note that the instrumentation gradually changes from the organ to the rock ensemble during these four lines. The rock sound has become this woman's leitmotif, and the organ stands for the speaker's life before meeting her.

Listening to the refrain a second time, it becomes clear that she's not necessarily a Giants fan, (or whatever the speaker's band is). In fact, she probably didn't know who he was when they met. The important thing here is that she loves him for who she is; she loves the man underneath the record deals and the screaming teenage fans. She will still be there for him when the tour (which now seems to be a metaphor for his musical fame as a whole, not just a literal tour) runs aground.

The bridge sees the brief return of the organ for the line "This was the vehicle, these were the people". She has removed these worldly concerns from his mind by opening the door (the one that she knocked at?) and expelling the people. Again, the sound of the bridge changes from organ gradually to rock ensemble. In time for the guitar solo, no less.

The repetition of the refrain at the end adds little more than emphasis (except for a possible double meaning in 'engagements' that comes from the final lines) until it reaches 'And we're never gonna tour again, no, we're never gonna tour again.' It seems to me that they have made plans to get married, or at least see each other exclusively. Tour is _now_ a metaphor for the dating scene. (Is that the scene that was old and totally over now?) Anyway, they have left the scene exclusively, and are going 'home', which means, of course, 'each other'.

There's my $0.02. If it's too long, I'm sure it can be trimmed up quite a bit.

Quoth Debbie Truitt <dtruitt@ucla.edu>:

The girl with a crown and a scepter always brought Miss America or some other such pageant winner to mind. I think the WLSD thing refers to the radio and TV appearances people like that make while they're on tour, and the LSD part of that reflects the craziness and sense of unreality that a life like that must have. Imagine, one moment you're an ordinary 18 year old girl, and the next you're on the road, making public appearances, never spending more than a few days in any one place. It would all seem pretty glamorous at first, but now she's seeing that it's not that great after all and she wants to go home--she can see herself ant the end of the tour.

The next verse is kind of a change of scene, and it doesn't tie in perfectly with the first, but there's still that theme of a crazy life. He says, "Never to part since the day we met our on Interstate 91" (By the way, does anyone know if there really is an I-91 anywhere?) Who knows how they met on a freeway--maybe thay were in an accident together (which would explain the bent metal and flaming wreck in one way) But it had a great impact on both of them(which explains it another way.) Then he says, "I was riding along with the people driving themselves to distraction inside me," which I think means he was just driving along with his frantic thoughts. The "people" are the different voices in his head, shouting conflicting and unrelated messages. "There was a knock at the door, which was odd, and the picture abruptly changed..." There was an unexpected incident, and his life was changed forever. "This was the vehicle, these were the people, you opened the door and expelled all the people...you let them go." The man himself was the vehicle for all these distractions and thoughts, and when he met this woman, she expelled the thoughts from his mind and set him free.

The chorus reflects the fact that life's insanity isn't going to stop ("The engagements are booked through the end of the world.."), but in the end they'll be together.

Anyways, that's my happier way of seeing it. It may not be any more or less "right" than the other, but I just thought I'd share it with you all.

Quoth Michael Hill <sultan@jhu.edu>:

In the song "The End of the Tour", They mention Interstate 91 as the place where the narrator met someone. There actually is an Interstate 91. It runs from New Haven, Connecticut north through Massachusetts and Vermont to the Canadian border. I don't know what this has to do with the possible meanings of the song, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Quoth Rob Palkowski <Yorx333@aol.com>:

At first glance, this song seems to be saying that TMBG is sick of the whole music biz ("...the scene isn't what it used to be/.../No, we're never going to tour again"), but after deeper probing, I've found something interesting about not only this track, but the entire CD. This song relayes the following story:

There's a girl with a crown and a scepter
Who's on WLSD
And she says the scene isn't what it used to be
And she's thinking of going home
That it's old and it's totally over now
And it's old and it's over it's over now
And it's over it's over it's over now
I can see myself

There is a girl, presumably at a party of some kind, who's been using drugs and/or alcohol. The party bores her, perhaps because of something happening too often, and she decides to leave, possibly with some of her friends. She's high, and may think that she can see herself.

Never to part since the day we met out on Interstate 91
I was bent metal you were a flaming wreck as we kissed at the overpass

On her way home, she and an unrelated person, the narrator are in a fatal automobile accident. The narrator's car was merely damaged, but Scepter Girl's car bursted into flame, killing her and her passengers, if any. The narrator feels very guilty ("Never to part since....").

I was sailing along with the people
Driving themselves to distraction inside me
Then came a knock at the door
Which was odd
And the picture abruptly changed

The narrator is very troubled and guilty because of the accident, even though the accident wasn't his fault. Then suddenly he realizes that he is free of guilt, "changing" the "picture"; allowing him to come to terms with the trauma of killing Scepter Girl. & Co.

This was the vehicle
These were the people
You opened the door and expelled all the people

Then he has a mightmare in which he relives the accident over and over again (allusion to the first verse with the repetition?). He cannot forgive himself for killing Scepter Girl: he'd tried, but subconsciously, he still feels guilty, giving him nightmares.

Finally, we get to the chorus:

At the end of the your
When the road disappears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of the tour
The engagements are booked through the end of the world so we'll meet at the end of the tour

The "tour" is the narrator's life. The narrator feels that he cannot forgive himself, but must receive forgiveness from Scepter Girl in the afterlife. Then, and only then, can his self-inflicted guilt be dissolved.

Quoth Jim Powers <jpowers@tiac.net>:

The end of the tour is the most depressing song TMBG has ever sung. It means to me about the time of transition from John & John to John, John & the band :-(. It's an end to the old. And a beginning of a completely differtent band. Very depressing. No more drum machine, just a typical concert band. What a waste of creativity. :-( I might need prozac.

Quoth Kay <Kaylum@aol.com>:

I've always enjoyed "End of the Tour" as a nice "farewell for now" ditty, but not long ago I realized it could be much more than that, at least for me. About 11 years ago, my little sister was killed (hit by a car), and one of my memories of her is that she used to love to play "queen" when she was little. I was looking through some old pictures and came across one of her with, you guessed it, a makeshift crown and scepter. I began to think how that song could easily be a love song to someone who has died, and it just became so much more meaningful. And you'd think listening to it would bum me out now, but on the contrary, it's very comforting. I'm not trying to impose my view on others, and I certainly don't want to depress anyone, but the more I listen to it, the more it makes sense.

Quoth Daniel Periera <DGently253@aol.com>:

I've always taken this song to symbolize the end of the Hippy movement, when the non-conformist tendencies of the fifties' Beat movement and the craziness of the sixties just ran dry, Of course, the most obvious example of this is at the very beginning of the song, in the line "There's a girl with a crown and a scepter/Who's on WLSD." If you've ever read the Electric Kool Aid-Acid Test, you'll know that the "radio station" that Sandy Lehmann-Haupt ran was called WLSD (For all of those who haven't read it, the important point that WLSD was a station run by one of the main members of the Merry Pranksters, a group who toured around the country in a psychedelic day-glo bus during '64). The girl is lamenting the end of the Sixties, that the movement which once seemed so exciting is "old and it's totally over now," as it nears the "end of the tour." I'll admit I can quite tie in the "I was bent metal..." bit to this, except to point out that the highway (Interstate 91) is a powerful and reccuring metaphor in the works of many writers of the fifties and sixties, most notably Jack Kerouac (THE Beat writer). Maybe the "crash" symbolizes the group of writers that came together more or less by chance to form the Beat movement? It's a stretch.

The "people driving themselves to distraction" is a metaphor for the chaos of the sixties. "The knock on the door" symbolizes the end of the sixties, when the picture "abruptly changed" to the seventies, disco, leisure suits, etc. I think that the "opened the door and expelled all the people" part is the hippies moving on to hold down normal jobs and get on with life, the "vehicle" that is referred to could very well be "Furthur", the Merry Pranksters' bus, or maybe it's a reference to the venerable old VW Bus, which is the Vehicle of the Deadheads (At concerts there used to be about 70 million (slight exaggeration) of them in the parking lot) . The refrain simply states the speakers desire to recapture the youth and excitment of a time that is now gone. He hopes to meet all his old friends at the "End of the Tour".

Personally, I think this is just one in a series of songs on John Henry which were influenced by the fifties and sixties. "I Should Be Allowed to Think" starts with a line from and echoes the sentiments of "Howl," by Allen Ginsberg, "Destination Moon" is part of a line from "Laughing Gas," also by Allen Ginsberg, and other songs like "A Self Called Nowhere," echo very Beatish sentiments.

I've always though that "Nyquil Driver" was Neal Cassady.

Quoth Joshua Hall-Bachner <particle@servtech.com>:

>I've always taken the line "Then came a knock at the door, which was odd,
>and the picture abruptly changed" to mean that the driver of the car wasn't
>paying attention, maybe drifting into sleep or another state of mind.  When
>the two cars hit ("knock at the door"), he was jolted back into reality
>("the picture abruptly changed").

I see it somewhat like this. I see a lot of car accident/death interps of this song, but mine is different. I, personally, like to take it at something closer to face value and see it as a sort of weird love song. Here we go:

There's a girl with a crown and a scepter
Who's on WLSD
And she says that the scene isn't what it's been
And she's thinking of going home
That it's old and it's totally over now....etc.

I think this sets up the female protagonist...the "crown and scepter" represent how she's "special"; she's a starlet of some sort. I personally tend to think of her as a reporter/anchorperson; the crown could be a headset and the scepter a microphone (and it also fits with the WLSD bit).

Never to part since the day we met out on Interstate 91
I was bent metal, you were a flaming wreck when we kissed on the overpass

I think that the first line here fits this interp better than the death interp, where IMHO it doesn't seem to fit. I think these bits have layered meanings: the guy and the girl are driving, completely oblivious to each other, when they have their little accident. The second line describes both the state of the cars and the state of the people afterwards: the guy maybe rescues the girl from her car, she's really frazzled. They see each other and fall instantly in love.

I was sailing along with the people
driving themselves to distraction inside me
Then came a knock on the door which was odd
and the picture abruptly changed

As I see it, the guy is driving alone with his anxieties, letting all the stuff in the world get to him, when the little accident happens, and he's jolted out of it; again, there's a double meaning here: he stops thinking about it for the moment because of the accident, but he stops thinking about it in general because of what happened because of the accident: his meeting the girl.

This was the vehicle, these were the people,
You opened the door and expelled all the people
You let them go

Here, again, the "people" are the anxieties in his mind from his job, life, etc. He wallows in them, until he meets this woman. She "opens the door" and lets the anxiety flow out of him.

At the end of the tour,
When the road dissapears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of tour
The engagements are booked
through the end of the world
So we'll meet at the end of the tour.

This is the important part: even though he's able to release his anxieties and his guilt with her help, they both still have their responsibilities. For whatever reason, they can't be together. So the "End of The Tour"...when they can, when they've been "freed", they'll seek each other out again. The "engagements are booked thru the end of the world" because circumstances are such that they can't be together now. When the "tour" is over, when they are free, they can finally see each other again.

We're never gonna tour again

Meaning, once they are free of all their obligations, they can settle down and forget it all; they'll never "tour" again.

This is my interp. The only thing I have a problem with is the line "If there's any more people around"...the other references to "people" are to the guy's worries. Does this mean that he only needs her to soothe his mind? That he wants her back so she can calm his anxiety again? Hmmmm....

Quoth Jason Soltan <jsoltan@ets.org>:

It occurred to me that this song might be written from the vehicle's point of view. Check this out, and let me know what you think...

It starts out with a girl on the car, or I think more likely, tour bus's radio:

There's a girl with a crown and a scepter
Who's on WLSD
And she says the scene isn't what it used to be
And she's thinking of going home
That it's old and it's totally over now
And it's old and it's over it's over now
And it's over it's over it's over now

The end of the tour might be when the car dies, or is destroyed, or the owners' band breaks up...

Never to part since the day we met out on Interstate 91
I was bent metal you were a flaming wreck as we kissed at the overpass

The bus describes the terrible accident, possibly to the other car.

I was sailing along with the people
Driving themselves to distraction inside me
Then came a knock at the door
Which was odd
And the picture abruptly changed

This was the vehicle
These were the people
You opened the door and expelled all the people

From this point of view, the bus is cruising along with its human occupants when it is struck in the door by another car. The bus, being larger is bent up, but the other car is totaled. The people all get out to help or whatnot...

The verse:

This was the vehicle
These were the people
You opened the door and expelled all the people

has always struck me as being similar to that children's hand gesticulated rhyme:

This is the church
this is the steeple
you open it up and here's all the people

I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but when I was small it was popular.

Finally, we get to the chorus:

At the end of the your
When the road disappears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of the tour
The engagements are booked
Through the end of the world
So we'll meet at the end of the tour

Maybe the car and bus have reached the end of the tour since they are "never to part" and are totaled. Maybe it has to do with a band's tour. Maybe the bus sees itself being run forever or until the end of it's world when it dies on one of the endless gigs. Maybe it is thinking about a junkyard, where it will be with the other car, and there won't be any people there after they've disposed of them. Maybe it's a love song to the car.

Quoth Johnnie Odom <JLODOM@amherst.edu>:

"There's a girl with a crown and a scepter/Who's on WLSD"

This line refers to the "Acid Queen" from the Who's rock opera "Tommy." She's got a crown and a scepter so she's