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Layla - Derek & The Dominoes - The granddaddy of great song endings. Dominoes drummer, Jim Gordon, contributed the elegiac piano coda for this close. He later went to hatchet his mother to death.
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Starship Trooper - Yes - Starship Trooper is actually comprise of three songs: Life Seeker, Disillusion and The Würm. The Würm is a continuous cadenza of chords (|G-Eb|C|) that my buddy Tim Weaver taught me to play on the guitar. It's only one of two songs I can play on the guitar. The other is Louie Louie.
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I Want You (She's So Heavy) - Beatles - This song held the title for the "world's coldest ending" until Townshend released "Face the Face."
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Drop Dead Legs - Van Halen - One of the all time greatest guitar solo outro fades
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Austraila - Kinks - The beginning of this tune is a typical very British sounding late sixties Kinks song. Then, it morphs into an extended guitar jam that will leave you speechless.
Honorable mentions:
- Rock and Roll - Velvet Underground
- Good Morning Good Morning - Beatles - Lennon asked engineer Geoff Emerick to arrange the animal noises heard at the end of the song so that the animal was capable of devouring or frightening the animal that came before it.
- Won't Get Fooled Again -THE WHO - Beginning with the line, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
- She's The One - Bruce Springsteen - live version
- 40 - U2 - For years U2 would end their concerts with this song. I vividly remember walking out Brenden Byrn Arena singing the final chorus, "How long to sing this song?".
Dishonorable mentions: Stevie Wonder has a thing for extending songs two or three minutes longer than they should be. "Golden Lady" is like one long-ass 6:53 outro. It goes on and on and on. Another song he kills is with an extended outro is "Maybe Your Baby". Please feel free to comment and give me your Top Five.
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
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