[4] According to biographer Stephen Davis, the song began as a jam in the studio after a night out dining and drinking at a local Mexican restaurant: "the band played free-form R&B, improvising about the death of rock and roll".

It summed up the depressive, changing climate of the youth movement of 1969, when the Haight-Ashbury had become a slum of panhandlers, burnouts, and runaways ...

[3][4] In an AllMusic review of The Doors Box Set, critic Bruce Eder commented: "the 16-and-half-minute jam/rap (including a reference to 'Mystery Train') from the Morrison Hotel sessions, entitled 'Rock Is Dead,' where, fueled on wine and good food, they let the tape roll on this astonishing extended musical moment.

Here, Morrison's singing, two years beforehand, gets fully at the raw, bluesy sound it would acquire for the subsequent L.A. Woman album.

"[5] Richie Unterberger in his review of the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Soft Parade, noted "The centerpiece of these two bonus discs is 'Rock Is Dead,' an hour-long studio blues jam that has been heavily bootlegged but never released in this complete form.