While we wait to hear what role Marilyn Manson will be playing in Josh Boone’s adaption of The Stand, the shock rocker released an eight and a half-minute cover of the sprawling, nearly 12-minute Doors dirge “The End.”
The Doors original soundtracks the opening sequence of Francis Ford Coppola’s dark 1979 drama Apocalypse Now. Marilyn Manson’s cover will be used for a CBS All Access adaption of the 1978 Stephen King novel about a government-created superflu accidentally bringing about a worldwide apocalypse, forcing a showdown between two camps of good and evil plague survivors. (Some of you may remember the 1994 TV miniseries starring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a vagrant prophet and Corin “Corky” Nemec as a disco-loving incel.)
Marilyn Manson’s cover is essentially a melding of two generations of messianic frontmen. Jim Morrison already did all the heavy-lifting in terms of all the stuff that will scare parents: The song evokes an oedipal relationship between a mother and son, and was composed while the late frontman was tripping. All Manson had to do is add some extraneous “motherf—ers” and growl with his signature mix of seduction and menace. Producer Shooter Jennings, who previously worked on Manson’s cover of David Bowie’s “Cat People,” helped give the song a gritty, sludgy feel.
The song is available on streaming now and will be released on a 12-inch picture disc single on March 6.
