Marilyn Manson – “The End” (The Doors Cover)
Right now, Marilyn Manson is riding a nice little career renaissance, mostly because rappers keep namechecking him. Devoted Manson fan Lil Uzi Vert wears a medallion shaped like Manson’s head. Travis Scott booked Manson to play at his Astroworld festival. Halsey got a giant Manson tattoo and dressed up as Manson for Halloween. And Manson has also taken a bunch of acting roles recently. He will, for instance, be in HBO’s The New Pope. And he’ll also be in the forthcoming CBS All Access adaptation of Stephen King’s end-of-the-world epic The Stand.
The Stand is presumably coming sometime next year, and it’s got a pretty stacked cast, including James Marsden, Amber Heard, Greg Kinnear, Whoopi Goldberg, and Heather Graham. I was terrified that Manson would play the Satanic figure Randall Flagg, but no, it looks like that’ll be the extremely typecast Alexander Skarsgård. Manson, instead, will play the disturbed pyromaniac known as the Trashcan Man. Maybe he’ll be good!
Back when he first mentioned acting in The Stand, Manson also said that he’d recorded a cover of the Doors’ 1967 trudge “The End” for the soundtrack. Today, we get to hear it, and it sounds exactly the way you’d expect a Marilyn Manson cover of “The End” to sound. It stretches over eight and a half minutes. It’s rough. (Also, it’s a bit on-the-nose to use a song that was prominently featured in Apocalypse Now on a TV show about the apocalypse happening now.)
Manson recorded “The End” with the country rocker Shooter Jennings producing; they’re apparently now working on an album together. It’s not Manson and Jennings’ first time covering an iconic movie song; they recorded a version of David Bowie’s “Cat People” together a couple of years ago. Listen to “The End” below.
“The End” is out now on the streaming services, and there’s also a picture-disc version of it for sale.