Marilyn Manson Producer Shooter Jennings Names Best Time in the Morning to Record Him Singing

Marilyn Manson's new album, We Are Chaos, marked the first time the shock rocker and producer Shooter Jennings (son of outlaw country icon Waylon Jennings) collaborated on a full length record. But it was when the pair first linked up to track a cover of David Bowie and Italian composer Girgio Moroder's "Cat People" that Jennings first discovered the "magic hour" to capture Manson singing in the studio.

In an interview with Guitar World discussing the history between Jennings and Manson and the steps taken to create Manson's eleventh full length work, the producer first recollected the first time they worked on music together.

"Kurt Sutter, who created [the TV series] Sons Of Anarchy, had written this song lyrically to be in the very final episode, and he wanted me to write music to it. I worked it out, and then I had the idea, 'Why not get Manson sing this? Instead of me singing it, it would be a lot cooler if Manson did it,'" relayed Jennings.

Although the work never amounted to much (the song was changed to "Come Join the Murder" and was issued by the White Buffalos), more was to come, which brings us to the cover of "Cat People" for a Giorgio Moroder tribute album Jennings had in the works.

"I went over to his house and that’s when I discovered that he sings his best at 3:30AM. On the dot. Like, no matter what time you start singing with him, 3:30AM is the magic hour. That’s the magic moment, every time," Jennings affirmed.

The session left the producer with a lasting memory.

"I only had one set of headphones at the time, and I brought this whole rig over to his house, and he was sitting there, singing on the Pro Tools track, and I was just sitting in the room with no headphones, and I can just hear Marilyn Manson in the room singing 'Cat People' with no music or anything! [Laughs] Just his voice echoing off the walls," he remembered fondly.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jennings mentioned that "Don't Chase the Dead" was the first track he and Manson wrote for what would become the We Are Chaos album, which was released on Sept. 11.