GodEatGod

"GodEatGod"
Song by Marilyn Manson
Album	Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
Released	November 13, 2000
Recorded	1999–2000 at the Mansion in Death Valley, California
Genre	Alternative metal
Length	2:34
Label	Nothing, Interscope
Writer	Marilyn Manson
Composer	Marilyn Manson
Producer	Marilyn Manson, Dave Sardy

"GodEatGod" is the first track on the 2000 release Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). Its title is spoonerism of the term "dog eat dog".

Analysis

The click of an empty revolver barrel. Another one. Russian roulette. And in the distance, in the valley below, the sound of fireworks...a celebration. GodEatGod equates Kennedy with Christ, under a "sky as blue as a gunshot wound". "Dear god, do you want to tear your knuckles down [from the cross] and hold yourself/dear god, can you climb down off that tree/meat in the shape of a T [the T-shaped Tau cross, the cross of the tarot's Hanged Man - originally a tree lopped off at its first branches--is the traditional one on which a sacred king was ritually crucified]/ dear god, the paper says you were the king in the black limousine/Dear John, and all the king's men can't put your head together again". "Before the bullets/before the flies/before authorities take out my eyes" - the mechanisms of death draw in ritual death, conspiratorial death, the death that silences by intention. "dear god, if you were alive you know we'd kill you." He's warning the One against the danger and futility of incarnation; don't come down off that tree, don't be one of us if you know what's good for you. (Why "and hold yourself"? For comfort? In fear? )--Give it any thought and you'll know Jesus would cringe at what the thing that bears his name has become: but how and why did he die? Was it murder or suicide? Was it to fulfill the prophecies or did he even die at all? Yet he's the template for all celebrity death, for the eroticism of death, the "tortured half-naked man" who - as Manson points out - hangs in so many American homes. As does JFK, who has become a Poderoso, a "powerful one" or folk saint, on the altars of many a Mexican-American bruja.

Appearances

Albums

• Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)

Versions

• GodEatGod — Appears on Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death).

Bootlegs

2/06/2001 - Bologna, Italy/Palamalaguti

Lyrics

    Dear god do you want to tear your knuckles down
    And hold yourself
    
    Dear god can you climb off that tree
    Meat into the shape of a 'T'
    
    Dear god the paper says you were the King
    In the black limousine
    
    Dear John and all the King's men
    Can't put your head together again
    
    Before the bullets
    Before the flies
    Before authorities take out my eyes
    The only smiling are you dolls that I made
    But you are plastic and so are your brains
    
    Dear god the sky is as blue
    As a gunshot wound
    
    Dear god if you were alive
    You know we'd kill you
    
    Before the bullets
    Before the flies
    Before authorities take out my eyes
    The only smiling are you dolls that I made
    But you are plastic and so are your brains

Trivia

• A raw instrumental version of the track was used in the "autopsy" video that was used to promote Holy Wood. The video is available as an easter egg on the Lest We Forget (The Best Of) bonus DVD.