Guitar World February 1996
MARILYN MANSON GUITARIST Daisy Berkowitz is pissed. He sold his soul to the Satan for lifetime's supply, metallic riffs, and has yet to recieve a receipt. "I'm still waiting," he says hopefully.
Not that Berkowitz really wants a refund. Thanks to Trent Reznor (who signed and prodcued the shock-rockers), and a notorious stage show, audiences are flocking to Marilyn Manson's shows. The band is touring in support of Smells Like Children (Nothing), an EP that features new songs, remixes from their debut album, Portrait Of An American Family, a few covers, including a terrifying version of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," and a turbocharged take of Patti Smith's "Rock And Roll Nigger."
The quintet is often called a "death metal" band, probably because of their roots in Tampa, the genre's birthplace and capital. Berkowitz says that while it's an influence, so is every player from Dimebag Darrell to the Smiths' Johnny Marr.
Marilyn Manson's spooky-kabuki live show is a rivet-popping industrial pummeling, with lead thingy Marilyn's bare buttcheeks flapping around as he sings in his straight-outta-The Exorcist style. On-stage fellatio, dildo insertion and self mutilation have all been known to occur under the band's Ouija-board backdrop while Berkowitz blithely cranks away. Christian protesters have been surprisingly sparse on this tour, but an animal-rights group showed up one time because a dead chicken shares an onstage gallows pole with three swaying Mortimer Snerd dolls.
"It's a rubber chicken," laughs Berkowitz. And, he notes, Marilyn Manson is basically a rubber chicken band: "Far too many people are born without a sense of humor."
-TOM GOGOLA