Dancin with Manson
DANCIN' WITH MANSON
Once upon a time you had to play Black Sabbath records backwards to hear those satanic messages but that's all changed with the arrival of Marilyn Manson, the hugely controversial rocker. Alan Corr has a few words with him
I am about to call the number of the beast. But before I settle down for a man to subhuman chat with Marilyn Manson (for it is he, she, it) a few things cross my mind. Like how much of this dude (who looks like a lady) is for real and how much is it all phoney shock rock artifice?
Does he dress in a Nike Air and put his hair up at the weekend? And does he really sit up nights like some LA-based alchemist peering into a crucible and musing on pestilence and multi-platinum sales. On the surface it may look easy - a pinch of Kiss, a dash of Bowie, a soupçon of Trent Reznor, bring to the boil and voila! Serves eight million - but Marilyn, whose real name is Brian Warner, has worked hard to complete the ultimate revenge of the nerds.
A one-man Blair Witch Project he may well be, but nothing in Marilyn's past could account for the hate-filled automaton he has become. He was born in the Midwestern steel town of Canton Ohio in 1969 and his parents have stayed together and still enjoy a good relationship with their son. However, Marilyn will insist that as a child he was force-fed passages from the bible that gave him nightmares about the Apocalypse.
Maximum heaviosity alright, but what about the fact that Marilyn dotes on his pet dogs Bug and Fester and supports George Bush? It would appear that "Satan's spawn" is actually a regular guy. Can this be the slime man who appears on the cover of his new album nailed to a cross?
Image is everything here. It has to be because Marilyn's quaint line in grindcore is fairly pedestrian stuff. In Marilyn's world, mutilated dolls feature heavily, blood is everywhere, crepuscular nightfall is always nigh and song titles include Smells Like Children, Disposable Teens and Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes.
Marilyn has probably got more in common with Garth Brooks than he'd care to admit; babbling Brooks came at us with a degree in advertising, and Marilyn is an ex-music journalist. Both know what buttons to push. His fan base is largely 14-year-olds who haven't moved on from playing Doom and worrying about what the old Ouija board spelt out the other night. His more hardcore followers, the ones who overdosed on The Lost Boys and found The Cure too intelligent, call themselves Mansonites and drone on about how they refuse to conform to conventional society. They look exactly like their idol only their clothes aren't as good.
God knows what Jello Biafro of The Dead Kennedys would have to say. But let's face it, anyone who takes his Christian name from a tragic screen idol and his surname from a homicidal maniac was always going to have a bit of an attitude problem.
So come on Beelzebub's cross-dressing hellhound, let's be having ya! The voice that greets me at the end of the line from London is deep and not a little unnerving. "Hello," it echoes, sounding at once like a Venice Beach stoner impersonating the baddies from The Matrix. Marilyn's certainly got vocal chords like the gates of hell but what he actually has to say is intelligent criticism of the moral quagmire that is the world today.
He's on The Guns, God and Government tour promoting his fifth album Holy Wood (In The Shadow of The Valley of Death) but he has played God-fearing lreland before. At the rather dull MTV Awards in Dublin a couple of years ago to be precise. "Yes, I remember a lot of people turning around in disgust," he says. "Physically turning around, which is a reaction I don't think I've ever seen. It was somewhat pleasing because I think they were very much pop fans, fans of Britney Spears and the likes, and when I stepped on stage painted entirely in black with a burning cross behind me, I think I left an impression they won't forget. It was amusing."
I haven't the black heart to tell him that the real reason why everyone had their backs turned was because they were leaving to go and see Iggy Pop play down the road. Things have changed since then, however, and Marilyn isn't quite the object of fun, the rip-off merchant he seemed that night. He has become one of rock's more compelling stars for very tragic reasons.
In April 1999 the self-styled Trenchcoat Mafia (two teenage boys named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris) killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher at their high school in Littleton, Colorado, and then turned their guns on themselves. Marilyn, already condemned by everyone from the Catholic League to Al Gore's running mate Joe Liebermann. was immediately held partially responsible for the massacre. It later turned out that the killers weren't fans of his music, but Marilyn has had to trot out the same line about the event ever since. He has said that there were no slasher movies around to inspire Cain when he killed Abel and that society hasn't become more violent, "just more televised".
"I don't think I'm being blamed for Littleton anymore," he says slowly. "Events like that have happened for years before my time, before all of our time, and I think the important thing that should be learned from that is that a lot of young people growing up are pissed off becauce no one's listening to what they're saying, so sometimes they have to say things in an ugly way and it should be a reminder to listen to what your kids are saying."
When Charlie Manson made the cover of Life magazine, his "family" (the band of killers who carried out murders on his instructions) were very impressed. It didn't matter what he'd done to get there. And this is precisely Marilyn's schtick; amid the Bosch-like visions, the point he seems to be trying to make is that attaining celebrity, no matter how, is the highest prize.
"I do use images of serial killers but not because I would ever condone their actions," he says. "I would never do anything just for the sake of shocking. There's always a point to what I'm trying to say. You often have to do things in a provocative way if you want people's attention, but nothing for the sake of pure shock and just bad taste. I do like to piss people off but not senselessly. Any art should make people think and provoke them." He takes a similar stance with the video for Coma White which features Marilyn as JFK and his former fiancee, actress Rose McGowan, as Jackie Kennedy cruising down Dealy Plaza in a ghoulish replay of the Zapruder film. "Oddly enough I received no criticisln from the Kennedy family because I did it as a homage," he says. "I did it, I thought, tastefully and there wasn't any sort of mockery of the event. I was trying to point out in a strange way it was like a death parade and what America has made of that event is one of the most violent motion pictures of our time. When people try to indict entertainment you have to realise that millions of children grew up watching that more than they did The Matrix."
With the critical raves for his latest album Marilyn appears to be taking himself a bit more seriously. After receiving death threats following the Littleton massacre he retreated, cancelled shows and retired to an attic in the house where The Rolling Stones recorded Let it Bleed to write Holy Wood. It was recorded in Harry Houdini's old house. Marilyn was obviously looking to summon up some old spirits.
The album is of the concept variety. Its central character is Adam Kadmon, "a naive boy who wants to be part of a 'perfect' world that doesn't want him". But as ever with Marilyn it's a fine line between pisstake and seriousness. "Well there's definitely a strong sense of sarcasm which usually leans more to me being sardonic," he says. "I don't consider myself a comedian and I don't consider what I do to be approached in a way like say, Eminem but at the same time I take what I do very seriously but you can never take yourself too seriously or you become a parody."
In terms of right-wing outrage, we've been here before with NWA and Ice T. Marilyn will say that his satanic verses are designed to provoke and not just shock, but what if Brian Warner was black? Would he be even more hounded? "When I started the band 2Live Crew was taking a lot of heat and part of me said how far can a white man go? What kind of attention can a white artist get? Obviously I took on greater goals than just getting people's attention at the time, but I did wonder."
Obviously, people have misinterpreted what you're trying to do. "As much as I've wanted them to," he says with a brittle laugh. "I think that often chaos and misinterpretation in itself is a greater way of making people think than taking things as literally as how you meant them in the first place. I think that I am now more than ever something that stands out like a sore thumb because things have been boiled down to the lowest common denominator. The majority of music buyers and listeners who watch MTV don't really know how to swallow what I do and sometimes that makes it even more enjoyable for me because I know I must be doing something right then. Awkwardly I am part of pop culture by being something that is very counter-culture." Marilyn laughs his brittle laugh again and says: "It's a unique position to be in."
Thanks to HOT PRESS MAG
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