Marilyn Manson: Sympathy for the Devil
Be careful when you gossip: a little rumor can go a long way. Especially when the subject is Marilyn Manson.
“For a solid year, there was a rumor that I was going to commit suicide on Halloween,” says Manson. He is sitting in a hot tub (yes, a hot tub!) in his hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“I started to think, ‘Maybe I have to kill myself, maybe that’s what I was supposed to do.’ Then, when we were performing on Halloween, there was a bomb threat. I guess someone thought they would take care of the situation for me. It was one of those moments where chaos had control.” He pauses, raises his tattoo-covered arm from the water and stares nervously through a pair of black wraparound sunglasses at the spa door. It opens a crack, then closes. No one enters. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m a character being written, or if I’m writing myself,” Manson continues. “It’s confusing.”
Never has there been a rock star quite as complex as Marilyn Manson, frontman of the band of the same name. In the current landscape of reluctant rock stars, Manson is a complete anomaly: He craves spectacle, success and attention. And when it comes to the traditional rock-star lifestyle, he can outdo most of his contemporaries. Manson and his similarly pseudonymed band mates – bassist Twiggy Ramirez, drummer Ginger Fish, keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy and guitarist Zim Zum – have shat in Evan Dando’s bathtub and, just last night, they coaxed Billy Corgan into snorting sea monkeys. When it comes to getting serious about his work, Manson is among the most eloquent and artful musicians. And among the most misunderstood. The rumor-hungry fans who see him as a living demon who’s removed his own ribs and testicles know just as little about Manson as the detractors who dismiss him as a Halloween-costumed shock rocker riding on Trent Reznor’s coattails. The people who work with Manson on tour aren’t any more privy to his personality. They have to follow the rules – no smoking, no talking about sports, no disturbing Manson in the three hours before a show – and clean up after his occasional temper tantrums that have left dressing rooms destroyed and a drummer hospitalized. In past articles on his band, Manson has deliberately toyed with the truth and with his interviewers.
“It’s part of the shell that I’ve always built up around myself,” Manson says. “And it’s only because what is inside is so vulnerable that the shell has to be so hard. That is the only reason.”
In the week we spend together in Florida, Manson is determined to come clean on everything, to lay all the pieces of his life and his band’s new album, Antichrist Superstar, on the table and see whether we can figure out how they fit together. He’s doing a good job of revealing himself so far, because he’s in a Jacuzzi at the local Holiday Inn. It was difficult for him to be here: He tried once and backed out because someone was already in the tub. He tried a second time and changed his mind because one of the garter-clad fans scouring the hotel for him had just walked by. Only when no one else was around did he finally strip down to his swim trunks and get into the tub. Though after about 10 minutes, he begins to feel sick. Maybe he doesn’t really belong here.
“This is going to be an important piece of press,” Manson says as we get started on the first of many conversations. “It’s going to be a piece of history that I want people to look at when I’m gone, and maybe it’ll help them understand what I was thinking at the time when I did this record. There’s been so much press and so many people feeding this sensationalism – and that’s all part of Marilyn Manson. But at the same time, I want people to know that I tried to explain it to them when they had a chance to listen.”
It’s not going to be an easy task, he insists: “I pity anybody who has to spend a day with me.”
Manson uses a number of different metaphors to describe himself: a snake, an angel, an alien, the child snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. One of the most vivid ones is a Hydra, the nine-headed serpent of Greek mythology. This image is at the heart of Antichrist Superstar, which entered the Billboard album charts at No. 3, just below two beacons of the status quo, Celine Dion and Kenny G. Antichrist Superstar explores a transformation and metamorphosis – of a worm to an angel to a world-destroying demon; of a boy named Brian Warner to the performer Marilyn Manson to the icon Antichrist Superstar. The album begins with a brief glimpse of the end. And that is where we will begin.
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