Marilyn Manson: 'Talking'

By Chuck Weiner

Marilyn Manson in his own words. Like a computer game come to life, he's playing a role and inviting us to join him in a fantasy world. He likes to shock, to test the limits, and has been adopted as America's Anti-Christ. This is his story, in his own words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnibus Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9780857126931

Book preview

Dreams

By combining the christian name of icon Marilyn Monroe with the surname of serial killer Charles Manson in 1989, Brian Warner revealed his intention to create an all-American monster. A decade and a half later, the gender-bending shock-rocker had not only his homeland but the rock world dancing to his tune.

His albums tell only part of the story. Musically proficient though they are, it was his bizarre, asexual visual impact and widely reported views on everything from organised religion through sex and drugs to politics that most enthralled a generation rebelling against the pre-chewed pap they were being served by satellite TV. Parents panicked as this bizarre Pied Piper led their kids up a dark, Satanic alley - as record-store tills played a merry melody.

Introduction

Warner/Manson’s troubled childhood fuelled his desire to rebel, the experience of being bullied at his devoutly Christian-run school combining with various domestic events to leave him both distressed and confused. He turned to heavy metal for consolation, and when his parents moved to Florida he started interviewing visiting stars for a local magazine. It was but a short step to forming his own group, Marilyn Manson and The Spooky Kids which, as with Alice Cooper two decades earlier, would not only be shortened but come to refer to their pansticked frontman alone.

Veteran observers of the rock scene can cite Cooper, Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Johnny Rotten and other role models whose attitudes Manson has liberally borrowed. Yet every generation needs a shaman, and as a new millennium began Marilyn Manson retained his place as America’s Most Wanted. Like a computer game come to life, he’s playing a role and inviting kids to join him in a fantasy world. This is his story, in his own words.

A Normal Childhood

PARENTS, UPBRINGING, SCHOOL, HOSPITAL, PERVERTED GRANDFATHER…

I didn’t have many friends, because I was one of the few bad kids. I wouldn’t bow my head for prayer. I started misbehaving really badly, because I wanted to go to a normal school. When I did get kicked out, all the kids in my new school really wanted to kick my ass because they knew I’d been to private school. OCTOBER 1996

"When I was 12 or 13, playing Dungeons And Dragons was a big thing. It was also considered very bad for kids at the time in America - people were blaming it for everything from children killing themselves to cult associations. But the key to it is that, when you’re role playing, you can be whoever you want to be. Which is what Marilyn Manson became to me. I didn’t want to be me any more. Not because I was ashamed of myself - I just had the desire to be something else." OCTOBER 1996

You do what I do because you want attention. I don’t want to over-analyse what I do, but it is a thinly-veiled cry for attention. I was just a kid, 14 years old, when I first started putting on my mom’s make-up and wearing Halloween masks in summer. I knew I was different, but it was also my way of getting noticed. All this stuff I’m doing today is really no different, and no more harmful, than that. I just want the world to know I’m here. APRIL 1997

"All through my early years, my father kept telling me he would hire a prostitute for me to lose my virginity to on my 16th birthday. I was really scared at that prospect because I was scared of prostitutes, and so I tried my hardest to lose my virginity before I reached 16. I managed it just before I turned 16, and when I told my father it was too late for a prostitute to take my virginity I think he was a little disappointed. Knowing my father, I think he was serious about that idea." MAY 1997

(Losing my virginity) was kinda quick and ugly, and the girl wasn’t very pretty, so it wasn’t a momentous experience. I took this girl out to this deserted park one night and we lay down on the grass on the baseball ground and did it. I think that experience is part of the reason I don’t like sport. MAY 1997

"I had some experiences with a neighbour who used to make me take my clothes off, so any mention of child abuse has been me singing about my experiences and using music as an outlet. So it’s rather insulting when people think I promote something like that. That’s the type of childhood I had, not the type I would promote. It was an older boy. He made me play strange games with him but when I told my parents they confronted his family and they said I was lying - the same with my grandfather. It was something no-one really wanted to admit to. So I had a lot of suppressed anger because no-one believed me." MAY 1997

"(My grandfather) had a lot of women’s lingerie and sex toys like vibrators, and his pornography was pretty dark and hardcore - nothing as conventional as Playboy or Penthouse, more like bestiality and S&M stuff. Discovering sex through pornography probably gave me a warped view of sexuality, and I kinda dislike pornography now. I’m kind of embarrassed and not excited about topless bars and things like that." MAY 1997

"(My grandfather) had throat cancer and growled through a tube in his neck. He’d wipe the spittle off with his handkerchief - the same one he masturbated into. The train set would run to cover up his growls." JUNE 1997

"(As a child) I was very much fascinated and afraid by all movies revolving around supernatural things - The Exorcist, The Omen, Burnt Offerings and Trilogy Of Terror - a lot of these movies that had to do with the unexplainable horror. At some point in my life I finally got over that. I don’t sit up all night and ever worry about ‘am I going to be punished for what I do?’

I don’t sit up at night and worry about ‘is a sort of demon or Lucifer going to appear at the foot of my bed and burn me for all the things I’ve done by day?’ I don’t think of that any more. As a kid, that was something I was afraid of, that I was going to be possessed. You know, just filled with this terror of the supernatural, but it’s something now that I embrace. It doesn’t terrify me at all. The only thing that scares me is going to the mall. 1997

"Being in hospital kinda warped me, you’re around dying people; deformed people; disturbed people; artificial limbs on sore stumps. I collect artificial limbs now - it’s one of my more recent hobbies." JUNE 1997

I remember being around a lot of crippled and disfigured people when I was young. My father and I would go to these gatherings of families from the Vietnam War and there were a lot of people who were allegedly affected by (allegedly toxic defoliant) Agent Orange (sprayed by US forces). There were kids with birth defects and I had to hang around them as a child. JULY 1997

"My childhood was no worse than anybody else’s. I was a sickly kid. I was in hospital four or five times with pneumonia. Later my mother became a nurse, so I’ve always had a medical fascination. I’ve inherited my father’s characteristics more. He’s always been a salesman, furniture mostly, and there is a bit of that PT Barnum quality to what I do."

JULY 1997

"(My parents) are proud of the fact I’m doing something that makes me happy. And they like it on their own level and they’re fans. I’m sure they don’t understand everything, but they’re supportive of it. That’s one thing that did get through to them, that they understand I don’t have to be like them. Maybe I actually got something through to my own parents that ‘don’t be mad at me because I’m not like you. How can you expect me to fit into this program you set up for me? It’s not for me.’

Sure, they wanted me to go to college and do something to fit into society’s idea of what is worthwhile. But I think they’ve changed their minds now they realise the kind of power I’ve tapped into. I have something that makes me happy on some level and this is a good way for me to deal with the torment of what teenage life gave me. I think everybody obviously has a hard time growing up. I’m no different than anyone else. I think that’s why a lot of our young fans really relate to our songs because I understand. I’m saying, ‘Look, I’ve been through it and I made it out. Now this is where