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Interview
by Jayne Margetts, October 1996
VISUALLY, they could be the bastard offspring of the Addams Family or
distant cousins of a sinister sect who peddle their dark, grinding cadences
and arid twang in the evangelical pulpit of the apocalypse. Yet in the
gothic and sultry terrain of New Orleans, where they reside, they'd cause
no more than a quick sidelong glance rather than shocked stares and cries
of horror and disbelief.
Marilyn Manson with their raven locks, pasty pallor, garish tattoos and
feral mannerisms are not the kind of motley freakshow pin-up boys that
are likely to encourage close and intimate acquaintanceships, or candle-lit
dinners in soft and warm surroundings. In fact, if Nine Inch Nails and
Alice Cooper were to conceive a child then the motley and seedy Marilyn
Manson would be that brat, spat out into the world kicking and screaming.
The American press has proclaimed them the voice of rebellion and youth.
Salt Lake City banished them after they ripped up a Mormon Bible on stage,
the Miami Police narrowly avoided arresting them for stripping to the
bone and New Jersey security guards retreated from a stage front assault
after they were hailed with a storm of spit.
Irresistable and undeniably confrontational, Marilyn Manson's industrial
and mayhemic trashy stomp has bellowed from the four corners of the American
continent and the youth of disillusioned America couldn't be happier.
There's the anguished ringmaster vocalist and songwriter Reverend Marilyn
whose caustic voice is comparable to having steel wool scraped across
your eardrums while gnarled bassist Twiggy Ramirez, deformed keyboard
pyromaniac Madonna Wayne Gacy, corrosive guitarist Daisy Berkowitz and
teutonic drummer Ginger Fish hammer out tainted and stained chordal angst
that is omnipotent both live and on their debut album Portrait of An
American Family and their apocalyptic tome and EP, the Trent Reznor
produced Smells Like Children.
For Manson, who eagerly confesses to walking a tightrope between dreams,
drugs and alternate realities, there is one facet of his artform that
continues to obsess him: "I don't enjoy the recording process as
much as I enjoy writing the songs," he explains from his studio in
New Orleans, where he is putting the finishing touches to his new album
Anti-Christ Superstar.
"I've been experimenting more with songwriting. I mean, initially
I wrote in an almost journalistic fashion because I would record things
that I see and write about, instances that happened to me. But then I
started paying more attention to my dreams and getting so much more out
of the things that happen when you're mind isn't concentrating and tapping
into your subconscious," he continues.
"It has come to a point, for me, in the last year where I have been
trying to induce those kinds of situations where I would use sleep-deprivation
or experiment with different kinds of chemicals, just trying to induce
dreams and to tap into parts of my mind that I wouldn't normally be able
to."
The anarchic frontman rolls his eyes and concludes, "My dreams have
changed radically. You become very aware and at the same time you become
de-sensitised. It's a weird place to go and I've definitely found it to
be an alternate reality that sometimes is more enjoyable."
Regardless of his own eccentricity Manson and his ghoulish entourage have
seen themselves soar into the spotlight with their dark and powerful adaptation
of the Eurythmics Sweet Dreams and are currently reaping both the
rewards and the criticism for their EP Smells Like Children.
They strut with feline prowess and drip swanky, hoary sleaze with Diary
Of A Dope Fiend, then screech their unholy pain through shards of
industrial fallout and metallic, demented tendrils on Kiddie Grinder
amid lyrical explorations into tabloid television, talk shows, drug abuse,
sexual deviancy and rebellion.
"We've had a strange reaction to this EP," Manson concedes.
"It was kinda confusing because some people had only heard Sweet
Dreams which was much more acceptable for most listeners than some
of the other songs on the EP, and it was almost a deliberate scheme on
my part to use Sweet Dreams to expose people to what Marilyn
Manson is really about.
"By releasing a song like Sweet Dreams it tricks people into
buying an EP and then they're stuck with dealing with my kind of world.
So Smells Like Children was a study in abuse and I wanted to take
the subject of abuse and I thought Sweet Dreams was the ultimate
anthem," he says.
"I liked the way the lyrics looked at relationships. Then I took
songs from our first record that dealt with different types of abuse and
we had some re-mixes done of them and then we put it all together. It
seems to make sense to me, and I hope people will get something out of
it."
Ask Manson if he thinks many people have a problem confronting their own
fears and darkness and he chides, "Yes. People are always pointing
out who the devil is, who the bad guy is and those are the exact people
who can't cope with the fact that who they're really talking about is
themselves.
"That's why fear is such a popular subject for me to use and I do,
because I'm interested in what people are afraid of, and I like to show
them what they are so afraid of so that they come face to face with it.
When I'm afraid that's exactly what I do."
Not content to merely realise and deal with his own fears, Reverend Marilyn
Manson and his sonic family will soon be delivering a soundtrack to your
personal and hellish nightmares and it will probably have the lyrical,
fetid breath of Nostradamus' frightening predictions and the fury and
frenzy of a religious sermon.
Manson agrees: "It discusses the end of all things as I see it. I'm
dealing with my dreams and visions I've had in the past year, the ones
I had as a kid and the ones that I will continue to have. It deals with
the political climate in America and its hypocracy. It deals with my disdain
for Christianity. It kinda lays it on the line and says that there's more
important things to worry about beside racism, sexism and whose running
for president," he sniffs.
"It's about the end of the world and how we are to embrace that or
interpret that when it happens. What I've done is very ritualistically
studied for many years a lot of old documents in Hebrew, Tablistic form,
within modern technology,it's binary codes and interesting superstitions
and combined them all together to make a musical ritual, that really,
in my eyes, brings about the apocalypse ..."
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