Fargo Rock City (22 page)

Part of what Butler says is probably true, but none of it matters. Anyone who saw the album covers were either scared, fascinated, or amused, and all three reactions were connected. In terms of darkness, Sab broke new ground. In his autobiography
Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture,
Abbie Hoffman described a Black Sabbath concert as a microcosm of everything that went wrong at the end of the 1960s. Hoffman was absolutely correct—and for that, I praise Jesus. More than any other rock group, Black Sabbath killed off the hypocritical, self-righteous hippie mentality that was poisoning the planet. Pseudo-political idealism was crushed by pseudo-satanic nihilism, and the world of rock was a far better place.

For me, the occult illusion was always a big part of what I loved about heavy metal. The devil intrigued me more than sex or drugs combined, mostly because I was under the impression that Satan was everywhere. I honestly believed the odds of me encountering Satan were much higher than my chances of meeting a dealer or a whore.

Metal stars who appeal to midwestern kids understand this perception. Take Marilyn Manson, a modern superstar who's not really a metal guy but plays one on TV (more importantly, he was raised with the same sensibilities; the pubescent Manson adored bands like Mötley Crüe and Judas Priest). I've interviewed Manson twice: immediately after
Portrait of an American
Family
was released in 1994 (back when he was a nobody), and again in 1995 (when he was opening for Danzig and starting to raise cultural/social—if not necessarily musical—eyebrows). Over time, his ability to manipulate the press has grown at an exponential rate.

The first time I spoke with Marilyn, he was among the most interesting and insightful musicians I'd ever encountered. When we talked a year later, he was surly and consciously outrageous. In that second conversation, Manson even feigned stupidity—he claimed he didn't know where North Dakota was, and he said he was unfamiliar with the name “Newt Gingrich.” By the time he released
Antichrist Superstar
in 1996, Manson was so popular he would only respond to requests from major press outlets; when he did talk to the media, he usually said stuff that was totally insane, sometimes mentioning how he enjoyed cutting into his flesh with razor blades and pouring drugs into the open wounds. Like every shock rocker before him, his weirdness was directly proportional to his fame.

But what's fascinating about Manson is how well he understands what society is afraid of.

Marilyn Manson was born Brian Warner in Canton, Ohio. The community of Canton is a weird little town; before Manson, its only social import was the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the fact that it's the former home of the only U.S. president ever assassinated by a self-described anarchist (William McKinley, for those keeping score at home). Of course, that kind of sweeping statement is exactly what the people of Canton hate to hear. It's difficult to find anyone in town who wants to talk about the musician's local legacy; they're not necessarily ashamed of Manson, but they are really sick of hearing his name. In 1998, I went to his old high school (GlenOak High) and I asked a student who the school's most famous alumnus was. After a ridiculously long pause, the seventeen-year-old girl said, “Well, I
guess
it would probably be Marilyn Manson.” Who else was it going to be? It appears that Manson's Ohio connection is a fact that everyone in Canton knows but nobody seems to care about. From what I
could tell by chatting with area kids, most of the “urban legends” about the young Brian Warner weren't even passed down through oral tradition—they all came directly from Manson's own autobiography,
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.

When he was pushing
Antichrist Superstar,
Manson's shtick was built around satanism. According to his book (which—I must note—is remarkably entertaining), he even met with Church of Satan high priest Anton LaVey in San Francisco (they ate steak and talked about the possibility of fucking Traci Lords). This is a good example of Manson's cleverness; he knows how the media works. Whenever he talked to a reporter, he would mention how true satanism has nothing to do with the devil and how it's actually a way to worship intellect and egoism. And no mater how accurately the reporter represents his quotes, the story's headline will include the words “devil worship” or “
Satanic Bible
” or “Anton LaVey,” and parents will freak out. Technically, Manson did nothing that was particularly outrageous—he simply described a philosophy that would probably be classified as merely amoral if it wasn't tied to Satan. But the obvious reality is that weird teens will always associate Manson and his music with the colloquial definition of Satanism—animal sacrifice, perverted sex, and ritualistic occultism that gives supernatural abilities to mortal beings. Intellectuals are forced to give him a few grains of credibility, and the black-hearted masses will always see him as the hard-partying Prince of Darkness.

What's even more fascinating was Manson's personal reinvention for his 1998 album
Mechanical Animals.
The look and sound were both conscious rip-offs of glam-era Bowie, but his new scare tactic was a little more original: The main set piece on his tour was a huge electric sign that screamed
DRUGS,
and the record's best song was titled “I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me).” During his live performance of the tune “The Speed of Pain,” his set was dusted with a blizzard of fake snow that clearly represented cocaine.

The significance of this new gimmick is substantial: Manson slowly realized that American society had grown to fear drugs more
than the devil. We have so demonized narcotics that they now seem worse than actual demons. In the eyes of a lot of stupid parents and confused teachers, the concept of a kid experimenting with marijuana is more terrifying than a kid who is intrigued by
worshiping the devil!

Part of that evolution is due to the ill-conceived rantings of idiots like Nancy Reagan, but a larger factor was the decline of American spirituality throughout the 1980s and '90s. Regardless of how many people still describe themselves as “Christian” in census surveys, we live in a primarily agnostic culture. Intellectually, agnosticism makes more sense. But the downside is that when people lose their convictions about the existence of God and Satan, they are less able to have personal perspectives on what's right and what's wrong. They are more open-minded about old taboos, but they're also less able to see what's obvious (and therefore susceptible to propaganda). It was easy for a vocal minority to turn drugs into the postmodern Lucifer, and savvy rappers like Cypress Hill and House of Pain picked up on that perception immediately. However, Marilyn Manson was the first
metal guy
smart enough to capitalize on a new era in spook rock: In the twenty-first century, Satan can be smoked, snorted, and shot.

Of course, there is a problem with all that metaphorical social deconstruction: It's all speculative. Rock 'n' roll has followed the same path as politics, sports, film, and every other slice of the pop culture hodgepodge—they've all placed a greater reliance on mixed messages in order to cloak selfish motives. One obviously suspects Manson's true quest is to parlay outrageousness into fame, and then sell that fame to consumers. His ultimate aspirations are almost stupidly transparent. However, his
modus operandi
is more sophisticated and non-linear—at least when compared to the guileless metal satanists from the '80s.

My friend Mr. Pancake lived in Nepal for three years; he somehow became involved with one of those wretched Peace Corps programs where we send bright American students to foreign wastelands so that they can stand in flooded ditches and watch people starve. Since he had no access to any American culture
except
Baywatch,
I would periodically send him cassette tapes of new alternative music and classic rock standards. (And here's a warning for anyone who ever has a buddy move to Nepal: The mail service over there sucks. I made Mr. Pancake at least sixteen tapes during his stay in Asia, and he received about seven of them. I heavily suspect the rest of my “American Rock and Roll Music” was stolen in customs and is still being used as barter in the Katmandu sex trade.) Every once in a while, I'd throw an Iron Maiden song into the mix, particularly stuff like “The Number of the Beast.” Since Pancake was never a metal fan, he always assumed I was just sending tracks off the soundtrack from
This Is Spinal Tap.
But not even Christopher Guest has the skill to write satire as deft as lyrics like, “666—the number of the beast! / 666—the one for you and me!” As far as I'm concerned, Iron Maiden was the funniest band in the entire metal genre. “Sex Farm” and “Big Bottom” are jocular, but I laugh even harder at “Bring Your Daughter … to the Slaughter!”

The irony (or at least what I find ironic) is that Iron Maiden was often referred to as “metallectual rockers.” They had a very bizarre fan base—a lot of musicians, along with an army of loner outcasts who didn't drink or smile or talk to anyone who was still alive. Maiden never sang about girls (except when they were slaughtering them), opting instead to do musical versions of poems like “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which I actually convinced my senior English teacher to play during class. Iron Maiden was fond of “perspective” songs, a songwriting technique that later evolved into a cornerstone for death metal artists. They sang “Hallowed Be Thy Name” from the “perspective” of a man about to be executed; they sang “The Trooper” from the “perspective” of a kamikaze cavalier battling the Russians; they sang “Fear of the Dark” from the “perspective” of a paranoid man who felt he was being followed. This allowed bands to sing about virtually any subject imaginable without personal responsibility for what they said, which was especially important to groups who wanted to specifically address occultism in the first person. For five minutes, the singer became
the equivalent of a character in a novel, and the audience was supposed to view his espoused subject matter with the same kind of aesthetic distance.

By disassociating themselves from the content of their lyrics, Iron Maiden could sing about satanism with brazen disregard. The video for their best song, “Can I Play with Madness,” was filled with Celtic imagery and Gothic cloud formations; the video's story followed a close-minded schoolteacher who was hunted by Druids after he harassed a young metalhead. It was pretty much the epitome of what made the occult enticing to teenagers: Iron Maiden's music was painted as a conduit to a dark force that empowered the weak. In every interview I've ever seen with mixed-up teenagers who kill classmates after dabbling with the devil, they always (and I mean
always
) mention how they were drawn to the “power” of satanism. “Can I Play with Madness” took that figurative concept and made it literal: The “madness” they're playing with is some kind of religious witchcraft, and the result (at least in the video) is an army of hooded pagans who will fuck with your teacher's life, possibly by erecting a Stonehenge monument in his front yard.

Part of the reason Maiden was tagged for being so intelligent was the guitar work of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, two classically minded musicians who loved to go for baroque. As stated earlier, they appealed to a specific kind of metal fan—for those who took time to study the genre, Iron Maiden seemed more credible than most of their peers. Of course, they also had no pop sensibility whatsoever. For casual listeners, most of their catalog is boring and self-consciously complex, and the lyrics are more comedic than poetic. But the band was able to get a tremendous amount of mileage out of their unique iconography. Album covers, posters, and T-shirts almost never showed the group members; that role was filled by Eddie, a sinewy cartoon corpse who had (presumably) been inspired to rise from the dead by the awe-inspiring majesty of rock. Any time the PMRC wanted to illustrate the dangers of rock 'n' roll, they would always show the cover art for
Live After Death
or
The Seventh Son of a Seventh
Son.
It's my suspicion that Eddie (or, more accurately, the concept of what a character like Eddie reflected) was the biggest reason Iron Maiden became an elite metal band. These guys were unattractive, they weren't prototypically cool, and it was impossible to sing along with any of their songs—but Iron Maiden was a
type
of band. They were the type of band who embraced demonic geekiness, and they did it very, very well.

Danzig was another group who fit this motif, although they were less literary. After fronting two musically inept devil bands who mostly sang about killing babies and raping children (the Misfits and Samhain), Glenn Danzig put together a legitimate group in 1988, named it after himself, and had Rick Rubin produce the music. From what I can tell, every song is about committing suicide and partying with Satan. Punkers who liked his early work will swear Mr. Danzig is being sly, but I've never seen anything to support that claim. Much like Iron Maiden, it sure seems like virtually all of his songs are absolute shit, but his diehard fans disagree with a passion that borders on the unfathomable—they don't just think he's good, they think he's fucking
brilliant.

Danzig's punk roots attracted a different kind of audience than most conventional metal bands (that heritage also allowed him to stealthily convert into the alternative scene during the early '90s). Still, the group's subterfuge was heavy metal satanism in its most traditional form; if you unfolded the liner notes to their second CD, it formed an upside-down cross. In the video from “Mother” (an artistic and consciously unmetal clip shot completely in letter box format), the same kind of upside-down cross is drawn in blood on the body of a nude woman.