Long Hard Road Out of Hell (26 page)

Why do you think it’s become so trendy for musicians to make references to Charles Manson in their music?

That pisses me off. Axl Rose was in a hellstorm because he recorded a Manson song, and I’ll tell you how he got that idea in a minute. Meanwhile Trent was living at the Sharon Tate house, so I end up looking like I’m this Marilyn Manson guy that’s riding Trent Reznor’s wagon, which is kind of funny. But I never got a chip on my shoulder. I never minded because otherwise I would never have gotten to record there and sleep there and get freaked out by the ghosts there.

That’s a good attitude. Why don’t you do another line?

Okay, but this is the last one
[sucking sounds]
.

So what happened with Guns N’ Roses was that Trent took me to a U2 concert one night and backstage I met Axl Rose. He was very neurotic and was telling me all about his psychological problems, his split personalities, and I felt like, “This guy’s a total fucking flake.” Being the overzealous type, I started telling him about my band anyway. And I said, “You know we do this song ‘My Monkey’ and it’s an adaptation of a Charles Manson song off his album
Lie
.”

And he’s like, “I never heard of that before.”

I told him, “You should check out the album, it’s cool.” And lo and behold six months later Guns N’ Roses put out
The Spaghetti Incident
and Axl Rose covers “Look at Your Game, Girl” from the
Lie
album.

Then he started getting all that heat from Sharon Tate’s sister and everybody. When our album was finished after that, we had the song “My Monkey” on it but I had this five-year-old kid Robert Pierce sing on it. That was the great irony: Here’s a kid that’s singing a song that to him is an innocuous nursery rhyme but to everybody else is this horrible thing.

After we turned the album in, I got this call from Trent and John Malm, who’s Trent’s manager and runs Nothing Records. And they’re like, “Listen, are you willing to put out your album without the song ‘My Monkey’ on it?”

I asked, “Why?!”

And they said, “Well, Interscope is having problems because of the shit that Axl Rose has got. He’s had to donate the proceeds of the song to the victims’ families.”

I said, “Well I don’t have a problem with that. Just explain to me what’s going to happen.” (The entire song wasn’t Charles Manson’s song. I just borrowed a few lyrics and the rest were my own.)

In the end, Interscope insisted that we take the song off. I said, “No.” So they told us they weren’t going to put the album out.

All of a sudden we went from being South Florida’s brave new hope, from being the only band that will ever make it out of there, to being like an unsigned local band again. And it sucked. It was the most soul-destroying period in my life because we had an album done and everyone was expecting it to be in stores. Meanwhile, my original bass player [Brian Tutunick, a.k.a Olivia Newton-Bundy], had started his own band called Collapsing Lungs and they got signed to Atlantic and had a total attitude toward us because they thought they were going to be big fucking rock stars. And now his replacement, Brad, was getting so fucked up on heroin that we had to kick him out of the band because we were spending more time taking care of him than rehearsing. So there was a real period there where I felt defeated. I wanted to give up. I thought it was over and my ideas were too strong for people. I thought about trying another medium, but I knew in my head that a year or two from then would be a better time for my music.

How did Interscope come crawling back?

While everything was in the air, Trent backed us up and stood behind us. He told us not to worry because he had an option to put out a record with any other label as part of his contract with Interscope, even though it technically owned Nothing. So we had Guy Oseary from Maverick Records [Madonna’s label] down to see us and he brought Freddy DeMann, Madonna’s manager. The funniest thing about those guys was that the first thing they asked me after the show was over was, “Aren’t you guys Jewish?” And our keyboard player said, “Yeah I’m Jewish, but I’m not religious, I don’t practice it,” And they said, “Yeah, okay, that’s cool. We gotta stick together.”

We had this whole bonding thing. Then they went back to New York and our manager got a call like two days later. They said, “We don’t really have a problem with Manson’s image, the tattoos, the association with the occult and Satanism. But there’s something we need to know: Does Manson have any swastikas tattooed on him?” And he’s like, “No. What are you talking about?”

They said, “Well, we just wanted to check because if there’s any sort of anti-Semitic message then it’s not something we want to be involved in.” Everything I was doing was so much about sticking up for the underdog that I couldn’t understand how they could misassociate what I was doing like that. It was weird. After my tattoos checked out, they actually offered us a deal. It must have lit a fire under Interscope’s ass because all of a sudden Interscope came back and said, “Listen, we’re willing to put out the record and we’ll even pay for it.” We agreed because we had always wanted Interscope from the beginning, I had faith in that label. I still do. They had a deal with Time Warner, who were the ones causing the problems.

So Interscope let you put “My Monkey” back on the album?

They did, but we continued to have other problems. I wanted to use a photo in the album’s booklet of me naked on a couch when I was a kid. When you hold up something to people, usually what they see in it is what’s inside them in the first place. And that’s what happened because the lawyers at Interscope said, “First off, that picture’s going to be considered child pornography, and not only will no stores carry the album but we’re subject to legal retribution from it.” They said if a judge were to look at it, the law states that if a photograph of a minor elicits sexual excitement then it’s considered child pornography. I said, “That’s exactly my point. This is a photograph that was taken by my mother, and it’s extremely innocent and very normal. But if you see it as pornography, why am I the guilty person? You’re the person who’s got a hard-on. Why aren’t you punished?” That’s still a point I’d like to make. People’s morality is so ridiculous: If they get excited by it, then it’s wrong.

[Manson rummages through his bags and pulls out the original album booklet, which has a reproduction of a painting of a clown face on the cover, with no text]

You see, we also had a John Wayne Gacy painting of a clown on the cover, and look at the other photograph on the inside. It’s one of my favorite photographs and I’ve never gotten to use it. It’s a picture of one of those dolls from the ‘60s and you pull a string on the back of it and the eyes get really big and they change colors. Around it is this like circle of wisdom teeth, and candy corns, and peppermints, and these Polaroid photographs of a completely mutilated girl. But it was something I had faked. It wasn’t real but it looked very authentic. So they called again and said, “Listen. First of all we won’t print this kind of photo, and second of all we couldn’t do it because unless you provide us with a name and a written affidavit from the person in the photo we’re gonna get arrested for distributing it.” They still thought it was real, so I told them it was okay not to use it. In the end I thought it was cooler for them to think it was real. It’s always been a game of not compromising but also knowing your limits and doing the best you can within those limits.

So you’re not bitter about your early experiences with Interscope?

Well, there was always a real chip on our shoulder that the album never really got the push from the record label that we thought it deserved. It was all about us touring our fucking asses off. We toured for two solid years, opening up for Nine Inch Nails for a year and then doing our own club tour. It was all just about perseverance.

Looking back on it, are you happy with the album?

Well, the whole point of the album was that I wanted to say a lot of the things I’ve said in interviews. But now I feel like I fell short, like I didn’t say it right. Maybe I was too vague or maybe the songs weren’t good enough, or whatever. But I wanted to address the hypocrisy of talk show America, how morals are worn as a badge to make you look good and how it’s so much easier to talk about your beliefs than to live up to them.

I was very much wrapped up in the concept that as kids growing up, a lot of the things that we’re presented with have deeper meanings than our parents would like us to see, like Willy Wonka and the Brothers Grimm. So what I was trying to point out was that when our parents hide the truth from us, it’s more damaging than if they were to expose us to things like Marilyn Manson in the first place. My point was that in this way I’m an anti-hero. I think I’ll be able to say it better on the next album.

AMERICA, MEET MARILYN MANSON: PART TWO OF A TWO-PART STORY

by Sarah Fim

Empyrean Magazine,
1995

When we last left Marilyn Manson, he was in his hotel room snorting coke and giving
Empyrean
an exclusive on the whirlwind events of the past year. The time now is four
A.M.
that same night and just as he is preparing to launch into the carnage tales of his tours with Nine Inch Nails (with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and, later, Hole as opening acts), there is a knock on the door. He hides his drug-covered Judas Priest CD behind a cardboard box and stands up, smoothing out his Adam Ant
Friend or Foe
T-shirt. He looks cautiously through the peephole, half expecting to see the psychotic runaways that slavishly follow his every movement and sleep with his crew (and occasionally very desperate band members) to find out his latest whereabouts.

But the sight facing him when he opens the door is a much more horrid one: it’s Twiggy Ramirez, the band’s bassist, with a bottle of wine in his hand and an expression of pure, abject horror on his face. He complains about how miserable he is because he’s snorted too much cocaine. Then he snorts another line and sits on an armchair in the corner of the room, curling his knees up to his red-and-white button-down shirt. Instead of making him talkative, the cocaine is bringing him down. To every question he is asked, all he responds is “whiskey and speed.”

I wonder if his presence will keep Manson from opening up and being honest, but Manson says not to worry as he pours himself a large glass of wine.

EMPYREAN: Snort some of that and then we’ll get started again.

MANSON:
This is good talking powder. [
Big snorts
.] Eek. [
He is startled by a scene on the video of handicapped people being massacred
.]

When did you start doing cocaine anyway?

Not that long ago. The first time was on the Nine Inch Nails tour. We had just played in Chicago, and one of the roadies called me and Twiggy into Trent’s dressing room. He was there with someone else in the band. The room was destroyed. There was food everywhere. Shit was crushed into the floor. Dirty clothes were strewn all over. And everything was covered in flour because those guys used to pour flour all over themselves.

In the middle of the wreckage there was a strange, gray-haired, pock-marked hippie who had bribed his way backstage with drugs and carved out something like thirty lines on a stainless steel counter in the bathroom. It was some ridiculous rock star amount of drugs, something insane like an ounce. He was like, “Do you want some?” And we were like, “We’ve never done this before.” And he said, “Try it.” So we did, and we were wired out of our minds. We were doing lines like crazy.

I was wearing rubber underwear that had been built only with an opening for your dick; I wore them all the time on that tour. And there were these two girls who were hanging out backstage. One was a blond and one was a redhead, and they were both pretty cute. One was studying to be a psychiatrist, and the other one was just a slut. I remember being really high and really confused and still having my pants on because I never took them off until I went to bed. And I was fucking both of them in the back lounge with this underwear on like I was some kind of debased version of Superman. My skin never touched them. It was like wearing a body condom.

Were you afraid your heart would stop on the cocaine?

It didn’t really bother me at the time. We thought it was really funny because it was such a cliché. Only stupid people get carried away with drugs. Like John Belushi and Corey Feldman.

That whole tour must have been amazing. All of a sudden you went from nothing to living this rock star life on the arena circuit!

No one had heard of us, and our album wasn’t even out yet. There were just rumors about us from the small amount of press that we had gotten from our publicist, Sioux Z., who was very excited about taking on this project even though she probably didn’t understand it. I always wanted something more. That was my problem: I always wanted more. And when I came across that way to my publicist or my record company or my producer I was always told to be patient and not expect too much or get my hopes up. Even Trent and his manager, when they signed us they said something like, “Someday I think you guys could sell as many records as Ministry.”