Blender May 2003 In Your Face Wake up America! Right-Wing punching bag Marilyn Manson has returned with a crazed new album, a racy new girlfriend and a first-rate taxidermy collection. But can he still scare the bejesus out of grownups like he used to? " Are you an idiot?" Manson snaps. " Im the first Eminem!" If there is one rock star you can count on to own a 150year old, seven-foot-tall human skeleton with the skull of an antelope, its Marilyn Manson. Once the property of occultist Aleister Crowleys lodge, the bones now sprawl in a chair at the entrance to Mansons attic. "I refer to him as Ernie," Manson says. "I dont know why." Lily, Mansons white cat, likes to curl up in Ernies rib cage and go to sleep. Manson is showing Blender his helter-skelter, five-story house in the Hollywood Hills with the brisk efficiency of a Ripleys Believe It or Not tour guide. His voice is low and soft, and his face, apart from the occasional flicker of amusement, is as still as a mask. He gently suggests that we restrict our tour to the upper floors, because his girlfriend of three years, burlesque dancer and pinup Dita Von Teese, is entertaining a friend below. Mansons home, a white, Spanish-style building previously owned by early-Hollywood actress Mary Astor, bulges with religious iconography and haunting artwork, including his own watercolor of JonBenet Ramsey. On the dining room table sits a Ouija board a gift, Manson says with mild embarrassment, from Johnny Depp. Entertaining the living room, Blender almost steps on a bearskin rug with the head (and gaping jaws) attached. Manson likes animals, especially the dead kind. Theres a baboon by the chaise lounge, a raven over the mantelpiece and, draped over an armchair, a deeply unsettling jacket made from the skins of conjoined twin lambs. "When I was a kid my dog died, so I guess I wanted to get pets that were permanent," Manson explains matter-of-factly. "I have a lovely cat now, but if she dies before I do, Ill probably her stuffed." Manson is dressed in what he calls his bad-schoolboy look: white shirt, black trousers, black-thick-soled boots, a black tie almost as wide as his waist and a gray army cap, titled at a jaunty angle. As usual, his face is painted white and his lips dark red. His trademark contact lens stares blankly from his left eye. All of this is disconcerting for about five minutes- after which Manson just seems like a polite, funny host with eccentric tastes. Unless hes been hiding all his Pottery Barn purchases, Manson lives exactly as you hope he would. Maybe this is why it annoys him when people assume he has two identities: the ghoulish folk-devil Marilyn Manson on-camera and plain old Brian Warner at home. "The minute anybody says to me, "I dont like you for Marilyn Manson; I like you for who you are, then that person is absolutely wrong, because thats who I am," he says. "Being Marilyn Manson is what I do just as much as making a record is. Thats why people create parodies of me or take shots at me or sue me. Its because thats what I am." People dont hate Marilyn Manson like they used to. Religious groups and moralizing politicians joined forces against him as soon as he released his breakthrough second album, 1996s Antichrist Superstar. Then, after the epochal events of April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, it seemed as if most of America hated him. Two years later, when he played his first show in Colorado after the shootings, he received so many death threats that a squad of undercover police officers had to follow him around all day. That same afternoon, though, he recorded an interview for Michael Moores documentary Bowling for Columbine, which has since been nominated for an Oscar. His smart, articulate performance won him many admirers and finally laid to rest the absurd notion that a rock star could be held responsible for the Columbine shootings. Even so, Manson is ambivalent about the response. "What I said in the film, Ive since the beginning of the band," he says. "People say, Wow, Im surprised how well-spoken you are. Its like me saying, Wow, Im surprised that you dont smell like dog shit." So much for the publics hate. A more pressing question might be whether people love Marilyn Manson the way they used to. His last two albums, 1998s Mechanical Animals and 2000s Holywood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), both sold disappointingly. At the same time, Eminem, another notorious MM, became the moral majoritys nemesis. Mansons bogeyman stock plummeted. The Onion ran a mock newspaper story headlined MARILYN MANSON NOW GOING DOOR-TO-DOOR TRYING TO SHOCK PEOPLE. At age 34, Manson is seen less as an evil pied piper leading kids of America into Babylon and more as a well respected commentator and polymath. He exhibited some of his watercolors in a Hollywood gallery this September and can be seen playing a transvestite alongside Macaulay Culkin in the upcoming movie Party Monster. He also has plans to write and direct his own feature-length debut. Where does all that leave his music? Manson will have an answer for this question- later. First, he wants to play Blender his new record, The Golden Age of Grotesque. "Well listen to it and youll say its shit, and Ill send my baboons after you," he says, pressing play. Even by Mansons standards, Golden Age is a thrilling over-the-top piece of work. Influenced by the excess of 1930s vaudeville and the decadence of Weimar Germany, it is frantic with Mansons libertine ideas about entertainment, ego, sex and violence. Its also dementedly catchy, and the language hyperventilates along side his music. One song is called "Doll-Dagga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag." The video for another, "mOBSCENE," Manson says, will feature a troupe of dancing girls and an elephant. While the album plays, Manson interjects with track-by-track explanations, sips absinthe and scribbles on a pad. When its finished, he turns the pad around to reveal a sketch of Blender looking like an extra from Schindlers List and clutching a grinning mouth in one hand. "I thought you were very serious, but then you started smiling," he explains. Manson plays games, but he doesnt really twist the knife. If he was cruel in the past- and various accounts suggest he had his moments he seems to have softened. He can be shamelessly pretentious, too, but hes charming enough to get away with it. "Shock was never my goal," he explains. "Its too juvenile. Anyone can be shocking. But to be provocative, yes. To be controversial, yes. Theres a point behind it." Did you see the story in the Onion? "Yes, Im amused by it, but its as cheap a shot as blaming me for violence. Someone was stupid enough to ask me, So, youre acting now- do you consider yourself the next Eminem? Are you an idiot? Im the first Eminem." Four years ago Marilyn Manson locked himself away in a room for three months and wrote a novel that nobody, not even Manson himself, has read since. "Its a very traditional orphic tragedy, like Romeo and Juliet," he says. "The main character was inspired by a girl in my life, and the ending isnt a happy one- the ending wasnt a happy one." Manson never calls the girl in question-actress Rose McGowen-by her name, just as he refers to Dita Von Teese only as "my girlfriend." Hes not explicit about what happened with McGowen, but it sounds messy:" Lets just say that I was a rock star, and thats not what she was interested in." Manson first saw Von Teese at a vintage-clothing expedition in 1997, but they didnt properly meet until three years later. There wasnt much time between the two relationships. "I wouldnt say I traded in one for the other, because it wouldnt be an even trade, but I made a strong stance in my life," he says. Youre a serial monogamist, arent you? "Im a very codependent person. I guess I was a mamas boy." There have been other changes in Mansons life. Six months into the recording of the new album, his good friend and longtime bassist, Twiggy Ramirez, left the band. Manson replaced him with Tim Skold, from industrial veterans KMFDM. With no disrespect to Twiggy, [his departure] helped the record, because it freed us from alot of things I felt tied down to," Manson offers. "You have to understand that its my vision, and the people in the band arent agreeing because theyre in the band; theyre sharing the vision. People will say it wont be the same with this lineup. Its not meant to be the same. Its meant to be better." While talk of his former bandmate gets him down, he visibly brightens when hes talking about Von Teese: discussing how at red carpet events she looks more like a Hollywood star than the Hollywood stars do; how shell always give him an honest opinion; and, yes, how she was Playboys cover girl last September. " I grew up stealing my grandfathers Playboy magazines, so to have my girlfriend in Playboy is nothing to be ashamed of. I dont let my Dad look at it, but Im sure he does anyway." The longer Blender talks to Manson, the warmer and frank he becomes. He appears content with the people around him. He takes fewer drugs: "I dont always answer the phone when they call," he says with a faint chuckle. He even talks about having children. "I like kids; kids like me. Im like a clown to them. I would love to have a kid one day." He wont be a family man quite yet, though. He still has grand designs. He still wants to change the world. And, of course, he still wants to entertain. "Im a shy person," he says. "I dont like being around people, but I dont like being alone so the way I found to deal with it was by entertaining people. And entertaining people sometimes is also pissing them off. It gives them something to complain about, and it creates new jobs and new comities and new collection plates to pass around to help stop terrible things like me." On our way out, Manson shows Blender his hat rack. Theres a Charlie Chaplin bowler, a Russian hat and a Nazi officers cap (minus the swastika). He picks up a fedora. "This used to be my incognito hat," he says. "I left a movie theatre once and a large group of fat girls yelled, Its Michael Jackson!" His mouth crinkles in amusement. "Thats the strangest thing Ive ever been called." |