A Lovely Chat with Marilyn Manson

January 20, 2015 7:09 AM

During the interview, Manson brought up the Doors before I did, calling Morrison “my whole inspiration” back when he first started writing poetry as a teenager. Later in life, Manson plugged into keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger; the trio jammed on some Doors songs in 2012, giving Manson serious Lizard King vibes. “They just went with me,” he said. “That’s what they did with Jim because he was chaos and they were the tornado, and they just had to go with it. They didn’t really have any choice.”
posted by josher71 (26 comments total)

Obligatory Onion link.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:15 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Manson, unsurprisingly, is a devotee of the Doors.

I always knew that boy ain't right.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:33 AM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also, every time I read a Grantland article, I'm pleasantly surprised by their footnotes.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:35 AM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

My favorite funny Marilyn Manson moment is in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine, where Michael Moore asks Manson if he knew that on the same day Columbine happened, NATO dropped more bombs on Yugoslavia than on any other day of the Kosovo War. And Manson says, "Why yes I did know that." And, I'm like "Really?" I half-expected Manson to talk with Moore about how he learned so much about Kosovo, because he reads both the Nation and the Economist on the tour bus.
posted by jonp72 at 7:45 AM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

His interview in the New York Times is pretty interesting also.
posted by Fister Roboto at 7:46 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

On the other hand, his recent interview with the A.V. Club is awkward and rambling.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 7:53 AM on January 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

Not of lot of Manson in the NYT "interview", so I suspect it, too, was awkward and rambling.
posted by kenko at 8:02 AM on January 20, 2015

On the other hand, his recent interview with the A.V. Club is awkward and rambling.

While I'm not a fan of the guy, I can't hate on the guy because of stuff like this:

...and he goes “Where’s the dildo?” And I go, “Why do you want a dildo?” And boom! He broke my jaw. "

This was the correct response to the cop's question, imminent danger to life and limb be damned.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:03 AM on January 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

Marilyn Manson is playing a a nearby casino-hotel next month. I'm not sure how the bingo-playing binge-smoker types are going to handle him but I certainly intend to find out.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:07 AM on January 20, 2015 [10 favorites]

I'm no fan of Manson, but his response to Columbine was on point and made me respect him. (He said that while others were talking about how he caused this to happen, he was listening to the kids about their experiences. I believe this was on Politically Incorrect, but cannot search this because I'm at work.)
posted by pxe2000 at 8:37 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Manson's new album auto-downloaded to my wife's computer last night. From what I heard, it's not as harsh sonically or musically. It's also not nearly as compelling as his stuff from two decades ago, but then neither of us are the same people now as we were then, right?

We'll always have that concert on February 14, 1997.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:47 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

The only time I saw him was when he opened for NiN at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena in 1994. At the end of his set he was naked with a beer bottle wedged between his buttocks, inquiring if "any of you 14-year-old girls want[ed] to suck [his] rock star cock." He was subsequently removed from the stage.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:10 AM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Barring the subject having committed serious crimes, I believe that interviewing anyone at all, no matter how annoying you think they are, under a pretense of respectfulness, just in order to make fun of them in public makes you a prick.
posted by TheRedArmy at 9:20 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

A lady I know is Evan Rachel Wood's godmother, and had Christmas dinner with the Wood family when Evan was dating Marilyn Manson. She referred to him as Brian, told me he wore a t-shirt and jeans, and was "very quiet and polite and kind of nerdy, like an IT guy." I can't really read anything about him anymore without this image, at Christmas dinner in a t-shirt like an IT guy.
posted by something something at 9:29 AM on January 20, 2015 [9 favorites]

Most of the IT guys I've met at work have seemed angrier and more nihilistic than Marilyn Manson will ever be.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:45 AM on January 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

I was at a concert around 2004 and for whatever reason me and the ladies standing up front formed the only all women mosh pit I have ever been in. It was insanely fun, until one creepy guy jumped in and began trying to feel us up. We had stopped moshing and were working on getting him out when Marilyn Manson, from the stage, screwed the lid back on the plastic water bottle he'd been sipping from and threw it directly at the guys head. It hit and he quickly left. We ladies went back to moshing. It was a great show.
posted by lepus at 9:55 AM on January 20, 2015 [12 favorites]

I saw Manson open for Nine Inch Nails back in '94 or so. The venue was packed with 14yo boys wearing t-shirts that had the word "fuck" displayed prominently. I remember thinking "I would be embarrassed to be a Big Rock Star with this kind of fan base". When MM got on stage, he was running around wearing brown socks and some kind of diaper that had a microphone hook on front so he could hang his mic there and it looked like a big dong. It was perhaps the stupidest public performance I've ever seen.

But having said that: I've really enjoyed most of his music from Mechanical Animals on. Some of his videos are quite good, too: I'm not into gratuitous grotesquerie, but pairing up MM with Floria Sigismondi was a brilliant move on someone's part.
posted by doctor tough love at 10:08 AM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Evidently he's doing a lot of press in advance of his new record. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but...god, the asinine posturing in that AV Club article is so bad...I'm not sure I can erase that from my memory and then allow him to be well-spoken or thoughtful instead.

I always enjoyed his unwillingness to accept the role of sole-cause-of-the-downfall-of-the-world, but man, was a self-aggrandizing knob he seems.
posted by Richat at 11:31 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

His new album is actually really good! Stripped down rock rather than glam industrial, and he's got the voice to make it spooky. I was pleasantly surprised.

Also I saw him on the Mechanical Animals tour and it was the best rock show I've ever been to in terms of showmanship.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:11 PM on January 20, 2015

I'm waiting for the inevitable duet with Taylor Swift.
posted by Pendragon at 12:58 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Card Cheat: "Most of the IT guys I've met at work have seemed angrier and more nihilistic than Marilyn Manson will ever be."

It's like you've never worked with an F5.
posted by boo_radley at 1:42 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will admit that his singing voice has come a looooong way.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:46 PM on January 20, 2015

I'm no fan of Manson, but his response to Columbine was on point and made me respect him.

Actually, he had a great response to Michael Moore in the documentary. Moore asked Manson what he would have said to Harris and Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre. Manson said, "Nothing. I would listen." In that moment, Marilyn Manson held the title of Most Reasonable Man in America. I should have known Bush would win in 2000, after that. When Marilyn Manson is the most reasonable man in America, the shit has gone seriously cray cray.
posted by jonp72 at 1:50 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

He is one of the least idiotic rock stars. On a scale of Tommy Lee to Brian May he rates about an 7.83. But his Screamin' Jay Hawkins via Alice Cooper via NIN schtick doesn't do much for me and his music fills me full of "get offa my lawn". Anyway, some interesting links here which I enjoyed!
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:08 PM on January 20, 2015

previously
posted by ostranenie at 6:31 PM on January 20, 2015

Tyler Bates did great work on this record, it's Manson's best in a long time. Bates also did an amazing job on the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack!
posted by frenetic at 9:07 PM on January 20, 2015