T he pale, scar-crossed, impossibly thin figure of Marilyn Manson looms over the last decade of the twentieth century like some sinister, corset-clad marionette. When, with characteristic bashfulness, he declares that the 1990s have been The decade of Marilyn Manson, even his sternest critics have to concede that hes made the transition from rock singer to cultural phenomenon. And critics are not in short supply: from young rock fans who dismiss the flamboyant, self-acclaimed Nineties voice of individuality as a pretentious faggot, to ageing reactionaries of Church and State like Senator Joseph Lieberman, who declared Marilyn Manson, the band, to be perhaps the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company. Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma was positively apocalyptic when he concluded a rant against the star by dubbing him further proof that societys moral values continue to crumble.
SPLITTING PERSONALITIES
Dissection is the only way to cut through the multiple personalities of a creature that uses them as both camouflage and armour. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the self-invented identity of Marilyn Manson with a name split between the theoretical opposites of Americas most infamous killer, Charles Manson, and her most beloved Hollywood star, Marilyn Monroe. As their rechristened namesake has observed, I thought that those two positive/negative, male/female, good/evil, beauty/ugliness created the perfect dichotomy of everything I wanted to represent.
Of course, the violent disapproval of the Establishment only establishes the bands status in the eyes of their army of fans. As the singer himself observed, Deep down most adults hate people who go against the grain. Its comical that people are nave enough to have forgotten Elvis, Jim Morrison so quickly. When the authorities try to remove Marilyn Manson from concert bills featuring previously unacceptable acts like Ozzy Osbourne and Nine Inch Nails, it just increases their outlaw credentials. Worse than Ozzy Osbourne, the demonic rocker pursued through the law courts for allegedly recording back-masked messages in the name of Satan! Worse than Trent Reznors Nine Inch Nails, electronic hatemeisters who recorded their masterpiece on the site of the infamous mass murder of Sharon Tate and her friends!
Such conservative reaction had previously been responsible for introducing the parental advisory stickers supposedly to dissuade impressionable kids from buying controversial records that sold so many albums and were worn proudly as T-shirt emblems and tattoos by rebellious youth. Attempts to ban Marilyn Manson gigs are just 300-foot-tall parental advisory stickers in psychedelic neon. Just as the condemnation of specific albums by his Christian teachers helped Brian Warner (the future Marilyn) select his musical entertainment in his early teens, so a new generation of disaffected teenagers were led to forbidden pleasures by the warnings of their elders. Ive always enjoyed being hated, observes the singer, the people who hate you make it all worthwhile. On my Antichrist Superstar tour, I think I upset all the right people; even if people are angry at me, at least theyre talking about Marilyn Manson, and Ive succeeded. The truth is that he not only withstands the blizzard of bile directed at him but feeds upon it, growing stronger with each outpouring. Combine this with a mainline into the worlds commercial arteries, courtesy of Trent Reznors Nothing Records, and we have the toxic cocktail that is Marilyn Manson from obscure Floridan cult band to the cover of Rolling Stone in a few short years. But does it add up to anything more than a combination of slick marketing and shock tactics?
Marilyn Mansons critics in the rock media are inclined to dismiss him as just another Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, KISS, or whatever rocknroll animal was rattling the bars of respectability when they were adolescents. Indeed, when asked about originality, Marilyn conceded that nothing is really ever new. Its a reinvention of a kind, as everything is these days. Everything comes back eventually, but whatever trend is reinvented its always with a different angle. Decadent behaviour and popular music have a far more enduring relationship than most of his critics seem aware. Classical icons like Mozart and Paganini posthumously elected to the ranks of respectability led lives of sex, substance abuse and Satanism that make many modern musical monsters seem mild by comparison.
Neither is the idea that shock tactics sell an invention of the contemporary marketplace. Russian composer Igor Stravinskys savage classical work Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) was inspired by a vision of a girl dancing herself to death at a pagan rite. (Satanist Blanche Barton includes it among her list of satanic music in her history of the Church of Satan.)
PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY
Marilyn Mansons 1994 debut album, Portrait of an American Family, appeared as the first release for Nothing Records the label run by Trent Reznor, best known as the harsh but well-respected industrial act Nine Inch Nails. It was initially produced by Roli Mossiman of New York noise legends the Swans, but Marilyn himself dismissed the original mix as too clean and polished. Reznor, working on his angst-classic Downward Spiral at the time, agreed to take over the production. The result is industrial rock blended with more gothic playfulness than Reznor would ever allow himself on his own projects. Its pathological exuberance doesnt always hide the technical limitations, but its good, contagious, toxic fun all the same.
The eponymous lead singers cheerful doodles of hypodermic syringes and lollipops adorn the sleeve, alongside photos of the band appearing like nascent shadows of the goth-androgynes who later haunted countless magazine covers. The label vetoed Marilyns plan to include pictures of himself naked as a child, and a faked polaroid of his horribly mutilated girlfriend, on the inside cover though they reluctantly allowed a curious, nursery rhyme-like piece entitled My Monkey, based on a song by Charles Manson, to remain.
I wanted to address the hypocrisy of talk show America, explained the bands figurehead, how morals are worn as a badge to make you look good and how its 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 were presented with have deeper meaning than our parents would like us to see, likeWilly Wonkaand the Brothers Grimm. Conceding it was a bleak album, despite his allusions to childrens literature, he added that theres a lot of moments of true pessimism, but I think in the end there is a shred of light at the end of the tunnel...