[新聞] Manson Featured in NME!
Manson 對投票、出兵伊拉克的看法，以及 (S)aint mv。
Manson Featured in NME!
Manson is featured in the current issue of NME magazine!
Click here to read.
http://www.marilynmanson.com/press/0409nme/1.html
[posted 9/22/2004 U.S.A.]
===
NME 25 September 2004
圖："If John KeRRy does something to impress me then I'll VOTe for him.
But It'll hAVe to be something like fucking A mAn oR TAKing CRACK"
He's the ultimate American anti-hero, but he won't vote against
Bush. He's the God Of Fuck who's getting married soon. And he's
the drug-snorting monster who goes to AA meetings. MARilyn mAnson
tells NME why defying all expectations is the most subversive act of all
Words: Mark Beaumont in LA
Photographs: Dean Chalkley in LA
圖：Burning Issue: our Mazza wonders what it is about him that irks
the right so much
"The record company said, 'There's nothing you could take out
that'd make it work. There's over 20 scences of you using
cocaine and there's a three-way homosexual sex scene'" Marilyn
on the video for '(S)aint'
The lights go down, the music strikes up; the worms begin to roar.
Blind, brainwashed freaks -- some locked in a contorted dance in the
aisles of Madison Square Garden -- howl their unthinking devotion as
the stage set of giant TV screens showing images of flags and
propaganda sweeps apart in a million-dollar, multimedia cabaret of corruption.
From the wings steps a silhouette -- their demigod, their anti-hero,
the man against whom demonstrations have been staged worldwide
decrying his megalomaniacal calls for teenagers to pick up guns and
kill in his name, and for his pocket. In a faraway block of seats
someone cries out -- "liar", "hypocrite", "evil" -- but they are
swiftly silenced.
He reaches the microphone. The music crescendos, the worms reach
apoplexy. The spotlight snaps onto the sneering, cruel face of the
Antichrist Superstar.
"Mr Chairman, delegates, fellow citizens," says George W Bush once
the clamorous applause of the Republican Party Convention has died
down. "I'm honoured by your support, and I accept your nomination for
President of the United States."
He pauses, a dead smirk on his lips, as men in army uniforms chase
down and manhandle from the arena two more protesters waving signs
reading, "BUSH LIES -- PEOPLE DIE."
"Since 2001," he continues, "Americans have been given hills to
climb and found the strength to climb them. Now, because we have made
the hard journey, we can see the valley below."
Another pause. A cold glint of the eye.
"And nothing will hold us back."
An hour later -- as the rock'n'roll Republican circus draws to a
close amid ribbon-storms, fireworks and sweater-clad Christian
geekolds dancing awkwardly -- on the opposite coast of America (and on
the opposite side of politics' vast chasm), another dark leader steps
up to a podium to deliver his State Of The Nation address. No goons
with balloons, hoisted placards or plastic smiles here, a deserted LA
photo studio echoes with the election manifesto of Bryan Warner, aka
Marilyn Manson: demon, scapegoat and whipping boy of the Christian
right; free-speech agitator and S&M 'daddy'; human mirror to religious
society's rank hypocrisy; sometime Satanist; renowned collector of
human remains, prosthetics and Nazi memorabilia; drug-guzzling,
grouple-humiliating devil on the arm of Lisa Marie Presley, writer and
film-maker JT LeRoy, Avril Lavigne and Aleister Crowley (RIP) and
Freak America's choice for President of the Bush-Blighted States.
"In some ways it's fair to compare America to a diet version of Nazi
Germany because it's a very subdued aftertaste sort of fascism that we
have going here," Manson says, musing on NME's proffered debate topic:
'Bush: Satan Or What?' "It's embedded in you. But (Bush) clearly
doesn't have the charisma and evil magnitude -- he's Dopey. The whole
German thing was an opera for them. It was a big show. In the same
way it's a big show here, but for Americans it's more like The Real
World or Elimidate. It's kinda pitiful."
After ten years and five albums of right-baiting controversy -- and
with that milestone of the Establishment, a best-of comp, due next
month -- it's easy to see Marilyn Manson in 2004 as a ball-less
Beelzebub. Back in 1999 the reactionary blame-flinging that followed
Columbine made him America's most undisputed Public Enemy Number One --
demonised, yes, but at the same time finally taken seriously by
conservative America as a subversive cultural force, and therefore a
brand of rebellion the kids could truly believe in.
His standing as a national hate figure, however, lasted only two
years, demolished along with the first twin tower. Today after three
years of living in a world of real devils -- be they Muslim
fundamentalists at flight decks of baby-slaughtering oil addicts in
the Oval Office -- a rock star fiddling with himself onstage while
singing about guns and drugs doesn't seem such a big deal. Hell, bwoy,
what do the good Christians of Buttfuck, Idaho have to fear from some
lanky LA fag with funny eyes when them damn Ay-rahs might be buzzing
overhead in corn-sprayers full of anthrax? Mazza's not the boogeyman
any more -- Osama's stolen his thunder.
Manson's slouches into a dressing room sofa, lighting dimmed, air-
con set to 'wintry', mirrored shades worn indoors at midnight. "To
say Osama has stolen my thunder is almost a compliment in the same way
as a porn star saying, 'I wore them out'," he sniggers. "Those are
some heavy credentials. But I think that I'm the long-term boogeyman.
I'm more like pancreatic cancer, something more obscure, something you
can't really diagnose at first. It's a dull ache that may end up as a
big boil that becomes fatal. It's not as obvious as these fly-by-
night diseases."
Oh, there's life in this old devil yet.
The politics of mayhem: part one
NME: Before the last election you were a supporter of Bush, right?
"That's a misnomer. People asked me, 'Are you gonna vote?" and I
said, "No, but if I were to vote I'd vote for Bush because, during a
Republican regime' -- and I believe I used that word because I think
it's funny to use those two words togetger -- 'art flourishes because
you have something to fight against.' Republicans are obvious. "We
believe in Jesus, we hate queers', they're everything that's against
Marilyn Manson. The Democrats are a little bit snakier. They're
liberal, they hug trees, they go on MTV and there's a lot of hanky-
pankey going on with them. I'm not into a two-party system. A lot of
people say I'm full of shit if I don't vote but it's like if you go to
a restaurant and they serve two different things to eat and they both
suck, do you just eat one of them for the hell of it? I feel like my
way of contributing is being Marilyn Manson."
Did you agree with the Iraq war?
"It's like Nineteen Eighty-Four. Is it real or is it fake? Who
knows? Do we know that it's real when we hear the horror stories of
the people who went over there not expecting what they got? I really
find it ironic, comical and stupid that so many Americans don't
understand why people in foreign countries hate us. Fox News -- which
is an oxymoron because it's not a news station by any means, they were
the ones that single-handedly started the whole 'Marilyn Manson is
responsible for Columbine' nonsense -- constantly have 'THE WAR ON
TERROR! TERROR THIS! TERROR THAT!' They are creating terrorism. The
terrorists don't even have to do anything."
Was it a mistake to go into Iraq?
"I can't say. It depends on the motivation. My dad was in Vietnam,
so I know that it had a similar flavour to it. I'm tired of hearing
this fucking pandering -- 'We must support the men and wormen in
uniform'. It's condescending, y'know? Go out there and fight
yourself. I think they should just reduce it to women's oil-wrestling.
Everone would be a lot happier."
圖："Bush has got another four years, you say. Ooh!"
"I started during Bush One, I'm still here during Bush Two and I
don't feel any older"
An empty hotel room, lavish and expensive. Cut to Marilyn, alone,
leaning over the writing desk, snorting cocaine. Now he's
masturbating on the bed; now he's bent over the toilet, vomiting; now
he's bathing in milk; now he's fucking two transvestites who inject
him and molest his unconscious body. The shots come quickly now --
Marilyn slicing his chest with a razor blade, a tongue in a vagina,
sex with what look suspiciously like under-age girls, line after line
of coke, alcohol guzzeld by the gallon and a final close-up of
Manson's wrecked, obliterated face, caved deep with desolation and
despair. Slow, slow fade.
Brian Warner has never been a stranger to psychological trauma. In
fact he credits it with making him the globe-trembling hell-beast he
is today. His autobiography opens with the image of a 13-year-old
Brian watching his grandfather, in a room full of dildos, masturbating
over pictures of bestiality. His childhood was spent at a govenment
research facility for children of Vietnam veterans who'd come into
contact with Agent Orange -- he was the only member of the study group
that was neither paraplegic or suffering from spina bifida. That's
about as Little House On The Pairie as it got.
Yet, having survived a life that made Requiem For a Dream look like
Rugrats In Paris, it was in January this year that the God of Fuck
finally cracked. Maybe it was the witch-hunt post-Columbine which
turned Manson reclusive for months and which he still feels haunts his
career. ("I barely made it out alive -- by my own hand or by
everybody else's. My phones being tapped, death threats from people
that fly black helicopters, whatever you want to believe.") Maybe it
was the abortion of his first child with his girlfriend, glamour model
Dita Von Teese, the foetus of which he keeps in a jar and calls Ludwig.
Maybe it was the stress of seeing off two identical lawsuits from two
entirely separte incidents (he was charged with sexual abuse by two
security guards for allegedly rubbing his genitals against their heads
during gigs). Maybe it was his growing realisation that he was "a
slave to a record company who for the most part, aside from a few
ambitious individuals, have no desire to care about art in any way --
I'm objectified, I'm a commodity". Maybe it was the cinema verite
approach to his role in JT LeRoy's forthcoming autobiographical movie,
in which Manson plays the stepfather who sexually molests a ten-year-
old LeRoy because the child is dressed like his mother, before
becoming the victim of domestic abuse himself: "It's a sick, twisted
story and I basically got the shit beat out of me. I got hit in the
face with a toaster! It looks real because it is."
Whatever it was, Manson come home from touring his US Number One LP,
'The Golden Age Of Grotesque', to find himself "sinking into
depression. It was one of those things like a snake that kinda crawed
up inside of me, like you never know why you've got a stomach ache. I
was lost."
Now 35 and (barely) still alive, there were a whole lifetime of
demons that needed facing. So Manson hired a film crew (headed by
director Asia Argento), locked himself in an expensive hotel suite and
spent two days in a real-life orgy of on-screen exorcism.
"I made this video for a song called '(S)aint'," he explains, "which
I paid for myself. I wanted to take two days in a very expensive
hotel room and completely relive moments in my past and stories of my
firends' pasts. I wanted to capture desolation, utter depression, but
real. There's moments where I'm naked and vomiting in a toilet,
there's bits where I'm cutting my chest and reliving that part of my
life. Then there's a series of sex scences, almost like when you're
half-asleep, when you're lucid-dreaming. It's the darkest thing I've
ever done and it's hard for me to watch. People can say I'm full of
shit but when you watch it there's nothing that was faked. If you see
sex in there, that's what it is. If you see me masturbating in there,
that's what it is. I didn't want the label to have anything to do
with it and, of course, when they saw it they said that they didn't
want anything to do with it. They said, "There's over 30 scenes of
you using cocaine and there's a three way homosexual sex scene." I
think some territories in Europe might release it. The Germans said,
'May we please blur the scene with the tongue in the vagina?' and I
said, 'If you must.'
"The point is I was signed to a record company that promised
artistic freedom and when you censor yourself before you get a chance
to let the government do it then you're really living in a terrible
time where there is no Big Brother -- you are Big Brother."
Not exactly coming to TRL soon (but it wil be on marilynmanson.com
for those who find The Libertines' soap opera a little too light-
hearted), '(S)aint' was therapy-by-promo, and watching it made Manson
realise that "I didn't wanna be that person any more". He set about
rebuilding himnself; he moved out of his Hollywood mansion to a house
out of the city once owned by '30s screen goddess Habara Stanwyck. He
proposed to his girlfriend -- they marry "soon... in Europe". And, in
a scene only dreamed of in the wildest nightmare of Mel Brooks, Satan
saw a shrink.
"I got dragged to one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting," he admits, "and
it wasn't very anonymous! I had to sign autographs! I don't believe
in psychiatry. I think therapy can exist in a lot of extreme ways.
I've been to the Church Of Scientology several times, but I'm not a
joiner, I think that's clear. But I did go and visit a psychiatrist,
which I find to be a modern evil of the Western world -- illnesses
without any cure that perpetuate themselves to pay people. But I
liked the psychiatrist. He said, 'Why are you here?' and I said,
'Well, people are concerned about me, they think I'm fucked up.' And
he said, 'I don't believe in treating artists because psychiatry has a
tendency to level you out, and ups and downs are what make people
creative.' I said, 'So what should I do?' and he said, 'Don't take so
many drugs and try to be creative.' So I said, 'OK, here's $500!'"
Somewhere along the line, though, Mazza found his salvation in art.
"Everyone could see the change. I'm much more...I wouldn't say laid-
back but more positive, less rash, more focused. I found a reason to
need to exist. It has nothing to do with money or status or being a
hero. It's just that America isn't worth living in, for me, if
Marilyn Manson doesn't exist. If it's not there then I wanna make it.
This is the real deal. It's life and death. I've faced the fact that
I could be killed on many occassions and I got over it. It didn't happen."
The politics of mayhem: part two
Who will you vote for this time?
"I'm not voting."
Even after what happened last time?
"Yeah. I know people will say I'm not taking a stand but I can't
say I'm interested in either of them. I don't see anything more
worthwhile in Bush than four years ago. You should be able to tell
just by looking at me what I represent. If John Kerry does something
to impress me then I'll vote for him. But it'll have to be something
like fucking a man or taking crack."
At such a critical point in US history you're putting out a cover of
'Personal Jesus'. Is this not the time to wipe off the make-up and
stand up for something?
"To me it was political, but that's the only way I can be political
because I'm not a preacher. The minute I become a preacher I'm gonna
become everything I hate. I'm someone that people do look for opinion
but what I'm trying to give people is the strength that I find in
doing what I do. I wasn't trying to be gimmicky picking 'Personal
Jesus' but I did decide to put it out right before the election and I
am going to tour before the election, do some shows, say my piece and
do things that make sure that freedom of speech continues to exist.
That's all I can ever offer."
Taken at face value, Marilyn Manson's politics are despicable --
here's an anti-establishment icon advocating apathy: spouting little
more thatn 'Don't vote, the govenrment always gets in', happy to see
another election become a mockery of 'democracy' and watch thoughsands
more civilians die so long as they're 'over there'. Similarly his
best-of, 'Lest We Forget' is, on the surface, nothing but a stream of
shallow teen sloganeering ('Rock Is Dead', 'Disposable Teens',
'Irresponsible Hate Anthem'), the only major 'hits' on which are
snarled pop covers ('Sweet Dreams', 'Tainted Love', 'Personal Jesus').
On this evidence he seems about as likely to radically alter society
as an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Look mummy, the God Of
Fuck's got a new album out. What time is How Clean Is Your House on?
But Manson's significance is far more insidious. By embodying
everthing that any government must -- in the eyes of Middle America --
despise, he stands for an abhorrence of conformity. His music has
always been more aligned to the living art of David Bowie and Leigh
Bowery that the soapbox tub-thumping of Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg.
He's been the vampire devil-star, the crucified zombie god and the
wire-jawed Papa Lazarous of his own Underworld Of The Burlesque,
always with the same massage: Don't Let Them Tell You Who You Are.
It's in 'Personal Jesus' too.
"I made the mistake of listening to some of the psychobabble of an
AA meeting," he recalls. "There was all this talk of Jesus, going
from one church to another. I'd always loved the song; if I were to
write a song today, it's what I'd wanna say. The whole thing is:
Marilyn Manson is a state of mind, a belief in yourself that I created
a long time ago and will live on when I'm not around. It's my legacy,
whatever stain I leave."
He snorts heavily: "This best-of is a reminder that I started during
Bush One, I'm still here during Bush Two and I don't feel any older.
I feel more damaged, scarred and cynical but somewhat young again,
with the foolish ambiiton to enjoy making music in a world where the
more successful you become, the more marginal you are in some ways.
'Lest We Forget' is used for war memorials and this has been a war."
It's almost 2am; the podium's packed away and Manson's car thrums
outside. As we head for the door his fiancee Dita breaks form showing
the NME snapper naked pictures of herself to confide the real
reason arilyn is reluctant to vote.
"He doesn't want to do jury duty." she says.
He's been given hills to climb. But nothing will hold him back.
--
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
im not in love but im gonna fuck you til somebody better comes to love
im not in love but im gonna fuck you til somebody better comes to fuck me
ˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍˍ
--
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