ME & MARILYN & THE OTHER MM IN TWO PARTS
(Including intermission, and admittedly some light-whingeing.)
Fuck the keepers.
Here's to those too self-destructive to care if they leave any imprint on you beyond a flash burn. A singe and seduction of your synapses and senses as transitory as it is dazzling.
So much obsession in these fanboy days of spoddery and filing with the artefact you can treasure, with only listening to those bands and artists with 'substance' you want to collate & keep. Keepers. Whatabout those you use up and discard, those who suit a particular paroxysm you were tangled up in at that precise time? Some of my favourite bands and artists are ones that I never listen to anymore. Never followed them, never called myself a fan, but they got under your skin at one point, gave you an unforgettable night, the illusion of belief again, even if only for a while. Marilyn Manson's one of those for a couple of reasons. Firstly, amazing live, always, even in the soul-sapping hellhole that is the Milton Keynes Bowl, always when on stage a giant refusal of your cynicism or fatigue. Also, smartest pop star I ever met. Here's two pieces, one an interview from Berlin in 1997, the other a live-review from Brixton about a year later. The Berlin trip was nuts and a hoot and was in the irresistable company of the goddess and genius Lili Wilde, whose shots accompany this post (and who also, on that particular trip, took the shot that tops this blog -you can see the Brandenburg Gate in the background). Lili, like Manson, is a superstar, but unlike Manson can fly a plane and doesn't mind if you fuck your leg up in Trondheim, she'll still stroll as slow as you up to nose around the church and laugh at modern artists.
I'll never forget waiting at Tegel whilst an increasingly confused security team pulled out an increasingly pissed-off Lili's props, whips, boas from her camera bag. She was and is one of the nicest and coolest people I've ever met and not just cos she always smoked Marlboro Red (c'mon, every fag you smoke is one you really want to be a Marlboro Red). This piece got half-spiked initially and I was told to 'tone down the Nietzche stuff' which I duly did as there is no principle I will not happily forget or sacrifice for money. Have no copy of the original but was happy with what ran. Probably the last time I would even dare to write something like this for Melody Maker, already well on it's way, under Mark Sutherland's shitheaded stewardship into being a shameful arserag I was faintly embarassed to be associated with. Anyhoo, don't get me started down that road, I'll talk your head off.
Alternative Cult Star
Melody Maker, Sept 20 1997
Interview by Neil Kulkarni.
"
I never became an adult, I'm Peter Pan."
In an ersatz Berlin hotel lobby, I ask the seven-foot insect god before me what he's here for.
"To undermine truth. To celebrate paradox."
Answer the question.
"You
tell me. It's the questions that matter, not the answers. It's the
experiences you gain, the people you piss off, the people you entertain,
the arguments you start. The energy of the contradictions, the debate,
not any conclusions you might draw."
If you don't tell me the truth in five seconds I will never believe in rock'n'roll again.
"Good.
The truth is only relative to how many people believe it. If I want to
discover the truth, I have to become more and more famous. I have to be
the biggest star. Because the more people believe in what I have to say,
the truer it is."
That's why you're the last rock'n'roll star we have.
"Yeah."
That's why I reject you.
"Are you sure?"
Of course not.
"Question answered."
"Capitalism has made it this way/Old fashioned fascism will take it away"
The Beautiful People
Marilyn Manson are mid-way through a Europe-wide tour by the time we hook up
with them. Whereas in the US, Manson is a household name, an
entertainment figure on the cover of in-store emags (thanks, in no small
part to the idiotic condemnations of the religious right and the
concurrent boost in fanbase) on the continent they're still playing to
2,000 every night, still reaching virgin brains and suspicious minds.
It's something Manson confesses to finding deflating and a little
strange, a frustrating hurdle on the way to the world domination he
predicts by the start of the new millennium. Here in Germany, it's
Rudolph Hess' birthday. On the Munich TV screen, shots of his grave, as
ever permanently bedecked with flowers from all over the country, are
intercut with shots of Jewish cemetries daubed with Nazi graffiti. If
the timing of our visit is unfortunate, then tonight's Marilyn Manson
appearance has us even more worried. Not only are we in Bavaria, the
hotbed of German right-wing extremism, but we're going to see a band,
who for their show-stooper, wheel out a podium, a pseudo-fascist symbol
and militaristic uniforms. Satire goes over boneheads, we could get
fucking stomped here...
As it happens, food poisoning saves us.
Manson is ill as hell, and the Munich gig is called off. we fly up to
Berlin for the night, and the next day Manson is shaking my hand and
swigging mineral water and putting none of my worries to rest...
"It's a complicated part of the performance," he offers. "I'm satirising
the fascism of politics, of religion, and most importantly the fascism
of of rock'n'roll. Whether people are realsing that, or simply buzzing
of fthe spectacle, isn't my concern. I'm thoroughly entertained by itas a
massive piece of performance art. Because it has so many dimensions,
because we're thepolar opposite of Nazism, would be the first to be
destroyed by it, and we're using that imagery against itself."
You don't think you're normalising the unthinkable, normalising the inhuman?
"Words and symbolism are only as powerful as you make them. Just looking at fascist imagery doesn't make it hateful."
I
disagree; I'd say fascist imagery is beyond artistic conceit. It's
violent, and violating in the same way words like "nigger" and "faggot"
are, it signals the end of interpretation.
"But fascist imagery,
whether blatant or subversive, exists in everything. Rock'n'roll, sport,
politics, they all carry an element of it. Totalitarianism fascinates
me because I see it everywhere. Everywhere you are told from birth to
death that if you don't participate in various capitalist rituals, ie
consumption/good behaviour/religious worship, you won't be accepted,
loved or beautiful. That underlying suppression affects you and it's
completely ignored."
And your alternative?
"Look, why do people
want to be beautiful? To be loved, accepted, conquer their fear of
exclusion. I finally realised after years of not being accepted - why
not create your own standard and let other people be accepted or
rejected by you? We've reversed the whole idea of the fascism of beauty
and replaced it with our own standard. We destroyed it to create a new
way."
So all there is is role reversal rather than revolution, a temporary changing of the guard rather than torching the palace?
"No,
all there is is making people think for themselves. That's it. No
answers. You make your choice. Fascism is precisely what I'm out to
destroy but if people see our show and see fascism, it's in them
already, it's a self discovery. And that's what we're here for, to make
people think, enable self-discovery. I ain't here to condemn or condone.
I'm here to go against the grain. I've transformed my world so that I
am my own work of fiction, with no boundaries to what I can do, no
limits. I'm saying anyone can do that. Anyone."
Can we talk Nietzsche?
"Sure."
The dilemma in Nietzsche is that he says perspective is "the basic
condition of life". That's a contradiction, of course, as it denies the
objectivity that even saying that requires. The radical interpretation
of the dilemma ids that he never really "defends" positions. He's
engaged in a hyperbolic parody of philosophy for the purposes of totally
undermining philosophy.
"Absolutely."
Similarly, Marilyn Manson
aren't concerned with the truth. You're here to present a whole mess of
alternative perspectives, on morality, sexuality, stardom and society,
that are so contradictory to the
"official" , you bring all those concepts crashing down around you.
"That's the most insightful thing anyone has ever spent the time figuring out about us."
And I think it's a bullshit way to go.
"Explain."
OK, I will. In order.
Because
if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Your fans
aren't living lives of constant critical awareness - they're hopelessly
devoted to you, and like all disciples they've stopped
thinking, they're simply marching to your step rather than the TV's...
"Maybe, but wouldn't you rather they did that than submit to church,
god and state? Just become ciphers, corporate shells of a right-wing
morality? I think what we offer is the most life-affirming thing
imaginable. Life is only worth living when you find something that gives
you the energy and enjoyment of creative expression. Not too many
people have it. Slavery was replaced by the work ethic.; now, if you
don't have a job you're not allowed an opinion, you're considered
sub-human. People are so trapped into the program, coupled with
Christianity's idea of the afterlife, that they're more concerned with
dying, preparing for the hereafter, than they are with life. They're
finding excuses for not living while they're on earth. We show that
living is all you're here for. Here, now."
True, but instead of
offering enough of a concrete moral framework to live that life by,
you're just engaged in a childish inversion of the status quo. You may
think that your star/serial killername-conflations (Madonna Wayne Gacy,
Twiggy Ramirez, Ginger Fish and, of course, Marilyn Manson) are cool,
but Christ, John Wayne Gacy killed 37 innocent children and Charles
Manson was a racist, misogynist cretin. Just 'cos kids get off on that,
doesn't mean you should encourage it...
"You're missing the point,
and you're assuming I'm not aware of the multiple levels and
contradictions of what we do. Don't you think there's a point to be made
about rock'n'roll here? That it thrives on misogyny, that the spectacle
of a show relies heavily on fascist undercurrents, that killers are
rock'n'roll's heroes? We're jacking up the ante on rock'n'roll's
nihilist impulses, we're taking it as far as we can. And for those that
want to, they can see it as almost a polemic against rock'n'roll; even
though it's the only form that has allowed me to take control of my
life, even though it's still the most immediate, communicative art-form
in the world."
But there's nowhere for it to go in your hands other than further transgressions of convention.More filth, more obscenity...
"Well, that's a really simplistic view of what we're about, and so
long as I stay alive, there's always somewhere for it to go. 'Antichrist
Superstar' (the last MM LP) was like falling from heaven. The next LP
is about what happens when you hit the earth, where you go from there,
how much more there is to be discovered. The underlying theme of all our
music is ending judgement, speaking your mind, not caring about what
the next guy thinks. It's about going beyond race, sex, sexuality. I
want as many people, especially the kind of people who probably won't
hear us, to experience our music. Quote-unquote 'normal' people can be
treated like pariahs at our gigs and that sickens me. That's just
creating an opposite version of what we're trying to destroy. We're not
aboutmonoliths and edifices, we're about exploring the ruins."
How would you place yourself politically?
"Some
have said a 'right-wing liberal'. I just think I'm open-minded to all
perspectives. I've got principles but I'm still able to listen and
argue."
Are you running scared of a galvanising political
ideology? They don't have to mean entrapment. Socialism and anarchism
sound right up your alley.
"I spent such a long time in my life
looking for an 'ism', or religion, to throw my weight behind. And by
doing that I've become my own 'ism' for other people to believe in.
That's what 'Antichrist Superstar' is about; everyone has a crwon but
someone has to be king. I'm trying to be the kind of leader who's the
same as his followers, doesn't think he's better than everyone else.
We're a club of non-joiners."
Gee, almost sounds cosy, don't it?
It'd be tempting to leave it there, see MM as another band for losers,
another rag-tag of vague rebellion for the mosh kids to huddle around,
albeit smeared with lipstick and fetish threads. But later that night at
the Berlin gig, it's evident something more is going on, something at
once laughable, scarifying, inspiring and depressing. Cod-Nietzschean
bullshit aside, Manson obviously takes his role seriously, really does
see rock'n'roll as the confusion creating, existential crossroads he
talks about in interview. You can tell by the way he's refusing mediacl
attention from the two German paramedics looking over his blood-drenched
body.
"Sign here," says the guy with the clipboard, clutching responsibility-releasing forms.
Putting
a hideously inadequate plaster over the hole in his side, Manson signs
with a flourish, adding "to my Number One fan," smiling. Funny guy. He's
lost a pint and a half at this point.
IT'S the hottest venue
we've ever been to. Ever. Think of hell with the air conditioning backed
up. Rammed to the rafters, Berlin's Huxley's club is the only place in
town tonight that has signs of
life, and pretty strange life it is
too. A weird mix of indie kids, Scorpions fans and statuesque
fetishists, we're copping the talent when MM's stage manager Tony takes
us backstage and gives us each five backstage passes.
"Find
girls," he grunts. "Give 'em passes. They've got to be attractive, with
big tits. If they've got boyfriends, explain to them that he'sgot to
fuck off."
A writhing "satire" of rock'n'roll sexism, I suppose?We
hand the passes out randomly, then make it to the sound desk for the
gig.
Back-lit, gliding forward with an evil grin on his face, Manson
is one of the most absorbed and absorbing performers I've ever seen. His
lexicon of stage-flash is small (a droopy armed Pinnochio, a
stilt-walking insect, a butt spreading Mapplethorpe fantasy) but
immaculately realised, now wrapping his legs round the stand in lewd
union, now smashing his chest to bloody bits with the mic, now swooping
to his knees and taking it from both ends. The heat is getting nigh-on
intolerable, on stage Manson collapses entirely, his sickness still
nagging, his head on fire, mic-stand thrashed petulantly into the
drumkit.
Then things get out of hand. Springing to his feet,
grabbing a red wine bottle, Manson offers it to the crowd with an
obscene leer, then smashes it on a monitor leaving a jagged splintered
edge, the neck in his fist. As the band drive "Tourniquet" to
ear-splitting depths, spinning the sound into a demented dervish, Manson
finds an already-open and seeping downward gash on his chest ,
positions the bottle's glass fangs to it's right, and with an
agonisingly slow digging motion gouges a seven-inch trough in his ribs
that immediately begins to belch out blood at an alarming rate.
Falling to the ground, coming up for air looking like Carrie White Prom
Queen, he starts to weave around the stage, a shower of O positive
spilling out over the front row. Suddenly he drops from sight, the band
playing on even harder, unsure of what's going on. Roadies storm the
stage and desperately try to revive him to no avail. The crowd crane
their necks to figure out if he's dead or not, as the lights cut out
entirely. Ten seconds of pitch black confusion follow, in which soundman
Shaun uses every expletive I've ever heard, and then the lights are
thrown back on. The stage is trashed. The drums are kicked to shreds,
keyboards are droning on the floor, guitars are stuck in holes in the
speakers. The band have left the stage. Christ knows what happene din
those 10 seconds but the gig is definitely over. And it's the most
thrilling thing we've seen all year. The crowd go fucking berserk. Rock
and fuckin' roll.
THE gig, everyone agrees, is a
triumph. Marilyn Manson, may be the biggest rock band in America, but
Europe has, until now, remained unconvinced. Gigs like tonight will win
it over, the new single"Tourniquet" (on "TOTP" soon!) should mop up any
last stragglers. But in tonight's sweaty cramp you don't think of
worldwide domination, your memory is a lot more focused and specific. No
one here will forget that face, the face to the crowd before he slashed
himself. Eyebrows raised, sneer wide and pouting, eyes wide and
inviting. This is what you want, it said. You demand this of me, it
insisted. It was a moment of confusion, of abandonment, of absolute
freedom, a moment where rock'n'roll found itself looking dead into the
eyes of its demanding followers, a moment that happened and thrilled you
before you had a chance to make it sense of it, a split-frame of
confrontation that forced you to admit the potency of rock music, and
the horrors it relies on.
Backstage, a whole new freak-show is
kicking off as the pimped fans crowd around in cooing veneration. We
don't get to talk to the band that night, Manson preferring the
unchallenging company of fawning fandom to any "challenging
perspectives" he might have conned an interest in during the interview.
That irks, but finally suggets the unpalatable truth. Marilyn Manson are
a great rock'n'roll band, perhaps the only rock'n'roll band around to
really achieve the levels of untramelled degeneracy and extremity that
the form demands.
And that's ultimately why I feel you have to
reject them. Because, finally, it's it's dissatisfying, because the
cartoon confines of rock music are unable to contain Manson's undoubted
intelligence, an intelligence that crumbles under the brute simplicity
of rock's moral universe, an intelligence that eventually has to lose
itself in the dumb macho business of being in a band, maan.
Rock'n'roll's self-indulgent vanity reach their most thrilling zenith
with Marilyn Manson. In many ways they could be seen as the last
rock'n'roll band we need.
The man is clearly the last star we have.
"I've
learned to make being a star part of my art, rather than as a result of
it. And I've made being a star the most inflammatory, thought-provoking
thing it can be," Manson tells me as we ride back to
the hotel. "By
going through so much chaos I'm getting more in control of my my
emotions and my life, enjoying everyday 'cos it might be my last."
And where does injuring yourself fit in with that?
"There's
a certain pain I don't feel, a moment in art where you eventually have
to let go of caring about yourself. It's taken me six years in this band
to even find out who I am. Now that I have, the
journey's only just beginning."
You're still not answering questions, are you?
"No. We raise them. That's the journey."
I'm not coming along for the ride.
"You sure?"
Of course not.
"Question answered."
[A BRIEF NOTE WHILST YOU MAKE A CUPPA:
The
good thing about live-reviews back then was that you usually had to file
the
copy the next morning or that night, whilst thoughts were still fresh
but also
whilst you were anything but 'considered' or 'fair' or dispassionately
far
enough away temporally from the experience to not sound a little bit
over-excited. The best editors let you sound like an arse because they
knew that gigs make you feel like that. The worse editors 'correct' you
until you sound like another unmoved prick. As you can read - this
was well into the period where some dimwitted memo had come down the
pipe from marketing telling us that our average readership was 16, and
anything that referenced anything pre-1982 had to be EXPLAINED. I wrote
the phrase 'Riefenstahl decor' - what ran though was an ugly creation of
a sub-editor that explained who that was: "reminiscent of Nazi
propagandist Leni Riefenstahl" - fuck me that used to make me angry and
under Sutherland it happened all the time - wrecked the flow,
wrecked the rhythm of the writing (although what the fuck would
Sutherland even know or care about any of that), but more importantly
spoke DOWN to the reader, spoonfed them 'facts' rather than retaining
any mystery. Can't tell you how many doors opened up for me as a reader of
Melody Maker just chasing up references I'd never heard of. ANYHOO, like
I say, don't get me started. As you can see, for that night, I believed, although I don't anymore.Cannot
emphasise enough how much it felt like England's lower half had been taken over
by Manson fans that day. They were everywhere. Tea brewed? Good. Here's Pt.2]
Marilyn Manson,
Brixton Academy,
London
17th
December 1998
“Gig of ‘98” isn’t speaking the same language. A “happening” leaves you when it’s over. No this, this trip, this frenzy, is a national event. Never mind Brixton being
transformed into the most eye-popping plastic hallucination on the planet,
the traces ran the length and breadth of the whole country today. On the
train to London I started to notice this strange new race: dye sprayed so
thick that their coiffures are chrome- solid, those eyes – caked in crudely
smudged black pancake – bugging out reproachfully. On the tube they’ve taken
over, and by the time you get to the Academy, they’re wound around the block and they look at you, barely hostile, those eyes demanding “Why aren’t you this beautiful?”
Everything that rock mourns as lost
forever, Marilyn Manson is. Showmanship, popcorn anarchism, stardom. I’ve never felt such a tangible, soul-puckering anticiptation, seen so many people in such a religious thrall as I see tonight. The band mooch on backlit, Manson sky-high silhouette
towering on an Empire State backdrop. A bass rumble swells to a deafening
volley and BOOM! The curtain drops and he’s…there. A cartoon insect amalgam
of everything Iggy forgot, everything Bowie wouldn’t dare: a writhing
mechanoid of fantastic flesh, weirdly the most traditional entertainer in
the world. “Reflecting God” and “Cake and Sodomy” roar through your body
before you register that he’s not in costume. “Posthuman” and “Mechanical
Animals” throw the stage into blackout and he re-emerges on four 10ft
stilts, prowling like an arachnid on “I Want To Disappear”, for “Sweet
Dreams” star-shaped and grotesquely alien. He vanishes again, then struts
stage centre for “The Speed Of Pain” in a black‘n’gold pimp’s outfit,
peeling his leathers to whip out what we all paid to see, and appears to
wank like a mad tramp, much to the pit’s delight. A shower of iridescent
fallout, and then jaws drop. Red diamante basque pulled ass-crack tight,
lavish feather frill, pure Ziggy Stardust on “Rock Is Dead”, the go-go
dancers lezzing it up on “User Friendly”, “Dope Show” and “Lunchbox”. Then
he cocks a sideways glance at us over his shoulder, splaying his butt-cheeks
like a good ladyboy and simulates fisting shamelessly. He’s there,
absolutely in love. Untouchable.
Manson tells us of a chat
with God in which he was informed that Jesus invented dope, coke and LSD and
then “I Don’t Like The Drugs” bangs out its exquisite disco under a huge
Vegas neon “DRUGS” backdrop. No time to breathe, no space left in our minds
that isn’t inhabited by inimitable, undeniable him. A faux-swastika-ed
podium and décor reminiscent of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl are props
for a Mau-suited Manson declaiming "Antichrist Superstar” from the heights, slumping over his
lectern like a dropped puppet and it’s one of the most perfectly realised,
potently charged fusions of sound and vision I think I’ve ever seen.
A
bruising “Beautiful People” brings it to melting point and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, we’re allowed to go. And all the way home you see people shaking their heads in disbelief, vainly holding onto their posters and T-shirts, as if they might afford an explanation, some steady ground, even though the earth has just been ripped from under their feet. I know why tonight was such a life-swallowing experience, why none of us will ever use the term ‘mind-fuck’ for anything else. It’s you lot.
Corniness aside,
these fans are the most incredible-looking, heroically committed, utterly
devotional and fantastically self-absorbed disciples in pop. At a time when
we are constantly being told “the young” (whatever that means) have never
been more conformist, never been more fearful of ridicule, never been more
raised and ruined by precisely the conservative, conventional and careful
values that are the nemesis of pop’s lifeblood – tonight wasn’t just a poke
in the eye of such blinkered rhetoric, it was a bloodbath. Proof that
whenever conformity threatens to envelope either pop or life, those pockets
and places where that conformity is refuted, denied, driven out of
existence, grow that much stronger, closed in on their own
conviction,
blissfully and blessedly right.
An overwhelming rock ‘n’ roll gig.
Still the
best reason to live.
Your choice.
Neil Kulkarni
