In keeping with the original Marilyn Manson ethic of celebrating the opposing extremes of life, just as many people adored Manson and his music as despised him. As Manson put it to Alternative Press in its February 6, 1997, issue, "I`ve always found that there are two kind of people on the world; people who like Marilyn Manson and people who are just jealous." In fact, some factions of society found him extremely entertaining. Antichrist aside, he has most certainly become a superstar, and anyone who looks like that and gives a hell of an interview deserves a bit of attention.
Turning up here, there, and everywhere, Marilyn Manson and his cohorts soon found themselves in the public eye like never before. Awards were no longer confined to the microcosmic Slammies. The "Sweet Dreams" video found itself up against seasoned professionals like Metallica in the MTV Awards. In 1996 Marilyn Manson was inducted into Cleveland`s Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. Hit Parader`s 1997 Reader Survey saw Marilyn Manson voted "Favorite Band." Mr. Manson`s photo began surfacing in publications of all description. He was snapped standing next to Billy Corgan, making even the Smashing Pumpkins frontman look like a suntanned picture of health. Spin`s Special Twelfth Anniversary Issue "The SPIN 40" featured a suitably disturbed-looking Manson, complete with dead duck, as number 22, dubbing our hero "one scary monster, one super creep." Praise indeed.
Rumors began making their fast and furious way through the undergrowth: Manson to commit suicide on Halloween, Manson will be having a single breast implant, Manson spread blood on a baby while giving an autograph (he claims it was lipstick), Manson cut off his own testicles. Manson engaged in a sex act on stage with Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Flinck while his parents were in the audience. And, of course, perhaps the most famed rumor of all . . . as Mr. Manson himself put it to Metal Edge, August 1997, "People said that I removed my two bottom ribs so that I could¨ perform oral sex on myself. But that`s untrue. The operation was far too expensive."
Manson, with date Twiggy Ramirez, turned up at Howard Stern`s Private Parts February 28, 2997, premiere party at New York`s Madison Square Garden. The Reverend Manson looked quite respectable--relatively speaking--in suit and tie, and was quoted as professing to tune in to the King of All Media`s show "when I`ve been up all night doing drugs." The Private Parts soundtrack, boasting acts such as AC/DC and Porno for Pyros, has its requisite Marilyn Manson original in the song "The Suck for Your Solution." Party guests included Rob Zombie, Robin Quivers, Manson who was accompanied, according to Spin magazine, by a blonde "nude masseuse," Conan O`Brien, Joey Buttafucco and his lawyer . . . the list goes on. Manson reportedly partied on until the wee hours with fellow rock star Billy Corgan, Anthrax, Alice in Chains, and Perry Farrell. At the Thirty-ninth Annual Grammy Awards in April, Rob Zombie was interviewed before the show and was quoted in Rolling Stone as declaring, "Some of the guys in Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson are back at the hotel. We`re all gonna watch it there--that`s how it`ll be fun." Difficult as it may be to imagine Trent, Twiggy, and gang awaiting some room-service beers to arrive, we have to take Mr. Zombie`s word for it. Manson even made his big screen debut in who other than David Lynch`s film The Lost Highway. His part? A porno star, of course. He and Twiggy appeared in the opening scene of the film, in which Manson in naked and dead. So, it seemed, the Reverend Manson was quite capable of hanging out with the beautiful people after all. Of course, infiltration is always a spy`s first mission, and how better to meet new allies?
As press coverage rose to a fevered pitch in the States, the UK was forced to sit up and take bit of notice of the Manson crew. For a nation of sharp-tongued and dry-witted music critics for whom cynicism is a career requirement, the Reverend Manson got off fairly lightly. Q, the self-professed "World`s Greatest Music Magazine" featured a large photo of the band members posing in all their glory around a hospital stretcher with Manson, scarred and lacerated chest suitably bared, in the foreground seated in wheelchair. The photo`s caption read, "No way is their image contrived." A smaller live shot of Mr. Manson live on stage in his usual garter-belt and medical-brace regalia in captioned "He`s got a girlfriend, you know." The article alternately refers to our hero as "not unlike a rack-stretched Iggy Pop in Alice Cooper garb" or a "pansticked taboo-smasher."
In fact, the European music scene seems to find Manson and Company quite palatable. Either that, or they haven`t taken him seriously enough yet to realize what they have on their hands. At the Dynamo Festival in Eindhoven, Holland on May 18, the band performed with the like-minded likes Type O Negative, Entombed, Cradle of Filth, Fear Factory, Helmet, and Korn. The official Dynamo Festival T-shirt rather unfortunately listed "Marilyn Monroe" as one of its participants. The UK heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer`s review of the gig noted that Mr. Manson "attacked" Zim Zum "in a fit of murderous intent" and that after the lead singer incited a mud fight "a great slop of shit smacked him straight in the mush." "Even this sympathetic publication felt obliged to poke a little fun. The article header in the magazine`s July 1997 issue read, "Ever seen your grandfather in French underwear, barking like a dog? Mr. Manson has. Some people have all the fun, eh, readers?"
The big question to must overseas media seems to be, "What is all the fuss about?" Q bemusedly reports that "America`s neo-right have responded to this oddly childlike entertainment by talking the singer very seriously indeed." And Metal Hammer queries, "But what is it about Marilyn Manson that so many people in America have found so objectionable? To British eyes, the motley Manson entourage can easily be contained as a nightmare Jane`s Addiction on an Alice Cooper trip. Bizarre certainly, but dangerous? Hardly." Well, that remains to be seen.
(ten)
|
Read
my
Dream Book! Sign my Dream Book! |
 |
