"An Interview With The Honorable Reverend Marilyn Manson"
SETTING: Monday January 15, 1996, evening. Frankie took us onto the tour bus and we met
Mr. Manson in the back section. It was kinda dark, and he was wearing his sunglasses.
INTERVIEW SET-UP: I spent a couple hours cutting pictures and words out and taping them to 3x5
cards. Mr. Manson held the cards and responded to each one. I took the card when he was done.
Card: Review of SLC from 'f' magazine.
Rev. Manson: Smells Like Children for us was a bit of a transitional period between Portrait of
an American Family, and thenew record that we are going to start recording next month, and it
kinda documents the time we spent in New Orleans. We spent about four months there, and uh, kinda
got involved in all different types of things, experimented with a lot of different types of
things, and the idea of use and abuse was very heavy in what we were doing musically and in our
lifestyles and Sweet Dreams kinda became the basis for what we were going to do an that EP. It
just kinda dealt with, uh, you know, since I was a kid up until now, how I experienced different
types of use and abuse, and that's really what we got into on that EP. Musically it's a little
different than our first record, but it's trying to make way for some of the other things that
we'll be doing on our next record.
Card: Picture of Dio of the Lunachicks (whom they are touring with now)
Rev. Manson: This is probably the most appropriate band that we've had open up for us, the
Lunachicks. I think it's a good combination, and we get along with them pretty well, and I like
their music, and No we're not having sex with them.
Card: "OZZY OSBOURNE 'Retirement Sucks Tour'" ad.
Rev. Manson: haha. Today Twiggy is wearing an Ozzy Osbourne "Speak of the Devil" muscle 'T'.
Card: Drawing of a heart.
Rev. Manson: Valentines Day I guess is approaching, but this reminds me of the Smashing Pumpkins
T-shirt, and I've heard that Billy Corgan wears a tupe (sp?).
Card: "BRIDES & GROOMS"
Rev. Manson: I think marriage is an outdated institution, and it's also a legal institution, and
I have no business doing anything that's legal.
Card: "CHRISTMAS"
Rev. Manson: This Christmas holiday I went home to where my family lives. I didn't really
celebrate Christmas too much. But I can appreciate the fact that it's such a capitalist holiday,
where people just find an excuse to spend money. I did get my picture taken with santa claus. I
think he was scared of me though.
Card: "LOVE"
Rev. Manson: A lot of people think that I hate everything, but there are somethings in life that
I love, and the things I do love are very important, they're just few and far between.
Card: "LIQUOR CITY"
Rev. Manson: I don't drink as much liqour on this tour as I did on the last one, but I suffer
from a dependency to Jack Daniels, and I like to smash beer bottles.
Card: "Ever Get Someone Totally Wasted?"
Rev. Manson: Every day I try and ruin somebody in our entourage's life by getting them fucked up
in some way or another.
Card: pictures of a needle, a crack pipe, and pills, one of which says procardia on it.
Rev. Manson: Don't take pills, don't shoot up, snort what I can find, and I don't like to smoke,
I don't know if that's a crack vile or not.
Ben: Actually it is, I'm not that good of an artist though.
Rev. Manson: [snickers] I may try it someday, we'll see. Procardia. [laughs] Yeah, that's a
conversation between my mother and my grandma. Most people think it's a 911 call, but it's
something that got recorded on my answering machine by accident when I was living with my parents
several many years ago.
Card: "Syracuse University"
Rev. Manson: I think we played at Syracuse University once. yeah. There weren't many people there.
Ben: It was my first concert for you.
Rev. Manson: All right. I think afterwards I gave some people a bath. I'm not sure, I think that
was here.
Card: "Full Internet Access"
Rev. Manson: I'm not really into the internet, it just seems like a gossip solumn for people who
have nothing else to do with their lives, but I'm sure they can turn it into something good
eventually.
Card: "crime"
Rev. Manson: CRIME. What's illegal is only what's the popular consensus of what's right and wrong.
I think, as we've seen in the past, things that are legal and illegal always change over the
years. A lot of people try to confuse the law with morality, but I think it's just what's popular,
that's all.
Card: Picture of a gun painted like the american flag
Rev. Manson: I think everybody should be able to have a gun, because the people who shouldn't
have them already do, so we might as well have them also. This reminded me of the fact that
starting on January first your no longer allowed to burn the flag in america. Which is kind of
uh...
Ben: Except for ceremonial purposes?
Rev. Manson: I guess so. That was something that was legal for many years.
Card: "POLICE"
Rev. Manson: The other night there were two police officers hanging out in our dressing room and
they were telling us about how they do drugs and that's not really the problem, they don't really
care about stuff like that. They're more concerned with, I guess, putting real criminals away and
stuff like that, but they were pretty strange cops because we expected them to be assholes, but
they invited us to ride around in their car and things like that. Most of the time I'm getting
arrested when I see cops and, so, I tend to stray away from them.
Ben: Was that at the Rochester show?
Rev. Manson: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah I think I met those two guys. I handed them one of the Church of the Anti-Christ Superstar fliers,
Rev. Manson: Really?
Ben: and they said they couldn't take it 'cause then they would be like supporting...you know
they couldn't take any fliers from any organization.
Rev. Manson: Yeah, they were kinda weary about taking photo's with us, but they did eventually.
Card: "Safe Sex"
Rev. Manson: I guess any life without the threat of death isn't worth living.
Card: Picture of a girl bare cheasted from playboy
Rev. Manson: Pictures of naked women and strip dancers make me violent.
Card: Picture of a naked man wearing shoes and a backpack.
Rev. Manson: What is this from?
Ben: That kid went to UCLA
Rev. Manson: That guy that was walking around naked?
Ben: Yeah he went to school naked all the time.
Rev. Manson: I guess that's the only way you can make college exciting, is to walk around naked.
I tried it, it was...boring for me.
Card: "Bi-curious?" "Meet real American Men" ad for phone talk lines
Rev. Manson: I have a personal fascination with transvestites, men who look like women. But I
have nofelling of excitement from hairy chested men, unfortunately.
Card: Editorial cartoon depicting a store closed with sign saying "government shutdown"
Rev. Manson: [looks over carefully and shakes his head](no comment)
Card: Book cover: Sin Sex and Blasphemy (or something). A guide to america's censorship battles
(or something to that extent).
Rev. Manson: At the same time that I am so very anti-christian, I think of course that
christianity is neccessary to provide a balance between, you know, what they do and what I do.
The same goes for censorship. There is no real fun in being offensive, if there is no one to be
offended by it.
Card: Drawing of the american flag, with pentagrams for the stars, and a big blue pentagram over the stars.
Rev. Manson: This is an old back-drop that we used to have.
Ben: Oh really?
Rev. Manson: Yeah, did you know that?
Ben: No, I had no idea.
Rev. Manson: Yeah we had a large american flag with a pentagram in place of the american stars.
This was about six years ago.
Ben: I didn't even hear of nine inch nails six years ago.
Rev. Manson: [laughs]
Card: Picture of a chicken
Rev. Manson: As always, kill the chicken has become our motto, since we've run into so many hypocritical poultry lovers.
Card: Picture of hands clasped in a "praying" position.
Rev. Manson: I guess also when you have your hands in this cross fingered praying position, that
if you open them up slightly and put some lotion in there, it's good for masturbation also.
Card: Pieces of an ad for angel footware. "and they're satan resistant too!"
Rev. Manson: [laughs] Angels are a subject that comes up quite often on Anti-Christ Superstar,
our next album. But I'll leave that for people to discover later.
Card: "Jesus Christ can offer you everlasting life" "Will you accept Jesus Christ?"
Rev. Manson: [chuckling] This is such a frustrating subject, I really don't have any comment.
Card: Picture of a bible.
Rev. Manson: Last night in our hotel room, we snorted drugs off a holy bible just to offend
ourselves I guess only.
Ben: So you guys have been playing some new songs in the concerts you've been up to. What are
some of the new songs, I suspect they are going to be on the new album.
Rev. Manson: We played Smells Like Children for a couple months. A song, called Smells Like
Children. We've been playing a song called Tourniquet, and a song called Irresponsible Hate
Anthem. But there is about twenty or so songs that we have that we are going to choose for the
next record. I'd love to play more, but people aren't really familiar with them.
Ben: I have a question about your old demos. You do a remake of "Iron Man"
Rev. Manson: That was the very first thing we ever recorded. That and "My Monkey" were the first
two things.
Ben: What was that actually called? I have a copy of it called "Son of Man"
Rev. Manson: Yeah. Yeah that's what it was called. It was our first experimentation with music so
we were just goofing around with a song that we had already known. It just ended up being on a
demo. It wasn't something that we really played or anything.
Ben: Okay, I guess that just about wraps everything up. Thanks a lot for letting me interview you.
Rev. Manson: Sure
(
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/studio) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip)