On the phone from his home in Ft. Lauderdale back in 1994, Mr. Manson was soft spoken,
intelligent and thoughtful in conversation. In fact, he was a little worried about his girlfriend
who had a middle-ear infection. But he was happy. Marilyn Manson (the gruop) had just
finished recording Portrait of an American Family, their first album for Nothing/Interscope,
his groups new major label home. There was a serious buzz about the fort lauderdale band,
since Trent Reznor produced the disc and Marilyn Manson, to heir own credit, has stirred up the hometwn
folks in South Florida with their brand of terrorizing rock'n'roll.
"If an album like ours had come out in the late '60s and '70s I don't think anyone would
even have batted an eye at it," noted Manson with a hint of amusement. "The subject matter,
I don't think, would have bothered anybody with the records that were coming out back then.
They had Ozzy, they had Alice Cooper. I think in the '90s, things have become ultra conservative and I want to make a
debt in that. I'm not trying to stir up trouble just to stir up trouble and make money off of it. I'm actually trying
to say something, but in the vein of stirring up trouble-because that's how you get people's attention."
And attention is certainly what he received, that's for sure. For shock rockers of Manson's bent, the ire of the public
at large tends to become the framework within which one operates. Of course, fans-and particularly dillusuioned adoloscents
will come out in droves, knowing and listening to songs like "cake and Sodomy" or tributes to abortion doctors
("Get your Gunn," in honor of the abortion doctor murdered by prolifers)would likely irritate their parents.
Or perhaps the kids would enjoy the liberal use of the f-word.
But the public, espescially parents, must have been disgusted when they discovered that the disc was recorded at
Pig Studios, the former Sharon Tate house. The Tate house, Located in California, was where actress Sharon Tate(then married to "Rosemary's Baby"
director Roman Polanski)was murdered by serial killer Charles Manson's cult.
"We had a couple of weird nights there," said Manson of the recording experience. "We were running 48 tracks and the one machine was a slave
to the other machine. When we were mixing one of the songs, it just kept playing-the one reel hkept playing real slow. So all the vocals were on the 48
track machine and all the vocals were coming out real slow. It kinda scared us after a while-we couldn't fix it.
"And there was one point where... in one of our songs, somehow something from another song kept popping up
and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from.It kept scaring us. I think there was one night where we got
kinda spooked and we went home early and came back the next day and it was alright. I hadn't been scared of the house
up until that one night."
One figures the band shouldn't have been too suprised about reception to the album, considering their surroundings. Plus, they'd already
been through the mill prior to going to California to finish the album.
(extracted from Circus Magazine written by: Dennis Walkling)
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