Long Hard Road Out of Hell

by Marilyn Manson

  Unfortunately, there isn’t any real climax to this story other than I think that she wanted to cuddle with someone and we both ran.

  Did she catch you?

  I have a feeling that Trent may have ended up cuddling with her because he has a soft spot for shitty women. Not that we all don’t all have a penchant for taking ugly girls under our wings in the hopes that they’ll be better in the morning. But they’re always worse.

  So I went to sleep and hoped that it all would go away. The next day it did and we felt a lot closer to each other of course. He told me that he was starting his own label through Interscope Records called Nothing, and he wanted Marilyn Manson to be the first band on it. I thought it was the best label to be on because Trent was so upset about his experiences with his old label, TVT, that one of his biggest goals was never to deceive or mistreat the bands on Nothing.

  Trent said he was particularly impressed with the demo that we had out at the time, called Live as Hell. It was recorded on a Tampa Bay radio station and it was dreadful sounding. It was with our then-drummer, Freddy the Wheel [Sara Lee Lucas], whose timekeeping was about as impressive as Kelly’s cornhole was.

  Tell me about the recording of your first album, Portrait of an American Family, which was actually number one in our reader’s poll last year.

  It was a disaster at first. We went to record in Hollywood, Florida, at Criteria Studios, which is owned by the Bee Gees. The guy we were working with was Roli Mossiman, who was a weird character. I forget if he’s Swiss or German—some country where they’ve never discovered the toothbrush. He had about six—maybe eight—teeth in his head. And while we were in the studio recording he lost two of them. They were just falling out of his head, rotten, and he smoked all the time. Do you know how I feel about that?

  Your manager told me you despise it.

  Right, and Roli would roll into the studio smoking at about two o’clock and would want to quit a few hours later. He spent all his time talking about when he used to be in the Swans, which was one of the reasons why we picked him. But he only worked maybe five or six minutes a day.

  When we were finally finished, Roli had done the opposite of what I’d expected. I thought he was going to bring out some sort of darker element. But he was trying to polish all the rough edges and make us more of a rock band, a pop band, which at the time I wasn’t interested in at all. I thought the record we did with him came out bland and lifeless. Trent thought the same thing so he volunteered to help us repair what had been damaged.

  So then the band went out to Los Angeles?

  No, I went out there by myself at first to try and remix the tracks I thought were still salvageable. A funny thing happened when I was done. I called home to Florida to talk to Daisy [Berkowitz, guitarist] and ended up talking to Pogo [keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy]. He told me they were at Squeeze and they got really fucked up. Daisy couldn’t handle his alcohol, and all of a sudden passed out while he was walking and fell right on his face. He split his chin open and lost his memory. He didn’t know who he was when he woke up, and he kept saying, “Where’s my car? Where’s my car?” He thought he had been in a car accident. I called him, and he sounded like another person. I couldn’t communicate with him. He didn’t understand anything I was trying to say and probably didn’t even know who I was. The doctors told him he had a bubble in his brain.

  Was there any tension or hostility in the band at that point?

  I had early impressions from Trent that there were problems with the band. He and everyone he worked with knew Freddy the Wheel was a weak link. And Brad Stewart [former bassist Gidget Gein] was also still in the band, and I knew that he was an even weaker link because at that point he had already OD’d three or four times. I was on the verge of kicking him out and replacing him with Twiggy Ramirez.

  I also got the impression from a lot of people that Daisy was not only disliked as a person because his personality was abrasive but that no one was particularly impressed by his guitar playing—though I thought he was all right and didn’t have a problem getting along with him. I knew that we had a foot in the door but I was not satisfied. Marilyn Manson wasn’t the band that it could have been. I knew I’d have to go through hell to get the band to where I wanted it. And I’m still going through hell. You know, the only way to get out is to go through all the way, to the very bottom.

  I’m sorry. Have another line.

  Sniff the dust? Okay [Cutting and clicking sounds. Sniffing sounds]. Where were we?

  We were talking about Daisy.

  So when Daisy got out of the hospital, we told him, “Fly out. Come hear the mixes. Let’s work on fixing these other songs.” The day that he was supposed to leave, he missed his flight and showed up late. He walked in the studio, and Trent had never met him face to face before. Trent said hi to him and Daisy was kind of abrasive and greasy. He always seemed to have baby oil dumped on his face and on his hair. The kid needed some Stridex. So he came in, and he was like this angry greasy pimple guy with cigarettes coming out of every orifice of his body, and Trent’s like, “You wanna hear the mixes?”

  And Daisy says, “No, I wanna go smoke a cigarette.” He was a dick right off the bat, which made me feel uncomfortable because I had to defend him. When Daisy eventually did listen to the mixes, he didn’t even pay attention or make a comment. He just kept bragging about the musical shit that he could do.

  We spent the next month or so trying to re-record songs and fix things up, and everyone learned early on that Daisy was not someone who was easy to work with. He was stubborn and he never had a song or the album in mind. He just had his personal agenda as a musician. He wanted to display his idea of what his talents were. Sometimes it got frustrating making that record. But most of the time it was fun. It was new. Life still seemed like something to be enjoyed.

  As we were working on Portrait, Trent was starting his album The Downward Spiral, and we had some good times working together. I thought that was what making music was about. Everyone was pretty sober except for maybe having drinks at the end of the night, and I can’t recall anybody doing drugs except Brad Stewart being passed out on heroin. All I had to be pissed off about was the rest of the world, the things that weren’t a part of my life, the way I saw everybody else’s life. So it was still okay to be idealistic. I hadn’t been scarred by the bad sex, drugs and touring that came afterward.

  Can you recall any of those good times?

  Well, the studio had a large window where you could view the live room, and one night we wanted to have someone entertain all of us. So we taped $ 150 to the inside door of the studio—Trent and I each put in seventy-five dollars. In order to win that money and get in all our good graces, the challenge was to go outside the studio, which was on Santa Monica Boulevard where all the transvestite and transsexual prostitutes come out after dark like little hermaphroditic cockroaches, and pick up one of them and bring him-her-it back.

  At first, all of us went and walked around. There were lots of people driving by and they seemed to be having an easy time picking these people up. But the prostitutes were clearly afraid of us, and we came back frustrated and ate dinner.

  Pogo, who was a skinhead with a long goatee then, went into the bathroom and shaved his head. He always carried around clown makeup because at random times he liked to go out dressed up like a clown. He made up his face Gene Simmons-style and went out by himself. We were starting to record some tracks when all of a sudden Pogo walks in with some she-male and takes her into the live room. All we had to do was turn on the microphones that were recording the drums and we could hear their conversation. Apparently this person’s name was Marie, and from far away it looked pretty much like a woman, and not that unattractive, at least for a prostitute. But upon closer inspection we could see that underneath her fishnets there were some open sores on her legs that looked like they came either from being burned with giant cigars or the first stages of something that we didn’t want to know about.

&n
bsp; What ended up happening was that she was smarter than we thought. She knew we were watching and wanted to charge extra. We weren’t really into it that much so Pogo went into the other room and, to the best of our knowledge, he jacked off on a man’s tits—and I’m not sure what that makes him, other than depraved, of course.

  Was it scary working in the Sharon Tate house?

  One strange thing that happened was we were mixing the song “Wrapped in Plastic,” which is about how the typical American family will wrap its couch in plastic and the question, “Will it keep the dirt out or will it keep the dirt in?” Sometimes the people who seem the most clean are really the dirtiest. We were using a computer because we had a lot of samples and sequencing. While we were working on that song the Charles Manson samples from “My Monkey” started appearing in the mix. All of a sudden, we’d hear in the song, “Why does a child reach up and kill his mom and dad?” And we couldn’t figure out what was going on. The chorus of “Wrapped in Plastic” is, “Come into our home/Hope you stay?” And we’re in the Sharon Tate house, just me and Sean Beavan [the record’s assistant producer]. We totally got scared and we’re like, “We are done for the night.” We came back the next day and it was fine. The Charles Manson samples weren’t even on the tape anymore. There’s no real logical or technological explanation for why they appeared. It was a truly supernatural moment that freaked me out.

  Why do you think it’s become so trendy for musicians to make references to Charles Manson in their music?

  That pisses me off. Axl Rose was in a hellstorm because he recorded a Manson song, and I’ll tell you how he got that idea in a minute. Meanwhile Trent was living at the Sharon Tate house, so I end up looking like I’m this Marilyn Manson guy that’s riding Trent Reznor’s wagon, which is kind of funny. But I never got a chip on my shoulder. I never minded because otherwise I would never have gotten to record there and sleep there and get freaked out by the ghosts there.

  That’s a good attitude. Why don’t you do another line?

  Okay, but this is the last one [sucking sounds].

  So what happened with Guns N’ Roses was that Trent took me to a U2 concert one night and backstage I met Axl Rose. He was very neurotic and was telling me all about his psychological problems, his split personalities, and I felt like, “This guy’s a total fucking flake.” Being the overzealous type, I started telling him about my band anyway. And I said, “You know we do this song ‘My Monkey’ and it’s an adaptation of a Charles Manson song off his album Lie.”

  And he’s like, “I never heard of that before.”

  I told him, “You should check out the album, it’s cool.” And lo and behold six months later Guns N’ Roses put out The Spaghetti Incident and Axl Rose covers “Look at Your Game, Girl” from the Lie album.

  Then he started getting all that heat from Sharon Tate’s sister and everybody. When our album was finished after that, we had the song “My Monkey” on it but I had this five-year-old kid Robert Pierce sing on it. That was the great irony: Here’s a kid that’s singing a song that to him is an innocuous nursery rhyme but to everybody else is this horrible thing.

  After we turned the album in, I got this call from Trent and John Malm, who’s Trent’s manager and runs Nothing Records. And they’re like, “Listen, are you willing to put out your album without the song ‘My Monkey’ on it?”

  I asked, “Why?!”

  And they said, “Well, Interscope is having problems because of the shit that Axl Rose has got. He’s had to donate the proceeds of the song to the victims’ families.”

  I said, “Well I don’t have a problem with that. Just explain to me what’s going to happen.” (The entire song wasn’t Charles Manson’s song. I just borrowed a few lyrics and the rest were my own.)

  In the end, Interscope insisted that we take the song off. I said, “No.” So they told us they weren’t going to put the album out.

  All of a sudden we went from being South Florida’s brave new hope, from being the only band that will ever make it out of there, to being like an unsigned local band again. And it sucked. It was the most soul-destroying period in my life because we had an album done and everyone was expecting it to be in stores. Meanwhile, my original bass player [Brian Tutunick, a.k.a Olivia Newton-Bundy], had started his own band called Collapsing Lungs and they got signed to Atlantic and had a total attitude toward us because they thought they were going to be big fucking rock stars. And now his replacement, Brad, was getting so fucked up on heroin that we had to kick him out of the band because we were spending more time taking care of him than rehearsing. So there was a real period there where I felt defeated. I wanted to give up. I thought it was over and my ideas were too strong for people. I thought about trying another medium, but I knew in my head that a year or two from then would be a better time for my music.

  How did Interscope come crawling back?

  While everything was in the air, Trent backed us up and stood behind us. He told us not to worry because he had an option to put out a record with any other label as part of his contract with Interscope, even though it technically owned Nothing. So we had Guy Oseary from Maverick Records [Madonna’s label] down to see us and he brought Freddy DeMann, Madonna’s manager. The funniest thing about those guys was that the first thing they asked me after the show was over was, “Aren’t you guys Jewish?” And our keyboard player said, “Yeah I’m Jewish, but I’m not religious, I don’t practice it,” And they said, “Yeah, okay, that’s cool. We gotta stick together.”

  We had this whole bonding thing. Then they went back to New York and our manager got a call like two days later. They said, “We don’t really have a problem with Manson’s image, the tattoos, the association with the occult and Satanism. But there’s something we need to know: Does Manson have any swastikas tattooed on him?” And he’s like, “No. What are you talking about?”

  They said, “Well, we just wanted to check because if there’s any sort of anti-Semitic message then it’s not something we want to be involved in.” Everything I was doing was so much about sticking up for the underdog that I couldn’t understand how they could misassociate what I was doing like that. It was weird. After my tattoos checked out, they actually offered us a deal. It must have lit a fire under Interscope’s ass because all of a sudden Interscope came back and said, “Listen, we’re willing to put out the record and we’ll even pay for it.” We agreed because we had always wanted Interscope from the beginning, I had faith in that label. I still do. They had a deal with Time Warner, who were the ones causing the problems.

  So Interscope let you put “My Monkey” back on the album?

  They did, but we continued to have other problems. I wanted to use a photo in the album’s booklet of me naked on a couch when I was a kid. When you hold up something to people, usually what they see in it is what’s inside them in the first place. And that’s what happened because the lawyers at Interscope said, “First off, that picture’s going to be considered child pornography, and not only will no stores carry the album but we’re subject to legal retribution from it.” They said if a judge were to look at it, the law states that if a photograph of a minor elicits sexual excitement then it’s considered child pornography. I said, “That’s exactly my point. This is a photograph that was taken by my mother, and it’s extremely innocent and very normal. But if you see it as pornography, why am I the guilty person? You’re the person who’s got a hard-on. Why aren’t you punished?” That’s still a point I’d like to make. People’s morality is so ridiculous: If they get excited by it, then it’s wrong.

  [Manson rummages through his bags and pulls out the original album booklet, which has a reproduction of a painting of a clown face on the cover, with no text]

  You see, we also had a John Wayne Gacy painting of a clown on the cover, and look at the other photograph on the inside. It’s one of my favorite photographs and I’ve never gotten to use it. It’s a picture of one of those dolls from the ‘60s and you pull a string on the
back of it and the eyes get really big and they change colors. Around it is this like circle of wisdom teeth, and candy corns, and peppermints, and these Polaroid photographs of a completely mutilated girl. But it was something I had faked. It wasn’t real but it looked very authentic. So they called again and said, “Listen. First of all we won’t print this kind of photo, and second of all we couldn’t do it because unless you provide us with a name and a written affidavit from the person in the photo we’re gonna get arrested for distributing it.” They still thought it was real, so I told them it was okay not to use it. In the end I thought it was cooler for them to think it was real. It’s always been a game of not compromising but also knowing your limits and doing the best you can within those limits.

  So you’re not bitter about your early experiences with Interscope?

  Well, there was always a real chip on our shoulder that the album never really got the push from the record label that we thought it deserved. It was all about us touring our fucking asses off. We toured for two solid years, opening up for Nine Inch Nails for a year and then doing our own club tour. It was all just about perseverance.

  Looking back on it, are you happy with the album?

  Well, the whole point of the album was that I wanted to say a lot of the things I’ve said in interviews. But now I feel like I fell short, like I didn’t say it right. Maybe I was too vague or maybe the songs weren’t good enough, or whatever. But I wanted to address the hypocrisy of talk show America, how morals are worn as a badge to make you look good and how it’s so much easier to talk about your beliefs than to live up to them.