The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

ACTIVITIES ON STAGE . T HUS, THE NSJEA WILL SUFFER NO IRREPARABLE INJURY FROM ALLOWING M ARILYN M ANSON TO PERFORM AT G IANTS S TADIUM ....
    I T IS ON THIS 7TH DAY OF M AY ORDERED THAT, PENDING A HEARING ON AN APPLICATION FOR A PERMANENT INJUNCTION, THE NSJEA IS PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED FROM PROHIBITING PLAINTIFFS FROM PRESENTING A CONCERT PERFORMANCE BY “M ARILYN M ANSON ” AT G IANTS S TADIUM ON J UNE 15, 1997.
    â€”F ROM THE DECISION OF THE U NITED S TATES D ISTRICT C OURT OF N EW J ERSEY UPHOLDING THE RIGHT OF PLAINTIFFS, M ARILYN M ANSON , I NC., ET. AL., TO PERFORM AS PART OF THE O ZZFEST AT G IANTS S TADIUM, WHICH HAD BEEN CANCELED BY THE DEFENDANT , NJSEA.

    Â Â Â Â Â  JUNE 19, 1997, CHICAGO
    I expected the OzzFest crowd to be much more open-minded. This is an audience that grew up in the tradition of Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and other bands that put on more than your average rock and roll show. But so far it’s just been a bunch of really drunk assholes who are intimidated by the fact that they are confused and maybe they want to fuck me, and it pisses them off. But in a weird way, I think I’m beginning to like this. It’s been a while since we performed and weren’t the headliners. Sometimes a crowd that hates me this much is as good as crowd that loves me, because it inspires me to give my best performance.
    Â Â Â Â Â  JULY 31, 1997, TORONTO
    Today the police told me that if I sang the Patti Smith song “Rock and Roll Nigger” I would be arrested under the hate crime law for promoting racial disharmony. So to fuck with the police I had a friend of mine, Corey, who happens to be black, accompany me and my bodyguard, Aaron, into my meeting with these moronic individuals. Wearing a police hat, I asked the officer in charge what problems he had with our show. He nervously shuffled through his notes and said, “There’s one song in particular,” as if he couldn’t remember what it was, and then he mumbles “Rock and Roll Nigger,” specifically so as not to offend Corey, who looks like he’ll kick the shit out of anyone who’s white. I went on to explain to him that not only did Patti Smith write the song (and not me) but that the song represents the isolation and discrimination of people for their ideas and their beliefs and their art—which ironically was exactly what this asshole was doing. He still didn’t seem to understand so I told him quite simply I would do the song and we would see what happened when it was done.
    Though I told him the show would not be changed, I did change it in several simple ways. I donned a police uniform and something given to me by a fan, a badge formerly in the possession of an officer shot in the line of duty. I also invited Corey to help me sing, in particular the lines with the word nigger in them.
    We performed the song as an encore, and I introduced it by saying, “I want to tell you about something that happened recently. There’s a song that’s twenty years old written by a woman named Patti Smith. And a couple of white cops came up to me and they said, ‘You can’t sing that song.’ They said that it’s against black people. What I wanna explain to those moronic fucking idiots is that the song’s about people like me and you, people that get discriminated against for the way we are. Just like they fucking discriminated against us today. And they didn’t understand. It’s because they are a bunch of fucking idiots. So I dedicate this song to the Canadian police force.”
    What we and the crowd realized more than anything was that nobody here hated “niggers.” We all hated cops. I didn’t get arrested or even reprimanded. The cops might not have been listening, though. They were probably too busy searching the bathrooms for plungers to stick up our asses.
    Â Â Â Â Â  SEPTEMBER 1997, PORTUGAL
    Plenty of people could do what I’m doing on an underground level—we did it for years and nobody cared. It’s not until you’re a household name that people give a shit. But what we’ve done onstage with the fascist banners, with tearing up the bible, with the snow falling from above, with the whole beautiful thing—it’s all so much more controversial than nudity or killing dogs onstage because it’s so powerful and it has meaning. I feel proud because in the beginning I