The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

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all for nothing
    I SAW THAT [HE] WAS A GENIUS OF SUFFERING AND THAT IN THE MEANING OF MANY SAYINGS OF N IETZSCHE HE HAD CREATED WITHIN HIMSELF WITH POSITIVE GENIUS A BOUNDLESS AND FRIGHTENING CAPACITY FOR PAIN . I SAW AT THE SAME TIME THAT THE ROOT OF HIS PESSIMISM WAS NOT WORLD-CONTEMPT BUT SELF-CONTEMPT; FOR HOWEVER MERCILESSLY HE MIGHT ANNIHILATE INSTITUTIONS AND PERSONS IN HIS TALK HE NEVER SPARED HIMSELF . I T WAS ALWAYS AT HIMSELF FIRST AND FOREMOST THAT HE AIMED THE SHAFT, HIMSELF FIRST AND FOREMOST WHOM HE HATED AND DESPISED .
    â€” Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
THE KING OF FILTH COMES CLEAN: PART ONE OF A TWO-PART STORY
    by Sarah Fim
    Empyrean Magazine, 1995 1
    Images of naked boys and rotting corpses flicker on the TV screen in Marilyn Manson’s hotel room as he removes his sunglasses and settles down on the couch. Photographs, clothing and papers are scattered across the floor, the debris of a busy year for Manson, the leader of the controversial shock-rock band of the same name. Practically overnight, the quintet has catapulted from a local Florida band to an arena act thanks to a contract with Nothing Records, the label owned by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Since then, Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, has been arrested, banned and beaten. He’s been accused of torturing women, killing animals and setting his drummer on fire. Today, for the first time, he has agreed to talk candidly and on the record about the events of the past two years. To make sure he doesn’t back out on that promise, we’ve filled him with liquor and drugs and rented one of his favorite movies, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hallucinogenic spaghetti western EI Topo .
    Lying across the glass table directly in front of him is Judas Priest’s British Steel CD, the one with the razor blade on the cover. It is an appropriate image because lined up in long white strips across it is some of the finest cocaine the editors of Empyrean could afford. Manson rolls up a $20 and snorts half of a line up his right nostril. He tilts his head back and shakes out his long black hair, then lowers his head and inhales the remainder of the line up the other nostril. In music, as in life, Marilyn Manson doesn’t play favorites. He likes to destroy everything in equal measure.
    EMPYREAN: You look exhausted.
    MANSON: Yeah. I woke up at seven o’clock this morning, and I was trying to find someone to express my ideas to but I couldn’t. I was walking around like a fucking madman. Then I called Missi [his girlfriend]. There has to be something wrong with anybody who is capable of liking me, because I’m not a likable person.
    Maybe you should do a line.
    I could do one line, and then…
    â€¦ see if you need another?
    Well, you never need one in the first place.
    But you always need another.
    Yeah, because once you have that one, you need the rest for maintenance [snorting sounds] .
    Let’s talk about how you finally broke out of Fort Lauderdale.
    Right, what happened was at the time I shortened the name of the band to Marilyn Manson, which is what people always called us anyway. The band had become less cartoonish and taken on a more serious tone. Several labels were interested in us. Epic Records had us come to New York to showcase for them. We were being courted by this guy Michael Goldstone who at the time had just signed Pearl Jam. Their album hadn’t come out yet and I got to hear it, and I thought it was very mediocre. At the same time I was idealistic about our music and its success. So it wasn’t very good for my ego when Epic ended up not liking us. It was a huge disappointment because we spent about three grand of our own money getting to New York.
    So how did you end up working with Trent Reznor?
    It began when we returned home practically broke. Missi and I went by the record store where I used to work and bought Nine Inch Nails’ Broken , which had come out that day. I was thinking that I hadn’t heard from Trent in a while because every now and then he would call just to say hi and keep in touch. As I was listening to it, I got a call from Trent’s manager asking for a copy of our demo tape. (These kinds of coincidences always happen to me, and have led me to believe that everything happens for a purpose.) I didn’t know why he wanted a copy of our demo tape. Maybe he just wanted to listen to it.
    A few days later I got a phone call: