The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

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