The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

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