The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

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.
    I was very much wrapped up in the concept that as kids growing up, a lot of the things that we’re presented with have deeper meanings than our parents would like us to see, like Willy Wonka and the Brothers Grimm. So what I was trying to point out was that when our parents hide the truth from us, it’s more damaging than if they were to expose us to things like Marilyn Manson in the first place. My point was that in this way I’m an anti-hero. I think I’ll be able to say it better on the next album.

    AMERICA, MEET MARILYN MANSON: PART TWO OF A TWO-PART STORY
    by Sarah Fim
    Empyrean Magazine, 1995
    When we last left Marilyn Manson, he was in his hotel room snorting coke and giving Empyrean an exclusive on the whirlwind events of the past year. The time now is four A.M. that same night and just as he is preparing to launch into the carnage tales of his tours with Nine Inch Nails (with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and, later, Hole as opening acts), there is a knock on the door. He hides his drug-covered Judas Priest CD behind a cardboard box and stands up, smoothing out his Adam Ant Friend or Foe T-shirt. He looks cautiously through the peephole, half expecting to see the psychotic runaways that slavishly follow his every movement and sleep with his crew (and occasionally very desperate band members) to find out his latest whereabouts.
    But the sight facing him when he opens the door is a much more horrid one: it’s Twiggy Ramirez, the band’s bassist, with a bottle of wine in his hand and an expression of pure, abject horror on his face. He complains about how miserable he is because he’s snorted too much cocaine. Then he snorts another line and sits on an armchair in the corner of the room, curling his knees up to his red-and-white button-down shirt. Instead of making him talkative, the cocaine is bringing him down. To every question he is asked, all he responds is “whiskey and speed.”
    I wonder if his presence will keep Manson from opening up and being honest, but Manson says not to worry as he pours himself a large glass of wine.
    EMPYREAN: Snort some of that and then we’ll get started again.
    MANSON: This is good talking powder. [ Big snorts .] Eek. [ He is startled by a scene on the video of handicapped people being massacred .]
    When did you start doing cocaine anyway?
    Not that long ago. The first time was on the Nine Inch Nails tour. We had just played in Chicago, and one of the roadies called me and Twiggy into Trent’s dressing room. He was there with someone else in the band. The room was destroyed. There was food everywhere. Shit was crushed into the floor. Dirty clothes were strewn all over. And everything was covered in flour because those guys used to pour flour all over themselves.
    In the middle of the wreckage there was a strange, gray-haired, pock-marked hippie who had bribed his way backstage with drugs and carved out something like thirty lines on a stainless steel counter in the bathroom. It was some ridiculous rock star amount of drugs, something insane like an ounce. He was like, “Do you want some?” And we were like, “We’ve never done this