R.O.O.T. Webzine

2009.09.22 – Marilyn Manson – Montréal @ Centre Bell

Brian Hugh Warner

It took me quite a while to find how I could work this live report out, considering the several personalities making Marilyn Manson the star he is nowadays. Because, yes, Brian Hugh Warner (his birth name) is a myth. That’s a fact. Of this myth, most people only knows his provocative aspect. An image widely spread by the media whereas this side is far away from dispensing him justice. So, obviously, talking about his Montreal gig through this approach would be highly wrong, as well as describing it only speaking about his amazing intelligence would be insufficient. As for focusing the attention on the more-than-deceiving show of this night would come up to injustice. So it would be impossible for me to judge this performance without mention who Marilyn Manson really is and what, above all, makes him a great artist.

Obscene, Violent, Profane…

You cannot find – in this world – a more controversial rock-star.
But behind this mask, is a man who based his whole art and life upon an anticonformist style – refusing the american and christian way of life that made his own education. The guy chooses to focus on human being free-will, liberated from the society, religion and medias’ chains… In a nutshell, Marilyn Manson chose to be an individual who refuses to be blindfolded. Questioning Status Quo, he chose to build his own self as a whole person.

Starting from the obvious observation of the people being desensitized, his logic is simple: “things have to be really shocking and have to punch you in the face to get your attention. Then, once you’ve got their attention. You can say something they might remember.”
This is the way his character is mixed. Choosing his stage name associating the famous actress and the serial killer names, the artist calls his shot: “I picked that (Marilyn Manson) as the fakest stage name of all to say that this is what show business is, fake. Marilyn Monroe wasn’t even her real name, Charles Manson isn’t his real name, and now, I’m taking that to be my real name. But what’s real? You can’t find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best. As long as you know everything’s a lie, you can’t hurt yourself.” “I’ve always watched pop-culture shows, and I found out when I thought about this, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson were the two most memorable people from the sixties, and I found it interesting that things like pop-culture shows put them on the same kind of celebrity status, and I thought that dichotomy of positive and negative, putting those two names together, represented what I had to say and what I was about.”
In addition to his name, Marilyn Manson also assumes an unusual look made by the lens he’s wearing at the left eye (in memoriam of his dog which his childhood neighbour killed by revenge, after little Brian denounced the sexual abuses he attempted on him), weird make-up, crazy stage clothes and a whole appearance sometimes very close to androgyny. If, at the beginning, this allowed him to put a mask on his shyness and find the courage to go on stage, it also is a statement against the appearance dictatorship set up by the medias and an affirmation for the people to be who they really are.

Manson is an accomplished artist.

Best known for his singer and songwriter carrier, he is a poet, painter, actor, director as well. According to him, “the artist in society has to affect people”. And this is the exact application of this principle which brought him so much controversy. The antichrist lyrics of his songs, his numerous provocations on stage (like burning crucifix and Bibles or the self-mutilations simulations for example) and also his ordination as the “Church Of Satan” Reverend made him the Bible-Christian’s pet peeve.

As a response, those ones never missed a chance to organize gatherings and manifestations against him or to start false rumours which, year after year, only reinforced the mysticism around the character. As for the medias, they confirmed the image of someone who has a bad influence on kids – because of him tackling all social taboos – and took advantage to make him responsible for dramas, like the Columbine massacre, since his albums were found in the killers’ room.

“I view my job as being someone who is supposed to piss people off. I don’t want to be just one-of-the-guys. I don’t want to be just a smiling face you see on television presenting some vapid kind of easily-digestible garbage. This is rock and roll. I want to be a rock and roll star! Rock and roll is about shaking things up, making people act and react. That’s what I do.”

As a kid,

he was sent to the Heritage Christian School where he had been taught values about the antichrist and the apocalypse. One day, trying to fit, he brought to his teacher a picture his grandmother took from a plane window showing, according to her, an angel in the sky. He had been retorted that it was a fake one and a blasphemy. From now on, the young Warner decided to stop making efforts to believe in what they wanted him to believe. And instead of living in fears and nightmares, he decided to face them in becoming what he was afraid of: the Antichrist. He understood very quickly that, to change things, you should rather expose them for everyone to see than absolutely trying to hide them. And this same mechanism can also be found in his songs lyrics when he’s speaking about emotions that he’s afraid of, tempting to exorcise them like in the “They said hell’s not hot” song from the Eat Me Drink Me album:

I kill myself in small amounts
In each relationship it’s not
About love.
Just another funeral and
Just another girl left in tears.

And I’m waiting
With the sound turned off
I’m waiting
Like a glass balloon
And I’m fading
Into the void and then
I’m gone, I’m gone, I’m gone…

They said that hell’s not hot
They said that hell’s not hot

I gave my soul to someone else
She must have known that
It was already sold.
It was never about her,
It was about the hurt.

And I’m waiting
With the sound turned off
I’m waiting
Like a glass balloon
And I’m fading
Into the void and then
I’m gone, I’m gone, I’m gone…

This is another aspect

which also appears in his texts and interviews, this Marilyn Manson – accused by all and unheard – that most people doesn’t know. Far away from the Antichrist Superstar, his fragility, shyness and humility are the only things shocking. We discover a will which isn’t so much about offence but leading people to think by themselves. “Find out what’s really out there. I never said to be like me; I say be like you and make a difference.” He’s a reflective and very smart man who aims to make people understands that the society itself created Marilyn Manson. “The burden of originality is one that most people don’t want to accept. They’d rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they’re supposed to like, what they’re supposed to buy, and what they’re supposed to laugh at. You have Beavis and Butt-head telling you what music you’re allowed to like and not like, and you’ve got sitcoms that have canned laughter that lets you know when to laugh if you’re too stupid to know when the joke is. People are too lazy and too stupid to think for themselves because America has raised them like that.”

Butt-head?

His pessimistic look on the society

reinforces his faith that the real power lives in our passions, and that we have to fight for them. This is also, and mostly, referring to the religions that he considers as obstacles to human development because of their reactionary moral which censors and makes people feels guilty.

So, behind the provocative man who scares many, lies a shy man with a particular reflexion and detachment about the events occurring around him.

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Looking back on the Columbine tragedy

during a Michael Moore interview for the “Bowling For Columbine” documentary, he explains why he cancelled some concerts during a tour, by respect for the victims. Coming back to Denver two years later, he keeps on claiming his non-responsibility in that story.

“When I was a kid growing up, music was the escape. That’s the only thing that had no judgements. You can put on a record and it’s not gonna yell at you for dressing the way you do. It’s gonna make you feel better about it. […] I definitely can see why they would pick me, because I think it’s easy to throw my face on a TV, because I’m, in the end, sort of a poster boy for fear. Because I represent what everyone’s afraid of, because I do and say what I want. […]The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, uh… violence in entertainment and gun control. And how perfect that that was the two things that we were gonna talk about with the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about… The president was shooting bombs overseas, yet I’m a bad guy because I sing some rock’n'roll songs. And who’s a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson? I’d like to think me, but I’m gonna go with the president.”

“(Michael Moore: Do you know the day that Columbine happened, the United States dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other time during that war?) I do know that and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said, “Well, maybe the president had an influence on this violent behaviour. Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it and turn it into fear. […] It’s a campaign of fear and consumption. And that’s what I think that’s it’s all based on, is the whole idea that: keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume. And that’s really as simple.”

“(If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine and the people in that community, what would you say to them, if they here right now?) I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say. And that’s what no one did.”

Mona Lisa?

This entire episode affected the artist a lot: “I’ve always had the same level of excitement about making music, but now it seems so much more important because all of the blame that was put on me for Columbine. The entire incident, the way the media reacted, the people who were involved, the way I was treated, it hurt me personally because my career is my life. It made me feel a lot like how I felt growing up because it was a lot of people beating you down and treating you a certain way for something you’re not even responsible for. I just really had to re-evaluate what I was gonna do; How am I gonna respond to this, how am I gonna take this? And I wanted to come out swinging with both fists.”

Several years after the tragedy, Marilyn Manson is still up and about. However, it took him some years to come back to a close level to his biggest albums, “Antichrist Superstar” (1996) and “Mechanical Animals” (1998). “The Golden Age Of Grotesque”, released in 2003, will be the one allowing the Reverend to the highest Charts ranks. “Eat Me Drink Me” (2007) stays nowadays the most memorable of his carrier because of his very personal and introspective side, and brings us to this year’s release of his 7th studio album “The End Of Low”.

Eat me?

TEXT: FLEA
PHOTOS: Marilyn Manson

Links:
Official Website: www.marilynmanson.com
Myspace : www.myspace.com/marilynmanson

Youtube Videos:
Marilyn Manson’s Interview in Bowling For Columbine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDS7kKdRZAs

“They said hell’s not hot” song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Ygc2b1zcY

French interview of 2007, “Esprits Libres” show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUpjrLB60-E
French Interview of 2006, Tout le Monde En Parle show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf9v1DJdOF0
MTV U – Marilyn Manson speaks to Art Students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB4AqkRrgyI

MARILYN MANSON – PART II – COMING ONLINE FRIDAY DECEMBRE 5th