Marilyn Manson, Oneworld 2003

Brian Warner took the long, hard road out of hell (Canton, Ohio, to be exact) to emerge in 1994 on Portrait of an American Family as Marilyn Manson — bandleader of what presidential hopeful Senator Joe Lieberman once called “perhaps the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company.” At the apex of his antihero popularity — the ’96 creative benchmark Antichrist Superstar — Manson was as reviled by conservatives as anyone this side of (early) Ice Cube or (early) Eminem.

Intellectually turning the tables on hypocritical politicos recently in director Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine, Manson set the stage for The Golden Age of Grotesque, his most critically lauded disc in years. Oneworld does the STROKE thing, quizzing the shock rocker on scary topics like politricks, sexstasy and the Easter bunny.

Have you found female celebrities to be more or less sexually inhibited than the average woman?

Famous women? It really depends on what they’re famous for. I happen to be in a relationship now which I’ve been in for three years with a girl that changed my life and the way I deal with my own hang-ups and repression — and of course, that’s [pinup girl] Dita Von Teese. She’s someone who, although she’s very different than me in so many ways, likes to live her art (or whatever she likes to call it). I have very conventional ideas of what types of women I like: the very archetypal Marilyn Monroe/Betty Page pinup type of thing.

I would say, everybody that I’ve met in the past, I could not generalize that they all have a specific way of dealing with things. But I can say that I left a serious relationship because it was not as open-minded as I needed it to be. Or open-legged. I won’t name names.

How do you account for the naïveté and/or ignorance of the American masses who put flags in their car windows and refuse to think critically beyond what they’re being spoon-fed by the media?

It first became a commodity during [the 1930s] where we were being slowly brainwashed in a way to believe that you need to dress and behave like the people you saw on the big screen. So, for me, capitalism in some ways, it contains a more dangerous and subversive form of fascism, making you feel guilty and scared so you fall into line. It’s the whole fear and consumption campaign that is America.

I can’t be patriotic in times like these; only by being an artist. I’m not gonna stick a flag in my fucking window in my car and drive around, because it’s just another form of consumerism. I don’t know if there’s an answer to escape that pattern.

Well, independent thinking, probably.

Independent thinking then even becomes something that is marketed to you. We’re convinced that we’re individuals. We’re sold the idea that we can “think different” — “If you buy that computer…” It all kinda comes around.

Sextasy is big in New York City nightlife: a combo of Viagra with Ecstasy. Ever tried it?

I’m fortunate enough to have a girl that could put Viagra out of business. I borderline suffer from priapy, and that could lead to being a sex addict. But I’m someone who’s so trapped in fetishes that were probably imprinted in my mind as an early child, [like] the stockinged, high-heeled legs of the lady of the house in Tom and Jerry cartoons. You never see anything above the knee, but there was something about those legs and those high heels that, you know, stuck with me. [Dita Von Teese] likes to wear high heels and stockings in the morning when she cooks breakfast.

I do find enjoyment in the almost time-travel that Ecstasy creates, and letting me behave and see the world through big and unjaded, childlike eyes. But Viagra, at least at this point, I haven’t had any reason to try it.

One of the few drugs you haven’t tried.

Yeah, it just seems like I haven’t had the reason to use it.

The coolest outlaw in any society is “the other,” and the black man in American society has always been the greatest example of what there is to be afraid of — the boogeyman that chaste women shouldn’t fantasize sex with, etc. Is there anything a white artist on the outskirts of rebellion can do to be a bigger rebel than the black man?

I guess the mainstream has accepted black music and culture on a different level. There’s a different level of respect to it. It’s not the same as it was back in the day [with] the minstrel show quality to it. Now, it’s something that’s not going away, and it’s not something that people want to go away anymore. It’s the world growing up and realizing that there’s not that much different, that people are people at the end of the day.

But at the same time, we still gotta hold on to the differences. And it’s not about being prejudiced or discriminating. But there is a difference between the worlds. When you’re prejudiced, that’s something I’ve experienced all my life, especially now when I assert myself as someone who’s different. But discriminating is having taste between something or other and I think that people should realize that you don’t wanna lump in black artists with white artists for some reasons. They’re great because they’re white or they’re great because they’re black. You don’t wanna homogenize that to death; that’s an idealistic, liberal thing. It’s more destructive than anything. When I listen to rap music, I want Geto Boys, I want stuff that is really hardcore and not homogenized or not smoothed out to fit into that middle ground that everyone can fit in. And that’s what I try and do with my music, you know?

If I’m trying to take inspiration, it’s about taking spirit, the zeitgeist of a period or an art form and putting it into what you do, instead of what most people try: infusing or stealing those elements — like the birth of rap-metal, which wasn’t something that did things right. Because original rock ‘n’ roll was doing that already, and that’s what people don’t wanna realize. Rock ‘n’ roll was fusing together white and black music.

I dressed up my girlfriend as Wonder Woman once. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve worn during a role-play, or had a woman wear?

Well, that’s a hard question to answer because I’m always role-playing. In fact, that’s part of being me. But I had on an Easter bunny outfit last year this time because I had plans to go down to Hollywood Boulevard and pass out eggs to kids and tell ‘em really terrible things so they’d go home crying, but I didn’t have the energy. I stayed home, got drunk and had some really dirty rabbit sex. Costumes are really sweaty. I feel bad for those people who work at amusement parks.

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