《玛丽莲曼森》疏港大道11号

2、The Guardian采访2015

　　玛丽莲曼森：“我创造了一个虚拟的世界，因为我不喜欢我现在生活的这个”
　　在一直作为一个局外人生活了很久之后，玛丽莲曼森，本名布莱恩.沃纳，开始面对他的过去。在这次坦诚的和灵魂的采访中，他与Carole Cadwalladr谈到了母亲的过世，成长的愤怒，以及他为什么已经做好当父亲的准备
　　从我理解的那一部分中展现出来的玛丽莲曼森是一个令人困惑的，难以置信的人物。一方面，他是一个美国偶像，一个重金属摇滚明星，卖出了超过50万张专辑。另一方面，他是一个中年男子，仍然没有得到他的哥特式舞台。他是一个有趣和聪明的评论家，美国的双重痴迷暴力和名人（他出生于布莱恩华纳;他的名字是玛丽莲梦露和连环杀手查尔斯曼森的混合）。然而，他也很容易写出那种你可能期望来自于有反社会行为问题的自恋少年的那种歌曲。
　　但是接着，我猜想的关于玛丽莲曼森的点是，你不要打算去理解他。他的核心观众一直是那些反叛的青少年，他们孤独，被误解，被疏远。如果莫西里是美国人，也崇拜撒旦并涂口红，并且与亨特斯托克顿汤普森和约翰尼德普是好朋友，那么他可能会占据一个离曼森所占据的那个不远的文化领域。
　　Morrissey（史蒂芬派崔克莫西里）：八十年代摇滚乐的代表人物，英国创作歌手。以担任1980年代另类摇滚乐团史密斯合唱团的主场与词作家著称。《NME》曾称他为“史上最具影响里的作家之一”
　　Hunter S Thompson（亨特斯托克顿汤普森）：美国传奇作家，在2005年以开枪自杀的方式结束了67年的传奇人生。
　　——出自百度百科
　　Johnny Depp（约翰尼德普）！普叔！我最喜欢的外国演员！一个有趣的灵魂！
　　当我出现时，他正在黑暗中等待，坐在一个完全昏暗的酒店房间的沙发上，唯一的光来自于咖啡桌上闪烁的假蜡烛。当然，吸血鬼般的黑暗是玛丽莲曼森的商标。更令人惊讶的是，他说：“我实际上不知道为什么他们这样做，我认为他们认为我喜欢它。”当我向他抛出第一个直截了当的关于他的新专辑”苍白皇帝“的合作者的问题时，他开始了关于找房子的漫长故事。“我这一生中拥有了我所有的一切 - 除了我的书 –还在存储中。我想找一个房子，真正的把我的根源放在加利福尼亚州，我这三年一直过着居无定所的生活。所以我去看房子，甚至我当时的经理也觉得奇怪。他很惊讶地看到我在白天四处走动。”
　　“这通常不会发生？”
　　“通常不会发生。但我真的想把我的整个世界颠倒过来，把天堂颠倒过来，而不是地狱。我只是想完完全全地去改变事情，想加入这个惊喜的元素。“
　　鉴于他已经带着黑色的妆容和乳白色的隐形眼镜，并在黑暗中徘徊20年，这似乎是一个起程。
　　“你有没有被你的公众人物的身份所困扰？”
　　“绝对困扰！这就是为什么我想退出音乐制作，去探索其他道路，如绘画和表演 - 虽然这不是当时的原因。我觉得我感到厌倦了。我不想成为大家都希望我成为的那个人。“
　　他在演员这个第二任职业上取得了成功，在大卫林奇1997年的电影《失落公路》上首次亮相。他正在美国电视节目《无政府状态的儿子》中扮演一个白人至上主义者。但是他最大的扭转了人们对他的看法和期望-当然是我-的时候还是他出现在迈克尔摩尔的2002年纪录片《科伦拜恩的保龄》的时候。
　　在校园枪击案的余波中，曼森被政治家，媒体所指责，还有一些看起来像女巫审判似的，指责他煽动迪伦克莱伯德和埃里克哈里斯发动暴力袭击。事实上，他们是像德国战车这样的欧洲金属乐队的粉丝，但曼森是最接近的美国人，他成了国家痛苦和混乱的出气筒。
　　摩尔采访了他，我在YouTube上观看了这个片段，依然很有冲击力。如果你直接和哥伦拜恩的孩子和那个社区的人交谈，他问他，你现在会对他们说什么呢？
　　“我一个字的废话都不会说”曼森说，“我会听他们说，这是没有人做过的。”
　　这是纪录片中一个高光时刻。而他的新专辑的第一首歌的歌名就是《杀死陌生人》，其歌词为：“我们杀死了陌生人，所以我们不会杀死我们所爱的人！我们有枪，我们有女孩，我们有枪...我们正在杀死陌生人，所以我们不会杀死我们所爱的人！我们有枪，混蛋们，你们最好快跑！我们有枪，混蛋们，你们最好快跑！”
　　这似乎是一个刻意的挑衅。但这甚至不是原意。（killing strangers 是 Marilyn Manson第九张专辑“苍白皇帝” （ The Pale Emperor ，2015）的歌曲。它是由同名的主唱和泰勒贝茨 （ Tyler Bates ）编写和制作的，当他出现在基努里夫斯 （ Keanu Reeves）的2014年电影“ 约翰威克 ”（ John Wick）中时，它首次发行。这首歌是受到曼森父亲在越南战争期间在美国武装部队服役的经历的PTSD的启发。）幻想着杀戮-自己，别人，敌人，陌生人，无论如何-这是玛丽莲曼森的另一个标志。我正想着如何提出这个，他开始告诉我，以他冗长的叙事方式，关于他母亲的死亡的事情。
　　“我觉得我很擅长做改变的催化剂。但我认为我需要改变自己。“
　　是什么让你觉得你需要改变呢？
　　“这就像我说的，我想买房子，然后我不得不飞往俄亥俄去看我的父亲，因为我的母亲去世了，在母亲节--谢谢，妈妈。我认为这是她放弃我父亲和我的方式。“
　　作为一名青少年，玛丽莲曼森与她有着密切的关系，但近年来，她得了阿尔茨海默病，而且他说：“我一年前与她和解，尽管她真的不知道我是谁。”
　　然后，在她死后的几个月，他的父亲来了。“他从俄亥俄州开车到加利福尼亚到我刚刚找到的房子，我想让他自豪。他问了我一件事。他说...这是我第一次听到他的哭-当他打电话给我，在我去看发生了什么事之前，无论如何，很难描述。“
　　你听到他哭了？
　　“是的，为我母亲服务的时候。这是第一次。在我出生前他一直在越南。当他出现在我家时，我墙上的投影仪在他走进来的时候正好播放着启示录，这有些尴尬。我没有计划这一幕。他刚刚到了，他走进去，他看到了，并说：“这给我带来了很多混合的情绪。” 我说：“好的还是坏的？他说：“当人们谈论创伤后压力综合征时，我并不认为人们明白，当你杀死了这么多人之后，你必须回到正常的世界，这很难适应。’于是我说：爸爸，我想你会想要听这首歌的，“杀死陌生人”。我为他播放了这首歌。”
　　以前他有没有跟你说过这个？
　　“从来没有，他从来没有对我说过这些。他从来没有谈到在杀死这么多人后，当你回家的时候会是什么样的感觉。“
　　事实证明，曼森的关于杀人的歌词，关于杀死陌生人，只是一个字面的方式，即使他还没有意识到。他的父亲杀了陌生人。而曼森和他的母亲，一直生活在这件事的余波中。
　　“我觉得他非常非常擅长他做的事情。就像马丁辛在《启示录》中扮演的角色一样。我想我的父亲被选中去做着粉这份工作。他17岁进入空军，你在那个年龄根本不知道你的生活将会如何。他从来没有跟我说过这些。他到现在还是没有真正的说出来。我认为在我母亲过世之后，他觉得是时候告诉我了：“这是真正的我。”而我认为他被选中是因为他做得很好，那就是杀人。“
　　当你意识到他生命的前18年一直生活在一个被暴力副作用影响的家庭里时，玛丽莲曼森和他的音乐，他的执念，他的疏离感，他对杀戮的迷恋，他对生活在外面美国主流社会的坚持突然变得更有意义。如果这是一个我突然明白了他是谁和他来自哪里的时刻，那么这对他来说似乎也很有帮助。
　　他的父亲告诉他不要写做。但不管怎么样，他还是去了新闻学院。“我写过的第一篇文章，”他回忆说，“是关于玛丽莲曼森，是以我—-布莱恩华纳的名义写的，这就是为什么我必须要有一个化名，一个舞台上名字。我把自己放到了一个无法摆脱的境地，在那里我创造了一个弗兰肯斯坦的怪物。有玛丽莲曼森，但还没有音乐。我创造了一个虚拟的世界，可能是因为我不喜欢我生活的这个。但是这也是让我做音乐的原因。我必须填补我创造的空白。”
　　你认为你创造的这个怪物是一种方法，将你难以应对的困难情绪具象化？你呢，布莱恩，把这些全都给了玛丽莲曼森？
　　他想了一会儿，然后说：“你想要伤我吗？
　　“是的！”我说。
　　“嗯，成功！这是个提示。所以现在我们可以去聊一些更兴奋的事情了。”
　　但我们没有。因为事实证明，玛丽莲曼森正处于一场看起来像中年危机的痛苦中，或者至少是由于母亲的死亡而造成的中年反思。很难准确地知道什么时候可以把他当真。他就像他的歌名一样，在无休止地玩耍和调侃。但是，他说，他专辑中最新的这两首歌 “丘比特携带枪”和“偶数赔率”都是生生不息的东西，并写于他母亲去世之后。
　　曼森一直不在意谈论他的并不幸福的童年。他在青少年时期是怎样殴打他的母亲。他是怎么被送到他讨厌的基督教学校。他如何被认为是同性恋从而遭到其他孩子的殴打。他的祖父是怎么被认为进行人兽□□的。但是据我所知，他还没有谈到过他不幸的童年的原因以及对他产生的影响。这让我想起了曾经访问过的美国家庭功能障碍文学大家萨姆谢泼德①，他告诉我了一个十分相似的事情，他父亲从第二次世界大战回来后就有了战后创伤，无法与家人共处，他的暴力对周围的每个人都造成了影响。对于谢泼德来说，暴力和秘密以及美国家庭都是一回事。
　　①Sam Shepard，美国剧作家，演员，作家，编剧和导演。他获得了10项奥比奖的写作和指导，最为给予任何作家或导演。他写了44场戏，以及几本短篇小说，散文和回忆录。Shepard的戏剧主要以他们黯淡，诗意，通常超现实主义的元素，黑色幽默和无根的角色生活在美国社会的郊区而闻名。 ]他的父亲是二战期间在美国陆军空军担任轰炸机飞行员的老师和农民; 谢泼德把他称为“一个喝酒的人，一个专门的酒鬼”

　　所以看起来，曼森也是如此。 “我父亲一直在工作。我不得不为我的母亲成为我爸爸的缩小版。然后我想摆脱这样的生活。我成了他的替代品。我的母亲甚至会用他的名字叫我。你浑身上下充满了荷尔蒙和愤怒，你不想被叫你爸爸的名字，特别是当你甚至不知道他在哪儿。
　　玛丽莲曼森继续与异化的年轻人交谈，并表达了对异化的年轻人的关切，这似乎并不令人惊讶。虽然看起来他母亲的死已经把他从某些事物中解放出来了。我问他，这些经历是否让你对父母身份以及亲子关系有了不同的看法。在此之前他最亲密的一个孩子是一个腌制的胎儿，他留在家里，命名为路德维希冯曼森（Ludwig Von Manson）。
　　“确实有”。
　　是生命的延续？生生不息？“不，这更像是传递你的遗产。你知道，我是家里最后一个人，因为我没有任何兄弟姐妹。所以,嗯,是，那是我其实一直在想的东西。我确实认为我会做...我是约翰尼德普的女儿的教父。他是我最好的朋友，我给了她第一套高跟鞋。遗憾的是，当我送给她的时候，她太小了,还在用尿布。当14年后再看她时，约翰尼介绍我的时候就像这样：嘿，这是曼森叔叔，他给了你第一双高跟鞋，还给你换了尿布。’听起来真的很糟糕, 但这是很不可思议的。
　　所以你觉得有一天你可能会喜欢做什么？
　　“嗯，当你最好的朋友是如此好的父亲，并且有类似的生活方式，这让我觉得创造生命会很好。我会讨厌如果是个女孩，因为如果是一个女孩，那么你要担心的可就多了。如果这是个男孩，那就只需要担心他一个就好了。
　　尽管作为未来孩子的母亲，也许并不是每个女人的梦想工作，但他已经和滑稽风格的艺术家Dita Von Teese有过短暂的婚姻，随后与当时19岁的Evan Rachel Wood （2010年）结束了合作关系。他现在有一个女朋友，他说，“但仅仅是因为她愿意和我一起做任何事情。我意识到我做这张唱片也许是我需要做同样的事情，因为我没有时间注意到这给人的印象是片面的，因为我是少数派。但是人们都知道那就是我。
　　他是少数派。他有许多有趣的事情要说，但他的讲话很零乱。他的故事充满了象征意义和巧合，并且我怀疑是夸张的。他从主题跳到主题，特别是电影参考到电影参考。一个狂热的电影爱好者，他沉浸在电影的语言和历史中。对他而言，电影的视觉意象似乎是真实的，因为现实生活是对大多数人而言的。

　　他说，他现在正在做三件事。“我现在是处于电影中下雨的桥段中。就是你知道麻烦要来了。
　　只是不清楚什么样的麻烦。他在哥伦拜恩是件（美国高中生枪击案）以后遇到了威胁，婚姻破碎后又出现严重的抑郁症，还有自杀的想法。他承认有报复的感觉。“也许这让我回到了当年，成为了那个总是被殴打的小孩，没有人为我出头。甚至我也没有为自己站起来。“但他说他看起来并不是一个“暴怒的人”。
　　他确实不是。他像是一个45岁的男人刚刚意识到有关自己的某些事情。他试图解释他在陌生人面前表演的是什么。“重建是不可能的。也许，我可以告诉我的父亲，这与他所经历的相当。从这段经历中挣脱出来是很困难，对身心都有很大的影响。
　　“这与战斗是不一样的，但这是一种连接我和父亲方式。生活在不同世界的想法，然后回到家，感觉自己根本不属于这里。“
　　所以你觉得你正在复制你父亲经历过的事情？
　　“并非是有意的，但这是将我们连接在一起的一种方式。我生活在一个很少有人生活的世界，当我回到常规世界时，我非常迫切地说：“你好，这是我”
　　这是玛丽莲曼森。越南兽医的儿子，或者按他纠正我的那样说，是“大规模杀人犯”。他一直批判媒体对暴力的渲染。而在布莱恩华纳（Brian Warner）创造玛丽莲曼森--玛丽莲梦露（Marilyn Monroe）和查尔斯曼森（Charles Manson）的结合体之后25年，他意识到玛丽莲曼森可能才是他真正的名字。因为越南已经被好莱坞粉饰过，在他喜欢的电影中浪漫化了。在启示录开始时，直升机突突作响，一段毛骨悚然的配乐。有着玛丽莲梦露的魅力，亦有着查尔斯曼森的血腥暴力。而他，毫不夸张的说，也确实是他们俩的后代。玛丽莲曼森，美国的真正的儿子。
　　苍白帝国在1月19日发售
　　The Guardian
　　Interviewed by Carole Cadwalladr
　　2015-1-18
　　Marilyn Manson: ‘I created a fake world because I didn’t like the one I was living in’
　　After a lifetime of being an outsider, Marilyn Manson, born Brian Warner, is coming to terms with his past. In a frank and soul-searching interview, he talks to Carole Cadwalladr about the loss of his mother, growing up angry – and why he’s ready for fatherhood
　　The Marilyn Manson who emerges from 从……显露出来the cuttings I read is a confusing, hard-to-pin-down figure. On the one hand he’s an American icon, a heavy metal rock’n’roll star who’s sold more than 50m albums. On the other he’s a middle-aged man who still hasn’t got over his goth stage. He’s an interesting and intelligent commentator on America’s twin obsessions痴迷，困扰，着魔，被迷住 of violence and celebrity 名人(he was born Brian Warner; his name is a blend of Marilyn Monroe and the serial killer Charles Manson). And yet he’s also prone易于，倾向于 to writing the kind of songs you might expect from a narcissistic自恋的 teenager with antisocial 反社会behaviour issues.
　　But then I suspect the point about Marilyn Manson is that you’re not meant to understand him. His core audience has always been disaffected不满的，反叛的 adolescents: the lonely, the misunderstood, the alienated. If Morrissey had been American and had taken up satanism 撒旦崇拜主义and lipstick唇膏，口红 and best friendship with Hunter S Thompson and Johnny Depp, he might occupy 占领，占据a cultural niche文化领域 not that far off Manson’s.
　　He’s waiting in the gloom黑暗，幽暗 when I show up出现, sitting on a sofa in a completely darkened hotel room with the only light coming from a fake candle flickering on the coffee table. Of course vampiric gloom is a Marilyn Manson trademark. It’s actually more of a surprise when he says: “I don’t actually know why they’ve done this. I think they think I like it.” And when I lob him a straightforward first question about the collaborator on his new album, The Pale Emperor, he launches into a long-winded story about house hunting. “I had everything I owned in my whole life – except for my books – in storage. And I wanted to find a house, to really put my roots down in California, and I had been living out of a suitcase for three years or so. And so I went to look at houses and it was strange even for my own manager at the time. He was surprised to see me in the daylight, walking around.”
　　“That doesn’t usually happen”
　　“It doesn’t usually happen. But I really wanted to flip my entire world upside down, have heaven upside down instead of hell. I just wanted to change things completely. To have that element of surprise.”
　　Given that he’s been wearing black make-up and milky contact lenses and hanging around闲逛，徘徊，光顾 in the dark for the best part of 20 years, this seems like a departure.
　　Have you ever felt trapped by your public persona
　　“Absolutely. That’s why I wanted to quit making music, which led to exploring other avenues, like painting and acting – though that wasn’t the reason at the time. I think I was just bored with it. I didn’t want to be exactly what everyone expected me to be.”

　　He’s made rather a success of his second career as an actor, making his debut in David Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway. He is currently playing a white supremacist in the hit US TV show Sons of Anarchy. But the moment when he most reversed people’s views and expectations of him – certainly mine – was when he appeared in Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine.
　　In the aftermath of the school shooting, Manson was blamed – by politicians, by the media, by what seemed like a witch hunt – for inciting Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to violence. In fact they were fans of European metal bands like Rammstein, but Manson was the closest American equivalent and he became an outlet for the nation’s pain and confusion.
　　‘Music helped me fill the gaps’: on stage in 2007. Photograph: Rex
　　Moore interviewed him and I watched the clip on YouTube, and it’s still powerful. If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine and the people in that community, he asks him, what would you say to them right now
　　“I wouldn’t say a single word to them,” says Manson. “I would listen to what they have to say. And that’s what no one did.”
　　It was a stand-out moment in the documentary. And yet the first song on his new album is called “Killing Strangers” and its lyrics read: “We’re killing strangers so we don’t kill the ones we love! We’ve got guns, we’ve got girls, we’ve got guns… We’re killing strangers so we don’t kill the ones we love! We’ve got guns, motherfuckers, better run! We’ve got guns, motherfuckers, better run!”
　　It seems a deliberate piece of provocation. It’s not even original. Fantasising about killing – himself, others, enemies, strangers, whatever – is another Marilyn Manson trademark and I’m wondering how to raise this when he starts telling me, in his circumlocutory way, about his mother’s death.

　　“I feel like the thing I’m best at is being the catalyst for change. But I felt like I needed to change myself.”
　　What brought that on
　　“It was… like I say, I wanted to buy a house. And what brought that on was that right before I had to fly to Ohio and see my father because my mother died. On Mother’s Day – thanks, Mom. I think that was her way of letting go of my father and me.”
　　As a teenager Marilyn Manson had a fraught relationship with her, but in recent years she developed Alzheimer’s, and, he says: “I’d made my peace with her the year before, though she didn’t really know who I was.”
　　Then, a few months after her death, his father came to visit. “He drove from Ohio to California to my house that I had just got, which I wanted to make him proud. And there was a thing he asked me. He said… It was the first time I ever heard him cry – when he called me before I went to see this happen, take place, whatever. It’s hard to describe.”
　　You heard him cry
　　“Yes, at the service for my mother. It was the first time. He was in Vietnam before I was born, and when he showed up at my house I had Apocalypse Now on the projector on my wall paused right there when he walked in, which was awkward. I didn’t plan that. He had just arrived. And he walked in and he saw this and said: ‘This brings up a lot of mixed emotions for me.’ And I said: ‘Good or bad’ And he said: ‘Well, when people talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome I don’t think people understand that when you’ve killed so many people and then you have to come back to a normal world, it’s very difficult to adjust to it.’ And that’s when I said: ‘Dad, I think you’re going to want to hear this song, “Killing Strangers”.’ And I played that for him.”
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　　Had he ever talked to you about this stuff before
　　“Never. He’d never said that to me. He’d never talked about killing so many people and what it’s like when you’re coming home.”
　　It turns out Manson’s lyrics about killing, about killing strangers, are true in a literal way that even he hadn’t quite realised. His father did kill strangers. And Manson, and his mother, lived with the aftermath.
　　“I think that he was very, very good at what he did. In the same way as the character that Martin Sheen plays in Apocalypse Now. I think my father was selected to do a job. He entered the air force at 17 and you just don’t know what your life is going to be at that age. He never talked to me about it. He still hasn’t really spoken of it. I think it was after my mother’s passing that he felt it was a time where it was necessary to tell me: ‘This is who I really am.’ And I think he was selected for being good at what he did – and that was killing people.”

　　When you realize that he spent the first 18 years of his life in a household dominated by the after-effects of violence, Marilyn Manson and his music, his obsessions, his sense of alienation, his fascination with killing, his insistence on living outside the strictures of mainstream American society, suddenly makes much more sense. And if it’s a light-bulb moment for me understanding who he is and where’s he come from, it also seems to have been for him.
　　His father had told him not to write. And he went to journalism college anyway. “The first article I ever did,” he recalls, “was about Marilyn Manson, which I wrote as myself as Brian Warner, and that was in part why I had to have a pseudonym, a stage name. I was put in a situation where I was suddenly stuck with… where I had created a Frankenstein’s monster. There was Marilyn Manson, but there was no music yet. I created a fake world maybe because I didn’t like the one I was living in. But that’s what made me make music. I had to fill in the gaps I’d created.”

　　Do you think that you created a monster as a way of externalising the difficult feelings you couldn’t cope with You, Brian, gave them all to Marilyn Manson
　　He ponders this for a moment and then says: “Are you trying to mindfuck me”
　　“Yes!” I say.
　　“Well, success! There’s the tip. So now we can go on to more cheerful things.”
　　Except we don’t. Because it turns out that Marilyn Manson is in the throes of what very much looks like a midlife crisis, or, at least, a midlife reflective moment precipitated by his mother’s death. It’s hard to know exactly when to take him seriously. In person, as he is in his song titles, he’s endlessly playful and teasing. But the two last songs on the album, “Cupid Carries a Gun” and “Odds of Even”, are “circle-of-life stuff”, he says, written after his mother had died.
　　MANSON has always been open about his difficult childhood. How he lashed out at his mother as a teenager. How he was sent to a Christian school he hated. How he was beaten up by other children who thought he was gay. How his grandfather was allegedly into bestiality. But he has not, to my knowledge, talked about the effect of the hows and whys of it. It reminds me of Sam Shepard, literary文学的 high priest of dysfunctional American families, who I once interviewed and who told me a very similar story of his father returning from the Second World War in trauma, unable to relate to his family, and the impact that the violence had on everyone else. For Shepard, violence and secrets and the American family are all of a piece.
　　And so it seems with Manson, too. “My father was working all the time. I had to become this homunculus of sorts for my mother. And then I wanted to get away from it. I became his placeholder. My mother would even call me by his name. And you’re full of testosterone and pissed off and you don’t want to be called your dad’s name, especially when you don’t even know where the fuck he is.”
　　It also seems less surprising that Marilyn Manson has continued to speak to, and articulate the concerns of, alienated young men. Though it seems like his mother’s death has released him from something. Has it made you think differently about parenthood, I ask him. The closest he’d got to having children before now has been a pickled foetus that he kept in his house and named Ludwig Von Manson.
　　“It has.”
　　Is it more circle-of-life stuff “No, it’s more like passing on your legacy. You know, I’m the last man in the family, because I don’t have any siblings. So yeah, that is something that I actually have been thinking about. And I do think I would make… I’m the godfather to Johnny Depp’s daughter. He’s my best friend and I gave her her first set of high heels. Unfortunately she was in diapers when I gave them to her. It was awkward when I saw her 14 years later and Johnny’s like: ‘Hey this is Uncle Manson. He gave you your first pair of high heels and changed your diaper.’ That sounds really bad. But it was amazing.”
　　So you think it’s something you might like to do one day
　　“Well, when your best friend is such a good father and has a similar lifestyle, it makes me think it would be nice to create life. I’d hate it to be a girl, though – because if it’s a girl then you have all the dicks in the world to worry about. If it’s a guy, it’s just one dick to worry about.”
　　Though being the mother of his future child is perhaps not everyone woman’s dream job, he was married briefly to Dita Von Teese, the burlesque artist, and subsequently had a relationship with the then 19-year-old Evan Rachel Wood, which ended in 2010. He does have a girlfriend now, he says, “but only because she is willing to do whatever it takes to be with me. I realised making this record that maybe I need to do the same thing because I did not take time to notice that it could come across as one-sided because I’m such a handful. But people know that about me.”
　　He is a handful. He has interesting things to say, but his talk is all over the shop. His stories are charged with symbolism and coincidence and, I suspect, hyperbole. He jumps from topic to topic and, especially, filmic reference to filmic reference. An ardent cinephile, he’s steeped in the language and history of film, and the visual imagery of the cinema seems as real to him as real life is to most people.
　　He’s currently in act three, he says, of his life. “I’m in the part of the film where it rains. That’s when you know trouble is coming.”
　　It’s just unclear what sort of trouble. He had death threats after Columbine, and severe depression after the ending of his relationships, and suicidal thoughts. He admits to feelings of revenge. “Maybe that goes back to me being the kid that got his ass beat so many times and no one stood up for me. But I didn’t stand up for myself either.” But he says he doesn’t seem to be “an angry person”.
　　He doesn’t. He seems like a 45-year-old man who’s only just realising certain things about himself. He tries to explain what it’s like performing in front of strangers. “It’s an impossible high to recreate. And maybe, I try to tell my father, it’s comparable to what he experienced. It’s very difficult to come off tour and come down from that. It does have an effect mentally, maybe even chemically.
　　“It’s not the same as going into combat, but it’s a way of bonding with my father. The idea of living in a different world. And coming home and feeling out of place.”
　　So you think you’re replicating what your father experienced
　　“Not intentionally. But it is one way that we could relate. I’m living in a world that very few people live in, and when I go back to the regular world, I’m very much: ‘Hello, this is me.’”
　　This is Marilyn Manson. The son of a Vietnam vet or, as he corrects me, a “mass murderer”. He has always critiqued the way the media glamorises violence. And 25 years after Brian Warner created Marilyn Manson by yoking together the names of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson, he’s realised it’s perhaps a truer name for him than he’d ever realised. Because Vietnam has been airbrushed by Hollywood, romanticised in the films he loves. The thwop, thwop, thwop of the helicopters at the start of Apocalypse Now, a thrilling soundtrack. There’s a Marilyn Monroe glamour to it. And a Charles Mansonesque blood lust. And he is, quite literally, the offspring of that. Marilyn Manson, America’s true son.
　　The Pale Emperor is out on 19 January