Let's Talk About... Marilyn Manson

There was a time when I didn’t listen to music. It’s a very difficult concept to grapple with now that music is the pivotal force in ones life. Not a day goes by when I don’t listen to a song or an album. I first became interested in music about ten years ago when I was eleven. I had never owned a CD up to this point and had never been inspired to venture further into musical discovery than that which my Mother’s car provided. I was a novice and the only artists I could name for you at this time were ABBA, Michael Jackson, Shania Twain, Madonna and The Bee Gees (some of my Mother’s car journey favourites). Had I owned an iPod at the age of eleven there would have been about nine songs on it (yet ten years later a 64GB capacity seems to be too restrictive).

Everything changed when I got into high school. Everybody was listening to music all of the time and when they weren’t listening to it, they were talking about it. I had nothing to add to the discussion and had I not been shunned enough by my peers, here was just another reason for them to neglect me. In the days when iPods were luxury items (and relatively unheard of) the kids would carry around their little portable jukeboxes or personal CD players and it seemed like a status symbol to me or ‘the cool thing to have’. I wanted one badly, but amongst the unquenchable desire to be among the school yard elite, I found myself asking the pivotal question, “what would I play on it even if I had one?” I started watching the music channels on TV in an effort to find out what my musical taste was. I remember at this time that Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ was out and My Chemical Romance’s ‘I’m Not Okay’ was playing seemingly on repeat. At this point, my hypothetical 2004 iPod’s song list would have started to slowly expand from nine songs to about fifteen. Now at school I could join in on a conversation about Good Charlotte or Blink 182. This was all very exciting. I was never a particular fan of this music in hindsight but it was the only music I knew and that knowledge put me on a level playing field with the other eleven year olds at school. I had also discovered a clique that I desperately aspired to be a part of, though I never became a valid member. I knew that I wanted to be one of the long-haired boys in the school years above me with the baggy trousers yet I wasn’t cool enough and I still didn’t own a CD, which in my eyes was the key. How could I wear long hair if I wasn’t a music fan? For me the two things went hand in hand, you can’t be one and not have the other. I really wasn’t overly enthusiastic about buying My Chemical Romance’s CD or Green Day’s CD or any of the other albums I had discovered thus far in my voyage through the music channels. I had to admit defeat and carry on searching for somebody whose CD I could proudly carry in my soon-to-be-purchased portable CD player. 

One afternoon amidst all the mediocrity came something extraordinary. The words “Not Another High School Party” flashed my retinas and a dark figure forced his way into my consciousness and my life forever. The song was familiar (one of my Mother’s car tunes) but this person was something completely alien to me. I found him fascinating and intriguing at once and it was his image that especially stood out to me at first. It was as though he had channeled all my inner angst and personified it. A feeling I had had that I couldn’t explain was finally made clear to me without the man even having to say a word. It is safe to say that I liked him and identified with him immediately. I still had an awful lot to learn about him, but I knew that this ‘Marilyn Manson’ was something special and unique. Of all the mediocre bands I had been listening to over the previous weeks and months, Manson was the first to make me think about anything and this alone made him stand out amongst his Kerrang peers. Music was no longer just a device in which I could become popular at school, it was now something entirely different. I had decided which artist I would give my support to in the form of my first CD purchase. 

Marilyn Manson - Tainted Love

These were the days when £5 was an awful lot of money to me and a CD was a relatively expensive item. This is a laughable concept today especially when you can download dozens of albums in an afternoon for free, if you were so inclined. To buy one album was the product of an entire weeks labour back then. I had to walk around in the early hours of the morning six days a week delivering newspapers before school just to afford one album. I went to a local pre-owned entertainment store that sold albums that had seen better days, yet even these were only just within my means to buy. The only Manson album I could find in my price range was his 1999 live album, ‘The Last Tour On Earth’. It had in it’s track listing two or three familiar sounding songs and after haggling the shop owner down 99pence (£5 being all I had at the time) I brought home this cracked CD case and began to listen intently. It probably wasn’t the best introduction to Manson’s music but in a lot of ways you could argue that it was. It captured the ‘take no prisoners’ attitude of his 1990’s show and it also served as a sort of ‘Best Of’ compilation for me to sample his various work. Soon this album wasn’t enough and I needed even more. I began to frequent this second hand CD store and over the coming weeks bought more of the Marilyn Manson stock. As my hair began to reach past my ears and I began to talk of colouring it black, an unexpected obstacle came between me and my music: My Mother. She disapproved of Marilyn Manson for reasons I never really understood. I guess she thought he was something of a bad influence on me. She could see that since starting high school my mood gradually slipped until I became a brooding teenager who was always depressed about one thing or another. She surmised that Marilyn Manson was to blame. She, to my utter anger and resentment, confiscated my only friend. Marilyn Manson was contraband. 

Over the following couple of years my experimentations with hair dye and make-up went  almost unchallenged but Marilyn Manson remained taboo. Unsurprisingly the fact that his music wasn’t allowed didn’t mean that I wasn’t listening to it. I was such a rebel. Home cassettes I had ripped from the radio and TV were stuffed under my mattress and Manson’s albums continued to be collected and hidden. What my Mother didn’t realise is that vetoing Manson only made him more appealing and enthralling. What was it about this man that she wanted to shield me from? By this time I had all of his CDs and I was utterly familiar with every song. No matter what was going on outside the four walls of my bedroom I always seemed to have a confidant in Manson and as lame as it sounds he was my only friend for the earlier part of my teenage years. Manson was to me what I imagine Morrissey was to the disgruntled and down-trodden youth of the early 1980s. Manson opened the door to many things I had no knowledge of previously. He was the first to introduce me to The Beatles, David Bowie, The Doors, William Blake, Oscar Wilde and Salvador Dalí. The doors of perception were cleansed and I no longer felt so alone. He was the Mad Hatter and I was cordially invited to his Tea Party. 

One day my Mother returned my CDs to me and stopped making a fuss whenever I played one of Manson’s songs. It was a glorious day. My Marilyn Manson liberation! Soon after this extrication I was allowed to attend my first of Manson’s concerts in Manchester in the December of 2007. That is as good as I thought it could ever get and the idea of meeting him was an idea beyond my wildest dreams at that point. Had someone told me that five years later I was to be back-stage with my arm around the man, I would have laughed. Luckily some dreams do come to fruition and sure enough five years later in November of 2012 I was back-stage rubbing shoulders (and groins) with my hero of nearly ten years. 

But alas, my hair didn’t always stay long and eventually the make-up bag ended up in the trash. I learned to appreciate Manson in other ways than imitation. I guess it’s safe to say that I grew up and out of personifying my misery, however, the influence of Marilyn Manson only grows stronger and stronger to this day. He made me content with being different and I realised that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, even if other people thought it was. Whenever I need reminding that it’s okay to be the way I am, I put one of his albums on and everything feels a little more bearable. If i’m angry he’ll be angry with me and if i’m sad he’ll sing me the most melancholically beautiful song. I value him highly.

Manson, Me, Twiggy - Nov. 2012

Stephen Fry once said of Oscar Wilde that, “The idea of becoming bored of Oscar is like becoming allergic to oxygen, it’s just not thinkable!” and although I adore both in abundance, I would like to take this opportunity to transplant the word ‘Oscar’ with the word ‘Marilyn’.