Interview:2007/05 Revolver
FEEDING FRENZY | ||
---|---|---|
Interview with Marilyn Manson | ||
Date | May 2007 [1][2] | |
Source | Revolver | |
Interviewer | Dan Epstein |
FEEDING FRENZY[edit]
MARILYN MANSON RETURNS FROM HIS DARKEST DAYS YET, WITH A FRESH NEW FEAST FOR THE SENSES
“This is the record I’ve worked all my life to get to”. Marilyn Manson says of his forthcoming album, Eat Me, Drink Me (Nothing/Interscope). You always have to transform, or you can’t continue as an artist, and this record has been the biggest transformation for me."
Eat Me, Drink Me,-his first disc since 2003’s The Golden Age Of Grotesque-was co produced by Manson and bassist/aide de camp Tim Skold, and is being mixed by Sean Beavan, who has worked on several other Manson projects, including 1996’s Antichrist Superstar, and 1998’s Mechanical Animals. According to the frontman, Eat Me, Drink Me “takes a totally different approach musically”. While some sources have likened his new sound to Queen, Manson will only say “It’s better heard than described.” Still, he reveals, “On this record I really wanted to sing, and that has to come from a naked, emotional place. “Its not a record about me crying, or songs about my woes, but I think this record will probably speak to more people in different ways, because of its total human element.”
As practically everyone knows now, Manson’s yearlong marriage to burlesque performer Dita Von Teese fell apart in late 2006. Their break-up was the capper of what Manson now describes as “The most fucked up year of my life” one that found him almost catatonic at times from severe depression. “As many dark places as I’ve gone in my life and in my music, this past year… it’s a real wonder that I’m alive” he says with a soft chuckle. ‘I never wanted to make music again, but this was the only salvation I had going for me. So somehow I came out of that, and I came out of that by writing a song, and that song turned into a record.”
Of the song in question “Just a Car Crash Away” Manson says “I compare love to fire, and how it consumes everything, and scars everything, and changes everything. A couple people I have played it for have cried, but I don’t think it’s sad, I just think it’s terribly romantic, in a Bram Stoker sort of way”. Other songs include “The Red Carpet Grave and the six-minute epic ballad “If I Was Your Vampire.” “It’s the centerpiece of the album,” Manson says of the latter, “I woke up Christmas Day and wrote it. It’s kind of my death wish fantasy.”
According to Manson, Vampirism is just one of the dark themes running through Eat Me, Drink Me, which was recorded mostly in his home in the Hollywood Hills. “If I had to do a record review, I’d say it’s got a cannibal, consumption, obsessive, violent-sex, romance angle, but with an upbeat swing to it.” He says with a laugh. Aside from the obvious Lewis Carroll and Jesus Christ references, Manson says the album’s title was also inspired by “that story several years back of the German man who put out an ad that he wanted to be eaten, and the man who ate him. Although I can’t relate to the relationship those two had, I found the story very compelling in a romantic way. I think a lot of people wouldn’t look at it as romantic, but it was to them in some sick way, and it is to me in some sick way, too” he laughs.
Eat Me, Drink Me is tentatively scheduled for a May release, after which Manson and his band (Skold, drummer Ginger Fish, Keyboardist M.W.Gacy, and a guitarist to be named later) will hit the road for the first time since his Against All Gods tour in late 2004. “I’ve been laying dormant, but its not going to be just a gradual sneaking back into society,” Manson promises, “Its going to be a very large swarm of pestilence.” DAN EPSTEIN