Fame, infamy, breakdowns, overdoses, high drama, a broken relationship from yet another raven-haired, red-lipped beauty (actress Rose McGowan) followed; as did the bother over Columbine.
On which: has anyone blamed him for the Virginia Tech shootings yet?
"Not as far as I know. But I wouldn't be surprised if I was blamed. You know, it all seems very manufactured to me."
In what way?
"In the way that there's candlelight vigils, but I haven't seen anyone crying. Not one single person crying. Someone said to me yesterday: I'm sure you're full of mixed emotions. And I'm not, really. I don't really care. I don't know anyone involved in it. If you lose emotion, and you gain it back, you realize that hate and love are very important to distribute properly. So I'm not going to waste any kind of emotion on things that aren't related to me. It doesn't mean that you have to be insensitive or cold, or have no sort of empathy. It just means that when you do have an emotion, make it extreme."
Sometimes, Marilyn Manson seems like a man in make-up, with a major midlife crisis. A man — furthermore — who doesn't recognize his midlife crisis as such, because he considers himself creatively superior and thus immune to middle age. It would be easy to dismiss him. He talks a lot of nonsense, and his conversation — like his lyrics — sometimes overflows with the kind of rhetoric and flawed sentiment that doesn't stand up to close inspection. Yet he's funny. He's not beyond laughing at himself.
He has occasional moments of something approaching self-awareness. Even his pretensions — which are manifold and enormous in scale — are somewhat innocent and authentic. Whimsical teenage pretensions, basically.
Plus he's got really great skin — you've got to admire that. What's his secret? "Make your body a place where germs are afraid to live." We share make-up tips. "I like Shiseido and Nars," he says. He doesn't take his make-up off before bed. Ugh, I say. He laughs. 'I have to shave, because I am a man — whatever you may think; but that's about the only thing I do that disturbs my make-up." I tell him I like his lipstick. He says he'll find out the color. "It's not my usual. For years I was wearing a very specific wine color. But this one is my more masculine lipstick, I think. Ha ha!"
Is he happy?
He pauses. It is a loaded question for a goth of his stature. An awful lot of fans depend on him not being happy.
"For the most part, yeah. More so than I was a year ago. And definitely more than I was 10 years ago. I feel, like, being in a position where I simply have no reason to apologize for just being myself, and where I don't have to make what I do an apology for me, or a defense of who I am."
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