By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 11/10/2000
Marilyn Manson breaks silence with new 'Holy Wood'
Marilyn Manson went into hiding after the Columbine tragedy in which two Colorado teens killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher. The music of goth rockers like Manson was widely viewed as a negative influence on the killers, though Manson says that Columbine, obviously, ''was something that I had nothing to do with.''
Harassed by the media, Manson canceled the rest of his tour after the shootings, while avoiding interviews. But he is now back with a new record, ''Holy Wood,'' which comes out Tuesday and restates his belief that young people are often seen as ''Disposable Teens,'' to quote the record's first single, which is already a hit.
''The album has enabled me to answer a lot of questions about myself. The story is about my life and trying to fit into a world that doesn't want you,'' Manson says in a phone interview. ''The album is very focused because I took the negativity [from Columbine] and I wanted to respond to it in an artful way. ... It was time for me to make an important choice - whether to continue or to look at that event as a wake-up call to America.''
Manson responded by not softening his views. ''I decided I wasn't going to be silent,'' he says. That's apparent on jarring new industrial/metal anthems of alienation that play like a long letter to society. The ominous ''Fight Song'' notes that ''isolation is the oxygen mask you're making children breathe in to survive.'' The Bowie-sounding ''In the Valley of the Shadow of Death'' asserts, ''We have no future/Heaven wasn't made for me ... sometimes I feel so worthless.'' And ''Disposable Teens'' declares, ''The more that you fear us, the bigger we get.''
''The song is a two-sided statement,'' says Manson, who will headline Lowell's Tsongas Arena on Nov. 22. ''One is about how people have become very disposable. The other is about how kids are being marketed to: `We want to exploit you, but we don't want to hear your opinions.'
''So if kids feel worthless, they're going to treat other people that way,'' he adds.
Manson sees a lot of parallels between the late '60s when the Altamont Festival showed ''the phoniness of the love generation,'' and the late '90s when Woodstock '99 turned into a fiery disaster. ''I was also born in 1969,'' he says.
Although Manson is sometimes seen as simplistic, he's not. The 31-year-old native of Canton, Ohio, is bright and articulate. And the same is true for his challenging new music. Although the sound reveals derivative influences harking back to Bowie's glam-rocking ''Ziggy Stardust'' era, Manson sings with a kind of robotic fascination and also surprises by injecting references to the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, and John Lennon.
As for Lennon, Manson quotes on ''Disposable Teens'' one of his famous lines: ''You say you want a revolution.'' Notes Manson: ''I realize now that I was influenced by Lennon a lot more than I thought when growing up. ... Lennon was considered so dangerous that the FBI had to keep an eye on him. And I've had some of that same scrutiny.''
Manson, however, is not without hope. ''I don't think I would have made the new record if I didn't have hope,'' he says. ''And the final message of the record is: `Are we going to behave like everybody before us?' I mean, violence isn't new. There just wasn't any TV back in the days of Cain and Abel.''
And speaking of TV, there's a haunting verse on the new CD that evokes incidents such as Columbine: ''If you die when there's no one watching, then your ratings drop and you're forgotten. ... But if they kill you on the TV, you're a martyr and a lamb of God.''
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
