Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie stay up too late, have tantrums

It must be galling to discover your star has faded so far that you can only fill tour venues by teaming up with other bands, so it's perhaps not surprising that Marilyn Manson is on a foul mood on his trek around the US opening for Rob Zombie.

On Friday, it all boiled over. AllMichigan reports:

"I'm going to kick his ass," said Manson, near the end of a set that lasted about 80 minutes.

Manson made the threat after he told the crowd he wished he could've been able to perform more songs.

I've never been a big fan of Zombie's, but "cutting short the number of songs Marilyn Manson playes" sounds like something from a Nobel Prize citation.

Zombie, of course, laughed it off.

No, no, he didn't:

"Some tours just don't go (expletive) together," yelled Zombie, after he told the crowd Manson didn't even attempt to "kick his ass" during intermission.

Zombie also said he was tired of Manson's "rock star (expletive)" and said something about hoping Manson enjoyed the show because it could be his last.

Apparently there was some sort of show-down after the gig; probably once they had their cocoa and went to bed everything calmed down a bit.

And the promoters? They must be delighted - far easier to sell a pantomime than two fading goths.

Manson drops Manson a brief note

It's right larks taking the name of a murderous loon for your stage name, right? So edgy. So daring. Why, it's cocking a snook at polite society, and no mistake.

Although what happens if the owner of the blood-spattered name decides to get in touch?

Charlie Manson has sent a postcard to Marilyn Manson:

"To Marilyn Manson, It’s taken me a long time to get there from where I could touch M. Manson. Now I got a card to play – you may look into my non-profit, ATWA, and give Manson what you think he’s got coming for Air, Trees, Water, and you. Or I will pay Manson what you think Manson got coming – the music has make Manson into Abraxas Devil, and I’m SURE you would want some of what I got from what I got. It’s a far out balance."

"Beyond good and bad, right, wrong. What you don’t do is what I will do – what you did a sing-along, and let it roll and said how you saved me a lot of steps – I don’t need, it’s not a need or a want. Couped – coup. Ghost dancers slay together and you’re just in my grave Sunstroker Corona-coronas-coronae – you seen me from under with it all standing on me. That’s 2 dump trucks – doing the same as CMF 000007. Charles Manson."

I think that's demanding money (for good works) with menaces. Lots and lots of menaces.

How thrilling it must be for young Brian to get a letter from the man who he has spent so much time trading off the back off. Exciting for him; lucrative for locksmiths and alarm manufacturers in his home town.

In other news, members of Spector are nervously checking their mailboxes and muttering about how they'd have been called something else if the Jing Jang Jong hadn't already been taken.

Marilyn Manson: Now see his sweary face

As if the story of Marilyn Manson writing Fuck on his face because otherwise people might not give him a second glance ("to stop his photo being taken") wasn't hilarious enough, now some images have turned up which shows what a hapless job he made of this simple task:

I'm starting to think what happened was he fell asleep at a party, and the "I'm doing it to mess with the paparazzi" story is just a coverstory. Lucky your friends with Sharpies didn't just go with the usual cock and balls, eh, Mazza?

[There's a whole bunch of pictures by Lindsay Usich over at Zimbio.com]

Marilyn Manson has a sweary face

Oh, Marilyn Manson, is there no end to your ability to amuse?:

I just went through the LAX security line with Marilyn Manson. He had "FUCK" scrawled in large letters across the bottom half of his face, with what appeared to be a grease pencil. As we each removed our boots in the security line, he kindly explained that it was not directed at me or anyone else in the airport, but rather at the paparazzi, so that they couldn't sell any photos of him that they took. He was really apologetic about it, and covered his mouth around young children while apologizing to their parents for exposing their child to profanity.

Oh, Marilyn Manson, the only man who would even try to pretend that he's writing a swear on his face to make people not look at him. Your whole schtick, Mazza, is to have people look at you. It's like me taking advertising space, hiring a gazebo, printing up catalogues and then trying to claim I'm not making an exhibition of myself.

Surely, the best way to avoid having the paparazzi take photos of you is by continuing your long, slow slide into the Dennis Norden Memorial Sofa of 'what was all that about anyway' half-forgotten sideshows?

Marilyn Manson only wanted to confuse you

Marilyn Manson has told the NME that he never wanted to be shocking.

Which is good news all round, as he never was.

But it might have looked to the casual observer as if he was trying to outrage the world with nipples on view and rubber clothes and eyeliner, just a good twenty years after that sort of thing had finally relinquished any power to surprise all but the staunchest Republican Presidential Candidate.

So, if he wasn't trying to shock, what was all that tiresome jumping up and down for?

"I've never tried to be shocking. The only thing you can do is confuse people, because it makes them think. And the art of confusion and chaos is the way to make people think, the way to create a catalyst of change."

I think the only confusion ever generated around Manson was that time everyone thought he was the kid off the Wonder Years - and that wasn't even of his doing.

It's a beautiful thing when you watch someone who just marched a bunch of clones up to the top of the hill, and marched them down again, explaining earnestly that in his mind he was shaking up society:

I had to remind myself that I've never wanted good reviews. I just want people to fear – and through that fear may come respect.

Fear? Who did Manson think he was scaring? Even the Mystery Machine would have rolled on by with a shrug.

I'm picturing Manson, stood by the KEEP OUT sign on the closed fairground, desperately yelling "surely Shaggy? Shaggy must be quaking? A little? Please?"

Festivalwatch: Sonisphere axed

There's not going to be a Sonisphere this year.

Organisers said the cancellation came with "very heavy hearts and much regret".

Evanescence, Marilyn Manson, Cypress Hill, The Blackout and Faith No More were also on the line-up.

Perhaps it's for the best, eh?

Gordon in the morning: Baked goods

Gordon's big splash story - about Jordan, who used to be in ITV2's Peter Andre Show, being in a car crash - has got a problem this morning; if you click on the link, it takes you right back to the page you were on. Don't know if this is because the story had to be pulled in a hurry, or simply because the people who know HTML at Wapping couldn't bring themselves to code the link properly.

In actually working news, Marilyn Manson loves Greggs:

Speaking at Cleo, he said: "What's that place in good old England? The bakers? Greggs, that's right Greggs. They do the best pasties there."
[...]
The freaky frontman added: "I always go there when I'm in London, the cheese and onion is great. Good old-fashioned fare."

Yes, Gordon did just call Marilyn Manson "the freaky frontman".

So, Manson believes Greggs does the best pasties, does he? He always was an idiot. Everyone knows Sayers pasties are miles, miles better.

Manson signs to Cooking Vinyl

Yes, of course, there's a blustery statement trumpeting the news:

"We will always be our worst audience, until we stop being an audience and start being an artist,” he said. “Any art is flesh and blood, no matter how you perform, decorate or display it. But we all want the passionate horror of that blood. And blood is what I am here to bring.”

But all the bluster in the world, and the dignity-salvaging side label called Hell, Etc, can't alter the fact that what Cooking Vinyl do - and do bloody well - is a nice line in bands whose focus is on serving the audience they have, rather than conquering new worlds. Manson - god bless him - has joined music's greatest conservation programme.

Marilyn Manson to make a movie

Who knew that Liam Gallagher getting involved with a Beatles film wouldn't be the most heart-sinkingly obvious tie-in of the year. Marilyn Manson is going to star in a slashy gore movie.

Splatter Sisters, it's going to be called. David Gordon Green is producing:

"This is a role Marilyn Manson was born to play and, with Evan Rachel Wood bringing dramatic gravity to the ensemble, I have no doubt this will take the horror genre to a new level," Green said.

On the plus side, it hasn't started filming yet, so there's a possibility that we'll all be wiped out by an asteroid before Claudia Winkelman has to review this.

Marilyn Manson hasn't been dumped, he's been handed an exciting opportunity on a pink slip

You know what? Let's not look at it like Marilyn Manson's audience have now reached puberty in such numbers that his latest album managed to barely squeak over 100,000 sales in the US. Let's not see it as if Interscope have decided that a Manson is a one-trick pony whose trick looks a little dated against a backdrop of Twilight and True Blood making cheap Goth look much sexier. Let's not see this as an end, shall we?

Let's turn that badly-drawn-with-eyeliner frown upside-down, shall we?

The singer told Metal Hammer: "We've just been released from our record contract with Interscope so I think a lot of the creative control on which my hands were tied on a lot of choices - the music videos - things like that (has been regained).

"I was so restrained from the music that I wanted to make - what they would allow, they would put out, what ideas they would allow to be conveyed in these videos. At least half of my creative output has been squashed, so now I think people can expect a whole lot more."

Mmm. Yes, it was a lack of creative freedom that was holding you back, wasn't it? Rather than a more pressing lack of creative ideas. So what's the big plan now you're "free", Marilyn? Same thing, but with more nipples?

Marilyn Manson doesn't even have swine flu

Although Manson claimed on both Twitter and Facebook that he had swine flu, it turns out that even his illness is duller than he'd have us believe:

According to the Canadian Press, Gillett Entertainment Group and Live Nation have denied that Marilyn Manson has contracted the H1N1 virus (commonly known as swine flu), and have confirmed that he is still playing his last remaining Canadian tour date: tonight (Saturday, September 26) in Moncton, New Brunswick. (Manson also played last night in Halifax.)

Blabbermouth reports that he's now removed the claims of swine flu from his Facebook:

He subsequently wrote, "That illness tried and lost. I am fully functioning. Not sick. My mental health is still up for dispute. Don't worry, world. I am not contagious. Just my goddamn music is."

Well, yes, I suppose it is contagious - a bit like swine flu, it's nowhere near the threat it would like to be, nobody really wants it and it does nothing to make you feel good. And it's best washed away as quickly as possible.

We are the pigs: Manson has swine flu

Marilyn Manson has got the swine flus:

So I have officially been diagnosed, by a real doctor, with THE SWINE FLU. I know everyone will suggest that fucking a pig is how this disease was obtained. However, the doctor said, my past choices in women have in no way contributed to me acquiring this mysterious sickness. Unfortunately, I am going to survive.

The caps are Manson's own. Given that he's meant to be in touch with the darkest sides of the human psyche, isn't getting a little over-excited at having something that's a bit like a bad cold a little odd? I bet Aleister Crowley didn't start sending notes around when he got the snuffles.

Still, it's good to see his sense of humour hasn't deserted him, even if it's a snide, misogynistic sense of humour.

Marilyn Manson doesn't take criticism well

Apparently confusing himself with Jeanette Winterson, Marilyn Manson is threatening to visit music journalists at home:

"If one more 'journalist' makes a cavailier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans' help greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech.

"I dare you all to write one more thing that you won’t say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat."

Manson - who is a bit like Gene Wilder playing Lord Voldermort - doesn't exactly say what he considers to be a "cavalier statement". Would "desperately trying to plough a furrow despite having hit the rock beneath many years ago" upset him, for example? Or "a sense of style which suggests a funeral director who arrived late at the jumble sale" be the sort of thing to set him off.

Still, interesting to see the man who ran into the streets screaming "please don't blame me" post-Columbine is now suggesting his fans might want to beat up people who have different tastes in music. Sure, Manson is just blowing hard on his blog, but his audience is pretty suggestible and not exactly the brightest fanbase around. for their hero to suggest that people be attacked until they are happy to cede their free speech sits oddly with his suggestion that he stands against the bullies of society.

Download: Manson wears a hat

Light from a dead star, as Marilyn Manson tries too hard at Download:

Marilyn Manson played Download this evening (June 13) and was joined onstage by a small entourage of make up and costume assistants, who primped and preened him after almost every song.

Wow. He's gone from being deeply gothy to Ugly Betty.

Tell us about the entrance, then, NME:

Manson arrived on the main stage at 7.20pm [BST], ten minutes after he was scheduled to appear. A giant black sheet which was covering the stage dropped dramatically to reveal...

Ooh! What? What did the god of twisted-evil-headfuckery have behind his big sheet? Virgins being deflowered by zombies? Priests having their innards fed to hounds? What? How did Manson twist everyone's minds?

...to reveal Manson sporting a gigantic hat.

Oh. A big hat.

Did I say Ugly Betty? It's more a mid-season challenge on Britain's Next Top Model.

Still, anyone following the NME store's suggestions of Manson records would rediscover a sense of nauseated horror:

Manson's slim sales

The final chugging of workers at that particular mine, then: Marilyn Manson's new album has scraped just 49,000 sales in week of release in the US. Much as Radio 2 used to see its audience vanish to the grave, so Manson is losing them to puberty.

Marilyn Manson: Almost as shocking as a mid-season Skins episode

You want to know why we're nailing boards across our windows and sending the children of the village away?

Why, it's all part of the bracing before the unleashing of another Marilyn Manson record. For, surely, this time it must mark the end of society as we know it.

Oooh, Marilyn, what are you about to do?

"This is not a record that we would leave black and self-titled and mature. This is the experienced record. This album is the 12th-grade guy that has VD and did cocaine in high school, who has been arrested once and the 9th-grade girl wants to fuck him."

That's quite something. Because so far, your albums have been a mixture of the 34 year-old who still lives with his mother and has a subscription to Nuts, and a fifteen year-old boy whose rebellion takes the form of putting chewing gum in the ashtray when his older sister picks him up from Bible Class in their mum's car.

Still, Marilyn, can you make the album sound any more appealing to those who confuse badly-applied make-up with individualism?

This album left many scars

Oh, perfect.

I wrote all the lyrics on the wall of my room. It wasn't to be decorative; it was one of those things, like it's the last thing someone sees before they put them somewhere else.

That's pretty, wow, intense. Even if it does trail off meaninglessly - presumably that bit got hidden when you moved the bedside table to the other side of the bed, right?

And if anyone wants to come into this room and fornicate with me, I think they are a keeper… and when I say keeper, I mean kidnapping.

Oh, Marilyn, you are a one. It's probably just as well you've got more chance of a cow walking backwards down a rope ladder than someone wanting to visit your teenage bedroom.

Because I always wanted to take pictures, my house is set up like a movie set. Instead of lamps I have movie lights and smoke machines and things.

The guy up the road from me when I was a kid was a bit like that, too. And he had stacks of sound-effect records, too. He'd play them at dinner parties, when most people would put on mood music, so you'd wind up having conversations about whether Jim Callaghan could survive the summer to the backing of 'steam train approaching tunnel'.

"I really look at this record as a film, maybe because I sort of directed it. I stopped trying to conform regular life into the idea that it's regular life. Why isn't it all just a movie? If people are watching, they're watching me being an asshole or being boring or creating something amazing. That's just a part of the movie. It allowed me to be more creative."

And also, continued Manson, did you ever think you might be the only person and everyone is just robots or if you closed your eyes it all might disappear?

Marilyn Manson is forty years old.

Gothobit: Gidget Gein

Gidget Gein, former bassist with Marilyn Manson's band, has died from an apparent heroin overdose.

Gein had been an early member of Manson's The Spooky Kids and arguably brought more of his style to the Manson look than Brian Warner. However, the former Bradley Anne Stewart also had a serious drug problem. After an overdose, the supposedly fearless Manson capitulated to management and record company demands and sent a FedEx dismissal letter to his former friend.

His next step was to form The Dali Gaggers, who built a following on the New York glumcore scene, but never broke through into the lunchbox-eyeliner market in the way his former band did.

Gein returned to Florida, picking up work dealing with dead bodies for the coroner's office, and using the experience of unexpected death at close quarters to drive further projects - most notably his Gollywood art work, which he started to exhibit in LA after a move in 2004.

According to LA Weekly, he was about to record a new solo album with former Janes Addiction producer Dave Jerden.

Manson hooks up with Durst's ex

Wes Borland, who for a long time provided some sort of back-up to Fred Durst, has signed on to play for Marilyn Manson's cabaret Goth experience. Oddly, he's not having to change his name to KateMoss Brady or anything. Manson's statement:

"We have a new guitar player that's gonna play for the first time tomorrow. It's the first time we'll play onstage [together]. His name is Wes Borland, and he used to be in a really terrible band that he left because he felt that it was a destructive force in art, and he has his own band, Black Light Burns, but now he is in Marilyn Manson. We don't know how permanent that is, but starting tomorrow will be the first step."

I don't know if it's just me, but this makes it sound less like Manson really wanted Borland on board, more he just wanted Fred to see the pair of them out and about together.

Fred Durst is currently seeing if he can get the number of that guy who said Mazza spent all his money on nazi skeletons or whatever.

Alice Cooper: The song remains the same

After all that fuss over the suggestion that Slayer songs pretty much all sound like Slayer songs, how refreshing to find someone making rock music to a formula who admits that, yes, it's a formula designed to soothe rather than surprise. Step forward, Alice Cooper:

I really kind of do my albums for my fans. I realize I'm not breaking any new ground out there. I don't think OZZY is, or AEROSMITH is, either. We have our fans. We've had them for a long time. We are getting new fans because kids that like MARILYN MANSON immediately go, "Who's this ALICE COOPER that they're always talking about?" Then they bring up my website on the Internet and go, "Wait a minute…I like this guy even better… and he's got 25 albums out!" So, they rediscover me…but honestly, when I do an album, I'm not thinking about, "Boy, I really got to get the FOO FIGHTERS' audience." [laughs] I'm thinking that I've got to satisfy my audience."

It might be wishful thinking to picture Manson fans going "hey... this stuff is even better", although if they like the pantomime when the pantomime knows it pantomime, there's no reason why they shouldn't.

Manson tries to hide how much he's taken fans for

He might like to shock people with, ooh, his eyeliner and stuff, but there's one shock that Marilyn Manson doesn't want to spring on people: just how much cash he's made from dressing up like a Target Halloween demon every day.

He's trying to stop the legal team representing disgruntled former goth-in-arms Stephen Bier from forcing financial details into the public realm as part of their bid to claw back some earnings:

"A protective order is necessary to protect the confidentiality of that information against competitors and from the media and to preclude the plaintiff from using Manson's confidential information for improper purposes," the motion states.

Bier's response misses the point a little:

"Manson lives his life in the public eye," a filing opposing the defense's motion states. "He communicates frequently with the press regarding his personal affairs, openly discusses his frequent drug use, his failed marriage with burlesque model Dita Von Teese, his current relationship with actress Evan Rachel Wood, and his wild, rock 'n' roll lifestyle."

He also drinks absinthe and openly discusses his friends' and band members' sexual proclivities, as well, Bier claims.

We've not quite been able to puzzle out why drinking absinthe means that everyone has, automatically, a right to see your bank statements.