rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Awkward Christian Soldiers: Marilyn Manson’s Adventures in Outer Faith

My buddy Rob and I were sitting on his couch one night in 1996 watching MTV with Rob’s then 7-year-old son Zack when Marilyn Manson’s "Sweet Dreams" video came on. We had been, that night, more or less good-naturedly dogging all the video artists, trying to get a rise out of the boy, much like our parents had dogged the Beatles on Ed Sullivan trying to get rises out of us. The tradition continues because, as we all know, each generation thinks it invented everything

My buddy Rob and I were sitting on his couch one night in 1996 watching MTV with Rob’s then 7-year-old son Zack when Marilyn Manson’s "Sweet Dreams" video came on. We had been, that night, more or less good-naturedly dogging all the video artists, trying to get a rise out of the boy, much like our parents had dogged the Beatles on Ed Sullivan trying to get rises out of us. The tradition continues because, as we all know, each generation thinks it invented everything and each successive generation’s culture is crap. Watching the scene where Manson, wrapped in a thin, clear plastic sheet and little else, lurches spastically down what looks like an alley in a very bad neighborhood, twitching and grinning, all red eye/white eye crazy menace, spitting the words to the Eurythmics’ (suddenly) oldie-but-goodie, Rob leans over to me and whispers, conspiratorially, "This guy kinda really creeps me out." "Oh, come on," I replied, "It’s just Alice Cooper with money. It’s nothing to worry about." Which seemed to be the end of that, but I was impressed that Manson had the power to ‘creep out’ a fellow old dog like Rob.

Having remained blissfully childless myself, I have never taken into account any sort of parental response when it came to rock and roll, but isn’t that a big part of it? Isn’t p***ing one’s parents off a hallmark of rock and roll? And ain’t it a kick in the head when we become the p***ed on. Time’s a b***h, man. Like I used to say when introducing our band to the cowboys at our local saloons "We used to be your parent’s worst nightmare. Now we’re just your parents." But, Manson had clearly struck a nerve. I started seeing local kids walking around with Manson tapes and CDs as well as the usual concert t-shirt. Walking around the little town of Fowler, Colorado, going in and out of the 66 and the video store with CDs at the ready, wanting to be asked about them, wanting to talk about them, to declare themselves allied with Marilyn Manson. In this era of musical hegemony, where faceless and interchangeable talent promise to jump through all the necessary hoops in order to serve the master MTV, this level of identification is no small thing. This is not your father’s Alice Cooper.

The slings and arrows started flying predictably at Manson’s death’s head as more and more kids showed up with t-shirts and CDs and white-out contacts with hair dyed black and, most dangerously, new thoughts. Thoughts perhaps more black, and no less dyed, than the hair. Thoughts that might lead to the revelation that we’ve been lied to from birth about pretty near everything. Thoughts that might lead to other thoughts that could eventually shake off our convenient fictions and ultimately result in it’s young eating America and not the other way around.

Something had to be done!

Manson courted controversy, to be sure. Shredding the Bible and miming sexual acts on stage, being ordained a minister in Anton LeVay’s Church of Satan, flaunting quasi-Nazi imagery, homo-eroticism and graphically violent images in a deliberately confrontational manner really is asking for it, but asking for what? On the surface Manson appears to be anti-EVERYTHING and as such an easy target for the morally outraged. But upon further inspection it becomes apparent that Manson is more than just another non-talent who makes up for deficiencies by using shock for shock’s sake, no, much thought has gone into Manson’s presentation. There are reasons for every last drop of blood, every crucified go-go girl, every abortion vid-clip, every bondage outfit, every shard of broken glass, every ravished Bible, every poisoned youth; ‘poisoned’, like Adam and Eve, having eaten from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, fruit brought to man by the devil himself. Manson, much like the film ‘Natural Born Killers’ tells us more about ourselves than we are comfortable considering.

If I met an alien from Outer Space, who knew nothing of our ways and this alien asked me to explain America, I would take him/her/it to see Marilyn Manson "cause it’s all there, Zardog! All the filthy spectacle of the home of the brave and the land of the freebase, where the white gods live in palaces of commerce and cathedrals of mass hypnosis while the faithful worker ants below kick and scrape to survive long enough to collect on their reward in heaven. Manson artfully (and the man has few, if any, purely artistic peers. His technique matches his vision and each are equally potent and disturbing) combines the iconography and tools of past power structures (the Church, the Nazis, Sex, Violence etc.) with stylistic touches that speak to the isolation and alienation felt by those among us who feel that something is drastically wrong.

From the screech and bang of heavy metal to the pomp and wasted grandeur of glam rock to the shadowy decadence of the German cabaret, Manson gleans bits and pieces of each and through considerable synthesis creates a whole that’s much more than the sum of it’s parts. Marilyn Manson, the band, is a sleek, chrome-hearted machine that blasts out concepts and alternative viewpoints with every power chord and sequence. By giving his audience the benefit of the doubt and refusing to talk down to them, by refusing to insult our intelligence and not challenge our perceptions of everything that counts like god, country and family, Manson proves himself, again and again, to be an artist actively engaged in his art, cognizant of the responsibility to say something of meaning when one has this many people’s attention.

But there is always of course the ‘kill the messenger’ contingent. Manson has been hounded and vilified on the Net and elsewhere by Christian groups at every turn. State legislation has been enacted to ensure that Marilyn Manson receives the rights guaranteed him, as an American citizen, in the Constitution. Ridiculous lies about his stage performance and personal proclivities have been posted all over the Net. The anti-Mansonites had a field day when, after shooting 13 people at their high school, it was revealed that the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were among other things, fan’s of Manson’s music. Rather than take a good, honest look at what caused this tragedy, which to my would have to rooted in the day to day dealings between the shooters and the shot, the community of Littleton, Colorado were awfully quick to lay the blame at the feet of, you guessed it, Marilyn Manson.

It dishonors the memory of all the dead, including Eric and Dylan, to willfully ignore the societal pressures that set the killing spree in motion and confer responsibility to a musician. It’s easier, sure, but still dishonorable. If one has to bring Manson into this equation then maybe all would be better served if the questioning went a little further, like maybe why were these kids listening to Manson? What were they getting from the music that they might not have been getting elsewhere? Approval? Identity? Strength? Respect? We’ll never know now how Dylan or Eric may have answered, but it’s still not to late to ask the question of ourselves. And, permit me a tasteless moment here, I swear, if I ever snap and feel compelled to shoot something up before offing myself I will be wearing a Walkman with a ‘Best of Wayne Newton’ tape playing in it just to cause that old geezer some grief. Now, see how ridiculous that sounds? To state a belief that merely listening to the music of a particular artist can drive a person to mass murder is the statement of an idiot.

Marilyn Manson is well aware of the idiocy out there, he takes it on every day with every move he makes, fighting the good fight for intellectual freedom and elevating rock and roll to the level of International Debate and, in my opinion, continually p***ing off the right people. Can we ask more from a ‘rock star’? We probably should and, rest assured, if and when we do, Marilyn Manson will be up to the challenge. This man and his work are the real deal, ladies and gentlemen, and one of few such combinations of heart and mind to grace our current rock and roll landscape today. A keeper and a Keeper of the Flame.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 23:18 | link | comments

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