Profile: He was public enemy number one, blamed for everything from satanism to the Columbine massacre, but the man named Brian is a nice guy who wants a family, writes Shane Hegarty.
His mother calls him Brian. He is a polite chap who apologises when he is late; is intelligent and articulate if sometimes a little woozy. He is planning to marry his sweetheart, believes in monogamy and would like to get married in a traditional ceremony.
"I do want lots of kids, too, but not any time soon," says Marilyn Manson. "Ultimately, that's how you make yourself immortal - by passing down your ideas and values to your children." Right now, he's working mainly with teenagers. Your teenagers, possibly. You're supposed to be worried about that; concerned, maybe even panicked. "Manson music turned my girl into a satanist", one Mirror headline declared in 2000. "They crushed the skulls of goats and drank their own blood on the hill over Bono's mansion", read another report on his influence. Recently, the Mirror was giving away free tickets to Manson's show as the support act to Iron Maiden at the RDS on Wednesday. Winners will be required to bring their own crushed goat skulls.
He is supposed to be the scariest man in rock. A bogeyman from which your kids must be protected. For almost 10 years, he has been known not simply as Marilyn Manson but as "the controversial Marilyn Manson" or "sick Marilyn Manson" or "satanist Marilyn Manson". Not so long ago his arrival on these shores would have been greeted with placards and enraged calls to Liveline. This time around there's hardly a whisper of dissent. He may slash his chest, as he has a habit of doing in live shows. He may say a few things about God and the Devil and suchlike, and there'll be a healthy gang of kids in black prepared to egg him on. And when he's done, and Iron Maiden are launching into Number of the Beast, maybe he'll return to his dressing-room, take a wet-wipe to his heavy make-up and reflect on how quiet things have got.
He was once public enemy number one. Blamed for the Columbine massacre.Implicated as an influence in murders in Italy and Scotland. A rival to Eminem as baddest boy in the class. Now, he may be forced to live up to the headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion: "Marilyn Manson now going door-to-door trying to shock people." There are still some places in which he can cause a stir. This week, several Croatian clergymen offered to compensate the promoters if they cancelled Manson's show in the coastal town of Pula. The show went ahead, with Manson making the typically incisive observation that "if they think that an artist can destroy their faith, then their faith is rather fragile."
He is, though, drifting away from his days when he was rock's most outspoken controversialist, a time when former US vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman could describe him as "perhaps the sickest act ever promoted by a mainstream record company". That reputation had been hard-won. He is a singer who has always thrived in the glare of such outrage, who knew how to manipulate media and public disgust to profitable effect. He successfully attracted colourful rumours: that he was actually the son, or nephew, of notorious cult leader Charles Manson; that he had sex with animals onstage; slaughtered puppies during his shows; that he hypnotised audiences. In his childhood, it was believed, he played the nerdy best friend in 1980s TV show The Wonder Years. Sadly, it is untrue.
His arrival in a country was always guaranteed to be preceded by some well-timed stories. In Scotland, the Sun ran a campaign against his supposed plans to visit Glasgow University Anatomical Museum, leading with the story: "I never got to see my dead baby so I'll be damned if that freak ever does".
Which is not to say that there was not a lot to get excited about. Manson appropriated fascist images, declared himself a satanist, revelled in sexual extremes, scorned Christianity, developed a nasty drug habit and engaged in acts of self- mutilation in front of predominantly teenage audiences. Yet, through the calls for censorship, legal action and death threats, Manson has always maintained that to take him at face value is to somewhat miss the point.
"I don't think the people I am attacking will ever understand the satire or the irony in my work," he told the Guardian in 2000. "They will react to the surface in the same old knee-jerk way and hate me, and probably want to kill me again. And that really does fuel my fire. See, I guess I need them like they need me. They don't have a living, breathing devil and I am more than happy to play that role." Yet, he takes himself seriously. "I like to think I'm more Oscar Wilde than Ozzy Osbourne," he once said. In reality, he has more than a touch of Ozzy, mixed with a dollop of Alice Cooper. Even if he is, at times, a particularly extreme version, he is just another incarnation of that old favourite - the baddie in rock's pantomime.
At 36, he's not quite in the "loveable old rogue" category, but will surely follow that trajectory. Born Brian Warner, he began his career as a music journalist before moving to the other side of the microphone. He adopted his name as a satire on America's twin obsessions with celebrity and violence. To lesser success, so did fellow band members Gidget Gein and Olivia Newton Bundy. It was with his second and third albums, 1996's Antichrist Superstar and 1998's Mechanical Animals, that he established himself as one of the darker leading lights in American rock. His autobiography The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell also made him a best-selling author.
Subsequent albums have proven less commercially successful, even if they have convinced many critics that there is artistic substance behind the notoriety. Yet, the notoriety is what the public knows. He has been cited in murder cases. When three Italian girls murdered a nun in 2000, their idolisation of Manson was treated as a factor. Earlier this year, a Scottish judge commented on the similarities between a teenager's murder of his girlfriend and Manson's drawing of the killing of 1940s starlet Elizabeth Short.
Yet, it was his supposed connection with the Columbine high school massacre of 1999 which sealed his reputation, while also triggering self-reflection. After one of their schoolmates said that the two killers listened to Manson's records, the singer became an easy conduit for anger and blame. It quickly turned out that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had not listened to Manson at all. In fact, they disliked his music. Despite that, Manson's name is still tagged onto that tragedy.
Although he cancelled the remainder of his tour after that incident, Manson threatened to sue anyone who linked him with it and became a lucid commentator on a culture that not only allowed such a thing to happen, but which rubbernecked at the scene. His subsequent album Holy Wood featured songs about guns, the media and teenage angst.
Meanwhile, he published a response in Rolling Stone magazine. "From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes. They just created two new ones when they plastered those dipshits Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris's pictures on the front of every newspaper. Don't be surprised if every kid who gets pushed around has two new idols." For someone who had played up to the role of antichrist, he refused to be demonised. "I was upset like everyone else by what happened. I'm not some emotionless creature," he told the Guardian. "But, mostly, I was disgusted. I mean, these guys got exactly what they wanted - fame . . . And, I was disgusted by the media sitting back there, judging and blaming everyone else for what they had helped create. I threatened to sue any media outlet that associated my name with the Columbine killings. There was no way I was going to be the fall guy for a nation."
After that controversy he became less deliberately shocking, more thoughtful in his lyrics. However, quite where he fits into a world that's untroubled by his rebellion may gradually be revealed. While he remains a fall guy for the US Christian right, as he arrives in Ireland for his first show here since cancelling a date at The Point in 2001 (ostensibly for technical reasons), the loudest tabloid rumour so far is that he plans to marry his fiancee - a burlesque stripper - in Cork. That's more Hello! magazine than Kerrang! For rock's panto baddie, that the booing has stopped may be his biggest worry.
Who is he?
A cross-dressing, stunt-pulling, bad boy of rock
Why is he in the news?
Because he plays in Dublin next Wednesday, and it has hardly been in the news
Most appealing characteristic
Far smarter and more articulate than his wilfully provocative nature might suggest
Least appealing characteristic
His attention-seeking antics are more comical than scary
Most likely to say
"Look at me! Look at me!"
Least likely to say
"Get me Val Doonican on the line. It's time we made an album together"