The Long Hard
Road Out of Hell
by Marilyn Manson (with Neil Strauss)
ReganBooks, US $24.00 Hardcover


Cost/page:

8.60 cents.

In a word:

Freakshow.

Big break:

Opening act for Nine Inch Nails in a south Florida venue.

Overcoming adversity:

• Born Brian Warner in Canton, Ohio. Family later moves to Fort Lauderdale, where he studies journalism and theater at a community college.
• At four, he has to have his urethra enlarged: "For months afterward it felt like I was pissing gasoline."
• Resulting from a sucker punch he receives in ninth grade, he suffers from temporomandibular joint syndrome, a disorder that still causes him headaches and a sore jaw.
• "None of the kids in school liked me because I played Dungeons and Dragons, I liked heavy metal, and I wasn't going to their youth group rallies and... burning rock albums."

Tainted love (bad marriages, etc.):

• "As a result of discovering that Rachelle had betrayed me and was engaged to someone else, I promised myself that I would try to close myself off emotionally to the world and trust no one."
• Manson (with a bandmate) plots to kill an ex-girlfriend but doesn't go through with it.
• "On February 14, Missi and I tried to get arrested... so we could spend Valentine's Day together in jail."

Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll (incidents pertaining to):

• Numerous incidents, including marijuana, cocaine, LSD, mushrooms; at an L.A. party, Manson smokes human bone fragments from a pipe. "I had to come to accept the fact that the acquisition of too much knowledge had led me to drug use..."
• "[My] source of album recommendations was Christian school... they were conducting seminars on backward masking. They would bring in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper..."
• Some Manson song titles: "Cake and Sodomy," "Tourniquet," "The Minute of Decay."
• "The bong [water] had been replaced with Southern Comfort... I lifted the bong... and downed what may have been the foulest shot ever concocted."
• On getting 'crabs': "She was the first girl to give me a blow job. But, unfortunately, that wasn't all she gave me."
• "Even more unforseeable was the fact that many years later I would be...trying to keep Jane's Addiction guitarist, Dave Navarro, from giving me a blow job as we sniffed drugs together."
• "Since Jeordie [soon to become bandmate "Twiggy"] was standing next to me and I had a free hand, I started jacking him off."

Divine inspiration:

• "I dreamt I was the Antichrist and I believe it."
• "Fools aren't born; they are watered and grown like weeds by institutions such as Christianity."
• "The devil doesn't exist. Satanism is about worshipping yourself because you are responsible for your own good and evil."

Oddities:

• He and his father, a Vietnam Vet who had dumped Agent Orange on Americans as well as Viet Cong, would sometimes attend a playgroup for the deformed children of parents who had been exposed to the chemical.
• As a youth, catches his paternal grandfather masturbating to a porno mag. Manson's grandfather had a tracheotomy; was given to wearing women's undergarments.
• His stage persona's one blue eye and one brown eye is a tribute to his boyhood dog Aleusha, an Alaskan malamute who "in some ways was my only real friend...".
• Manson is often followed on tour by the "slashers," two girls who like carving the names Marilyn and Manson into their chests.
• On a "reality" TV program, a 25 year-old Christian fanatic is arrested en route to "go to Florida to kill the Antichrist" — presumably meaning Manson.

Cameo appearances (by other famous persons):

• While working briefly as a music critic, he interviews Debbie Harry and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• Describes fleeting relationship with ex-porno teen queen Traci Lords.
• Attends Private Parts premiere with Fiona Apple, an occasion after which he ends up alone in a hotel room with Jenna Jameson.

Manifesto for living/advice to fans:

• "The less people understand you, the smarter they think you are."
• "If the Internet is the CB radio of the '90s, then the home computer is the trailer park of the soul."
• "Marilyn Manson was the perfect protagonist for a frustrated writer like myself. He was a character who, because of his contempt for the world...does anything he can to trick people into liking him. And then, once he wins their confidence, he uses it to destroy them."

Intro | Suzanne Somers | Peter Fonda | Delta Burke
Christopher Reeve | Walter Koenig | Marilyn Manson