Music

Marilyn Manson is trying to be normal with mixed results

by Richard Howard

The statement “Marilyn Manson is a weird dude” is about as revelatory as “Justin Bieber gets in trouble with the law.” To hear the shock rocker tell it, though, he’s in the process of becoming an Average Joe after spending the last few years turning his life around. Kinda.

In a recent interview with the UK Mirror, Manson said that his 2008 split with Rachel Evan Wood began years of behaviour that was over the top even for him. Depressed, he blacked out the windows in his house, disconnected from his friends, and holed up with a whackload of cocaine and bad thoughts. Now, he says he’s attempting to jettison some of his more troubling habits. For one, he now wakes up at 6 a.m. instead of going to sleep at that time. He’s also given up one of his biggest vices: absinthe. And he wasn’t drinking the namby-pamby kind you get at the LCBO – we’re talking the honest-to-God, wormwood-containing, messes-with-your-temporal-lobe-and-makes-you-see-green-fairies stuff.

While this is all very commendable, it seems the ‘normal’ thing won’t be happening anytime soon. Manson bought a new house, which sounds promising in that he’s getting away from his previous den of iniquity and depression. His new new digs though? When decorating, Manson decided it would be a good idea to fashion it after the TV show Hannibal: “I have a lot of taxidermy, a prosthetic limb collection, and a seven-foot tall, 100-year-old ­skeleton I call Ernie. My cat, Lily White, likes to sleep in his pelvic bone.” The charming decor is also said to feature a painting by serial killer John Wayne Gacy and an abortionist’s chair gifted by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Soooo… the end result here seems to be a Manson that’s still weird as hell, but maybe less so. “2014 was my year of changing how I thought and lived, realizing you can’t blame others,” he explained. “If you want to be in control you have to take responsibility.” Aw. Good for you, buddy. Of course, he then declared that as much as it is for his own good, his bid for normalcy is also designed “to f*** with people.”

Don’t ever change, Marilyn.