Huzzah for Marilyn Manson, the shocker’s shocker, who emerges from the 10th circle of hell – obscurity – with an interview to promote his new album.
Inevitably, it is to the attack on Charlie Hebdo that the rocker turns his thoughts. “I was talking to [Johnny] Depp about what happened because he has a house in France,” Manson tells the Daily Beast. “There are repercussions to your actions. I, personally, related to what happened in France, would not have done something that I didn’t realise may have repercussions to it. For example, I’m friends with guys in the Hells Angels and MS-13, and I wouldn’t find myself making fun of them to their faces. When you’re dealing with people who are very blinded by their beliefs, the line of freedom of speech needs to really have some common sense to it.”
Isn’t that basically what the pope said last week? Mr Manson’s decision to place himself in lockstep with the pontiff is presumably a fantastically complex statement about what constitutes transgressive behaviour and whatnot.
Meanwhile, there’s an important update on Where He’s At. “I’m not immoral, or amoral,” he explains. “I have a moral code that I live by. I wear a three-piece suit and carry a gold switchblade.” (I wish I weren’t imagining all this being delivered in Chris Eubank’s voice, but there you go.) “If you start a conversation with me that ends with me pulling out my gold switchblade, then I think you started the wrong conversation.”
According to the interviewer, Marilyn brings up “the impending danger” of this blade “a few times during the course of our brief chat”, making me wonder whether media outlets abandoning any planned conversations to promote the new album might not be the common sense solution to which he was earlier gesturing.
