Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Brian Hugh Warner, better known by his stage name Marilyn Manson, is an American musician, songwriter, actor, painter, singer, rapper, author, composer and former music journalist. He is known for his controversial stage personality and image as the lead singer of the band Marilyn Manson, which he co-founded with Daisy Berkowitz and of which he remains the only constant member. His stage name was formed by juxtaposing the names of two opposing American pop cultural icons; actress Marilyn Monroe and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth5 January 1969
CityCanton, OH
CountryUnited States of America
I try and take everyone's ideals, common morals, flip them around, make people look at them differently, question them, so that you're not always taking things for granted.
People hate to describe their music. What we have come to call it is "beat up your mom" music. As far as describing what it sounds like, I guess you'd have to listen.
I put out a lot of ideas in the lyrics and the way I do my things. There's a lot of ideas floatin' around and people who know what it is. People will pick it up if they know what to pick up.
Marilyn Manson has always been intended to confuse some, anger some and make some people feel at home. There's no way to misunderstand what I do - but everyone can understand it differently. That's the only way I've learned to embrace art - it has to be a question mark, not an answer.
The idea of Marilyn Manson has been brewing in my head, one form or another, since I was about 12 years old at a Christian high school in Canton, Ohio.
As far as the performance goes, I want to create an atmosphere, and use 5.1 sound and imagery and shape and form to transform the stage from one thing to another, as if you're watching a movie.
I hate normal studios, because you have to say "hi" to the person at the front desk. And then you go into the studio, and there's a second engineer in there that you don't know, and then you're stuck in a glass box with someone talking to you through a walkie-talkie.
Spare time is like spare change. It's hard to quantify, the definition of that phrase. What do I do when I'm not onstage singing, or sleeping, with or without someone else? I watch movies.
I think people have always misinterpreted my self-destructive nature as nihilistic, because if you don't care about the world, you can't create art. I am misanthropic and self-loathing, but never nihilistic. And I think I act far worse off-stage than onstage.
I usually wake up far after breakfast. So I have no other choice but to go straight to dinner.
My mom was always a big fan of Elvis. She made me listen to Elvis when I was a kid. I hated it. And I think now I've kind of grown up to fill in some of the sort of controversy that he created back in his day, but in a much more extreme, modern sense.
If you die and enough people are watching, then you become a martyr, you become a hero, you become well-known.
I don't think that my lyrics are over-laced with profanity, because I myself don't speak using a lot of profanity in normal conversation. But I think when you're making something aggressive and you need to get a point across, if you're angry, sometimes profanity is necessary. It's better to use a curse word than to hurt somebody else, I find.
I am a character, so that's the problem. There are many, many levels to how I behave. Some people might associate being Marilyn Manson as having lipstick on, but I don't really have some sort of other lifestyle.