Evil at every turn
Shock-pop’s Marilyn Manson figures to shake up Salem with his third-season role, he tells Lorraine Ali.
APPARENTLY basing an entire TV series on the horrors of 17thcentury witch trials wasn’t disturbing enough.
Salem has returned for a third season, with macabre rocker Marilyn Manson playing a sadistic barber/surgeon/butcher.
‘‘He likes to serve up Sweeney Todd-style sausages for snacks,’’ says Manson, a.k.a. Brian Warner, of his character Thomas Dinley. ‘‘He’s also a childish sociopath who’s curious about what’s inside a human. His way of finding out is cutting them open, and sometimes before they’re dead.’’
Manson, who’s spent much of his career peddling similarly squeamish themes in his music, appears regularly throughout Salem’s latest season. But when not playing a sociopathic butcher, Manson still makes music under the banner of a parental warning sticker.
The Los Angeles singer, finishing his 10th album, Say10, spoke about what it’s like to shed the makeup and play someone other than Marilyn Manson. curable by religion, medicine or the puritanical (remedy) of hangings. If someone comes to his place of business, it provides an array of services from haircuts to tooth-pulling. It’s a 1600s version of a strip mall where they have a doughnut shop next to an orthodontist. Ironically, he has a lot of things in his office that I have (as decor) in my home.
Old medical equipment, apothecary (jars). I collect prosthetic limbs, some dating as far back as the Civil War. A lot of people think looking at death, or those kinds of instruments, is morbid and what you’d expect to see in Marilyn Manson’s house. It is what you’d expect, but way worse. that makes me obligated to be funny. The pressure. But I like the concept of being a character actor. And I like the careers of Gary Oldman, Tom Waits and Dwight Yoakam.
I normally shave my eyebrows and don’t have facial hair, so if you put in facial hair and eyebrows, suddenly I don’t look the same. If I ever decide to rob banks, I would be good at avoiding criminal prosecution. I just take off the makeup, grow eyebrows and I’m incognito. The beard is a little more work. It took me a week just to grow stubble (for the Dinley character).
Yes, my next album’s called Say10, like Satan. I found that title in my 12th-grade yearbook at Christian school. It goes back that far. The record is very political, socially and sexually. It deals with things I’ve talked about a lot but may not have sung enough. I work best when I combine imagery and words, rather than just words alone. Acting reminded me of that.
It’s lyrically ambiguous. I wanted it to be something anyone could interpret. People hear songs that I think are angry as sexy. Or weird songs that I think are sexy as violent. This album, if it were blamed for any problems on life, I intentionally am asking for it because I think art needs to shake ... up. That’s what I’ve always thought. I just needed a little reminder, and that was this (election).
‘ I just take off the makeup, grow eyebrows and I’m incognito. The beard is a little more work. It took me a week just to grow stubble (for the Dinley character).’ MARILYN MANSON
I may be doing something next year in a major motion picture; a major superhero film that I can’t mention.
A villain, of course. – Los Angeles Times ● New episodes of Salem debut at 9.30pm on Mondays on Sky TV’s The Zone.