Manson tries to reboot 'evil' brand

You could almost feel a pang of sympathy for Marilyn Manson. Most people go through their extremo-Goth phase and come out the other side, carrying some lessons learned, some useful knowledge about when to wear PVC and when to wear rubber, and a desire to expand their characters beyond two dimensions.

Manson, though, is stuck being a fifteen year-old bedroom sulker, trying to shock the neighbours, as his career choice. The Miami Herald goes to pat him on the head:

MiamiHerald.com: What brought you to South Florida originally?

Manson: My parents moved there — it inspired me to make the type of music and have the type of personality I ended up having. All the sunshine and tourism and being the happiest place on Earth could do nothing but create Marilyn Manson. "Let's see if we can make the most evil person possible. Sprinkle in some drugs and some anger, knives, naked women and fire and tell him everybody wants to kill him and see what he does, and you make the `Antichrist Superstar'. "

Of course, his cover of Gloria Jones' Tainted Love was quite hard to bear, but it hardly makes you the "most evil person possible". Indeed, it's amusing that - when the history of the last couple of centuries shows that evil tends to wear a suit and a shit-eating grin - Manson thinks his wipe-clean pants and oh-so-scary coloured contact lenses constitute a nightmare.

Seriously: who'd lose sleep over a children's entertainer when Dick Cheney is hanging about the White House, a heartbeat from the nuclear strike codes?

Marilyn, George Bush sprinkles depleted uranium on the heads of Iraqi children. What have you got? Ooh, drawings of naked ladies? Oooh, scary.

The Herald attempts to pin down if Manson is all an act:

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. Sometimes I don't have the energy to put on clothes or even change my underwear. But there's a difference between being on- or offstage that's not the same thing as being Marilyn Manson. I can't turn off the way I think, and that's essentially who I am, who anybody is.

Except, of course, when it gets a little too close to actually being attached to evil. Like in the aftermath of Columbine, when Manson stepped out of character to stress that it was nothing to do with him, at all. Because while he's happy to tell the Miami Herald that he's the "most evil person imaginable", he sure as hell isn't going to let that damage his brand.