SAN FRANCISCO — from www.sfexaminer.com - Heartbreak, for your average composer, is usually good for a tearjerker or two.
But not for shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, who employed an entire album — his latest, "The High End of Low" — to catalog a debilitating breakup with actress Evan Rachel Wood, a relationship that ended with a battery of 158 self-inflicted cuts, one for every unanswered call he placed to her.
Lyrically, it’s grim, in dirges like "Leave a Scar," "Unkillable Monster" and "I Have To Look Up Just To See Hell."
But musically, the record — which re-teams the makeup-splashed showman with his old guitarist foil Twiggy Ramirez — is as glam-punk thumping as his 1998 classic "Mechanical Animals." So torture, it seems, certainly becomes this artist.
But 158 incisions’ worth? "Yeah, it’s true," says the 40-year-old, who appears in Mountain View on Saturday.
"But they weren’t the type of wounds I’ve imposed on myself in the past, because, well, a razor blade is a very fine instrument, and it makes very small, precise cuts," he says. "But I really don’t think that was bad. It was me making a point at the time, reminding myself of the stupidity of waiting on someone, a reminder that I’d made a mistake. So I’m glad that I did it, and I learned from the experience."
But before his goth-girl fans start shedding tears on his behalf, Manson would like to make a few upbeat points. His side career as a watercolorist is doing fine, thanks, as is his own brand of Swiss-made absinthe, Mansinthe, which won a Gold Medal at San Francisco’s World Spirits Competition last year.
He’s slated to star in an upcoming feature by his filmmaking hero, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and just last week his French-director chum Gaspar Noe filmed an MTV segment featuring Manson and his new gal pal, adult-film actress Stoya, a woman he’s come to see as his salvation.
Listen closely to "High," this notoriously hard partier invites, and you can hear him leaving his carnal phase behind with Stoya, whom he became obsessed with — then admittedly stalked — on the Internet.
"And now I’ve strangely curbed my behavior," he says. "I’ve met a girl who’s managed to make me lose interest in drugs and alcohol, so now I’m driven by romance, love, by the concept of wanting to live, wanting to be better as a person."
Such serenity is worth fighting for. He says, "I’ve gotten to a spiritual place, and it’s really centered on the importance of what I love. And I will beat down, kill and destroy anything that messes with that."
