MARILYN MANSON or ROCK IS DEAD, December 21st, Paris

It took me 3 months to write this, so you can just guess what to expect.

The title is also quite a hint really.

I always loved rock. I used to see it as a form of contestation of the surrounding world. My parents hating it also helped. I used to just shut myself in my room (during the day, because at night I had to share it with my grandmother) and listen over and over again to my cassettes (I know, it sounds so antique) and dream or write or cry. I would have done anything to keep myself from doing school related stuff (i.e. homework – soooo boring!). And now that I have a job, well … I guess some things never change :)

I never really appreciated Marilyn Manson – too “commercial” for me. Groups having videos on MTV weren’t cool enough back then. Success (and the implicit wide public) was a sign of mass accessible music – a bad thing, a kind of intellectual prostitution, a compromise, a “sold your soul to the devil” label. I was better than that! I was into black metal, death and doom (when melancholic). I wasn’t what French people would call a “gothic”, though. There were no “gothics” in Romania back then. Well, maybe this is just another French exception :)

Being an auditor is like being a rock fan actually: we’re always dressed in black and we’re always sceptical. Real rock fans I tell you!

Without being a fan, Marilyn Manson always fascinated me: I must have seen a documentary about him showing how he was more into character and legend making than into music. Apparently, he started talking about his rock band in his school paper before even creating it. It was like a manifesto or something. Good marketing, good shows, and that was it! When picking up his name, he became completely schizophrenic. You might not know it, but his real name is Brian; though, he insists on being called Marilyn by his own mother.

Anyways, he did it! He made us all talk about him, be intrigued about his looks, love affairs, drinks & drugs habit. We used to say he had extracted 2 of his ribs in order to be able to suck himself; we used to say he was the Grand Master of the Satanic Church; we used to say he was into 20s fetishism after marrying Dita von Teese, but that he came back to normal porn after dating young Evan Rachel Woods. Everybody used to talk about his shows and grandiose (if not hallucinating) staging.

So, that’s why I was at the Zenith in Paris on the 21st of December with my auditor / marketing friends. We wanted a show, a provocation, a contestation! We weren’t expecting any noble or elevated or profound ideas; we were expecting fake blood, and simulated virgins’ suicides, and false vampirism and counterfeit Satanism. That’s all! We wanted some fun! And what did we get? Nothing!

- The burning of a Bible (or of an empty book, we couldn’t tell the difference),

- some naughty words like cock sucker and suck my dick (what an aesthetic revolution!)

- being pushed by an unknown fan … who asked us to excuse him afterwards !

a disgrace, a shame … worse than a Céline Dion concert : bon esprit, bonne famille, bon coeur … a complete waste! To cite another angry fan: a Latin mass would have been more rock’n’roll!

So, this is it, ROCK IS DEAD!