I was always trying to do different things to entertain people. And at the same time, I think, I was, whether subconsciously or not, trying to get kicked out of school because I hated it so much.
I didn't go to guitar school and I don't know how to play chords, but I can do it in my own way and I think sometimes that will piss off some guitar players who sit around playing their stuff all day long and then there are people who like that.
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.
if I hadn't gone to a private Christian school, I'd never have built up enough animosity to want to have started a band. And now that I have one, the fact that they are giving me such resistance and publicity, they have made me far bigger than they'd ever have wanted me to have become. So I guess in a strange way the Christians have influenced me the most.
What I know is my music gets blamed for school shootings.
Gradually, I began to resent Christian school and doubt everything I was told. It became clear that the suffering they were praying to be released from was a suffering they had imposed on themselves—and now us. The beast they lived in fear of was really themselves: It was man, not some mythological demon, that was going to destroy man in the end. And this beast had been created out of their fear.
