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I understand that you have to ask a question like that, but I don’t want to talk about rumours as much as I want to talk about music.”
Marilyn Manson is speaking down a phone line between Los Angeles and London.
So is there no truth in it, I ask?
“Like I said. I won’t qualify it with an answer.”
It’s fair to say that our conversation is going downhill rapidly.
So you only want to talk about the new album? You don’t want to talk about the allegations against you?
“There’s no allegations against me, and I’m not going to talk about it. Rumours…”
There’s an empty, black silence. Marilyn Manson - one of modern music’s most articulate figures and a man who never ducks a question - has hung up.
This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to talk to him about his new album, We Are Chaos, and his place in the era of #MeToo and Cancel Culture - a time when the more toxic aspects of old-school rock’n’roll behaviour increasingly won’t wash.
We never get as far as that. The reason: I have ventured into an area that Manson clearly does not want to engage with. It turns out that the way to silence Marilyn Manson is to say three simple words: Evan Rachel Wood.
Manson in the 90s: a folk devil to plague God-fearing America
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