MARILYN MANSON Discusses Making Of 'Eat Me, Drink Me'

Marilyn Manson appeared on the UK.'s BBC Radio 1 Tuesday evening (April 17) on Zane Lowe's show. Manson talked about his latest album, "Eat Me, Drink Me", and debuted his new single, "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When Then Heart Guides The Hand)", along with "If I Was Your Vampire". Below is a transcript of the interview, courtesy of MansonUSA.com:

Zane Lowe: What have you been doing on this glorious day in London?

Marilyn Manson: I just woke and was confused what day it was because I had done a bunch of press and a photo shoot, I fell asleep briefly and I went into one of those deep sleeps and started having a nightmare and didn't realize it was still the same day.

ZL: Which do you prefer, talking to the press or doing a photo shoot?

MM: I'm always specific about photography because I think it's such an important art form for me and I have always made a big point of doing that properly, I like both, as long as I feel comfortable with what I'm doing. In the last year for me, my biggest problem I realize now looking back was starting to dislike being me. I feel a little bit like I did when I started the band, but this record isn't anything I did before, it wasn't anything I was capable of doing before, It's the record I was meant to do. It was me finally falling into the role of what I've always been and not being uncomfortable to accept my role as being evil and Identifying with this Vampire mythology which is so much in the record, I was trying to prove I'm invincible to the whole world. The only thing that ultimately could kill me was romance, so a Vampire the only thing that could kill that is through the heart and that was essentially what I could identify with,

ZL: Was it the first song that you worked on for this new album? Which is "Eat Me Drink Me", and we're talking about "If I Was Your Vampire", the first song on the record.

MM: "If I Was Your Vampire" is the first song on the record because it was the song that I sang just as it was, 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning. It wasn't me going back and telling a story about another period, it was this past Christmas and me writing it as it happened. It was a new style of writing for me, I don't keep a diary and I never knew how to write in that style. I started writing songs in a way to communicate in a way directly with, at this point one person. I had come to point in my life where I had nothing and no one and didn't understand what my identity was and I think making music made me realize if I can make one person feel something then feel like a person again.

ZL: It feels like your actually singing on this record,

MM: Well I felt like I didn't accomplish what I was capable of.

ZL: What your entire career?

MM: Yeah, instead of being defeated by how I felt. Feeling like there's so much in music doing what I've already done and I didn't know what I wanted to say anymore. This record wasn't as simple as the clichéd ‘It saved my life', or it was an outlet or catharsis for me. It was all that but it was much more than that, It was as simple as I didn't have any more reason to want to be alive which is much different than wanting to die because when you want to die at least you have a goal, when you don't want to live you don't have anything. The first song that I sang on the record was "Just a Car Crash Away", and the performance on the album is the first time I sang it, so I was sort of writing it as I was singing it. It wasn't a point of me thinking well this is wrong or this is real from a production style or any other angle that I did it and I didn't think there was any other reason to do it differently. It started to become the way I wanted to make a record or in the future make music again and it wasn't until I wrote "If I Was You Vampire" that I realized this actually could become a record. I had been trying to do that for a year but I had kept trying and failing, and it wasn't until I realized I was separating my art and personality and I didn't want to anymore, it was essentially realizing I had to be what I've always said I want to be. This song really made this come back to me.

[Plays "If I Was Your Vampire"]

ZL: Marilyn Manson's "Eat Me, Drink Me" will be available June 7th. That is easily the far reaching and most progressive thing you have ever done, I think. Don't you agree?

MM: Yeah, I agree, thanks. When I did the song it's what convinced me into make this into an album, I felt like I suddenly had the conviction to make this into something more.

ZL: There have been so many rumors floating around since far back around mid-2005 about you being so close to finishing a record.

MM: I had done so many things that I thought was something I wanted to do but it just never really crossed over as much as this song did which only happened recently. Obviously this is one of the longest songs I have ever done and suddenly I felt that is the best thing I could do instead of the normal obligation of making something short.

ZL: If you're waiting for music to inspire you for a song to pop out and give you direction or give you a reason to live that can be a long painful wait.

MM: It was, it was a year to get to making this record almost, but once it started it never stopped and this song was really in the middle of making it really go along. As soon as I wrote that song I new it was going to be the first song on the record and the first song I'm going to play on the live tour.

ZL: As far as the album goes it does have other shades, its not just as intense and as far reaching as "If I Was Your Vampire". The single "Heart Shaped Glasses" that's more of a dance record for me.

MM: When I wrote the song that's the single "Heart Shaped Glasses" it was one of the songs that I really expected an immediate response from the record label from, in the way like "Of course that's a single" and it was almost embarrassing in the way that I thought it was so obvious. The song was written in a simple way, I was reading the book "Lolita" and it was something inspired by my current girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood who's obviously much younger than me, but having the sarcasm to make the point of that and showing up to visit me once wearing heart-shaped glasses which is the same as the Kubrick movie poster for the film "Lolita" and me saying what I say in the chorus of the song. I said that to her and I suddenly realized I should really write a song about that and it never occurred to me in my entire career, my entire life that, that's how you should write songs. It should be the part of your personality that you might feel guarded or too secret to put out the rest of the world.

[Plays "Heart-Shaped Glasses"]

ZL: The first official single taken from "Eat Me, Drink Me".

MM: I was trying to make songs to be seductive appose to making music that was an amour to put between me and the world. Now I can look back and understand that my world was reduced by not giving a shit, (care). I was kind of use to the idea of making music in one way, or being me in one way and I started to realize that I could use this as a way to make someone care about me or like me, which is what it always should have been , what it was mean to be.

ZL: Your previous music was aggressive and kind of challenging almost saying ‘I dare you to like me'

MM: That's exactly how I would interpret it now, I don't regret any of my previous records because they sound and they are what I was when I made them.

ZL: You must have mixed emotions today with the recent shootings in Virginia which is almost a reflection of columbine?

MM: I don't have mixed emotions as much as I was watching it in the same way that I can remember watching the TV when Columbine happened, and just seeing it take place as any other person would. Then suddenly Columbine happened and my name got brought into it and I wouldn't be surprised if my name got brought into this.

ZL: I was wondering if you felt less scrutinized as an artist, now that you're a bit older a bit wiser you have made more records and have established yourself more as a musician as an artist with a gallery, much like how controversial acts that came before you, people move on and you just become part of the fabric?

MM: Sometimes I feel that it's a really bad double standard that I had to be blamed so much when something happened then later when it's talked about. Sometimes its reduced to simply, "I like what you said in the Michael Moore movie," I feel cheated almost. So now for me I didn't think my world and what lead me to make music when I almost not wanting to make music or not want to live for anything anymore was really reduced to this world I had made for myself which had nothing and I started to creep from nothing. At that point I didn't care about the rest of the world's politics or the rest of the worlds anything, if someone was to ask me what my opinion on America or violence and entertainment, I don't really care. I think this record was me realizing that the world is a victim of its self and this is a point for anybody who wants to do something important as an artist, it's a time to be introspective, it's a time to have you personality be what makes you somebody and something that has an impact on other people because personality and just the human element of anybody is what makes a difference and I think when everyone suddenly thinks that everything I did on this record is more human, to me I guess if I could be objective about myself by saying that its more human is really acknowledging I'm inhuman by showing this. So I think it was an important record to make now for me, not just personally, its my view and views in the past about the world, I think the only you can say something about the world is to say something about yourself.