MARILYN MANSON On Last Year: 'I Was In Such A Black Hole Of Depression'

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Marilyn Manson talks about his new album "Eat Me, Drink Me", which is tentatively set for a June release.

"Halfway though last year I was in such a black hole of depression," he says. "I couldn't make anything, I couldn't do anything. I lost hope." At the time, Manson's mother was diagnosed with a mental illness and, he says, "I got trapped in one of the classic rock and roll clichés of having people work for me rob me behind my back."

Manson says he was finally uplifted by a close friend's morbid gesture of devotion. "She picked up a butcher's knife and said, 'Here, you can stab me'" he says. "When someone was willing to drown with me, I really didn't want to drown anymore." This theme is depicted in the six-minute epic "If I Was Your Vampire", which Manson wrote on Christmas. "That song is the new 'Bela Lugosi's Dead'," says Manson. "It's the all-time gothic anthem."

The album's lyrics were written after last Halloween. That night, Manson presided over the opening of his Los Angeles art gallery. The next morning he left his home in the Valley and set up temporary digs at a studio-equipped house in the Hollywood Hills. "Suddenly," he says, "I felt liberated. I'd write a song, walk two doors down the hall and record it right then." Manson's lyrics, which were recorded over tracks crafted by Tim Skold (who joined Manson's band in 2002 as bassist),came quickly. "I was writing out of desperation and hope," he says. "The record came out in a rush-like an open wound-and I went with it."

Read the rest of the article at MansonUSA.com.