Anyone who liked Motley Crue’s *The Dirt *will get a kick out of Marilyn Manson’s The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, which was, like The Dirt, coauthored by Neil Strauss. Much like the Dead To The World documentary, which followed Marilyn Manson (the band) on the Antichrist Superstar tour, LHROOH is amazing. And disgusting but also amazing.
Marilyn Manson is another one who doesn’t know the meaning of ‘TMI’. He’s an egomaniac and often just not a nice person, but he’s also frank about some things that most people just wouldn’t even talk about. He admits to becoming enraged at his mother and beating her up, talks about his girlfriend’s abortion, and describes jacking off his friend (and future bandmate) Twiggy Ramirez at a concert. There’s also the usual rock star debauchery, such as the notorious incident where the band covered a deaf groupie in meat and pee’d on her – she loved it.
When the book was published in 1999, Marilyn and ex-guitarist/cofounder Daisy Berkowitz were on the outs (they’ve since reconciled) and Marilyn is extremely nasty towards him in the book. Honestly, reading it gives me (and I’m not the only one) the impression that Marilyn was *so jealous *of Daisy’s musical ability that he could’ve just spit. Marilyn was not a trained musician and to this day is dependent on hired guns to actually produce the music, whereas Daisy was a fairly talented guitarist and for a long time the only competent musician in the band. There’s also some unintentional FoeYay as Marilyn is obsessed with Daisy’s sex life – seriously, was he hiding in the guy’s bushes or something? WTF Manson.