Jake Brennan (3:32)
Welcome to the Disgraceland bonus episode. A little thing we like to call the After Party. This is the show after the show. The party after the party. The bridge to get you from one full episode of Disgraceland to the other. The backyard to dig into the dirt on this bonus episode, we are talking about this week's full episode subject on Marilyn Manson. We are previewing the coming Bjork episode, talking about the worst bands of the 90s and we go through your voicemails, texts, DMs, emails, and as always, a whole lot of rosy all right discos, let's get into it. So I'm reading this great book called Maidens by Alex Michelitis. I think that's how you pronounce his name. Apologies Alex, if I got that wrong. It's one of those modern day Agatha Christie type whodunit books that we've talked about here. Books. I love books. I know a bunch of you love as well. And last night I came across this passage that I thought was super relevant to the music in true crime storytelling that we're doing here. It's short. I'm going to read it to you now. It says a long time ago, psychopathy used to be called simply evil. People who were evil, who took delight in hunting or killing others were written about ever since Medea took an axe to her children and probably long before that. The word psychopath was coined by a German psychiatrist in 1888, the same year Jack the Ripper terrorized London from the German word psychopastische, literally meaning suffering soul. For Mariana, that's the character in the book. For Mariana, this was the clue. The suffering, the sense that these monsters were also in pain, thinking about them as victims allowed her to be more rational in her approach and more compassionate. Psychopathy or sadism never appeared from nowhere. It was not a virus infecting someone out of the blue. It had a long prehistory in childhood. And that's the end of the passage. So basically, what that quote is telling us and what medical history is telling us is that psychopaths are not born, they're baked in childhood from the suffering that these people experience from their own past trauma. Now, in almost every episode that we've covered here, where we dive into a musician's past, particularly the more psychotic musicians, the ones who have allegedly killed, like Jerry Lee Lewis, those who are sexually abusive megalomaniacs like Diddy, the psychotically ambitious, like Madonna, the violently drug crazed, like James Brown. And every one of those cases we find in our research suffering, as the quote that I just read to you says. Now, as always, I'm not excusing these quote unquote, suffering souls. I'm simply trying to understand them. And like I've always said, what made James Brown carry a shotgun cross country police, chase and violently abuse women while fueled on crazy amounts of drugs? Okay, what made him do that is the same thing that made one of the greatest musicians in the history of the world. The fact that he was raised in a whorehouse and disciplined as a young boy by being held upside down in a burlap bag and beaten with a wooden stick. Without that trauma, you don't get the drive to become the hardest working man in show business, and you don't get that artistry and you don't get the psychotic behavior either. Same goes for the rest of the musicians that I mentioned. Now, for those of you who are new to Disgraceland this week, again, we're not trying to excuse the behavior of these musicians. We're just trying to understand it. So to this week's episode subject, Marilyn Manson, that quote that I read you says that before they had the word psychopath, they just called those who willingly hurt others evil. The introduction of the word introduced the concept of suffering and thus the possibility, I guess, of further understanding. We all understand evil. It's black and white. Psychopathy is a little more gray, a little more complicated. Now, do I think Diddy is a psychopath? Yes. Do I let Diddy off the hook for what he's done? No. Do I understand why he did it? Yeah, I kind of do. As you can tell from the two full Sean Combs episodes that we've released, particularly Part two, that delves into his history and the murder of his father by a notorious Harlem gangster. That trauma, that suffering, it not only allows us to understand what these artists have done, but it also, in some cases, not in all, but in some cases, drives the artists to contrition, to empathy. But what about this week's subject, Marilyn Manson? Was his behavior that we detailed in this episode psychotic? Yes. Was there past suffering in his life trauma debatable? Now, I was struck when reading Marilyn Manson's autobiography by the fact that there's nearly zero examples of the artist's humanity. Quite the opposite. Inhumanity is one of the goals of the artist. In the one time that the artist, that Marilyn Manson, bends toward humanity, it's for completely selfish reasons if we're to believe him, because he believes that being humane will help him with his art. So what does that make Marilyn Manson? Well, it makes him unique amongst all the subjects that we've covered. But does his lack of humanity, does his striving for inhumanity not only make him a psychopath, but instead make him evil, truly evil? I don't know the answer to that, but I hope the answer is no. I'm always rooting for the comeback. Just like Don Kove and a certain Jewish carpenter, I'm always rooting for mercy. Part of what I think is going on here with Marilyn Manson is, I think, you know, in his autobiography, I think he's a bit of an unreliable narrator. He's trying, I was about to say, desperately, but not desperately. He's trying in the autobiography to paint a picture of a different type of artist. And he does a damn good job in doing that. Now, what we think of that artist is a completely different story. There's been a ton of hate and anger directed at Marilyn Manson in our social posts this week. And I get it. I get the anger. But one poster commented that Marilyn Manson, AKA Brian Warner, has cleaned himself up. In my research, I've come across next to no examples of empathy from Marilyn Manson. I hope it exists. I hope it's there. If anyone's a fan, hit me up, let me know. Let me know what I don't know, okay? If Brian Warner has had some sort of redemption beyond getting just back on the road and filling stadiums and getting his career going again, if he's changed in any demonstrably humane ways, I want to know. So hit me up. 617-906-6638 on voicemail and text or Disgracelandpod on the socials, we'll keep the Marilyn Manson conversation at a low hum. We'll keep that going, try and figure this out. Try and get more into it because, you know, love him or hate him, you just can't get around the fact that he's a fascinating individual. All right, speaking of fascinating individuals like yourselves this week, for those of you who are new here, let me break it down for you, okay? Let me break it down for you, what we do here, all right? On Tuesdays we release a new full scripted sound design episode of Disgraceland. Our bread and butter, so to speak, like we just did this past Tuesday with Marilyn Manson. On Thursdays we release these after party bonus episodes where we discuss the full episode and where I take your calls and texts relative to the full episodes question of the week, which gets asked the week prior. And at the end of the full episodes on Fridays, we dip into our archive of over 235 full episodes and relaunch a previously released episode. Okay? It's like when that TV show that you used to watch back in the day would air a rerun, okay? We call these rewind episodes and we do this because we have so many damn episodes, all right? It helps expose new listeners to some of our past hits. Occasionally those rewind episodes that we release on Fridays are part of a multi episode story. And in that case, we release both parts one and two over the weekend, which is what we are doing this Friday and this Saturday with our rewind episodes on the Rolling Stones at Altamont and the Rolling Stones in Exile. These are two of my favorite episodes on one of my favorite bands of all time. And I cannot wait for you guys to hear them. If you have not already. If you have. I can't wait for you to re listen and get your dad deeper insight when we talk again next week. Now next week on Tuesday is our new episode. Our next new episode on Bjork and the Truly psychotic man, not a musician, truly psychotic man who tried to murder her. Okay, this is our swing at one of those old school 90s obsession suspense thrillers. All right? That's what we tried to do in this episode. So when you're listening to that episode, guys, be thinking about is the Bjork story, the wildest story of obsession and deranged fandom in music history. It's pretty fucking deranged, as you shall hear. But if it's not the most deranged or if it is, either way, I want to hear your thoughts on it. 617-90-66638 voicemail and text with your answers and you might hear yourself on next week's afterparty all right, I'm gonna take a quick break, gonna drink some tea, gonna give my voice a rest. I'll be back in a flash though, with your calls, texts and DMs on last week's question the most subversive artists of the 1990s back right after this.
