A TASTE OF MARILYN MANSON.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Marilyn Manson believes that entertainment doesn't end when he walks off stage - and art doesn't just hang in a museum.

In his world, ``You can live your art, and you can be a work of art.'' To wit, the 34-year-old shock rocker born Brian Warner's most famous piece is himself, Marilyn Manson - an ever-morphing pop-cultural icon.

For a decade, Manson has steadily rattled the establishment with his outrageous personas, including the Antichrist Superstar and an androgynous space alien named Omega. His latest, a cross between cabaret performer and dandy, is again stirring up controversy.

Manson is banned from playing Rochester, N.Y.'s Ozzfest date on Aug. 11 because, according to Six Flags Darien Lake spokeswoman Lauren Spallone, ``Several people in the area expressed an uncomfortable feeling about having that artist in our area.''

No worries. He's still part of the rest of the tour, which stops at Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen on Saturday.

Earlier this year, Manson released his new album, ``The Golden Age of Grotesque,'' a follow-up to 2000's ``Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death).''

Like a throwback to the late '80s industrial metal mash of decibel- crunching guitars and electronic noise, ``Golden Age'' debuted in May at the top of the Billboard charts and won its share of praise. Rolling Stone asserts that ``never has there been a rock star quite as complex.'' While Kerrang! raves that Manson's latest ``may well be his best album yet,'' and Revolver calls it ``pure rock ecstasy.''

But music is only half of ``The Golden Age of Grotesque.''

According to Manson, the album was inspired by radical art movements such as prewar German cabaret, the pretentious wit of Dandyism and the all-out brattiness of DaDa. Describing himself as a voracious reader and moviegoer, Manson says he was drawn to this period after experiencing a few bumps along the way in his own life.

In 1999, he came under attack by the religious right, who blamed him for inspiring two boys to carry out the Columbine High School shooting rampage (to which he later responds in the Oscar-winning documentary ``Bowling for Columbine''). He was slapped with various lawsuits, watched 2000's ``Holy Wood'' bomb and went through a very public breakup with his fiancee, ``Charmed'' actress Rose McGowan.

The final straw could have been his longtime collaborator and friend Twiggy Ramirez's departure from the group over creative differences, but it wasn't. In fact, things were starting to get better for Manson.

He was getting movie work (he plays a transsexual nightclub singer in ``Party Monster'' and is scoring the remake of ``The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'') and had begun a new relationship with Dita Von Teese, the fetish model and burlesque performer. Producer Tim Skold (formerly of the industrial rock group KMFDM) even offered to double on bass for the new album.

It was also around this time that Manson began collaborating with Austrian multimedia artist Gottfried Helnwein, who in a Kerrang! interview refers to the singer as ``a true artist who reflects the state society is in.''

Together with Helnwein, the pair created a series of controversial photographs, most of which were deemed by the label as too risque to be album art, including one of Manson dressed in Nazi regalia and clutching a gun as a young girl looks on.

As for the Ozzfest, Manson says, ``I've made a greater attempt to make my show not just the most theatrical thing on Ozzfest but the most theatrical thing I've done. And it's in a vaudeville, cabaret way that it's not about just entertaining the audience, it's about interacting with them, and not in the cliche rock 'n' roll way where you get them to hand-clap.''

Here's more from the interview:

Q: Not everyone is going to be familiar with the radical art movements you've said inspired you for ``The Golden Age of Grotesque.'' How did you arrive at them?

A: Just in my personal entertainment. I read a lot of books, and I watch a lot of movies. I'm really captivated by the late '20s and early '30s because ... that's when expressionism in theater started taking shape in most interesting ways. Vaudeville and cabaret are what I've always done and why I don't fit in with most of the rest of rock 'n' roll - because I do things more as an artist than as a musician, but music is the core of what I do. So, I've found that reading about people and the way that they lived, the version that I see in my head - of how people were, their attitude and how it came to be during times of political upheaval and fear, concern that there's no tomorrow - seems like they took that and twisted it into the most genius and great art.

Q: What research did you do?

A: It wasn't a matter of me researching anything as much as there is where my interests lie. It was reflected in what I was doing and how I was dressing and in my personal life. My girlfriend has always been someone who looks like she stepped out of a pinup from the 1930s. So, being around her is a certain influence. ... We found things in common that we liked in that era because people had a different attitude about entertainment and art. People wanted to walk around and live like they were in a movie. And now, because reality is what people watch on TV with reality shows, it's doing the reverse, and it's just not exciting to me. I prefer to live in a fantasy world. That was one part.

Q: What was the other part?

A: Berlin. Symbolically the city not only is where a lot of great art was coming from and artists were being persecuted, but symbolically the city could also be perceived like a relationship, which is a lot of the things I wanted to talk about on the record - the way it started out with one sentiment, and it spun out of control.

Q: This album is as much about music as it is visuals. Are you putting a greater emphasis on art than you have in the past?

A: I think it's really a timing thing. A window opened up, and now I'm going to show people what I really have, and it's more than people expect.

Q: In what way?

A: I like to prove people wrong and smash expectations and take taboos and challenge them. So the imagery and the lyrics on the album is about taking symbols that people think they understand ... whether that be taking chaos and order and putting them against each other by combining controlling fascist imagery with chaotic degenerate art imagery, people are tossed in between. I think it's interesting whenever people gravitate toward one thing and then they get really upset. They think something is offensive because it's pornographic, or they think it's offensive because they think it's promoting fascism. They don't realize it's not doing either of those things. It's making you think ... the fact that you got upset about it really justifies and solidifies it as an artistic statement.

Q: Can you give me an example?

A: I couldn't put the image of me wearing the Mickey Mouse hat on my record because (the record company) said it was infringing on a copyright image. It's not an image that's ever been seen before, but it make you feel a certain way, it makes you think about a certain thing - it's supposed to make you think if it's art. Art is a question mark, and everybody wants it to be an answer. And that's why most of entertainment is boring.

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

OZZFEST WITH MARILYN MANSON

Where: Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen (formerly Blockbuster Pavilion), 2575 Glen Helen Parkway, Devore.

When: 9 a.m. Saturday.

Tickets: $38.50 to $78.75. Call [phone] or www.ticketmaster.com.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) the ART of MARILYN MANSON

There's more to the shock rocker than meets the eye

(2 -- 3) no caption (Marilyn Manson)

Steve Jennings/WireImage.com