Fitting. He had something when it was a collaborative effort, when he just contributed lyrics and the band wrote the music. Somewhere he got it in his head that he didn’t need the two people who helped shaped the sound best in the early years, his co-founding guitarist and keyboardist. He said Pogo (keyboardist) was extremely important to the sound of Manson and couldn’t see the band existing without him, wish I could find the article. This was back before he pissed his good fortune away.
Your mileage may vary but the band peaked with Smells Like Children and Antichrist Superstar marked the downfall. Why? Lack of Daisy’s influence and Manson completing his total self-absorption. The first album was comical, dark, and had a unique circus like vibe. Enter Antichrist and the chugga-chugga-chugga guitar, it all goes downhill.
If he had kept his drug consumption down and not been such a dickhead he might have his original band-mates around and might still be making music on par with the original release and not be the equivalent of the Jose Canseco of music (great early career followed by embarrassment).
Hopefully he hits his head real hard someday and calls up Stephen and Scott, apologizes for being such a dickhead, and starts making music on par with the first album/second EP again.
Eh I disagree largely. Yes Daisy was a great guitarist and should have been kept in the lineup, but they did fine without him. Their most commercially and critically successful material was mostly without him, and I think all of the albums have been great up to ‘Golden Age…’ which was solid but too repetitive.
Yes they lost the psychedelic fun edge but made up for it in different ways.
Plus Daisy is a loser. I mean he has gone on to do absolutely nothing since leaving Manson and still uses the moniker “Daisy Berkowitz”. He wrote a lame article on Manson in a Florida newspaper semi-recently. There are also some hilarious/pathetic videos of him playing “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley on keyboard on YouTube somewhere but I can’t be assed to find them.
Pogo however, I agree with you there. I think the key change from ‘Holy Wood’ to ‘Golden Age…’ – aside from Twiggy’s departure – is the that Pogo does not play keyboard on the album, and it really suffers without his creative edge. He was the one I feel who most gave the band that little spark of weirdness they needed to keep from sounding too generic and commercial. It just hasn’t been the same without Pogo. He’s supposedly working on a solo album but who knows…