"If Depp somehow prevails, one can expect similar lawsuits against other women who say they’ve survived abuse."

"Already, the singer Marilyn Manson has filed a defamation suit against his ex-fiancée Evan Rachel Wood, one of several women who have accused him of sexual violence. But Depp needn’t succeed in court to achieve his ends. In a 2016 email to his former agent, Christian Carino, Depp wrote that Heard was 'begging for total global humiliation.' Now this televised trial has resulted in an explosion of hatred and derision directed at her. The volatile actress — who at times was violent toward Depp, and who never made good on a promise to donate her entire divorce settlement to charity — is very far from a perfect victim. That made her the perfect object of a #MeToo backlash. Online, there’s a level of industrial-scale bullying directed at Heard that puts all previous social media pile-ons to shame.... Meanwhile, every platform appears to be full of adoring pro-Depp memes.... [T]here’s a history of online communities fixating 'on theories that the male objects of their fandom were being manipulated and tortured by less-famous, female romantic partners.' There seems, however, to be a broader misogynist frenzy at work, one characteristic of the deeply reactionary moment we’re living through."

From "Amber Heard and the Death of #MeToo" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT).

"Evan Rachel Wood Accuses Marilyn Manson of Abuse ... Hours later Mr. Manson’s label dropped him."

 The NYT reports.

“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Ms. Wood wrote in an Instagram post. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”

Wood was 19 — a teenager — when the relationship began. Manson was twice her age. His Instagrammed response is:

“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

From the NYT:

The many voices of Paul McCartney.

May I recommend this highly detailed episode of "The Beatles Naked" podcast? 

I'm not yet half way through, but I'm so impressed with the analysis. There's so much of it! With the music played, so you can judge for yourself. 

I was interested, for example, in the discussion of the emotional effect of any slightly out-of-tune singing. Is it "soulful"? And has our experience of it changed over the years as present-day music is electronically tuned to perfection?

And is it the case that there is a song that only Paul McCartney can sing and that song is "Helter Skelter"? The Wikipedia article on the song cites a number of cover versions, but the only one mentioned in the podcast is Bono's. It is mentioned with a scoffing laugh (just before saying that if Kurt Cobain had tried, he might have succeeded). I just annoyed myself by listening to the Mötley Crüe version. I also sampled a little of the Marilyn Manson "Helter Skelter." Here's the awful Oasis version.

I'm no expert, but I'd say if you're just going to do it like Paul and just approach what he did, why do it at all? As an homage? But it's an homage with a song that got its reputation twisted up into the Manson murders. Bono said Charles Manson "stole" the song from The Beatles and he was "stealing it back." 

Having just written about the connection between Trump's January 6th speech that — intentionally or unintentionally — seems to have inspired the storming of the U.S. Capitol, I'm interested to stumble so soon into this story of a vocal presentation that may have inspired murder. According to one Manson follower: 

When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down.

Of course, there's no way to hold The Beatles complicit in a murder scheme. At most, they could have thought that too many people are too attached to them and looking for messages and crazy connections and maybe they ought to stick to the peace-and-love songs so they don't accidentally inspire murder. It would be a different matter if The Beatles knew before they put out the White Album that there was a violent group set to rise up when The Beatles gave the signal "helter skelter."

"There were very drawn out versions of songs where Manson mostly rambled on about our lack of love and other bizarre things. After an hour and fifteen minutes of this, he threw his microphone and left the stage."

From "Marilyn Manson Cuts Concert Short After Meltdown Onstage/The rocker rambled a freestyle jam and repeated demands for applause, while performing at the Paramount in New York on Thursday night."

I'm fascinated by that phrase "our lack of love and other bizarre things."

"Everybody wants to be abused," Marilyn Manson sings as he climbs onto giant stage-prop guns and pulls them over onto himself.

That's the end of the concert. He leaves the stage on a stretcher. And now he's in the hospital with injuries that are not specified. (Daily Mail.)

For the record, the official lyrics to "Sweet Dreams" do not have everybody wanting to be abused:

Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

I believe I'm hearing — as Manson climbs the scenery — the line quoted in the post title. Looking up the lyrics, I see that at the end of the song Manson adds lyrics that were not in the original song by The Eurhythmics. Those extra lyrics are:

I'm gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside
Gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside you

Here's how Marilyn Manson wanted people to experience the song:



And here's the classic Eurhythmics video, downright wholesome by comparison:



I hope Marilyn Manson is okay. I saw him in concert once (back in the 90s), and he put on a fine show (not that I can remember any of the "shocking" details (except his wearing leather pants with a sewn-in yard-long fake penis)). But climbing on the scaffolding is a bad idea, unless you've got trustworthy people putting it together in a way that's guaranteed to support you. I don't exclude the possibility that the falling scenery was a publicity stunt, but I don't see how it helps him to look like he's part of some Spinal Tap-like stupidity. And it's not as though you could do it night after night, like Alice Cooper hanging himself...



... which sets an entertainment standard that scenery falling over scarcely approaches.