Article Database

New York Post
October 26, 1997

Making Up Is Hard To Do

For shock rockers, it isn't easy when every night is Halloween

In the 70's Alice Cooper slapped on ghoulish makeup and adorned himself with snakes. twenty five years later Marilyn Manson's corsets, mascara, and carefully thought out theatrics have catapulted him into the role of rock's new high priest, of androgyny.

BOY GEORGE:
"People like glamour. Becayse I was a pop star It was okay to dress up. It's about being acceptable, a clown in a supermarket is not acceptable but a clown in the circus is."

GENE SIMMONS
"The Make-up usually took us about and hour or so to do. We stopped doing it when we thought it had run its course. But you're damned if you do and damned it you don't ........The same people who thought we were crazy for putting it on were calling us crazy for taking it off."

ELTON JOHN
"I Looked ridiculous in the 70's but the ridiculousness got the peoples attention. I did wear some unbelievable things. Looking back at them now, I think I looked like Diana Ross in Mahongany."

ALICE COOPER
"People may have been scared and shocked by Alice Cooper, but people also laughed. They had fun with it; when you walked out of an Alice Cooper concert you were covered in confetti."

MARILYN MANSON
"The whole grunge era did a lot of damage to rock and roll it stripped away the glamour and the power of the iconography of rock stardom. It promoted the concept that anything more than just music was insincere or flamboyant. I'm just trying to recreate the type of music and imagery that I liked when I was a kid bigger than life."

INSANE CLOWN POSSE
"We put on makeup because people in the suburbs view gang kids in the city as clowns. Mostly what we do is for entertainment. Bands like Rage against the machine talk about the political prisoners and how the government controlled you. When you're sick of listening to that, look and listen to us"

DAVID BOWIE
" For me, a lot of those onstage costumes were a disquise, but I wanted to do something very exciting on stage something nobody had seen before, a kind of rock and roll theater."