New Musical Express

24.12.83

'Paul Morley tousles with Marilyn on a soft sofa and wonders if the seduction of pop has a more explicit meaning.' Well, so sayeth the blurb.

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"If I worked in a chip shop I'd make sure I was the best fucking chip fryer in the world."

MARILYN ON WHAT HE IS

"Who's to say?"

You could go far.

"I could go nowhere...as long as I go for dinner with Diana Ross I'll be happy."

What do you mind?

"People buying me grapes when I want bananas."

The male's being photographed, and he's happily collapsing onto soft furnishings, rubbing his body into big baggy cushions, cheaply wetting his finger on his tongue, flinging his mane around his face, acting out his borrowed name to a quick perfection, pretending with his sparkling eyes to a special, rising bliss.

He giggles indulgently, rolls over, pulls the mane over one side of his face, peeps out, hugs himself; an animal, a baby, a clown...what a tart.

"I like people thinking I'm sexy. Doesn't everyone?"

The female's being interviewed, telling big, small, and awful lies, spinning out aphorisms that glisten with blatant contradiction - resisting, challenging, winning, losing, fluttering his eyelashes, giggling, snapping, rolling back onto the sofa, sinking into the cushions, wrapping a big red scarf around his head, splicing the holy with the unholy. Such skilful, insincere seduction.

"What I'm saying to people is, look at me, if you want to look, but you don't have to look. See what I mean?"

No, Marilyn.

"Oh go on - have another drink, girl!"

I'm two hours late for the interview. Male Marilyn, in an awfully affronted snap-song voice, disapproves. "I do not appreciate being kept waiting for two hours."

Who are you to act so royal? He cracks the whip: "Who are you to keep me waiting?"

Ouch! But Maid Marilyn is the kind of girl you never want to say sorry to. I get out of my bag of equipment a quarter bottle of Bells whisky. Marilyn giggles dreamily, "Ooh, alcoholic." I can't do interviews without being intoxicated. Aren't you the same? Marilyn tells some cream lies. "I don't drink..." Don't you ever get intoxicated? "Never. I rely on my sharpness. That makes me blurred, it blurs the edges..." Of reality? "What's reality?"

I've been wondering that about you.

"What - whether I'm a fantasy or a reality?"

Something like that.

"So," says Marilyn, beginning his wicked tease, sorting me out before we begin to play our snappy, baity word games, "You're the one who's so nasty to everyone..."

He looks me in the eyes and there's a suggestion that I talk dirty. I spill my seed...at least, I drop my tape recorder. Batteries roll over the floor and under the soft furnishings. Marilyn giggles, his pleased giggle. I put my equipment back in order: we don't have much time. "I'm sorry darling - I've got to go to Germany in a little while." So should we play interviews? "Oh, I hate doing interviews. I don't see why I should sit here and put myself across to someone I don't even know and read all their criticisms of me afterwards. Why should I have to do it?"

It means you can talk about yourself...me, me, me.... Isn't that what you like?

"I am me, me, me, but I don't have to force it on other people all the time, do I? Still, I'm told that it helps."

Marilyn pulls his knees up to his chest. "Oh, it's so cold!" he shivers, suddenly thirsty for love and affection. This boy is trouble: and deliciously untroubled. I'll have to be careful.

"So what am I? You tell me..... you're the analyst....daddy..." During this sentence he slips effortlessly from challenging big boy to wishy-whispering little girl. I will have to be careful. He giggles, indecently.

MARILYN ON BEING NICE

Have you got a grudge against the world?

"I don't think so. The world's a big place with a lot of people in it. Everyone's free to do exactly what they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone....when you hurt other people....oh, like that guy who wrote that thing about me in the Sunday People; well, it didn't hurt me, but it was just so....twisted."

Don't you relish that kind of attention?

"I just think it's sad because it makes me realise that there are freaks in the world, and I don't want there to be freaks in the world. I want everyone to be nice and give flowers to each other."

Some people might say you haven't been very nice in releasing such a record. Oh Marilyn, you're so nasty for making us listen to that record.

"Switch off the radio."

Oh Marilyn, you're so nasty for making us look at your photographs.

"Turn the page."

Maybe some people don't think you're nice because you're so secondhand.

"I've never seen anyone like me before. I've never met anyone like me before."

MARILYN ON BOY GEORGE

"First schmirst..."

MARILYN ON HIS MEMORIES

"There are so many values and opinions and everything, and if I see something I like I keep it. If someone says something that I like or agree with, I remember it. I'm the amalgamation of everything that I like. The individulaity of a person is his or her concoction of the things around them, there's no such thing as someone who's completely brand new and fresh. Your wisdom is everything that has gone before you, and everything that people have told you and taught you, all your experiences. I've experienced a lot and I always try to experience new things. I've tried all the drugs there are, I've been to all the different nightclubs, and discos, and through all the scenes, all the different aspects of music, and I've come up with my own version - a version that suits me. And it is a new thing, because it's a new blend, my blend....

"It's like a food mixer; depending on what you put in, what comes out will always be different. It always depends on what you put in and what you take out, and that's what I am."

A food mixer.

"Kind of."

MARILYN ON THE BITCH

"I try not to be bitchy about anyone."

Oh Marilyn!

"I don't...not at the moment. It's quite funny in situations like where you crack jokes, and I can lay into people verbally, especially when they try and force me to be something I'm not or don't want to be, and I can shut them up very quickly. But there's no satisfaction in it. I can bring people to tears by saying things to them, because I've got this, like, horrible gift or curse of whatever it is, to be able to zoom in on peoples minds, and work out exactly what will annoy them 100% the most...and I say it to them. I used to do that all the time, but not anymore. But I know it's still there, that I can still do it if the mood takes me."

Do you hide behind masks?

"I used to. I suppose I still do in a way. At first, around the time I did the Riverside Interview, when I'd dropped the masks, it was the first TV I'd done and I was like waiting for the knives, and it was very painful. But once you get past that stage it gets better...and then the fact that you don't wear any masks becomes a mask. So you always have a shield."

Do you take anything about Marilyn too seriously?

"Not really...."

MARILYN ON 'CALLING YOUR NAME'

"I decided to make a record that people would like to listen to, I hoped. I wrote the song while I was walking down Oxford Street and I ran to a phone box and I was shoving 10ps in, humming it to Paul (Caplin) so he could write it down, because he can write music. That was excitement to me. When I hear the song, that's what I remember. I wanted to get some physical proof that I'd done it, and there it is; and when I hold the black vinyl it reminds me of all the things I had to get through to get to that stage. Paul McCartney told me he loved it, he couldn't stop humming it."

MARILYN ON COMPLICATION

"It's very fashionable at the moment to hate Marilyn."

Can you understand why?

"Yeah...because when you don't understand something and it's new you're frightened of it. It's like AIDS, for instance. Nobody wants to discuss AIDS, they just totally do not want to know. But it's there, it's getting bigger, and sooner or later they're going to have to discuss it."

You're as contagious as AIDS, are you?

I don't think of myself as a disease. I'm just a person who sings on a few records now and again..."

And irritates people.

"Probably. Because I've got the gall to do exactly what I want, and most people are frightened of doing what they want. I admire it in people who want to stick green hair on their head or wear black eyeliner. I think that's good. Do it! Who cares? But people who are desperate to put green hair on their head or wear black eyeliner, they just can't or won't, and they hate anyone who's prepared to do that kind of thing. It's quite funny really..."

Do you imagine that you're so complicated, it's a case of people just not understanding you?

"Sure...it's very difficult to assimilate someone after three interviews and a few photographs. It's very difficult to know someone and dismiss them through that. People think they can though. It's going to take time and more interviews for people to get used to what I am."

Isn't the irritation simply that you're seen as just one more unacceptable frivolity who's exploiting pop music at a time when it's at it's most soft-headed and weak-bodied?

"That's crap. I just think that if you take yourself too seriously then you're in a sorry state."

But as a perfectionist, you surely reject the kind of superficiality and vacuity that your record seems to celebrate?

"I don't think it's at all superficial to do what you really want to do. I believe in doing what you feel like whenever you want to do it. As long as you don't hurt anyone else. As long as you don't go out and rape people.

It's so stupid. Everyone gets worked up over me wearing a sequined suit when there are people going out and murdering other people, it's all just so twisted. I mean, there's no one person who's normal, there's no one human being who does all the right things and says all the right things, because there are no right things. And once you realise that then it's fucking tough cookie for them.

I think that to care genuinely about other people and be interested in things around you, and to forge ahead and make everything alright for you is much more important than sitting around criticising other people all the time and interfering in other peoples' business.

All the time I do what's best for me. And through that I'd like people to realise that I'm doing what's best for me in my way and hopefully they can get inspired by that, and do what's right for them. I'm trying to make myself into what my dream of me is, I don't think that's wrong."

MARILYN ON THE TRUTH

"Of course I care what people think about me, but I have to try and make myself believe that I don't care."

You've been telling me lies.

"No!! I believe everything I say. I believe every single thing I say."

Even when it's a lie?

"What's a lie? What's the truth? Tell me what my truth is...."

Marilyn is the last of that breed to emerge publicly from that shaky sub-myth; the last one to try out on the showbusy world his parcel of cunning, contrivance and comedy. Maybe, after all that, he's the best, the bravest, the sneakiest, the sexiest...bringing to pop entertainment a little more, a little less, than one light, slight teenybop record suggests: more like a mouth that can melt all attempts to be sensible and analytical.

What Marilyn understands is that unbeatable, unbreakable ambition that has made the millions for former London Village Idiots Boy George and Steve Strange. Ambition that is never justified or considered, but that is some grand narcissistic design to grow larger than life.

Man alive, moving girl, nothing can stop it.

"No one created me. I created myself. I do exactly what I believe in. I'm moving towards what I want and people are bashing me from all sides. But it's no good, I'm still moving on, I'm still going in the right direction, and I know I'm right, so everyone might just as well let me get on with it."

Has there been a plan?

"I don't make plans. I live from day to day."

That's how you've ended up here?

"Well, I knew about two years ago that I was going to do a record, that was the only thing I knew. And so everything from then on was like a time filler. I knew I was going to make a record but I didn't know how, why, when, what, who....I knew it was the goal. And when I reached that there would be different things on the horizon. It's like steps on a ladder, you have to get to the first step before you can get on any of the others. Making a record is like starting at the bottom. Modelling is like below making a record and I'd been through all that, and then it's like singing, acting de di da dum, up and up and up and up....."

To where? To happiness, as it happens. To be as happy as Barbra Streisand or Diana Ross: this is the burning red fire in Marilyn's free heart. That simple, devastating, perfect dream. To be beyond the bland naggings, the tedious snags of the grey to middling world that most have to share: to glow with fame, to verge on immortality. Marilyn wants to be happy, like the true beauty queen, and then some, and so on.

I tell him: oh, he's so silly.

"Maybe. That's not my decision to make. I don't think I'm silly, and I'm happy so far so I must be doing something right."

I tell him: oh, he's so naïve.

"Oh, that's nice....so refreshing...I'd hate to think I knew everything. I never want to be static, I must always be on the move."

Marilyn: she has an answer for everything.

"Oh, I'm getting a headache."

What, with all these questions? Too much thinking? Is it destroying your soul?

"I thought a sole was something that swam in the Sea."

I'll beat you at word games...

"Cat!" he says, and tease-flashes his eyes at me, signalling something with his lashes. I wish I could have got that on tape and written it down: in that single, split-up second was all the Marilyn cunning.

And he just will not keep still!

MARILYN ON SHOW BUSINESS

"I want to get an Emmy, and a Grammy, and a Tony....that's my new goal. I'll probably fail miserably but at least I will have tried."

You're just an old-fashioned girl, aren't you? You just want to be part of that blazing 20th century superstar tradition.

"I don't know....I don't know what I'm part of. I don't like to be part of any movement or organisation because I think that's frightening."

I'm not being so concrete - it's like you just want to lead the classic show business life.

"Do I?"

Emmy, Tony...those are quite conventional aims, aren't they?

"Are they? Who on Earth would dream of having those things?"

Isn't it the usual type of fantasy?

"How strange you should think so. I've never met anyone who wanted those things. How weird."

What do you think most people dream of having, then?

"New car....washing machine...the thing about England, it's so different from America. In England you get your job in the chip shop and that's it. As soon as something positive happens to you, you think, that's it. You don't want to own the chip shop or anything, or a chain of chip shops. You're just content to work there. That's the attitude of most British people I think. I feel that there must always be more beyond, so that you're constantly striving for more and more, better and better. I don't think you should be stationary. I'd hate to be known as just 'a singer'. I never feel that what I am at the moment is the end."

MARILYN ON FRIENDS

"I do appreciate everything I have. I don't have too many things but I do appreciate what I have intensely, because it's mine and it's something I've worked for. I'm not very materialistic. I spend money like water, I don't watch where it's going, but the position I'm in and the friends I have now I value very much....what else is there?"

How important are friends then?

"110% because at the end of the day, you still go home to an empty room, you don't go home to your career. The career is like fiction: it's a toy you play with during the day and then you go home with yourself, and if the phone doesn't ring then it's an awkward moment...."

MARILYN ON COMEDY

"You're desperate for me to be full of contradictions, for me to admit that I'm conning people and that I'm just a fictitious pop character, aren't you? I don't want you to be satisfied that you've made me admit I'm the kind of person you think I am. I'm the way I am, and if you don't like it then you can just write any old shit about me."

Actually I just think you're a comedian.

"Oh, I am. I like making people laugh. One of my closest friends said to me when I first started doing the record, you shouldn't be a singer, you should be a comedian. I said, but Blanche, I don't want to be a singer and I don't want to be a comedian - I want to be a person who does everything. It's like a rough-cut diamond, there are so many facets in it. I don't want to be like your smooth one-surface person. There's lots of different sides to me...hopefully."

MARILYN ON MONROE

"I get really upset when I think about her sometimes...."

MARILYN ON THE MIND AND BODY

What have you done with your body?

I've been through a lot of different stages. I sort of cared about it for a long time, then I didn't, then I did, then I didn't....lots of different trips."

What have you let people do to your body?

"I've let it be loved, let it be abused. Your mind is part of your body and if you let your mind be abused, you're letting your body be abused as well. I've let people do that and it's like a knife. Sometimes when you let people in they want to leave you damaged...."

Can you not separate your mind and your body?

"No....I think it's all one thing. When I meet someone I don't judge them on the outer shell because that's just superficial. What goes on in their mind, what they think and say, that's the most interesting, most difficult thing."

Do many people get to your mind?

"A few."

Through sex?

"Sex is like the full stop after a sentence. The sentence is the mind. Having sex is like rejoicing in the two minds being connected. That's when it's exciting. If your mind is detached from your body then you're thinking of other things when you're having sex, which is totally boring. You might as well be having sex with your hand."

MARILYN ON THE FLOOR

Are you telling me more lies?

"No no, it's probably just another contradiction....life's full of them, you know!"

Oh, fuck you, Marilyn!

"Oh, I wish you would...."

Marilyn's certainty, the trick of his wit, the invincibility of his optimism soon wears down the questioning. Marilyn has the knack of making the questions seem irrelevant. He wrecks the conceit of the interviewer splendidly - lesser writers than me must have real trouble puzzling out the crossfire and coping with the intolerance. He slips and slides, races away, directly challenges the interviewer's right to ask such questions. The questions are beneath him. Or above him. He couldn't care less.

What are you doing in 1984?

"Album, tour, movie."

The old things.

"They're new to me."

Are you capable of doing a tour?

"Are you?"

Yes.

"Are you? I'd love to see you try..."

He charmed the pants off me. And so once he's made his points, the determination, the energy, he loses interest, finds a new game to play, rolls around, rolls his tongue, blinks his eyes, curls up into the sofa, dangles his bait, plays around with his big red scarf....

"Actually, I'm wondering if Paul Morley's gay...."

I signal for the photographer to leave the room. And you said, Marilyn, that I was the nasty one.

"We all have our weaknesses."

Wet kisses?

"WEAKNESSES. Your hair's really nice."

So's yours. So this is your technique - discover the interviewer's weakness. In this case, pick up the interviewer...

"Is that what I'm doing? You're certainly one of the most interesting interviewers I've ever been with..."

The photographer leaves the room. Was I careful? Who's to say. Full stop.

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