Vietnam war veteran Hugh Warner decided to surprise his son – real name Brian Hugh Warner – during a photoshoot for the March edition of Paper Magazine (out now), and the results were priceless.
Both dressed in black and sporting similar red pouts and lashings of eye makeup, it’s hard to call who wears it best.
Either way one thing is for certain, Marilyn’s dad rocks just as much as his son.
One thing weighed heavily on Manson while he was making The Pale Emperor: the death of his mother, Barbara Warner. For years, she had been suffering dementia; she passed last May. He has said that album closer “Odds of Even” came from her death, and in our conversation he calls it an epilogue, a reminder that “you die alone.” Family now seems to matter more than ever to Manson.
Ultimately, his mother’s death brought him closer to his father, Hugh Warner. When I tell Manson that I saw him in Denver in 2001 — his first post-Columbine concert there, which prompted death threats and protests — he recalls, “Everyone I know, including Hunter S. Thompson, said, ‘Don’t go onstage.'” He had brought 40 plainclothes policemen with him and decided to play anyway. “My dad said it best: ‘If they wanted to kill you, they wouldn’t warn you in advance,'” Manson tells me. “And he would know, because he fought in Vietnam.”
When Manson brings up his dad, he exudes happiness and awe. Lately, the shock rocker has been talking to the elder Warner a lot more, about his service in the military and “a lot of things we never talked about before.” For years, Manson had been trying to persuade his dad to move to L.A. to be closer; getting a role on Sons of Anarchy, Papa Warner’s favorite show, did the trick. Now they’re sharing deep conversations and Manson is learning new things about his family. His father drove to L.A., for instance, to spread his mother’s ashes along Route 66 — her favorite place, “which I never knew.”
Driving home Manson’s expressions of filial love is the fact that, during our interview, Hugh is in the adjoining lobby. At our cover shoot, Manson’s father put on the singer’s makeup. “That’s a good Ghost of Christmas Future,” Manson says, laughing. “When I see pictures of my dad, I’m like, He looks like me. The first time I saw my dad in makeup was, ironically, the second concert I ever went to. He dressed as Gene Simmons and took me to the Kiss ‘Dynasty’ tour when I was 11. And people were asking my dad for his autograph.”
(I had one interaction with Hugh. As Manson and I left the interview, the elder Warner called out, “You know, he came from my nut-sack.”)
