Smells Like Children

• Release date: October 24, 1995
• Genre: Rock, Avant-Garde
• Length: 54:43
• Label: Interscope
• Written by: Marilyn Manson, Daisy Berkowitz, Twiggy Ramirez, M. W. Gacy, Gidget Gein (through remixed material)
• Cover songs by: David A. Stewart, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye
• Remixes by: Dave Ogilvie, Joe Bishara, Anthony Valcic, Charlie Clouser

Track List

Introduction

Smells Like Children encapsulates a period in the band's life when it was on a self-destructive binge. They were disappointed with their lack of commercial success, pissed off with their life and each other after the tribulations of their last tour, Manson's relationship with his girlfriend Missi was on the decline because he was never around, and instead of working on the next album they were pushed by the record label to go on another tour with Danzig. To make matters worse, the Danzig tour acquainted them with Danzig's tour bus driver, Tony Wiggins, who amplified their chaotic tendencies with drugs, alcohol, and general depravity. Tony Wiggins stayed in touch with them after the end of the tour, continuing to lure them to the same chaotic behavior they engaged in on the Danzig tour. Somehow, despite all the distractions, they managed a creative streak that resulted in 13 songs that would later become the record Antichrist Superstar, but the record label wasn't interested in their demo tapes, and instead had them create an EP to continue promote their debut album. And thus, Smells Like Children was born.

It should come as no surprise given the above introduction that Smells Like Children was a Frankenstein of anything but quality original material. The work of a messed-up and pissed off band who wanted to do a completely different record. This is a record full of remixes, audio experiments, and non-music recordings, a lot of which came from their appearance on Phil Donahue's talk show in an episode about the dangers of moshing. The only musically serious work on this album was the second track and the three cover songs, so in other words- mostly music they didn't write (although they succeeded in making these songs their own, and one of them- Sweet Dreams- became their first real hit). Nevertheless, as it often happens in art, this record became an accurate reflection of who they were at the time, and through that, had picked up a theme of lost innocence. In his autobiography "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell", Manson described the record as follows:

Smells Like Children was supposed to be a record for someone who's no longer a child, someone who, like myself, wants their innocence back now that they're corrupted enough to appreciate it. What began as a very disturbing record had become a record that disturbed only me.

Children's stories and their hat wearing antagonists

Childhood was a key theme in the band's early work, which was rife with references to movies and TV shows that were aimed at children, but often took on a deeper meaning when viewed as an adult. Even though you could already see the band exploring new territory on this record, since it was still a derivative of their previous record, some of these themes of childhood naturally carried over. In fact, in an interview with Axcess, Manson said that with Smells Like Children, he "wanted to make a children's record that wasn't for children", reminiscent of the things that he used to listen to when he was a kid, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, two movies known for their iconic hat wearing villains, whom Manson drew a lot of inspiration from.

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory is a 1971 film adaptation of the 1964 novel Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. It tells the story of Charlie Bucket, a poor child who wins an invitation to tour Willy Wonka's chocolate factory along with a few other kids. The chocolate factory is a sort of wonderland of candy, but it soon turns out that it's a rather dangerous wonderland, and that its owner, Willy Wonka, is a pretty shady character. For what is essentially a children's story, it skews surprisingly hard towards the horror genre.

In his autobiography, Manson said that:

I've always felt a kinship with Willy Wonka. Even at that age, I could tell that he was a flawed hero, an icon for the forbidden. The forbidden in this case was chocolate, a metaphor for indulgence and anything you're not supposed to have, be it sex, drugs, alcohol or pornography.

On this album Willy Wonka references appear in the artwork and song names. The movie was also supposed to be sampled in one of the songs, but this plan was axed due to copyright reasons.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

This was a children's musical film based on Ian Fleming's novel Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. It tells the story of two siblings who grow fond of a racing car wreck that's about to be sold for scrap. After succeeding in raising enough money to purchase it themselves, they name it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the unusual noise its engine makes, and go on various adventures in the car, which turns out to be capable of many magical feats like flying or transforming into a boat. The main antagonist in the story is the Child Snatcher, a hat wearing man with a large nose with which he can smell children, who tries to kidnap the children throughout the story. The Child Snatcher became an inspiration for the song Organ Grinder, which appears on this album in its remixed form as Kiddie Grinder, and he also inspired the cover and name of the album. The album cover is also reminiscent of this character.

The Phil Donahue Show appearance

Marilyn Manson always considered his work to be the product of talk-show America, so it was rather fitting that eventually he would end up as a guest in one of them. In 1994 Manson and the rest of the band were featured on a talk show called The Phil Donahue Show. The episode's subject was moshing, and the band was featured as a music group that has moshing in their shows. Parts from the show were used in multiple tracks of the album with some sound effects applied to them.

Chickens

During the Portrait of an American Family tour, the band befriended a chicken. It was discovered in their backstage area in a venue in Texas, and Manson decided to adopt it and name it Jebediah. The chicken proceeded to tour with them to multiple locations, performing with them on stage (safely locked in the cage it was discovered in), and sometimes even contributing vocals to the performance. During a show in Dallas, the cage was accidentally kicked open and the chicken flew into the crowd. It crowd-surfed for a little bit before someone took it away, and it was sent to live in a farm... or the grocery store. Since that incident, "kill the chicken" became a euphemism for either getting high or going all the way, and that was the inspiration for the multiple chicken jokes and references in the Smells Like Children era.

The EP that wasn't

During the Danzig tour, Manson and Wiggins picked up a new hobby: carrying out confession sessions for willing fans. The confessions were essentially S&M sessions; the fans were tied naked to a bondage contraption, whipped, and asked to confess something. The confessions were recorded, and two of these recordings were meant to be tracks in the Smells Like Children EP. Since the band didn't have written permission from the participants to use the recordings, the record label forced the band to remove them from the record, but a few thousand copies of the original EP were mistakenly printed and sent to journalists and radio stations. So now we know that instead of The Hands of Small Children, the EP was meant to open with a track called Abuse Part 1 (There Is Pain Involved), which was one of the recorded confessions, and instead of May Cause Discoloration of Urine and Feces was supposed to be the track Abuse Part 2 (Confession). This article will cover both versions, since it can be argued that the version with the Abuse tracks is the real version of the album.

Other differences between the leaked version and the final version are samples from movies that were meant to be incorporated in the songs but were removed due to copyright reasons.

About this analysis

Since this album is mainly a remix album of songs from Portrait of an American Family, instead of doing full lyrical analysis, which I did in the Portrait of an American Family analysis, I will instead concentrate on the differences between these tracks and the originals, since that is where the crux of this album is. For the missing lyrical analysis, see the Portrait of an American Family analysis article.

Since this article is about Marilyn Manson, I will not be doing analysis for lyrics that weren't written by Manson. I will however provide commentary on the choice of the cover songs, as well as the creative license that was taken on them.

Song Analysis

Abuse Part 1 (There Is Pain Involved) / The Hands of Small Children

In his autobiography, Manson described the story behind the Abuse Part 1 recording:

Wiggins brought a woman backstage who asked to be humiliated and abused. The play started out light, but she kept asking to escalate it further and further until finally she screamed that her life didn't matter and asked them to kill her. The excerpt from the tape had Wiggins worrying that he had gone too far and trying to deescalate the situation. According to Manson, it was one of the few times he had seen Wiggins act with restraint.

On the incorporation of the recording in the album, Manson wrote in his autobiography:

On the [original] album, as soon as she said her life didn't matter and begged to be killed there was a loud, ambiguous, cataclysmic crash and then the bassline of "Diary of a Dope Fiend" slowly kicked in. It was a perfect preface to an album about abuse: sexual abuse, domestic abuse, drug abuse, psychological abuse.

The following is a transcript of the Abuse Part 1 recording as it appeared on the album (the Abuser in the recording is Tony Wiggins):

On the final version of the album, Abuse Part 1 was replaced with The Hands of Small Children, an audio experiment that was based on a sample from the song Cyclops slowed down to create a creepy sound, and also sped up to sound like a baby crying. Though it could hardly compare to the impact of the Abuse Part 1 recording, it nevertheless plays on a similar theme of abuse and innocence, creating an image of a baby being frightened by something scary.

The Hands of Small Children also has some unofficial lyrics:

Diary of A Dope Fiend

This track is a rerecorded and rewritten version of the song Dope Hat. It is basically the only piece of original song writing on the album if we exclude the experimental tracks. While the original song was upbeat and kooky, this version is sluggish and sickly, and a perfect soundtrack to the messed up, drug-fuelled state the band (or perhaps just Manson) was in during that time.

The song title is a reference to Aleister Crowley's novel Diary of a Drug Fiend, a fictional novel based on Crowley's experiments with drugs. This thematically ties in with the theme of the song, which is about the relationship between a drug dealer and his drugs (and clients).

The song starts with a message to Manson's ex-girlfriend Melissa Romero, who broke up with him during that time: "Are you still in love with me, Missi? I am so pretty and withdrawn..."

Shitty Chicken Gang Bang

This is an instrumental keyboard track. We hear a calm keyboard melody playing along with what sounds like noises from a chemistry laboratory, and then there's an explosion, presumably because the experiment blew up. The song title is a parody of the kids novel/film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a story about kids who save a magical flying car, and then go on adventures in it. The exploding lab scenario that is implied in this track was probably chosen because the kids' caretaker is an inventor.

Although easy to dismiss as simply dark humor, this track does play into the record's loss of innocence theme by essentially mangling the image of a beloved children's story. It's also thematically fitting to act as segue to the next track Kiddie Grinder, a remix of the song Organ Grinder, which was inspired by the child snatcher character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Kiddie Grinder

This is a remix of Organ Grinder, a song that can be summarized as being about the relationship between parents, children, and rockstars (or other figures that tempt children).

On the original version (the one accidentally sent out as promotional copies), this track had audio samples of the Child Snatcher from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who was an inspiration for the song.

Sympathy for The Parents

This is an excerpt from the band's appearance in The Phil Donahue Show. Below is a transcript:

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

This song was originally an 80s pop song by the band Eurythmics. According to his autobiography, Manson got the idea to cover this song during an LSD trip in which he hallucinated a "slower, meaner" version of the song sung in his voice. With this new aesthetic reinterpretation of the song, the band pretty much made it their own, and it became their first hit, paving the way to mainstream success.

Everlasting Cocksucker

This is a remix of the track Cake and Sodomy, a song criticizing white trash America. The title track is a parody of Willy Wonka's "Everlasting Gobstopper", a fictional candy from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory story, which could be eternally sucked without losing flavor. The original version of the album was supposed to have an audio sample of a song sung by the factory's dwarf workers, taken from the movie. As with other samples missing from the final version, it was removed due to copyright issues.

Fuck Frankie

Frankie Proia was Manson's tour manager during the Portrait of an American Family tour. He was fired after he "ran up $20,000 in expenses he couldn't explain", and this track is their way of making fun of him. The track was simulated by Manson who plays the groupie, and Tony Wiggins who plays the abuser.

I Put A Spell On You

This is a cover of a Screamin' Jay Hawkins song which was originally released in 1956. Jay Hawkins started his career as a run of the mill blues singer, and initially intended I Put A Spell On You to be a ballad, but then some alcohol was introduced to the recording studio, and he blurted out a wild, demented version instead. The song, along with the cannibalism inspired live performance, was heavily censored, making him one of the earliest shock acts, and the kind of artist who Manson could find natural kinship with.

Abuse Part 2 (Confession) / May Cause Discoloration of the Urine or Feces

The 10th track of the album was supposed to have another confession recording. Its transcript is recreated here. As always, the interrogator is Tony Wiggins:

On the official version of the album, instead of the confession, we have a recording of a phone call between Manson's mother (Barb Warner) and grandmother (Blanche Wyer), in which the mother tries to give medical advice to the grandmother who complains of a headache. It eventually turns out that the grandmother didn't take her heart medicine, and I can only assume that the track's name was inspired by a warning label present in the medicine's information slip.

Scabs, Guns and Peanut Butter

This track is just the bass player (Twiggy Ramirez) strumming two chords on an acoustic guitar and humming along, sped up. When the band was featured in The Phil Donahue Show, Twiggy was asked why he is dressed the way he is, and he played this track on a tape recorder as an answer.

Dance of the Dope Hats

A remix of Dope Hat. No trivia here.

White Trash

This is an acoustic rendition of Cake and Sodomy performed by the notorious Tony Wiggins. In his autobiography Manson said that because the song criticizes southern Christian white trash, he felt that "there was no better way to remix it than to have Wiggins strum and twang a redneck version".

Wiggins altered some of the lyrics, so the changed lyrics can be found below. The words [in square brackets] are censored on the record.

Dancing with The One Legged

During the tour with Danzig, they had a battered doll of Huggy Bear, the pimp from Starsky and Hutch, which was missing a leg. Inside that doll they would hide drugs, and they referred to the use of those drugs as "dancing with the one-legged pimp", so this is what this track's title is a reference for. This track is yet another transcript from the Phil Donahue show.

Rock 'n Roll Nigger

This is a Patti Smith cover. It was originally released on the 1978 album Easter. In his decision to cover the song, Manson said that:

I thought "Rock N Roll Nigger" was a song that I could really relate to, and our fans could relate to, about being an outsider. I also thought that nobody else really, in our era of music, had the courage to do a cover of a song like that because, you know, they would get in trouble for the title, but this song isn't about racism. It's about standing up for yourself.

Hidden Track

After the official track list ends there's a final secret track, which has two parts. The first is a slower, more ominous version of Shitty Chicken Gang Bang. The second part has more crying baby synth sounds and then an argument. The Pogo character is played by the band's keyboard player M. W. Gacy. The identity of the Man character is unknown.

Artwork

The album doesn't have much artwork. However, there is something to be said about the front cover. The image of Manson is a reference to the child snatcher character from the children's film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while the font for the band name is taken from the poster for the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory movie. Both of these children's movies also played a role as inspirations on the Portrait of An American Family album, the source material for Smells Like Children.

Easter Eggs

The liner notes jokingly list the band members as follows:

• Reverend Marilyn Manson: Spitting, Self-Mutilation, Chickens
• Twiggy Ramirez: Mini-Cassette, Fag Bass, Wigs
• Daisy Berkowitz: Analog Distorted Filth Box, Electric Twangdoodles, Cigarettes
• Madonna Wayne Gacy: Sound Deformation, Poop Games
• Ginger Fish: Kiddie Pops, Live Drums

Some notes on that:

• Spitting and Self-Mutilation are both things Manson did on stage (he would literally cut himself across the chest. You can see the scars from that on the Sweet Dreams music video). The chicken part is a reference to Jebbediah, the chicken Manson adopted while on the Danzig tour.
• Mini-Cassette seems to be a reference to the mini cassette tape recorder Twiggy took with him on the Phil Dunehue show. The Fag Bass and Wigs part refers to his cross-dressing stage outfits.
• Daisy Berkowitz's section basically lists him as being responsible for guitar amps and electric guitars. Also, he is a smoker.
• M. W. Gacy is listed as responsible for sound deformation, referring to all the loops and sound editing he contributed to the music. The poop games part refers to something he says on the hidden track.

Beyond the Record

The era yielded one single and one music video, both for the song Sweet Dreams. The Sweet Dreams single doesn't have any new music or artwork.

Music Videos

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

There was only one video that came out of the Smells Like Children EP, but it was the video that brought them commercial success. The concept of the video was proposed by the director, who also came up with many of the images of the video like the ballerina dress and the pig riding and so on... Playing off of the song's title, it essentially looks like a weird, creepy nightmare, with bizarre scenes and many visual distortions. It was shot in a burned down church.