::HOME | All Things Zum HOME | Submit Zim Zum News | Help Promote Zim Zum::
::Z² Articles & Interviews | Z² Reviews | Z² Transcripts::
::Black Hearts Bar & Grill::

Ex-Marilyn Manson guitarist Zim Zum claims he left the band on amicable terms and that he can return one day. His former boss insists that he's been told to fuck off. Goodbye then, to five-day drug binges, watching lizards dance in strip clubs, and signing groupies' backs with razorblades....

"I was presented with a track list for the 'Mechanical Animals' album, along with a royalty percentage list. That was the end of Zim Zum being a member of Marilyn Manson".
Sitting at a table in LA's Sunset Marquis Hotel, Marilyn Manson's ex-guitarist stains a cigarette with red lip gloss and continues his version of events.
"I think the last thing I said", he chuckles, "as far as any business-related activity goes, was, 'you gotta be fucking kidding me!' " Zim Zum joined the band after Daisy Berkowitz resigned during the 'Antichrist Superstar' album's laboured birth. He makes the briefest of appearances on page 243 of Marilyn Manson's 'The Long Hard Road Out of Hell' autobiography, portrayed as a 'deceptively benign Chicago vegetarian with a horrible taste in women' - charitable compared to the descriptions of Berkowitz.
While Manson maintains that he fired Mr. Zum, the guitarist claims he made the move away himself. He offers various reasons: he didn't want to commit to the subsequent 18-month tour; he wasn't getting enough credit for the album ("I took it to a place it wouldn't have gone without me"); that the aforementioned division of royalties - according to him - reflected that.
"Stepping away from a band like Marilyn Manson would, for most people, be insane", he says. "But I'm so confident about this decision. Now, I can completely control my music, and that's way beyond what I did last year".
He compares leaving the band to "coming out from behind a very long shadow" and much more ambitiously, to "when Mick Ronson stepped away from David Bowie".
Zim Zum insists that, last time he spoke to Mr. Manson, "the door was left open. Last thing I said to him was 'You got my number. Call me.' He knew that I wanted to do my own album".
While the two parties conflicting accounts of the split indicate bad feeling, the guitarist says he wants remain friends with his ex-bandmates. Keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy (Pogo) is still his flatmate, after all.
"I refuse to sling mud. The way they talk about me is gonna be a direct reflection on them. I'll let the music do the talking from here on in".
Before you do so, sir, how's about regaling us with all manner of ridiculous rock 'n' roll tales from your time with bassist Twiggy Ramirez, drummer Ginger Fish, Pogo and the Tall Gangly One?

BAPTISM OF FIRE
"The very first show I played with the band, all hell broke loose after four songs. Manson swung from the mike-stand, the bottom of it came off and nailed Ginger. It knocked him off the stool, but he got up and carried on playing. Meanwhile, Twiggy was demolishing the bass drum. I figured 'Alright, if this is the way things go...’ Nine Inch Nails' set-up was behind ours, so I wanted to see what I could get away with. I threw my guitar towards the NIN kit, but it hit Ginger again! He disappeared, so we thought he'd left. We left the stage and were like 'Where's Ginger?'. But he was behind the drums the whole time. Five thousand people watched dumbfounded as he was dragged across the stage with a towel over his head. Ever time his heart beat, it would shoot blood out through a wound in his chest".

THE BANANA INCIDENT
"We got Jonathan Davis into so much trouble! I think Korn actually had to cancel a show the first time I hung out with him. He made the mistake of coming to our show and Manson made him drink a shot of Jack Daniels. Then, making the mistake of trusting me, Jonathan took what he thought was a 7-Up chaser, but it was tequila. All I remember was that we locked Ginger out of the bus completely naked and only let him back in when the cops got there.
"Jonathan had some mishap with Ginger and a banana. It was amazing. I'd never seen anything like it. Ginger is a very bad, silly drinker, and it was kinda boys' night on the bus. It was Twiggy, Ginger, Pogo, myself, my bus driver and Jonathan. Ginger was keeping up with us on shots of tequila, and we had Metallica's 'Ride the Lightning' playing ridiculously loud in the front of the bus. We had our own mosh-pit going, and we'd take it in turns to get up on the kitchen table and crowd-surf.
"Then Jonathan just leapt out of nowhere. Ginger was lying on his back - I don't know *what* he was thinking but he was naked - and Jonathan just lunged out of nowhere with this banana...then the banana was gone! Ginger hopped around like a dog with his tail on fire, because this banana was instantly implanted up his ass. And that's how I met Jonathan. I remember me and the bus driver carrying him to a cab".

THE U.S. OZZFEST TOUR
The larger abount of Ozzfest, I don't remember. Pantera went on before us and they're notorious for alcohol. Oh man! The first couple of shows we played with them, our dressing room was next to theirs. Pantera turned on a tap that half-filled our dressing-room with water. Somehow, stuff was all over the ceiling and things were heavily broken. So we went into their room and trashed it. I think it cost us six grand apiece.
"Pantera would give us a print-out of what their damage was every day, and some of it was amazing. They'd bring a chair from one of their houses to replace the one they'd smashed in the dressing room! Or they'd sit there with hammers and rebuild a table!
"Dimebag Darrell, Twiggy and myself would sit in front of the monitor board on Tony Iommi's side. We'd dump the water out of Ozzy's buckets, fill them with beer and pass it between the three of us, watching Black Sabbath. That's about as good as it could ever get. I smashed a guitar one night, and when I sobered up I realized it was my favourite and became quite upset. I gave it to my guitar tech to fix, even though his face told me he couldn't. He brought it back into the room 15 minutes later, and Tony Iommi had signed across the top of the body. He saw the show and realized what I had done. It now hangs on my wall."

AFTER-SHOW SEX
"It was always amazing what some people would do. One girl had come to five shows and was relentless about us signing her back...with a razorblade. Finally, we did it. I did mine as lightly as I could - I didn't see blood. But Twiggy was cutting in Iron Maiden symbols on this girl's back.
"We had sex in front of each other quite often. I can remember many a time, walking into the back lounge of the bus and seeing Ginger in a simultaneously exciting and disgusting act with various girls. He's notorious for comic relief. One time, Ginger turned around to Pogo and said ' If you don't get that dick out of my face, I'm gonna suck it!'. It got quite interesting, every now and then. And yes, Pogo did get his dick out of Ginger's face, through sheer fear of what he might do. Quite a bit of this is on film somewhere, too. I wish I knew where! "There was a running joke between Manson and Twiggy. I didn't get involved because I don't trust where Twiggy's been! They'd say that, technically, you're not gay if the dick you have in your mouth has a rubber on it...
"Ginger was certainly open to experimentation. He would run around with this candle up his ass. We would light the candle and see how long he could keep it up there. We lit candle after candle, and poured the wax all over Ginger's balls. He'd run around screaming.
"There was only so much Manson could get away with. But while the focus was all on him, the rest of us were going apeshit. If there was a girl that Manson had spotted and had his eye on, and we knew it, Twiggy and I would make our way to this girl immediately - try to cut her off at the pass! If we couldn't do that, we'd plant little 'bombs' for Manson, so he would find our names written somewhere on her body. I can remember hearing a scream come from down the hallway - like, 'Goddamn'! - when he took this girl's top off and saw 'Zim' and 'Twiggy'!"

HALLUCINATIONS
"We tended to experiment with sleep deprivation. We called it the 'shadow posse' - when you get to a certain point, you start seeing people. We had shadow friends who would hang out with us! There was a time in LA when Pogo and I had gone five days without sleeping, in the middle of recording process. We'd write and record as much as we could during that time because the creative process was amazing. "Some of it, of course, was complete bullshit. I found myself in a strip club one night, watching lizards dance onstage..."

DRUG BINGES WITH NAMELESS ROCK STARS
"Manson, Twiggy and myself were in a room with two very famous rock individuals. I think we'd made everybody else leave the room - including record label heads - so that the typical rock debauchery could take place comfortably. We were completely drunk and there were substances everywhere. These were really famous stars who could afford some ridiculous stuff. I don't think there was sleep to be had for days.
"Another time, the whole band went to see Radiohead in New York and we met another guy whose name is on various garments that I own! Again, he convinced me that the world has done drugs at one time or another. He would take very discreet trips to his limo. Judging by the amount of words he was getting out per second, I would say there were at least a few grams consumed.
"We tended to be scapegoats for everything, but the longer I was on tour and the more people I met, I realized that people who have problems with that sort of thing are the people who have problems with that sort of thing are the people who hide it - even to the extent of campaigning against it.
"I don't think anyone in the band has addictive tendencies. It was always a fun social thing - another way to kill time, rather than spending another two days in a hotel room, staring at the television.
"One time, our road manager was sleeping. The rest of us had been up for quite a while. It had been, like, a 16-hour drive. We packed cocaine into a straw and blew it up his nose. He only woke 5 minutes later, not having a clue what happened, but he was *really* awake! "Manson, Twiggy and I took a time release-capsule apart one night, separating it into three colours - then each one of us snorted a colour, to see what would happen. Well, the only thing that happened was that we ran around the room sneezing and screaming for 20 minutes!
"But anyone who said there was hardcore substance abuse or any of this ridiculous killing of animals, if they paid attention to the show and the kind of schedule we keep there'd be no way we'd be able to balance the two. We were all very focused. Everybody knew they had to answer to themselves first, then to the rest of the guys in the band. There couldn't be a weak link." ::top::