Fucked By Rock Again: Zodiac Mindwarp Exclusive Interview
Frank Meyer, Managing Editor
Tuesday, November 13, 2001 02:32 PM

In his current book, Fucked By Rock, Manning describes in great detail his years of debauchery and mayhem in the hedonistic rock n’ roll daze of the late-‘80s metal scene as the frontman of Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction and the Love Reaction. Since shedding the Zodiac persona back in the early-‘90s, Manning has been concentrating his LSD-blitzed mind and word weaponry on penning a number of successful books. All tales of decadence and destruction to be sure, but none really grappling with the legend of Zodiac properly and up front. Fucked By Rock is a groupie by groupie, dollar by burned dollar, loud and proud swagger through his days as Kerrang cover boy, NME bad boy and all around rock n’ roll outlaw. And, as you’d hope and expect, it’s a damn good read…

Young Mark Manning was born in Armley, Leeds in 1958. He was a working class upstart who found his salvation in comics, art and rock n’ roll and attended Bradford College of Art in the late ‘70s before becoming the art director for the music magazine Flexipop! And so the legend goes, that one day Manning ingested insurmountable amounts of LSD, decided to become a rock n’ roll singer, and created the alter-ego Zodiac Mindwarp. He found a rag tag bunch of heavy metal renegades and gave them name such as Slam Thunderhide, Trash D. Garbage, Cobalt Stargazer, and bassist Kid Chaos (later to join rival The Cult under his real name, Haggis). In Stargazer he found a songwriting partner and partner in crime and the two comrades have collaborated ever since. Manning cut a demo and passed it on to the folks at Zoo Music Publishing, who promptly signed him to a contract and scored him an indie label deal.

Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction made their glorious vinyl debut in June of 1986 with the Wild Child EP, a three song saga of sex and degradation set to a funky metal beat. The disc was an instant fave of the cooler UK writers at Sounds, Kerrang and NME, where the band was awarded with critical praise as the second coming of Steppenwolf. The infamous High Priest of Love EP followed and the band really came into its own, dropping the slap bass styling and concentrating on Motorhead meets AC/DC minded hard rock, with big, fat guitar riffs, nasty lyrics and plenty of violent overtones. Manning penned some his best cock-rock parody lyrics and gre into one helluva vocalist, as demonstrated on nitty-gritty thug-rock toons like “Speed Kings,” “Kickstart Me For Love” and the title track:

I'm More Sexy Than Jesus Christ
Where Loves Concerned I'm An Anarchist
C'mon Baby Praise The Lord, I Got Your Just Reward
U Ain't Virgin Baby, U Ain't Madonna
Shut Your Mouth And Let Me Save You From Dishonor
Cos I'm The High Priest Of Love...
I'm Shooting Babies From The End Of My Dick
This Ain't Science Baby This Is Magic

- “High Priest of Love”

The band caught a major wave of critical/industry buzz and began touring Europe, tearing up clubs with their brand of in your face psychedelic biker rock gone horribly awry. As their rep grew, they ended up signing with Iron Maiden’s manager Ron Smallwood’s company Sanctuary and signing a worldwide deal with Polygram Records. In 1988 Zodiac Mindwarp & the Love Reaction unleashed their masterpiece debut album Tattooed Beat Messiah, a commando rock orgy of molten guitars, gutter poetry lyrics, pop hooks and more genuine sleaze factor than even Nikki Sixx would blush at. With titles like “Backseat Education,” “Bad Girl City,” “Skull Spark Joker,” and “Let’s Break The Law,” the album reveled in violent sex, street warfare and religious submission. Sure, all the songs sounded exactly the same, but dammit, they had more damaged charisma, punk rock charm, and rock star attitude than half of those late-’80s hair bands and the timing seemed perfect. It was the height of the post-Bon Jovi metal attack, the rise of the Sunset Strip era of rock was at a peak and the band seemed poised for mega-superstardom and worldwide domination. MTV’s Headbangers was playing the video for the single “Primer Mover,” which featured the band fighting a squadron of ninjas and nuns in an electric church and was directed by Young Ones star Adrian Edmonson (punk rocker Vivian), and the band was touring the U.S. with the then still-rising Guns N’ Roses. A triumphant set at Britain’s prestigious Reading Festival seemed to seal the deal – these guys were gonna be huge. But it was not to be…

Murderous Maneuvers In A Tiny Room
Blood Sweat And Death With Doctor Doom
Gambling Guns Pissing Bullets Down
Puncture Oxygen Murder All Around
Eyeball To Eyeball In A Crocodile Storm
Piltdown Glory Caveman Story
Holophonic Dog Howling At The Moon
Lying With The Dumb Baby Death At Noon
I’m In This War Cos I Never Lose
Cut Me Baby I Just Bleed Booze

- “Untamed Stare”

Tattooed Beat Messiah was a disastrous failure. The band spent millions of dollars on big budget videos and lavish touring expenses but barely scratched the charts and ended up owing Polygram an enormous wad of cash. After being dropped, Zodiac and Cobalt carried one for three more albums into the mid-‘90s, Hoodlum Thunder, One More Knife and My Life Story, none of which ever saw the light of day in the States. All three efforts attempted to update the band’s sound and featured drum machines and synths, pulling them farther and farther away from their metallic roots. Other than the fact that Alice Cooper covered one of his songs on Hey Stoopid (“Feed My Frankenstein”) and performed it in Wayne World, Zody and Stargazer reaped little rewards from their years of dedication to living and breathing the rock warrior lifestyle.

Eventually, the band disbanded, only to perform at occasional parties and one-off gigs. Hooligan sex king Zodiac morphed back into mild mannered Mark Manning and became a professional author. Along with the KLF member Bill Drummond, he writes the “Bad Advice” column for the literary magazine The Idler and have published a cult favorite book called Bible of Dreams for their own Curfew Press and the best-selling Bad Wisdom (Penguin). Since then Manning has also penned Crucify Me Again (Codex Books) and Get Your Cock Out (Attack! Books) and has one called Wild Highway on the way as well. He shows up at poetry festivals and spoken word shows from time to time but has generally stayed out of the music business and rock world for most of the last decade.

Manning lives in London now, has a young daughter, and recently released his latest novel, Fucked By Rock, to splendid critical praise. It is the first book where he really delves into his years as Zodiac Mindwarp in all of its blood-soaked, alcohol and drug fueled, LSD-drenched glory. An invitation to read book excerpts at the Viper Room turned into a tour dates on the east and west coast with Cobalt on board and early-‘90s Love Reaction members Tex on bass and drummer Robbie Vom. The tour was met with much enthusiasm by worshipers and fans alike as the band returned wholeheartedly to their raoring hard rock sound and relived the glory days of being “drunk on stars” and driving a “Cadillac drawn by swans.” Manning stopped by KNAC.COM to chat online with fans and we had a chance to do a little one on one Q&A with the skull spark joker himself on the eve of his west coast dates to discuss his days of thunder as ringleader of one of the baddest bands on the planet. Check it out!!!

I Love TV And I Love T. Rex
I Can See Through Your Skirt
I've Got X-Ray Specks
I Came From The Sky Like A 747
I'm The Bad Boy Baby I Fell Out Of Heaven
Sex Fuhrer Baby I'm A Love Dictator
Blitzkrieg Romance I'm A Cool Dominator

- “Primer Mover”

KNAC.COM: Hey Zodiac! It's so god to have you back, man. I saw you guys back in '88 both times you played Hollywood and you smoked! Now that you're back on the scene and touring, have you thought about doing a new record too?

ZODIAC: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got 10-12 songs recorded and were looking to get something out soon, next year.

KNAC.COM: It seems like the first couple of EPs and Tattooed Beat Messiah were more guitar rock and then the last three records were a bit more industrial and synth-based…

ZODIAC: Well, now we’re going back to being ourselves with the guitar, bass, and drums.

KNAC.COM: Are you going to do stuff from all the records in concert or mainly new songs?

ZODIAC: Mostly early stuff that sounds like could have been done like 10 years ago or so.

KNAC.COM: Most of your old songs tend to be about your cock. What are some of the titles of the new songs?

ZODIAC: “Fucked by Rock,” “King of Love,” “Devil Drives,” “20,000 Women,” “Slutfreak,” “Avalanche”...

KNAC.COM: You wrote a song called “Feed My Frankenstein” that Alice Cooper covered in the Wayne’s World movie. How did that happen?

ZODIAC: One morning I woke up and decided to sing a song about a monster. (laughs) Actually it’s an interesting story that I never told anybody. I was laying in bed listening to the radio and I they had a Motley Crue record and I thought they were singing, “Feed My Frankenstein.” Then when he said the title it was nothing “Feed my Frankenstein.” I thought this is a good title, there’s a song here. So we recorded it and somehow he got a hold of it, which was cool.

KNAC.COM: Did you get to meet Alice?

ZODIAC: We met backstage in London. It was kind like Wayne’s World I think He’s been pretty straight for a long time.

KNAC.COM: Was Alice Cooper one of your inspirations back in the day? It seems like that would be sort of a logical connection.

ZODIAC: He was for me. I was a big fan of Alice when I was a kid. I was a big fan of everything American, really.

KNAC.COM: You can definitely tell there’s a comic book influence in both your music and the artwork on the early singles. Did you do the art work on those records?

ZODIAC: Yeah. I did all that squirrelly stuff.

KNAC.COM Speaking of squirrelly maneuvers, do you think Rob Zombie stole your space age Road Warrior biker look?

ZODIAC: I wasn’t even aware that it was missing.

KNAC.COM: Really?

ZODIAC: I’d better check when I get home.

KNAC.COM: It seems like you kinda came up with that waaay before he made it famous.

ZODIAC: I don’t remember really, probably just a coincidence, you know.

KNAC.COM: When Tattooed Beat Messiah came out in the States it was the height of heavy metal in the ‘80s, you were signed to a major label (Polygram) and toured with Guns N’ Roses. What was that like? How did that work out?

ZODIAC: Basically, what happened is we started off on an independent record label and it was cool. Then we signed to a major and it was completely out of our hands and it there were like two options: were we going to let it break our hearts or were we just going to enjoy the ride? So we just fastened our seat belts.

KNAC.COM: How did that end with them? I mean, there wasn’t a second record with that label…

ZODIAC: No, there wasn’t. Put it this way, we still owe quit a few people a lot of money. I’ll say this, there’s nothing we saw. I mean, we saw some money, but it was all spent on marketing. We were just doing the same thing we always did. It’s kind of weird. I mean, last time we had boats full of jets and stuff and this time we just turn around and buy a guitar and some drumsticks and play. Literally, we flew to New York bought a guitar and a bag of drumsticks and we hired a cab and that’s it.

KNAC.COM: That’s probably closer to when you guys started off on the indie label.

ZODIAC: That’s the way it should’ve been. If we hadn’t been dazzled by the dollars, that would’ve been the way we would’ve done it, I mean, we suddenly had our own checks and different flavored peanuts and chefs everything!

KNAC.COM: You guys had your own chefs?!?!?!

ZODIAC: Yeah, our own chefs.

KNAC.COM: Now when your getting that extravagant, is that stuff that the label is throwing at you guys or did you just demand everything you could and milked ‘em for all they were worth?

ZODIAC: Pretty much. It was sort of, “We want tanks in the videos and we want to do kung fu and win.”

KNAC.COM: …and flying nuns and shooting lasers….

ZODIAC: …or it was like, think that this was our money and we’re spending it and have to pay it back. We didn’t. Ok, spend it. Go for it.

KNAC.COM: Well, how many bands get that opportunity? I mean, we could all probably name great bands that never once had a chance to make a big video or go on the road in America and have chefs in the bus.

ZODIAC: I don’t recommend the chefs. If anyone’s going to do it, don’t have the chefs. Do the rest of it but leave out the chefs.

KNAC.COM: So those are your words of wisdom to up and coming bands? Take what you can get but stay away from the chefs?

ZODIAC: Yup!

Check out more live pictures of Zodiac Mindwarp at Lori Struble’s website http://www.ladyalchemy.com/.