Themes
The band's frontman has discussed his thoughts in retrospect on Smells Like Children within his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, circa 1998:
| “ | It was a perfect preface to an album about abuse: sexual abuse, domestic abuse, drug abuse, psychological abuse. Midway through the record, we included one of the taped confessions we had gathered, from a girl who molested her seven-year-old male cousin. It underscored the subplot of the album, about the most common target of abuse: innocence. I've always liked the Peter Pan idea of being a kid in mind if not in body, and 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. | ” |
Manson has considered the release to be "An album that looks like an album for children that is not for children"; in fact, on the outer rim of the CD label the printed words "Keep this and all drugs away from small children" are visible.
Read more about this topic: Smells Like Children
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)