Parenting & Family Quote by Daisy Berkowitz

There is a quiet contrarianism in Berkowitz's admission: he arrived at metal late, not as a birthright but as a chosen language. That matters because metal culture, especially in American suburbs, often runs on early initiation and tribal loyalty. By positioning himself slightly outside the “kids I went to school with,” he frames his relationship to the genre as curiosity rather than inheritance - less about belonging, more about discovery.

The timing is the tell. “When Marilyn Manson formed” becomes a hinge between fandom and authorship: he’s not reminiscing about a scene he grew up in, he’s describing the moment the scene became a tool. “Still excited about approaching music from that angle” reads like a creative thesis statement. Metal isn’t just a sound here; it’s an angle - a lens for exaggeration, confrontation, and theatrical discomfort. That phrasing hints at intention: to use heaviness and shock as an aesthetic strategy, not merely to replicate what came before.

The subtext also pushes back against the myth that extreme music requires lifelong devotion to be “authentic.” Berkowitz suggests the opposite: coming in late can be an advantage, because you aren’t trapped by the genre’s rules. You can treat it like a medium - malleable, borrowable, open to collision with glam, pop, art-school provocation.

Contextually, it situates early Marilyn Manson as a project born from appetite and experimentation, not just darkness. The excitement is key; it implies the band’s original charge wasn’t nihilism, but possibility.