Where do you think I came up with ‘Sleazegrinder’ in the first place? Like Mark Manning, I found myself in desperate need for an alter-ego, someone to blame the bad shit on. He took seven tabs of acid and weeped as his brains poured out of his ears before the Interstellar cosmic joker Zodiac Mindwarp showed up to save the day and seal Mark Manning’s fate, from art student to Rock God in one bad, late 70’s trip. I only had to stare at the back of the ‘Prime Mover’ record, mesmerized by the gasahol fueled beat poetry crammed into the borders. Sleazegrinder might have been Manning’s rock-speak for the bass guitar, I don’t really remember. To me, it meant I now had free reign to get away with whatever bad craziness was coiled up in my teenage-reptile brain like a King Cobra. Whatever happened next, it simply wasn’t me. It was the other guy, the one with the big mouth and the drinking problem.

Although it was hardly Manning’s only shining moment, ‘Prime Mover’ remains his most infamous piece of work, and with good reason. A sinister laugh, like the Abominable Dr. Phibes drunk on mad science, kicks off the proceedings. And then there’s that riff. Like holy thunder, ripping through the sky and slamming straight into your crotch, a mighty, swaggering thing that defined the Love Reaction’s sound and vision, like the Cult at their most grandiose, only stripped of any neo-romantic soul-warrior posturing, replaced instead with barbaric cruelty and Viking lust, modern day beserkers looking to make necklaces from the ears of the gods themselves. All at once, the Love Reaction raised the bar for just how cool, how menacing, how victorious rock and roll could get. I don’t suppose I’ll live to see the day that somebody tops the bottled hurricane of ‘Prime Mover’, but since it’s 15 years after the fact and I’m still dressed like Zodiac was on the cover of the single, maybe once in a lifetime’s enough.

"Give me some space", he drawled like Telly Savales in ‘Prime Mover’s intro, " I want to spread my disease all over the place." Even if he had died somewhere between there and now, as was often predicted by lonely internet feebs, his virus of raunch-for —all uber hipsterism had already set in among the coolest of criminals everywhere. Every time some glory-ripped axe slinger bashes out a riff that’s nothin’ but muscle, a riff that makes his speaker cabinet tremble and squeal like a bitch; every time some finishing school drop-out of a porn star gushes to a screamy on-screen climax, and the camera lovingly pans up to the twinkling gold crucifix that dangles from her jizz splattered throat; every time some overwrought adolescent would-be poet scribbles down a line that scares him, because it’s actually cosmic, at least to himself; well, that’s the mark of the Tattooed Beat Messiah. As his serial killer counterpart was fond of saying, ‘The Zodiac is with you, always.’

An interview with Mark Manning has nothing to do with nostalgia- nostalgia kills, baby, and Zodiac Mindwarp is far from the rock and roll boneyard, although the gutter is always comfortably close. He’s just had the common sense lacking in most ego stars to stay under the radar, on purpose. Besides, he’s been busy. He has the home life of an American ghetto superstar, after all, with 3 children from 3 ex-wives all vying for attention and child support. And then there are the more aesthetic distractions, like drinking, and poetry. He’s spent months at a time scribbling insane ravings onto rocks to prevent earthquakes, locked himself into obscure English libraries with a bottle of Absinthe, making fast friends with long dead Victorian dandies, perfecting the street thug turned Renaissance man vision that has been his life’s work. Most recently, he’s taken to writing, a speed zone Hunter Thompson in Rimbaud’s trousers. Several books have already been published. The auto-biophrenic speed trial of ‘Crucify Me Again’, the JG Ballard meets Larry Flynt porn savagery of ‘Get Your Cock Out’, and the soon to be released, tell-all-and-deny-everything story of the Love Reaction, ‘Fucked By Rock’, among them. And let’s not forget the time Z, KLF secret agent Bill Drummond, and Elvis Presley saved the world from Martian attack a few years back. And it’s all true, especially the parts that he made up.

With the very real threat of the Love Reaction storming the American shores this fall for a much anticipated return to the rock trenches, I figured it was high time to hunt down the elusive Mr. Manning and soak up some of his bad wisdom. It was no easy task. I started by placing a classified in the NME, the UK music paper. "Sleazy American rock journalist seeks Zodiac Mindwarp for discussions of a revolutionary nature", I wrote. "Any leads will undoubtedly get you laid." The fuse, as Z would say, was lit. A week later, I got an email from some anonymous Mindwarp fan who graced me with Love Reaction guitarist Cobalt Stargazer’s rather obvious e-mail address. After informing Cobalt of my plans, he wrote back, saying simply, "Good news, my friend. We are back. Talk soon."

That was all I heard for a month or two. Then Cobalt wrote back with a phone number, and told me to try it. He didn’t bother to tell me whose number it was, however. Through the miracle of a corporate phone account, my girlfriend discovered it belonged to Hayley, the affable editor at Codex books, Mark Manning’s UK publisher. She provided his cell phone number. And so, the circuitous journey ended on a rainy Sunday afternoon. As the minutes ticked away, so did the any hope of paying the rent next month. An hour long call to England is financial suicide for a guy that makes $8.50 an hour when he’s not at the dog track, or selling fake ecstasy to teenagers, or writing hard bondage stories for ‘Latex Whore’ magazine. But I found myself wanting to just keep the fucking tape rolling. Not because I wanted to soak up Z’s bad advice, I mean, I’m 32 years old, I have plenty of my own. No, what was really happening here is one of those super-real moments when you can actually see the psycho-spiritual landscape around you changing, distorting into a new, brighter, braver place. I mean, there was chance that I was wrong all these years, that rock is merely a distraction, and not some palpable, God given life force that’s dragged me through defeat and victory for 3 decades.

Any fears were dashed immediately. I was right all along. From across the Atlantic, the great and terrible Mark Manning inhaled deeply from a joint. "So what do you want to talk about?" he asked me with a roguish chuckle. "Rock and roll? I know all about that…"

The first matter to attend to, however, was his Cockney accent. As thick as a fridge- cooled bottle of Karo syrup, my mind was in fifth gear, desperately trying to decipher his words as he graciously asked me how things were going on my side of the pond. I wondered what the hell happened to the fake American accent he’d display in the past, the one he picked up from watching Kojak as a child. "I can do that again, if you really want me to", he laughs, slipping into some sub-Texan cowboy drawl. "Rock and Roll is an American thing, really", he says, returning to his home tongue. "So it sounded stupid when I talked about rock in this voice. It’s my speaking voice, though." At this point, I’ve actually got the hang of it anyway, settling in to the slinky, low toned groove of his rap. Yank ingenuity.

Although he has many guises, all with different sinister agendas, Mark will always be remembered for his rock star alter ego. I ask him if he remembers the day Mark Manning became Zodiac Mindwarp. "I think I was 13", he recalls. " I knew what rock and roll was already, and I just decided to become it. Since then, everything I do is rock and roll." All he needed was some co-conspirators. After rounding up a suitable gang of delinquents, the rest was easy. As he wrote in ‘Crucify Me Again’, " It was another place, another time. I’d given up on the notion of being a crazy drunken poet and settled on just being a crazy drunk instead. I was a lousy poet, but an excellent drunk. An industrious manager named David Balfe thought that the poetry shit wasn’t important and figured that I just might be crazy enough to know the way to the fabled Goldmine. He bought me a Fender pick axe, a white one like Jimi Hendrix used to have, and told me to get digging." What he eventually struck, while maybe not gold, was a precious metal indeed.

‘Tell the government, the Love Reaction wants the world’ the band announced on their first album, ‘High Priest of Love’. As if they were already the biggest band on the planet. "Well, we were", Mark chuckles. "We still are." When the Love Reaction first hit the streets in the mid 80’s, they were an overnight sensation. The UK music tabloids had found a new messiah. "Well, we nailed it", Mark explains. "In LA, they were still wearing spandex and hairspray, but rock and roll is criminal. It’s crime with a 12 bar beat. That’s what we were about. I think the hip-hoppers said the same thing, only without the tunes, really." Mark laughs. "hip hop is rock and roll without a tune."

"Basically, we were anti-social creatures", he continues, explaining the Love Reaction’s origins. "Pissed off that we were surrounded by a world of bullshit. We’re supposed to be ashamed of the way we are, ashamed of being scumbags, but I think it’s quite good being a scumbag, actually. It’s cool to just be who you are." The scumbags brought with them heady messages wrapped in ham-fisted innuendo, like a minister of propaganda spelling things wrong on purpose. "I’m aware that things mean things don’t mean things", he says, when discussing the Love Reaction’s twisty lyrical bent. "Part of my fun is cryptology and puzzles. I’m a bit of head-fucker. It’s how I get my jollies." He chortles like a self-satisfied serial killer. "Head-fucker supreme, that’s me."

Then, of course, there was the look. The Love Reaction was the pinnacle of rock and roll fashion, motorcycle outlaw meets ‘Nam chic. On threads alone, you couldn’t get any more rock than Zodiac Mindwarp. "We have to thank Sonny Barger for that one", Mark admits. The Love Reaction almost could pass for Hell’s Angels, except for a few minor adjustments. "Longer hair, better looking", he notes.

Shameless, handsome devils on a wild search for kicks, the Love Reaction headed for America, supporting Gunsn’Roses on their endless "Appetite For Destruction" tour. "That was interesting", Mark remembers. "What was that cat’s name?" ‘Axl’, I remind him. "Yeah, with the funny little trousers", he laughs. It was widely reported at the time that the two camps did not exactly get along well. "It’s true, we didn’t. I thought they were shit, really. Cobalt kind of liked them, but I thought they were rubbish. Bunch of LA poofters." Zodiac was fond of expressing this opinion on stage at the time. "Well, history proved me right, didn’t it?" Mark rhetorically asks. "He was just a bum from Nowhere, USA, that got lucky somewhere down the line, and he never got over it. Bunch of money, and he didn’t even know how to spend it." Mark seems to know this story well. "It happens sometimes, talent-less people get money. Look at Elton John."

The Love Reaction saw themselves as a breed apart from the other bands they toured with, a bit more clever than the rest. "I came from an art background, really, and it was more of a conceptual thing with us. We weren’t just a bunch of rock and rollers from nowhere. It was a piece of art, like a painting or some writing. I just had this idea of putting together this rock and roll band, and it just took over my life. And it could have been a poem, or a painting, but it was a rock and roll band. And it was brilliant", he beams. "I loved it, and I still do. But it’s only a piece of it all to me. I know that’s what people remember me by, though, and I still can’t believe it." He recounts a recent occurrence with one of his children. "My 13 year old daughter found the ‘Prime Mover’ video in her mother’s trunk, or somewhere, and she didn’t know it was her dad. She’s into, like Eminem, and she’s like, ‘Wow, this is like friggin’ Eminem shit!’, you know with the school teacher’s heads being blown off, or whatever. She dug it. So the shit goes on, you know."

Mark obviously wants to move on to other, more sublime victories, but I still want to know how he wrote ‘Prime Mover’. After all, rock and roll is still trying to catch up with it. "Kobain was next in line to write it, I think", Mark says. "But he had that bitch, didn’t he? She fucked that all up. By the way, I don’t take any responsibility for Limp Bizkit", he says parenthetically. I’ve got nothing to do with that shit."

That much is obvious. In fact, Zodiac’s low profile in the 90’s is one of the only explanations for the siege of bad rock and roll in America. Conversely, in parts of the world where his star never dimmed, rock has an entirely different face. In Scandinavia, the perpetually dark home of bands like Hardcore Superstar, Backyard Babies, Turbonegro, and Gluecifer, ‘Prime Mover’ never went out of rotation. Although amused at it’s lingering effect, Mark doesn’t claim any genius alchemy to the song’s construction. "We just nailed it", he says. "And we did it in a really sneaky way. Maybe not consciously sneaky, but we got away with it, and nobody really knows how." He laughs his throaty, super villain laugh. "You won’t find it in the books", he says cryptically, "but anybody that knows about rock and roll knows about the documentation of that". I ask him if it has anything to do with his famed theory of ‘creative plagiarism’. Another chuckle. "Absolutely. It’s all material, you know. It’s all just clay."

I ask Mark if, even during the height the Love Reaction’s campaign of excess at all costs, he always had a clear delineation of where Mark Manning ended, and Zodiac Mindwarp began. "Completely. I mean, can you imagine if Vincent Furnier was Alice Cooper all the time, walking down the street in make-up and killing babies?" Well, it is an amusing thought. " You won’t find me out shagging chicks, you’ll find me at the library, pouring over 18^th century grimoires. That’s how I get my kicks these days." Still, Mark must run into people on the street that expect a little rock star debauchery out of him. "No way", he informs me. "I’m a master of disguise, I wear glasses, for fuck’s sake. I look nothing like the guy you see on stage or in pictures in my every day life, I look more like a librarian."

"If someone asks us to do a gig, and they seem cool, we’ll play it", Mark says when I ask him about what’s going on with the band these days. "The Love Reaction never split, really, we’ve always been going along, me and Cobalt. Robbie’s on drums, and Texxy boy’s on as well, he’s an LA boy. We do shit, but the thing is, we rock. People seem to put us under the guise of record contracts and things, but really we’re just a bunch of guys that just like to rock. It happens when it happens. Rock and roll is all about believing in yourself, and me and Cobalt still believe in ourselves. I mean, the reason that people know about the Love Reaction in the first place is because the money people got their hooks in", he explains. "That what got us out there, but it was never our motivation to be some industry thing. All that merely amused us. If some guy in a bar says, ’I want you guys to play, I’ll pay for you to fly here, or drive here’, then we’ll play. I mean, how cool is that? No tours, no money, that’s how we like to do it. Just show up and rock, man."

Such a casual approach to the business of rock belies the perception, at least of American fans, of the Love Reaction’s struggle to keep the huns at bay at the gates of the sweaty palace of rock, the last men standing in the battle to keep real rock and roll alive. Turns out it was never quite the blood ballet we thought it was, out there on the frontlines. "That perception is all from magazines and such", Mark says, "but really, the Love Reaction is just me and Cobalt and a guitar, looking for someplace to rock. If there’s cats making money off it from the back, that’s irrelevant, really." I mention to him the bizarre letters circulating on the internet that he’d written over the years, letters that added to pathos of the Love Reaction myth. In one, he wrote, in part, "Peter and John prepare the Last Supper. The agony, Christ is betrayed with a kiss. The bearded white gent tosses fairy tales and fiction into a turbulent cauldron of smart monkeys trying to unravel the universe with chainsaws and mathematics. I remember him long ago, when I was Walt Whitman."

"I used to get drunk at Cobalt’s house and write stuff like that." He laughs at the perceived drama of it all. "I mean, to get into all that, like us against ‘the business’, it’s all bollocks. We’re nobody’s monkeys, and we’re not money junkies either. They never bought me, basically", he says, when talking about his dealings with the record industry, "And I never kissed ass, either. Besides, we always had other things going on. I had the writing, and Cobalt, he…" Mark pauses. "Well, I won’t get into what Cobalt’s into. Let’s just say it’s other things."

One of the best bits of Zodiac lore I’d heard in recent years was about the time he saved us human sinners from imminent destruction at the hands of otherworldly forces. Upon hearing that the Martians, or some other wrecking gang of aliens, planned on shattering Earth with laser beams, Z rushed to the North Pole, placing a Velvet Elvis on the exact spot they planned to mount their attack, warding off cosmic evil with rock and roll. As we are all still here, apparently, his plan worked. "I’ll tell you exactly what it was", Mark begins. " I ended up with this chick, and she kind of insisted I hang up my leather trousers, basically. There was no way I was going to do that, end my rocking career, and say, ‘ok, I’m going to go job hunting.’ So I’m thinking, what is rock and roll? Well, rock and roll is Elvis Presley. So where can I take it that’s the furthest place on the earth? The North Pole. So, it was very symbolic. Foolishly, I thought that would end my having anything to do with rock." Obviously, the plan had some sort of flaw. "It was a serious gesture", he says, "It just didn’t fucking work. You just can’t kill that shit, man. If rock and roll is in you, it’s in you." Cursed by rock. "It’s no curse, man. I love rock and roll." And while the true story may have nothing to do about aliens, it’s got everything to about the universe, at least Zodiac’s, where everything is connected by a blue suede sneer, and Instant Mythology is the order of the day. It’s no wonder he’s taken to writing, the ultimate lair of the divine liar.

"Yeah, so I started writing", Mark says. "I could have done anything, I could have gone looking for a job, but I’m a rocker, that’s what I do." I ask him if he approaches the pen any differently than the microphone. "Whether I’m writing, or rocking, or talking on the phone, it’s just another extension of what I am", he explains. It’s no different, it’s just what I’m into right now. And people seem to dig it, which is cool." I ask him how many he’s written so far, as his books aren’t the easiest to find stateside. "I’ve written them all", he jokes. "Crucify Me Again’, that’s on Cordex. ‘Get Your Cock Out’, that one’s a bit of a joke, a porno thing, it’s from Creation. ‘Bad Wisdom’ is on Penguin, and then there’s the one that’s coming out in October. It’s called ‘Fucked By Rock, the Unspeakable Confessions of Zodiac Mindwarp’. I’m quite proud of this one. It’s about the band, and all the shit that goes on, being in a rock band and on the road. It’s kind of like that Motley Crue book, ‘Dirt’, only with an overview, and some intelligence." We both laugh. "It’s not just a list of drugs that you’ve taken. It’s got insight, and there’s no sort of remorse, or anything. It’s just about what happened, and what I did, and what I learned. I have no remorse, really. It was cool, a real groovy time. I wouldn’t want to do it again, though. "

"It’s a different world, really", Mark says when I ask him what it’s like rubbing elbows in literary circles. "For one thing, rock and rollers don’t really read." Books don’t elicit roars of approval from a mob of frenzied fans, either. "You’re right, there’s no immediate feedback like in rock and roll, but I like writing. It’s really been taken as literature, these books, like apart from the band thing. I’ve gotten good reviews, and people buy the books, so it’s cool. Rock and roll is really my bag, though. I’d never give it up entirely."

With the publication of ‘Fucked By Rock’ this October, Mark will have the opportunity to show off both talents. The book’s release will coincide with some eagerly awaited stateside gigs on the West Coast. "We’re doing a little tour, like 10 dates", he tells me." We’re playing the Viper Room, the Roxy- LA, San Francisco, all those places in between. Cobalt’s handling all of that. I just turn up, you know." I ask Mark if he imagines that these shows will be triumphant occasions. " The promoter seems to think so", he says, nonchalantly. " I don’t really have an over view of it, I don’t really think in those terms. I just cruise, baby."

‘Fucked By Rock’ purports to be the true story of the Love Reaction. In Mark Manning’s world, however, truth has a tendency to change sides rapidly. "You know how I write, man, I write auto-biographical lies", he snickers. " I think lies tell the truth more than the truth does anyway." But how will the Love Reaction emerge from the pages of the book , better or worse than Motley Crue did from their tell-all? "We’re going to have to hide out for awhile", he reveals. "We tried to be elegantly wasted, tried to have some grace to our debauchery, that was really our thing. But we were young, you know."

Having taken successful stabs at music, art, and writing, you begin to wonder if there’s anything Mark Manning can’t do. " I can’t act", he admits. "I tried, and I can’t pull it of, I can’t be a nerd." Of course, one could argue that Zodiac Mindwarp is a rather grand and complicated acting job. "No, that’s me", he laughs." I mean it’s terrible, it’s some deep shit, but it’s not an act. I tried to do some bits on TV, or whatever, but the acting thing just didn’t work. I’m either Mark, or Zodiac, that’s it, there’s no in-between. I can’t be anyone else." Luckily, between the two, there’s more than enough to work with. Even without a script.

As we wind things down, I remind Mark that it’s a very short list of people that can save rock and roll, if called on to do so. And Zodiac Mindwarp is always at the top of that list. "I take that duty quite seriously, to be honest", Mark tell me. "Rock and roll is important. I think it’s up to me and Iggy." I add Ian Astbury to the list, although it takes a couple of seconds for Mark to warm up to the idea. "Yeah", he finally decides. "Ian’s pretty serious about it. There’s a few of us that really do believe in the power of rock and roll, and we keep quiet about it .We do believe in it, and we’re down there, somewhere. We’re the cagiest motherfuckers, you won’t catch us on tape, but we’re there, man, we’re there."

As we say our good -byes, I think of one more question to ask Mark, an important one. Is Zodiac Mindwarp a hero, or a villain? A final cackle. "Zodiac Mindwarp is the grooviest of the groovy." Just as I expected.