Marilyn Manson found it hard to admit his career needed a transformation.
Speaking to Metal Hammer magazine, the 43-year-old shock rocker said: ''I'd make things and I'd turn them into the profiteers, the record label, Interscope or whoever, and they would do something with it that was not only as smart as what I would do with it, it diluted it.
''They tried to dull it down, basically. I didn't even understand why they wanted me in the first place. I'm not bitter about it, I'm just pointing out that they were incompetent salesmen. So I did my best to get dropped from my label.
"It was like starting over. I mean, it wasn't like I was scrounging around for another record deal; people were throwing a lot of money around, but what is money? It's just something that allows you to continue doing what you like to do in life. I don't care about money.''
The Beautiful People singer further explained that he treated new record Born Villain as a comeback and now thinks his career is back on track.
''I had a period before making this record where I didn't like who I was," Manson says. "And I had to admit to myself that I had to make a 'comeback'. And that's tough to swallow, to say that you weren't as good as you were. And I wasn't. So I fixed it.''
