How do two best friends cement their brotherly bond when one is the kind of real-life movie star who once claimed Hunter S. Thompson as a mentor, and the other is a goth-rocker who furnishes his home with artwork by John Wayne Gacy? By getting elaborate matching tattoos needle-pounded into their skin, of course! Marilyn Manson confesses to Rolling Stone that this is what he and Johnny Depp have gone ahead and done on two separate occasions.
They apparently understand each other as few others can. Most literally, they're both low-talking mumblers who have found that they don't need words to communicate with each other. "We mumble like we're a mumbling chorus, and we finish sentences with hand gestures," says Manson. On a deeper level, they share certain fascinations and predilections. At one point, they tried to buy the gun that Hitler killed himself with. And neither can go to sleep unless a TV is on, with Manson's preference being "really loud and violent things."
In addition to inkling, mumbling, and Nazi antique bartering, the two occasionally perform onstage together—the most recent time being this past Halloween at the Roxy in Los Angeles.