Proof Provocative

So you want to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.

The best advice this weekend, with apologies to the Byrds: “Just get yourself to the Pond and learn how it’s done.”

Take a notebook and a good set of binoculars, and stay glued to Courtney Love of Hole and Marilyn Manson, the two ‘90s rock figures most notable for agitating their way into the public’s consciousness.

They took opposite paths to stardom, but with this common grain: a knack for attention-grabbing provocation and the gumption and drive to turn adversity into fame.

Manson, a canny imitator, has taken cues from rock stars past. Alice Cooper, with his mix of trashy androgyny and horror-rock theatrics, was the model for Manson’s breakthrough album, “Antichrist Superstar.” The new album, “Mechanical Animals,” takes its sound and sense of decadent, world-weary glamour from David Bowie. It’s a potentially smart progression. Playing the Bowie card is like plunking down the ante toward a possible jackpot of a long and developing career.

Manson’s “Antichrist Superstar” creation had a Cooper-style gimmickry--he played a rock ‘n’ roll Visigoth out to overthrow all that’s considered decent by exposing it as a sham. Fundamentalist Christian groups blew his act far out of proportion and tried to get venues to ban his shows. Manson went from MTV saturation to pop-cultural omnipresence. But once an antichrist has had his way with the world, what to do for an encore?

The answer, on “Mechanical Animals,” is to declare the world he’s conquered a disappointment that’s not worth having. Manson gets to change from a one-dimensional hellhound to a weird but wounded composite of several Bowie characters from the ‘70s.

Vulnerability enters the picture along with rage and debauchery; maybe Manson will move ahead toward a more balanced vision that accepts the fallen world and tries to fan some flickers of idealism.

While Manson follows a road map to stardom, Love is an original who makes it up as she goes along--including live performances that always seem on the verge of something unpredictable, unscripted, unpremeditated and possibly chaotic.

There is no show-business precedent for what happened to Love five years ago, when her voice-of-a-generation husband renounced the gig with a self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound. What followed immediately was her own ascension from a flamboyant, fisticuffs-prone loudmouth figure of gossip who could be dismissed as a hanger-on to a legitimate creative force.

Love rose on her merits: “Live Through This” was a bracing onslaught of gut-spilling feelings expressed in rough, vibrant, punk-fueled garage rock.

She is an easy target. There’s her past addiction to drugs, her never-ending craving for attention, her combat with rock rivals and journalists, her cultivation of just the right rock-star contacts and, of course, the whole Cobain entanglement.

Some blame her for pushing Cobain to his downfall, or failing to rescue him, or even having him killed; the film “Kurt & Courtney” absurdly pursues a conspiracy theory.

Ultimately, Love is a poignant figure. A sad, shunted-about childhood, in which she was repeatedly exiled as inconvenient or incorrigible, no doubt gave rise to a personality that needs constant attention.

The psychic engine driving her toward stardom is a V-8, if not a Saturn 5, and it should be no surprise that Love--again in the face of derision from alterna-rock purists--has sought to intensify her hold on the spotlight with film acting, a glamorous and healthy look in place of punk rock wreckage and, with “Celebrity Skin,” a more tailored, mainstream-accessible pop-rock sound.

The album muses about stardom and the gamesmanship involved and serves as her requiem for Cobain. The fury and confusion of “Live Through This” gives way to an elegiac tone.

Love’s naked need to project herself beyond her limitations is evident in the gap between her vocal ability--she has a distinctive, but one-dimensional, leathery bray--and the more diverse, pliant and inventive standard set by such alterna-rock models as Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to long-term stardom that faces Love and Manson alike is that she, in her unorthodox way, and he, following set conventions, both suffer from the narrow preoccupations of the stardom-obsessed.

The fundamental subject for both is rock ‘n’ roll, celebrity and what the alchemy of those two ingredients has done to them. As the decade turns, it will be interesting to see whether placid times endure, allowing stars to remain famous mainly for how they manipulate their fame (Madonna being the hallmark), or whether a more charged, less passive social climate will develop, requiring our pop heroes to reflect the deeper currents in our lives rather than catering to our yen for glamour, gossip, spectacle and diversion.

Marilyn Manson, Hole and Monster Magnet play at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Arrowhead Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. $35. (714) 704-2500.