Stately Wayne Manor

Not to be confused with Bruce Wayne's home, stately Wayne Manor.

Stately Wayne Manor is a writer/musician/performer, best known globally for his participation in professional wrestling. Having thrice been touted as "The World's Most Conceited Man’"[1] in The Weekly World News and The Sun, the letters in Stately's tribute site URL, SWMSWM.com, stand for Stately Wayne Manor's Site to Worship Me.

The "fledging rock star" years

Dubbed a virtuoso rock drummer by a Philadelphia-area newspaper, self-taught Manor also became competent enough at songwriting, synthesizer, various percussion instruments, harmonica, vocals and electric bass to perform each discipline onstage; and wrote three articles for Modern Drummer magazine. He also performed in a public demonstration with synthesizer inventor Dr. Robert Moog.

Stately is one of the "Sigma Kids," a group of eleven (among dozens) of David Bowie devotees who kept a ten-day vigil outside the studio and band’s hotel during the recording of Young Americans rewarded afterwards with an exclusive listening party hosted by Bowie, a move so unprecedented, it was documented in Rolling Stone magazine. In 2007, a special CD/DVD re-release of the album features Manor visible in four photos in the enclosed booklet. Photos from the event also appear in books about Bowie and the original supermodel, Gia, as well as on the SWM website ‘Photos’ archive.[2] The May 2014 issue of Britain's Mojo magazine, in an article chronicling the YA sessions, contained two photos from said booklet, including a never-before-released color version of one, it capturing Stately in the foreground.

Inspired by the Sigma experience to try his own hand as front man, Manor assembled a short-lived band, recruiting bassist Gail Ann Dorsey who, coincidentally enough, now regularly tours with Bowie.

In the latter half of the Seventies, Stately became deeply immersed in the emerging punk rock music scene. He was a regular and occasional performer at Philadelphia’s Hot Club, and frequented NYC venues such as CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, regularly sleeping on the couch of future recording-engineer superstar Bob Clearmountain while in New York. Manor was also slated to drum behind former Sex Pistol Sid Vicious on the Philly date of the latter’s aborted "solo tour." Additionally, he wrote the liner notes for the aborted Cheetah Chrome debut solo album on Polish Records. (Stately did receive a 'Thank You' on that label's release "Siren" by Ronnie Spector.)

The professional wrestling years

Fueled by the advent and aggression of punk rock and his interests in performing—he made his public debut at age five—but disillusioned with the music business, Manor regained interest in a childhood hobby, professional wrestling, and was particularly drawn towards the ‘‘heel’’ (‘bad guy’) characters.

Never content to merely observe, but lacking the bulk required to participate in matches, Manor eventually broke into the bonebending business as a feature writer in 1984 and, in 1986, as a pro-heel columnist for Wrestling World magazine, his highly provocative "Stately States" inspiring hate mail from around the globe. Having established himself as The Sultan Of Insultin’ for his blistering attacks on the mat heroes and those who support them, Manor expanded into color commentating, managing grapplers, performing in-ring skits and ghostwriting wisecracks for the performers. Though not publicly accredited, a number of Manor’s column scenarios and zingers have been ‘re-originated’ in the WWE, TNA and WCW.

Manor was the very first color commentator for the ECW promotion (in their pre-Extreme days), though he has nothing positive to say about what they later became. He is also the first American magazine writer to give international exposure to Sabu, Rey Misterio, Sean Waltman, John Cena, Sandman and Victoria/Tara (Lisa Varon); and in the early Nineties, long before the Texan joined the WWF and become known as Stone Cold, Stately publicly proclaimed, "If I could buy stock in any (active) wrestler, it would be Steve Austin."

On the independent circuit, Manor has written and performed skits with WWE Hall Of Famers Jerry Lawler and Jimmy Snuka, once enraging a Northern audience by publicly apologizing for the Civil War to Memphis-native Lawler(!) By bizarre coincidence, Manor was at one point also scheduled to perform with the pro wrestler named Sid Vicious.

During 1993, in the midst of his 17-year tenure with Wrestling World’, Manor debuted a second villain-praising column, that one in Britain's Power Slam. It too provoked a great deal of controversy among readers. With the uninterrupted streak of pieces in WW and PS, he is the longest-running magazine columnist in professional wrestling.

Other media sightings

print

When not denigrating shirtless mammoths, Stately takes on the general public via ‘’On Manor's Mind’’ rants for the alternative set, and rages about inane celebrities in his SNAPS—Suckas Needing A Pimp Slap—Of The Month column.

A lifelong fan of obscure so-bad-they're-good films, Stately also authors ‘’Manor On Movies’’, an affectionate homage to the genre, and one of the earliest columns of its kind still regularly published. It is available in hard copy and on a few websites besides its own, e.g. The Spinning Image.[3] His long-term side project is a book dedicated to the horror/sci-fi end of what Manor has dubbed "junkfilms." As a result, he has befriended such notable screen veterans as James Karen, John Saxon, Walker Edmiston and Francine York.

Other journals that have carried Stately’s work, under the Manor moniker or otherwise, include Inside Karate, Video Review, People (Australia), Filmfax, Tuber’s Voice (the originators of the term ‘couch potato’), Comic Release, Carbon 14, and Brutarian, to name a few. In addition, he has repeatedly scored ‘Dishonorable Mention’ in the annual international Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where the challenge is to compose the worst possible opening line for a novel.

(Trivia note: Stately wrote for the same high school newspaper as Tina Fey.)

radio and television

In character, Manor has guested on countless radio programs throughout the US and Canada, including morning drive time shows in Philadelphia and New York City. During the Nineties "Wrestling Radio" boom, Stately set records for Most Guest Appearances on at least two stations, including topping a mark held by notorious talker Jim Cornette.

Manor was once booked on Sneak Previews Goes Video—an Eighties reworking of the popular movie-review program—to discuss wrestling videos, but the segment was red-lighted by PBS executives who considered the subject matter "too lowbrow."

video

Stately can be heard providing color commentary on two volumes from the Pro Wrestling From Japan series, Bam Bam Bigelow And Friends, and Bruiser Brody Memorial, both featuring the American stars as they toured with the New Japan Pro Wrestling promotion in the late Eighties. A few tapes of his work with primordial ECW were briefly marketed, as well.

External links

References

  1. ↑ http://swmswm.com/tabloidclipsone.htm tabloid clips
  2. ↑ http://swmswm.com/sigmakids.htm SWM site Young Americans photo page
  3. ↑ http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/ The Spinning Image website