Hmm...
Marilyn Manson. Here, at the ass end of the twentieth
century, just the name can be almost guranteed to provoke
a reaction - adoration, excitement, anger, fear - it all
depends on which side of the fence you stand. The man,
the band, the all-American Antichrist; reviled by
right-wing fanatics and pro-censorship campaigners, yet
attracting a legion of loyal fans and flavor of the month
freaks along the way. Whatever you think of Marilyn
Manson, it's hard to ignore them. But what is it that
makes a shock-rock band from South Florida into the rock
world's most charismatic stars? Here, for your
entertainment, a fairy tale for Spooky Kids.
I'm not going to try to discuss Manson's childhood or
personal life here. His autobiography, which I am sure
you have all read, is the best guide to that. Nor is this
a dissertation on what Marilyn Manson mean to me. This is
a history of the band, and I will try to keep it as
brief, informative and accurate as I can. But like all
fairy tales, it has to start this way - once upon a time
there was a little boy from Canton, Ohio, whose name was
Brian Warner...
The future Marilyn Manson was born in Ohio on 5 January,
1969, the only child of Hugh and Barbara Warner. By now
the world is familiar with his childhood discoveries in
his grandfather's porn-filled basement, and his failure
to conform at Canton's Heritage Christian School. He grew
into a rather awkward teenager, with a love of heavy
metal and a talent for writing. With his already
unconventional nature and burgeoning skills as a
businessman of dubious repute, selling forbidden rock
albums and home-made comics to his fellow students, these
things would, in time, make the dreams he had of becoming
a rock star come true.
The young Manson's first stage experience provides a
fitting introduction to the controversy yet come -
playing Jesus in a school play at the tender age of six,
he found himself naked in front of the entire school when
the towel he was sporting as a costume was ripped off
him. It took him many years to overcome the stage fright
the trauma instilled in him.
Shortly after he graduated high school in Ohio, his
family relocated to South Florida, where he began to
submit stories and poems for publication, and to write
for local magazines, most notably 25th Parallel
(no longer in existence), under various names. He began
to hang out at the Squeeze club in Fort Lauderdale, and
to regularly perform there - not as a singer, at first,
but as a poet. He gathered together the musicians that
would form Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids' first
line-up at this time - Brian Tutunick (Olivia
Newton-Bundy), a friend from theatre class; Scott Putesky
(Daisy Berkowitz) who Manson met at a party; and Perry
Pandrea (short-lived original keyboardist Zsa Zsa Speck).
Drums were provided by Berkowitz's drum machine.
He also met Jeordie White (later to become Twiggy
Ramirez), in the record store where White then worked,
and Stephen Bier (Madonna Wayne Gacy/'Pogo') and Brad
Stewart (Gidget Gein), at this time, although they would
not be included in the band's first line-up.
The band's first show was at Churchill's Hideaway in
Miami in late 1989, and saw Manson taking the stage in a
Marilyn Monroe t-shirt with a Manson style swastika drawn
on the star's forehead. The band apparently opened with
one of Manson's favorite poems, 'The Telephone'. Manson's
car broke down on the way back to Fort Lauderdale after
the show, and he celebrated his first stage appearance as
the future Antichrist Superstar by waiting for a tow
truck until the following morning.
Speck and Bundy quickly left the line-up, and were
replaced by Gacy and Gein (who Manson had lured from
another local band); and Marilyn Manson and the Spooky
Kids began to play regularly around the South Florida
area, rapidly gaining a reputation for their outrageous
stage antics and props, and their exciting and original
music and philosophy. By 1990, they were notorious
throughout South Florida, and already had a solid fan
base. They were shocking and spectacular, with a dark
sense of humor, and their stage shows were equally
impressive (and often dangerous!), with props ranging
from chainsaws to flaming lunchboxes and a Lite-Brite set
spelling out the legend 'Anal Fun', incorporating
challenging performance art. All of these things had far
more significance than just shock value, representing
ideas and concepts that would become central to the
Manson philosophy; but then, as now, many people chose to
misinterpret them.
They made several demo tapes, the debut 'Meat Beat
Cleaver', 'Big Black Bus', 'Grist-O-Line' and 'Snuffy's
VCR', and in the summer of 1990, they opened for Nine
Inch Nails in Miami. It would prove to be one of the most
important events in the band's career.
By July, 1990, drummer Freddy Streithorst (Sara Lee
Lucas) had replaced Daisy's drum machine, completing the
band's line-up. Lucas's joining of the family was
announced in the newsletter, 'The Family Trip to
Mortville' ('where junkies, queers and killers live scot
free!'). Lucas was credited, suitably enough, with 'baked
goods, percussion'.
The band's profile and acclaim grew, through the fall of
1990 and 1991, with the release of two more demos, 'After
School Special' and 'Lunchbox', and the production of the
band's first promotional t-shirts and stickers. Manson
began to get radio airplay for tracks from the demo
tapes, and the 'Marilyn Manson Family Intervention
Hotline ' was set up, providing a telephone information
service for fans. Marilyn Manson's first CD appearance
came in 1991, with 'White Knuckles' and 'Same Strange
Dogma' featuring on the compilation 'Funnel Zone'; a
limited release of only 5,000 copies on German label
Dossier, aimed at the European market.
February 1, 1992 saw them play the 'Miami Rocks' East
Coast Music Forum, a showcase for Florida bands, and by
summer 1992 they had been nominated as Band of the Year
and Best Hard Alternative Band at the South Florida
Slammy Awards. Jeordie White's then-current band,
Amboog-A-Lard, also received a number of nominations, and
he won Best Rhythm Guitarist. August 1992 saw the band's
name being shortened to Marilyn Manson (they gave their
last performance as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids on
1 August, 1992), and their popularity and notoriety
increasing further still. They had released a further
demo, 'The Family Jams', and their last self-made
cassette, 'Refrigerator', was to come in early 1993.
In May 1993 Marilyn Manson became the first band to be
signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing label, having been
courted by a number of other labels, including Madonna's
Warner Bros. off-shoot Maverick. The two had built a
friendship, having first met when Manson interviewed
Reznor some years before, and the band were perfectly
suited to Reznor's ideas for his label. The 1993 Slammies
saw Marilyn Manson winning two awards, for Best Song
('Dope Hat') and Band of the Year.
The band began work on 'Portrait of an American Family'
at Criteria Studios in Miami, but the first set of
recordings, produced by Roli Mossiman, proved
disappointing to the band. Mossiman was dismissed, and
Reznor took over as executive producer, heading to LA's
Record Plant and the infamous Sharon Tate house, scene of
the real Manson family's most notorious murders in 1969,
which Trent was living in. Nicknamed 'Le Pig', this
strange setting fulfilled Marilyn's fantasy of recording
there, and added an extra touch of spookiness to the
recording.
Although the album was originally scheduled for 1993, it
was not released until July 1994, due to the problems
with mixing and Time-Warner (who owned a 50% interest in
Interscope, Nothing's parent company) executives' concern
about the album's artwork, which featured bloody
Polaroids taken by Manson, and a nude family photograph
of the singer, aged six (check out the official website
to see this, it's very sweet!), and legal problems over
the adaptation of Charles Manson lyrics, and it was
preceded by the first single, 'Get Your Gunn', on 9 June.
By this time Gein's heroin addiction had forced his
ejection from the line-up, despite having played bass on
the album's tracks, and he had been replaced by Manson's
long-time friend and co-conspirator Jeordie White, now
renamed Twiggy Ramirez.
The album's release in Britain saw an unsuccessful
attempt by the Church of England Synod to have it banned,
a precursor to the hysteria that would follow the release
of 'Antichrist Superstar' and the 'Dead to the World'
tour.
The new line-up played a number of club dates in the
early summer of 1994, and hosted a listening party for
the forthcoming album at the Squeeze club in Fort
Lauderdale on 29 June, and headlined the 1994 Slammie
Awards a few days later. They won Band of the Year, and
Manson himself Best Vocalist, getting a free tattoo from
sponsors Outrageous Tattoos for the achievement. When the
album hit the record stores on 12 July, it was a fitting
tribute to the band's four-year development.
The band played a handful of warm up dates before hitting
the road in August with Nine Inch Nails' 'Self Destruct'
tour, sharing the bill with the Jim Rose Circus and Hole.
Although 'POAAF' had only been out for a month, the band
were already attracting fans all over America. The tour
was wild and chaotic, and the backstage antics have now
become legendary. The tour saw several events that have
now passed into Manson folklore - Manson's meeting with
Traci Lords, the banning of the band from playing at the
Delta Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah, by local Mormon
groups and Manson's appearance on-stage, shredding the
Book of Mormon - and Manson's first meeting with founder
of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey.
Manson had been interested in Satanism for a number of
years, and had included LaVey's 'The Devil's Notebook' on
his required reading list for Spooky Kids in the band's
1994 'Reality Transmission M1' newsletter in the fall of
1994. He had approached LaVey about playing theremin on
tracks on 'POAAF', and LaVey invited him to his house in
San Francisco in October 1994. It was a meeting that
would mean a lot to Manson, and that saw him ordained by
LaVey as a Reverend of the Church of Satan.
November 1994 saw the band returning to Florida with the
tour, and Manson infamously performing fellatio on NIN's
guitarist, Robin Finck, on stage. The tour began to wind
up along the East Coast, and it's final show, at The
Spectrum in Philadelphia, was a night of unprecedented
mayhem, ending with the Manson troupe being forced to
perform doused in baby powder and salsa and then being
'kidnapped' by NIN's security and dumped, now handcuffed
and covered in whipped cream, in the middle of downtown
Philadelphia, with only the keys to the handcuffs and a
dollar to get back to the venue with. Luckily, a group of
college kids rescued them and returned them to The
Spectrum, and the evening ended in the band doing over
$5,000 worth of damage to their dressing room.
Their first national tour now over, the band scheduled a
mini-tour in their home state to precede their own
headlining tour. But Christian protests against the band
had already begun, and when they hit Jacksonville for the
first date, on 27 December at Club Five, the Christian
Coalition had already voiced concern about the band in a
well publicized press conference. It was hardly
surprising that the show saw Manson's arrest for
'violation of the Adult Entertainment Code', and his
being held in jail overnight.
Although MTV and radio had largely ignored 'Get Your
Gunn', 'Lunchbox' was released as a single prior to the
start of the tour, accompanied by a video starring Robert
Pierce, the little boy (and son of a long-time Manson
fan) who features on 'POAAF' track, 'My Monkey'.
The 'POAAF' tour, scheduled to last two months and with
almost 40 shows planned, began on 11 January, 1995, with
Monster Voodoo machine as the support act, at the Abyss
in Houston, Texas; and two days later, an incident which
would become infamous and be distorted greatly in the
press took place in Dallas, Texas, at the Trees
nightclub. Stories are lurid and varied, but in it's
simplest form, a chicken, requested as a joke by the band
on their tour rider, was provided by the club's
management, and taken on stage in a cage which it
promptly escaped from during the band's set. It was
rescued by fans, but United Poultry Concerns, along with
many others, decided to take the incident very seriously,
hysterically announced that 'the audience dismembered the
live chicken in a bacchanalian orgy of violence'. Thus
began the accusations of animal abuse that are often
leveled at Manson, and, more humorously, the rallying cry
'Kill the Chicken!'
The tour carried on across America, attracting many new
fans and much media attention. In February 1995 Marilyn,
Twiggy and Pogo were part of the panel on the Phil
Donahue Show. The tour ended with Manson setting Sara Lee
Lucas' drum kit on fire during 'Lunchbox', and with a
final gig at an unfriendly dancehall in Columbia, South
Carolina, hindered by MVM's scattering of chicken parts
over Manson's stage. As soon as the band got off the
road, Lee Lucas left the line-up, to be promptly replaced
by Kenny Wilson (Ginger Fish), and within two weeks, the
band was back on the bus, this time supporting Danzig,
along with the then-unknown Korn.
The tour began on 24 March, and saw further controversy
in the press and antics on and off stage growing wilder
still, with the band's friendship with Danzig's bus
driver Tony Wiggins developing (and the recording of
fans' backstage confessions, some of which would almost
appear on 'Smells Like Children'), finishing in Orlando
on 14 May. 22 June saw their appearance on the Jon
Stewart Show, and their torching of the set. Never mind,
the show was due to be pulled the following night.
The band headed to New Orleans to record 'Smells Like
Children' at Trent Reznor's studio there, a project which
grew out of the potential release of 'Dope Hat' as a
single. The band, and Manson in particular, disliked the
city intensely, and the resulting work, in it's initial
form, was dark and harrowing, including recordings that
had been made on the tour and samples from children's
classics 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' and
'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', twisted into an album about
use and abuse, concepts which the band were by now all
too familiar with. It included three of the band's
favorite covers - The Eurythmics' 'Sweet Dreams',
Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 'I Put A Spell on You', and Patti
Smith's 'Rock 'n' Roll Nigger'.
Promotional copies of the album were distributed in
advance, but recalled almost immediately, due to problems
with the samples used. The record label were concerned
there would be legal difficulties with the 'Willy Wonka'
samples, and insisted that the band provide written
affidavits from the fans featured in the Tony Wiggins
recordings ('Abuse Part I - There is Pain Involved/Abuse
Part II - Confession'). The album's release - with the
troublesome samples removed - was delayed until 24
October, by which time the band were already back on
tour, with the unpopular opening act Clutch, who were
Christians!. A video was made for 'Dope Hat', but only
received airplay on MTV in an edited form, in the early
hours of the morning. It was the release of 'Sweet
Dreams' that made Marilyn Manson a household name.
By spring 1996 the song had become an MTV favorite, and
was in rotation on over 50 rock stations in America. With
it's almost psychedelic video, it brought Marilyn Manson
to the eyes of the world, and sales of 'Smells Like
Children' soared. In the last week of April, the album
leaped from No. 115 on the Billboard chart to No. 60, and
it's sales had topped 200,000 copies. The song, and it's
video, with subtle references to the Church of Satan,
also brought the band to the attention of the American
Family Association, and fueled the right-wing backlash
against them, which would only grow with the release of
'Antichrist Superstar'.
During the recording of 'Smells Like Children' the band
had already begun to write the songs that would
eventually become 'Antichrist Superstar', and as 'Sweet
Dreams' became a massive hit, the band headed back to New
Orleans to work on the album; a soundtrack for the
apocalypse. The recording was long and arduous, with
tension growing between the band members, and between
Manson and Reznor. From the first day in New Orleans,
Manson was unhappy there. As the album began to take
shape, the tenuous friendship between Manson and
Berkowitz disintegrated, resulting in Berkowitz's leaving
the band before the album's completion. The same month
saw 'Sweet Dreams' nominated for Best Hard Rock Video at
the MTV Awards. The band advertised for a new guitarist,
and found, through a series of auditions, Timothy Linton,
formerly of the Chicago-based band Life, Sex and Death.
Manson renamed him Zim Zum, a marked departure from the
previous names adopted by band members, and a reference
to Manson's growing interest in the Kabbalah. By the time
the band left New Orleans at the album's completion,
Manson himself had been through a considerable amount of
personal trauma and emerged even stronger than before -
and his transformation was almost complete.
September 1996 saw Zim Zum's stage debut with the band at
the ill-fated Nothing Records showcase at New York's
Irving Plaza. The band had hoped to use the show to begin
the tour to promote 'Antichrist Superstar', but instead
their set was cut short when Manson accidentally hit
Ginger with his microphone stand, resulting in him
needing medical attention. The friendship between Manson
and Reznor became even more strained.
When 'Antichrist Superstar' was released on 8 October,
1996, it entered the US Billboard charts at No. 3 (behind
Celine Dion and Kenny G!), to generally favorable
attention from the music press. The album's dark concepts
and storyline saw a departure from the morbid humor that
had featured on the first two releases, and mirrored
Manson's own transformation from teenage drop-out to rock
star, and more. The fans loved it, for the most part; and
the conservative right hated it.
The 'Dead to the World' tour had begun in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, on 3 October, five days before the album's
actual release, with a carefully constructed stage show
designed to tell the story of 'Antichrist Superstar'
without leaving out older songs. The album had barely
been stocked in stores and the tour was hardly underway
when the trouble began. Senators, family groups and
Christian organizations promoted anti-Manson feeling,
which quickly built to hysteria. The first leg of the
tour went smoothly, despite bomb threats and rumors of
Manson's planned suicide (due to take place on-stage at
Asbury Park, New Jersey on Halloween 1996), but the
'moral outrage' concerning the band was escalating.
Marilyn Manson first hit the UK in December, 1996, at the
tail end of a string of European shows. The tabloid press
tried and failed to get the band banned, and there were
many problems with venues having to be changed at the
last moment due to public pressure and one show, at
Nottingham's Rock City, finally being canceled, but the
concerts were a sell out. Meanwhile, things were
continuing to hot up in the US, with political groups
(led by Democratic Senator Joseph Liberman of
Connecticut) making widely publicized attacks on the
band. The first single off the album, 'The Beautiful
People', was a hit, and receiving much exposure on MTV.
The January 1997 issue of Rolling Stone saw
Manson on the cover, another long-time dream achieved,
and he had been inducted into MTV's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of
Fame. The band's popularity - and notoriety - was growing
almost by the day.
The return to America saw mass protests by Christian and
right-wing groups against Manson shows (many of whom,
ironically, accused the band of using Nazi imagery in
their artwork and live shows), and the forced
cancellation of several shows. The tour ground to a halt
on 21 February in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to public
protests, and the band took a few weeks off, only to head
back out on the road in March.
This period also saw the band featuring on the soundtrack
of two major movies, Howard Stern's biopic 'Private
Parts' and David Lynch's nightmarish thriller 'Lost
Highway', the latter seeing Marilyn and Twiggy's film
debut, as - appropriately enough - porn stars. The movie
soundtrack, consturcted by Lynch and Trent Reznor, was
another source of problems between Manson and Reznor.
The Manson circus traveled to Alaska, followed by shows
in Japan, Australia and New Zealand, then returned to the
States in style, with Manson tripping on stage at the
Nimitz Concert Hall in Honolulu on March 22 and cutting
an artery in his hand. The incident was widely distorted
in the press, and some reports speculated that the
accident was, in fact, a suicide attempt.
As the tour returned to mainland America, protests from
Christian and right-wing groups continued to mount,
spurred on by bizarre rumors, mainly about Manson
himself, that were circulating on-line, and by a series
of vicious and completely false affidavits posted by the
AFA describing Manson's on and off stage behavior. These
affidavits contained accusations of animal and child
abuse, Satanic ritual, and worse, and were all totally
untrue, but led to concerts being picketed and even
canceled. The fans, outraged by the prejudice and
ignorance they were facing, began to strike back, and
chapters of the Portrait of an American Family
Association began to form across America and further
afield, giving Manson fans a chance to access retaliatory
information, and let their voice be heard, too.
The 'Dead to the World' tour was set to finish with a two
week tour as part of Ozzy Osborne's Ozzfest '97, due to
start at Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey. As
the protests snowballed into hysteria, the New Jersey
Sports and Exposition Authority put mounting pressure on
Ozzfest's promoters to pull Marilyn Manson from theshow's
bill, citing security concerns and the content of the
band's stage show as the reason. The band and promoters
filed a lawsuit against the Sports and Exposition
Authority, and on 7 May, the conflict was resolved in
court, with the band represented by famed First Amendment
lawyer Paul Cambria (who also represented Hustler
mogul Larry Flynt in many of his most famous legal
skirmishes). The judge ruled that the show would go on,
as the Authority had no legal grounds on which to force
Manson from the bill.
The band traveled back to Europe for a further month of
dates, and then returned to America for the Ozzfest tour,
which went successfully ahead despite more attempts by
Christian groups and local authorities to prevent the
band from playing. As the long tour wound down, with a
handful of Canadian dates in July, Manson announced that
Harper Collins had purchased the rights to publish his
autobiography.
August 1997 saw the publication of an unkindly-captioned
(but still much sought-after) porn spread featuring
Manson in Hustler, and on 13 August Manson
appeared as a guest on Bill Maher's talk show
'Politically Incorrect'. The end of the month saw the
band's triumphant performance at the Reading Festival in
England, followed by their success at the MTV Video Music
Awards, where they closed the ceremonies with 'The
Beautiful People'. The Manson-Sneaker Pimps collaboration
'Long hard Road Out of Hell' appeared on the soundtrack
of the hit movie 'Spawn'. Marilyn gave the keynote speech
at the prestigious CMJ Music Marathon, proving to the
last doubters amongst the gathered members of the press
and music industry that he, and the band, could no longer
be dismissed as a passing phenomenon.
A number of South American gigs followed, and then the
band returned to the US, to engage in a long legal battle
with former guitarist Scott Putesky, and to begin work on
their new album.
January 1998 saw the release of a remix EP, 'Remix and
Repent', and on 14 February, Manson's autobiography,
written with Rolling Stone journalist Neil
Strauss, hit the bookstores amidst a storm of
controversy, finally providing a personal insight into
the singer's strange and turbulent private world. It was
an immediate success, going straight into the bestseller
lists. The band went into the studio, this time in Los
Angeles rather than New Orleans, to record the
forthcoming 'Mechanical Animals', due for release in
mid-September, announcing that the album was not going to
be produced by Reznor. Rumors flew about the possibility
of Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan taking on the
role, until the band at last confirmed that the
production would be shared by Manson himself and Hole
producer Michael Bienhorn.
The band's first live video was also released, 'Dead to
the World', a chronicle of the on and off stage mania of
the recently finished tour. It, too, provoked
controversy, and was withheld from sale in England for
several months while the board of censors examined its
contents, finally passing it for release uncut.
A series of European festival dates were announced for
June and July, with fans across Europe rushing to buy
tickets, but were canceled due to illness, as rumors
circulated that the band were in disarray. An official
announcement in July put the record straight, notifying
fans and the press that Zim Zum had left the band on
amicable terms (quite an achievement for an ex-Manson
member, but refuted later in the press) and would be
pursuing his own musical interests, being replaced by
ex-Two guitarist John Lowery, renamed John 5.
With the band's contribution to the soundtrack of
forthcoming movie 'Dead Man on Campus', and the new album
- one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year
- due to go on sale in a few short weeks, the new single
already receiving airplay and a tour as extensive as the
'Dead to the World' outing being planned, who knows what
the next twist in the tale of Marilyn Manson will be?
They have gone from local heroes to international rock
gods - from worms to Antichrist Superstars. Cliched as it
may be, perhaps the only way to finish this is to leave
the last words to Manson himself - words that he uses on
the closing page of his best-selling autobiography:
'We've infiltrated the mainstream in a way that they
don't want, and I think that is a work of art in itself.'
I think he is right.
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