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Manson was born Brian Warner in Canton Ohio. When he was 18 he relocated to Tampa Bay, Florida. Manson had begun his career as a music journalist interviewing the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - a meeting he now describes as "disastrous. I said something that really pissed them off." In 1989 Manson became friends with guitarist Scott Mitchell. Mitchell re-christened himself Daisy Berkowitz and the pair formed Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids. Bassist Gidget Gein and keyboardist Madonna Wayne-Gacy were soon added (their stage names cribbed from glamorous icons and serial killers) and began releasing cassettes and playing local gigs. Their stage show soon became infamous for its goth histrionics and Manson's Edward Scissorhands-era elaborate make-up. Their sound took on a harder edge when they swapped a drum machine for drummer Sara Lee Lucas in 1992. After Manson had interviewed Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, Manson secured a support slot on a NIN tour which resulted in a record deal with Reznor's Nothing Records. Our surgically corsetted hero knew how to grab the limelight. He dated porn star Traci Lords and caused uproar at a show in Florida by allegedly fellating Nine Inch Nails' Robin Finck on stage before mutilating himself with knives and broken lightbulbs. Follow that Brian McFadden!
The group's debut album, Portrait of an American Family, was released in 1994. Unsurprisingly full of sub-Goth posturing and sledgehammer subtlety, the album did the job of furthering the group's notoriety with their core audience - surly, white suburban teens. Bassist Twiggy Ramirez replaced Gein and Ginger took over drum duties for the band's next album, Smells Like Children. The album was propelled into the charts by the band's gruesomely effective covers of the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Screaming Jay Hawkins' I Put A Spell On You and Patti Smith's Rock and Roll Nigger.In 1995 Manson launched a full scale assault on the moral majority of America with the inflammatory album, AntiChrist Superstar. With Daisy Berkowitz replaced by guitarist Zim Zum, the album debuted at No.3 in the US Billboard charts and Manson's satanic popularity was sealed. Manson's live gigs, where he would regularly threaten onstage suicide, were often picketed by civic groups and he was the subject of right wing and religious group attacks. Meanwhile the album's single, Beautiful People, gave Manson his first UK Top 20 hit. Meanwhile a best selling autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, helped to sustain the Satanic myth.Manson reinvented himself (slightly) for 1998's Mechanical Animals album, appearing on the cover as a naked, androgynous freak boy that owed much to Ziggy Stardust and nothing to X-Factor's Steve Brookstein. Up to now, more column inches had been dedicated to Manson's persona rather than the music, while Manson's own wit and ambition seemed several notches ahead of the sub Goth-metal output the band had produced to date. Mechanical Animals aimed straight for the heart of stadium-land, dispensing with the sub-Nine Inch Nails sludgecore for shiny, electronic rock on muscular tunes such as I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me) and the fists-in-the-air of Rock Is Dead. Manson's Rocky Horror Show era ghoul had been replaced by gender bending alien chic and the results were jaw droppingly good.But Manson's Satanic notoriety made tragic news headlines in 1998 when two Marilyn Manson obsessed teenagers gunned down 12 students inside Columbine High School near Denver. (A teacher was also killed and 28 were injured.) Manson immediately cancelled the rest of the band's tour and sent his sympathies to the bereaved while fending off right-wing politicians who were blaming Manson and metal music for society's troubles.
Down but not out, Manson retreated to his Hollywood mansion, lying low and working on a new album to throw America's hypocrisy back in its face. The result, 2000 album Holy Wood, was a march through the Manson manifesto, encompassing similarly iconic figures, JFK, Lennon and Jesus. The album was the final chapter in Manson's trio of albums following a character who attempts revolution through music but ends up killing himself when his revolution is exploited by society. It was Manson's own story and his attempt to spotlight Christianity and the violence committed in its name. The album melded the glam space metal of Mechanical Animals with the industrial crunch of AntiChrist Superstar. The guitars were still skull-shatteringly loud with Manson still aping Bowie-era Ziggy on the GodEat God and The Love Song. It was a another brilliant rallying cry for the disaffected.In 2001 during a July show in Michigan, Manson was charged with criminal sexual conduct after performing an alleged offensive act on a security guard. In December of the same year Manson released his version of Tainted Love. Meanwhile another security guard filed a civil suit alleging Manson had rubbed his pelvis on the guard's head. The July 2001 sexual conduct charges were lowered to a misdemeanor in and the civil suit was dropped soon after.In May 2003 Manson released his new album, The Golden Age of Grotesque, which spent a week on top of the US charts. It was intended as a modern version of German art, Vaudeville and decadent, 30's Hollywood glamour set to Manson's metallic grind. The album's lead off single, Mobscene, pillaged a Faith No More kiddie chorus set to the usual industrial guitar rampage. The funereal title track aside, there were many highpoints on the album but Manson's shock tactics were on the wane and to some extent had been superseded by some bloke from Detroit called Eminem.2004 saw a greatest hits set, Lest We Forget, including a new single, a cover of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.TO BE CONTINUED TO THE PRESENT DAY......
