MARILYN MANSON

Formed: 1989, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Members: Marilyn Manson, vocals (Brian Warner, born Canton, Ohio, 5 January 1969); Ginger Fish, drums (Frank Kenny Wilson, born Framingham, Massachusetts, 28 September 1966); Madonna Wayne Gacy, keyboards (Stephen Gregory Bier, Jr., born 6 March 1964); John 5, guitar (John Lowery, born Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 30 July 1971). Former members: Daisy Berkowitz, guitar (Scott Mitchell Putesky, born East Orange, New Jersey, 28 April 1968); Olivia Newton-Bundy, bass (Brian Tutunick, born 31 March 1968); Gidget Gein, bass (Brad Stewart, born 11 September 1969); Sara Lee Lucas, drums (Fred Streithorst); Twiggy Ramirez, bass (Jeordie Francis White, born 20 June 1971); Zim Zum, guitar (Timothy Michael Linton, born 25 June 1969); Zsa Zsa Speck, keyboards (Perry Pandrea).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Antichrist Superstar (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "The Beautiful People," "The Dope Show"

With a penchant for stirring up controversy, Marilyn Manson was one of the most intriguing and vilified rock bands of the 1990s. Manson, led by the band's lightning-rod namesake, featured a constantly changing cast of grim-faced players who did a grinding, industrial dance of the macabre with their leader, who mixed the makeup rock of KISS with the shock tactics of the 1970s rocker Alice Cooper. With futuristic-sounding, keyboard-laden heavy metal songs such as "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" and "Antichrist Superstar," Manson provoked the ire of the religious right with his outrageous lyrics and stage antics. Arrests, concert bans, and lawsuits dogged Manson throughout the late 1990s as record sales faded and his over-the-top persona lost its shock value.

Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids was born in 1989 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the brainchild of the Ohio native Brian Warner. This middle-class son of a furniture salesman father and nurse mother was educated in a private Christian school, the strictures of which he later attributed to his desire to mock and question organized religion. Each of the group's members took a stage name that combined that of a famous celebrity with a serial killer, hence Marilyn Manson (Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Manson), was joined by guitarist Daisy Berkowitz; bassist Olivia Newton-Bundy—soon replaced by Gidget Gein; drummer Sara Lee Lucas; and keyboardist Zsa Zsa Speck.

The band released several home-recorded tapes and played locally in Florida in the early 1990s, earning a reputation for their disturbing imagery, gothic makeup, and homemade special effects. The group opened for the popular industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails in 1993, and were signed by the band's leader, Trent Reznor, to his Nothing Records label that year. Their debut album, Portrait of an American Family, was released in the summer of 1994.

The band's debut is rife with disturbing imagery, profane language, and a dark, cynical worldview that is matched by the grim, menacing clatter of the music, which mixes the hard cadences of "industrial" dance music with the overamplified guitars of heavy metal. Manson willfully blends sacred childhood imagery such as lollipops and dolls with references to suicide, disease, apathy, drugs, and sex. The group's first ban, in Utah in 1995, was fueled by Manson's destruction of a Mormon bible on stage.

While each band member sported a disturbing, pale makeup look, it was Manson who was the visual centerpiece of the group's dark worldview. The gangly, heavily tattooed singer with the long black hair often sported heavy white makeup, colored contacts, and combinations of medical bandages and braces, lace gloves, and leather fetish lingerie. A follow-up album, Smells Like Children (1995), a collection of covers, remixes, and odd spoken word collages, helped put the band on the national map thanks to a grim cover of the Eurythmics' 1980s new wave hit, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)."

The stage was now set for the album that turned Manson into both an icon for disaffected, marginalized teens and a target for censors and religious leaders. The Christianity-attacking concept album Antichrist Superstar (1996), whose title is a play on Andrew Lloyd Webber's religious-themed rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar, is twisted by Manson into a story of an evil being's rise to power and the destruction of decorous, mainstream society. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard album charts. The allegorical tale, complete with abrasive guitars, jackhammer beats, and Manson's tortured, spooky yelling/singing, features the hit "The Beautiful People."

Thanks to grim videos in which Manson is strapped into medical torture devices amid images of decay and destruction, the group rose to superstar cult status, their black concert T-shirts a staple of high schools and rock shows. Meanwhile, Manson's stage act was drawing the ire of conservative and religious groups, who frequently attempted to ban the band from playing live, accusing Manson of everything from devil worship to immoral behavior.

Mechanical Animals (1998) represented a stylistic change for the group, with its focus on a slicker, glam-rock sound that traded the gloomier imagery of the past for a more sterile, glittery, androgynous look akin to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character of the early 1970s. Songs such as "Great Big White World," "The Dope Show," and "Coma White" portray a bleak, postnuclear science-fiction world of drugs and numbness.

After a period of relative quiet imposed by both the deadly shooting spree at Columbine High School in April 1999 (the two, goth-obsessed shooters were reported to have been Manson fans) and fans' rejection of the Mechanical Animals album and concept, Manson released a meditation on the ills of fame, guns, and violence entitled Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000). The album is a virtual cheat sheet of Manson themes, questioning the existence of God ("Godeatgod"), ridiculing the gun culture and blind patriotism ("The Love Song," "Burning Flag"), and attacking the church ("Target Audience").

The album mixes the anthemic, abrasive gothic rock of Antichrist with the more sedate, glam-inspired meditations of Mechanical Animals. Manson failed in his attempt to get a movie version of the album produced. His long-time side kick Twiggy Ramirez left the group in May 2002, just as Manson was gearing up to record a new album, The Golden Age of Grotesque (2003), inspired by life in 1930s Berlin.

Spot Light: Attempts to Ban Marilyn Manson

Accused of everything from distributing drugs to torturing animals on stage, cheering on gang rapes to endorsing Satanic views, Marilyn Manson was a favorite target for censors and conservative religious groups in the middle and late 1990s. The American Family Association regularly picketed the group's shows, and some cities attempted to pass legislation banning Manson from performing in their towns. Some, like in South Carolina, took the path of least resistance, paying the band $40,000 not to play in the state. When Manson joined Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest show in 1997, the management of Giants Stadium in New Jersey attempted to block Manson from performing; it took a federal judge's decision to secure Manson's right to perform. At one point in 1997, a Milwaukee school banned the Manson "look," citing it as a disturbance to classroom activities; in 1998 a Kentucky woman was arrested for wearing a Manson T-shirt. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Manson fought back against some of the venues, suing them on First Amendment grounds. More often than not, Manson won the right to present his show, but the legal battles eventually took their toll, frequently overshadowing the music and the antiestablishment message.

By appealing to (mostly male) teenagers ridden with feelings of rebellion and angst, Marilyn Manson became the cultural bogeymen of the late 1990s with images meant to spook parents and intrigue their children. A gifted huckster, Manson took taboo subjects (drugs, sex, religion) and exploited them for their shock value, reveling in the resulting media attention and robust album sales. In the process, Marilyn Manson became an anti-hero for a generation. But, just like the tragic figures in many of his songs, even the anti-hero was subject to a fall when his antics ceased to be horrifying.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Portrait of an American Family (Nothing/Interscope, 1994); Smells Like Children (Nothing/Interscope, 1995); Antichrist Superstar (Nothing/Interscope, 1996); Remix & Repent (Nothing/Interscope, 1997); Mechanical Animals (Nothing/Interscope, 1998); The Last Tour on Earth (Nothing/Interscope, 1999); Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (Nothing/Interscope, 2000); The Golden Age of Grotesque (Nothing/Interscope, 2003).

gil kaufman