Marilyn Manson (born January 5, 1969 as
Brian Hugh Warner), is an American
musician and
artist known for
his controversial stage persona and image as the lead singer of the
eponymous band,
Marilyn Manson. His
stage name was formed from the names of actress
Marilyn Monroe and convicted murderer
Charles Manson. His long legacy as
being depicted in the media as a bad influence on children, along
with his seemingly outrageous styles for which he models, and the
controversy surrounding his lyrics all have led to his more
pronounced public appeal.
Early life
Marilyn
Manson was born as Brian Hugh Warner in Canton, Ohio
, the only child of Barb
Wyer and Hugh Jack Warner. According to his autobiography
The Long Hard Road
Out of Hell, Manson is of German and Polish descent on his
father's side. His father was a
Roman
Catholic and his mother was an
Episcopalian,
and he was raised in his mother's religion. Warner attended
Heritage
Christian School from first grade to tenth grade.
He later transferred
to Cardinal Gibbons High School
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
. Manson graduated from high school in 1987,
and became a student at Broward Community College
in 1990. He was working towards a degree in journalism, and was gaining experience in the
field by writing music articles for a South Florida
lifestyle magazine, 25th Parallel.
He would soon meet several of the musicians to whom his own band
would later be compared, including
My Life With the Thrill Kill
Kult and
Trent Reznor of
Nine Inch Nails.
Career
Music
Manson
formed Marilyn
Manson & the Spooky Kids in Florida
in 1989 (the
name was shortened to Marilyn Manson in 1992). While with
The Spooky Kids, he was involved with
Jeordie White (also known as Twiggy Ramirez)
and Stephen Gregory Bier Jr. (also known as
Madonna Wayne Gacy) in two side-projects:
Satan on Fire, a faux-
Christian
metal ensemble where he played
bass guitar, and drums in Mrs. Scabtree,
a collaborative band formed with White and then girlfriend
Jessicka (vocalist with the band Jack Off Jill) as
a way to combat contractual agreements that prohibited Marilyn
Manson from playing in certain clubs. In the summer of 1993, the
band drew the attention of
Trent
Reznor. Reznor produced their 1994 debut album,
Portrait of an American
Family and released it on his
Nothing Records label. The band began to
develop a
cult following, which grew
larger with the release of
Smells Like Children in 1995. That
EP yielded the band's first big
MTV hit with
"
Sweet Dreams
", a cover of the 1983
Eurythmics hit.
Antichrist Superstar
(co-produced by Trent Reznor) was an even greater success.
In the US alone, three of the band's albums have been awarded
platinum certification, three more gold, and the band has had three
releases debut in the top ten, including two number-one albums.
Manson first worked as a producer with the band
Jack Off Jill.
He helped name the band and produce most
of the band's early recordings, and also played guitar on the song
"My Cat" and had the band open most of his South Florida
shows. Manson later wrote the
liner notes to the band's album
Humid Teenage Mediocrity
1992-1995, a collection of early Jack Off Jill recordings.
Manson has appeared as a guest performer on
DMX's album
Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of
My Blood and on
Godhead's
2000 Years of Human
Error album — the only album released on his
vanity label Posthuman.
Film and television
Manson made his film debut in 1997, as an actor in
David Lynch's
Lost
Highway. Since then he has appeared in a variety of minor
roles and cameos, including
Party Monster;
then-girlfriend
Rose McGowan's 1998
film
Jawbreaker;
Asia Argento's 2004 film
The Heart Is Deceitful
Above All Things;
Rise; and
The Hire: Beat The Devil, the
sixth installment in the
BMW Films series.
He was
interviewed in Michael Moore's
political documentary Bowling
for Columbine discussing possible motivations for the
Columbine
massacre
and allegations that his music was somehow a
factor. He has appeared in
animated
form in
Clone High and
participated in several episodes of the MTV series
Celebrity Deathmatch, becoming the
show's unofficial champion and mascot; he often performed the voice
for his
claymated puppet, and contributed
the song "
Astonishing Panorama of the
Endtimes" to the soundtrack album. In July 2005, Manson told
Rolling Stone that he was
shifting his focus from music to filmmaking - "I just don't think
the world is worth putting music into right now. I no longer want
to make art that other people — particularly record companies — are
turning into a product. I just want to make art."
Johnny Depp reportedly used Manson as his inspiration for his
performance as Willy Wonka in the film
Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory. Manson himself expressed interest in
playing the role of Willy Wonka in the film.
He is currently working on his directorial debut,
Phantasmagoria: The
Visions of Lewis Carroll, In the film, he plays
Lewis Carroll, author of
Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland. Rather than a web-only release, he decided to
give the estimated $4.2 million budget film a conventional cinema
release, originally slated for mid-2007. The film will have an
original music soundtrack with previously unreleased songs.
Production of the film has been postponed until an undefined period
following the
Eat Me, Drink Me tour.
Art
Manson claimed in a 2004 interview with
i-D magazine to have begun his career as a
watercolor painter in 1999 when he made
five-minute concept pieces and sold them to drug dealers. On
September 13-14, 2002, his first show, The Golden Age of Grotesque,
was held at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Centre.
Art in America's Max Henry
likened them to the works of a "psychiatric patient given materials
to use as
therapy" and said his work
would never be taken seriously in a fine-art context, writing that
the value was "in their celebrity, not the work". On September
14-15, 2004, Manson held a second exhibition on the first night in
Paris and the second in Berlin. The show was named ‘Trismegistus’
which was also the title of the center piece of the exhibit – a
large, three-headed
Christ painted onto an
antique wood panel from a portable embalmers table.
Manson named his self-proclaimed
art
movement Celebritarian Corporation. He has
coined a
slogan for the movement: “We will
sell our shadow to those who stand within it.” In 2005 he said that
the Celebritarian Corporation has been "incubating for seven years"
which if correct would indicate that Celebritarian Corporation, in
some form, started in 1998.
Celebritarian Corporation is also the namesake of an
art gallery owned by Manson, called the
Celebritarian Corporation Gallery of Fine Art in
Los Angeles for which his third exhibition was the inaugural show.
From April
2-17, 2007, his recent works were on show at the Space 39 Modern
& Contemporary in Florida
. 40
pieces from this show traveled to Germany's Gallery Brigitte Schenk
in
Cologne to be publicly exhibited from
June 28 - July 28, 2007.
Manson was refused admittance to Kölner Dom
(Cologne Cathedral), when he was in the city to
attend the opening night. This was, according to Manson, due
to his makeup.
Personal life
Manson made an appearance in the video game
Area 51 as Edgar, a
Grey Alien. His song "Cruci-Fiction In Space"
is featured in a commercial for a video game,
The Darkness. His likeness is
also featured on the
Celebrity Deathmatch
video game for which he recorded a song for the soundtrack (2003).
The song "Use your fist and not your mouth" was the credits score
of the game
Cold Fear as well as
Spawn: Armageddon. Manson
launched, "Mansinthe," his own brand of Swiss made
absinthe, which has received mixed reviews ranging
from critics who compared the drink's odor to sewage water and
described the taste as being "as bad as piss" to coming second to
Versinthe in an Absinthe top 5and winning a Gold medal at the 2008
San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Prior to his relationship
with Dita Von Teese, he was in a relationship with Michele
Greenberg. He then was engaged to actress
Rose McGowan. In 2007, attention was brought to
Manson's love life again when a relationship with actress
Evan Rachel Wood was made public. After
media comments from Manson that he wears his signature black
leather pants 24/7,
animal rights
group
PETA added Manson to PETA’s
‘Worst-Dressed Celebrities of 2008’.
Marriage to Dita Von Teese
Manson and
Dita Von Teese first met
when he asked her to dance in one of his music videos. Though she
was unable to, the two kept in contact. On his 32nd birthday they
became a couple. He proposed on March 22, 2004 and gave her a
1930s-era, , European
round-cut diamond engagement ring. On November 28, 2005,
Manson and von Teese were married in a private,
non-denominational ceremony in their
home.
A
larger ceremony was held on December 3, at Gurteen Castle, in
Kilsheelan
, County
Tipperary
, Ireland, the home of their friend, Gottfried Helnwein. The wedding
was officiated by
surrealist film
director and comic book writer
Alejandro Jodorowsky.
On December 30, 2006 Von Teese filed for
divorce due to "irreconcilable differences." ET.com
and
People claimed that
Manson was having an extramarital affair with then 19-year-old
actress
Evan Rachel Wood, who is to
co-star in his horror film
Phantasmagoria: The
Visions of Lewis Carroll, and features in the video for
his 2007 single, "
Heart-Shaped
Glasses." The relationship was confirmed by Von Teese in an
interview with the
Sunday
Telegraph, "I get the impression he thinks I was
unsupportive, but the truth is I wasn't supportive of his
lifestyle, and someone else came along who was." Manson's
alcohol abuse and distant behavior were also
cited as cause for the split. A judgement of divorce was entered in
Los Angeles Superior Court on December 27, 2007.
Lawsuits
- In a
civil battery suit, David Diaz, a security officer from a concert
in Minneapolis,
Minnesota
, on October 27, 2000, sued for $75,000 in a
Minneapolis federal court. The federal court jury found in
Manson's favor.
- In a
civil suit presented by Oakland
County, Michigan
, Manson was charged with sexual misconduct against another security
officer, Joshua Keasler, during a concert in Clarkston,
Michigan
, on July 30, 2001. Oakland County originally
filed assault and battery and criminal sexual misconduct charges, but
the judge reduced the latter charge to misdemeanor disorderly
conduct. Manson pleaded no contest
to the reduced charges, paid a $4,000 fine, and later settled the
lawsuit under undisclosed terms.
- On April 3, 2002, Maria St. John filed in Los Angeles Superior
Court accusing Manson of providing her adult daughter, Jennifer Syme, with cocaine and instructing her to drive while under the
influence.
- On August 2, 2007, former band member Stephen "Pogo/Madonna Wayne Gacy" Bier filed a lawsuit
against Manson for unpaid "partnership proceeds," seeking $20
million in back pay. Several details from the lawsuit leaked to the
press. In November 2007, additional papers were filed saying that
Manson purchased a child's skeleton and
masks made of human skin. He also allegedly
bought stuffed animals, such as a grizzly
bear and two baboons and a collection of
Nazi memorabilia. In December 2007,
Manson countersued, claiming that Bier failed to fulfill his duties
as a bandmember to play for recordings and to promote the
band.
Discography
Filmography
Books
References
- Charles Manson Trial, 2violent.com.
- Manson Hooks Up With DMX October 23, 1998".
Retrieved June 18, 2007.
- http://www.scifimoviepage.com/art_charlie.html
- Esquire Mansinthe 2nd in top 5
- The Heirophant - Marilyn Manson Encyclopedia and
Community
- People Magazine
- PETA Announces 'Worst-Dressed' Celebrities of
2008
- Kate, Aretha, Lindsay & Eva Top PETA Worst
Dressed List
- Marilyn Manson's Alleged Affair ETonline.com
January 10, 2006. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
External links