Part II by misreznor
Welcome to Marilyn Manson Biography Library, featuring info, opinions, and quotes directly from the Reverand himself

"The only thing that scares me is going to the mall" "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who like Marilyn Manson, and those who are jealous" "I've grown up to become the things that hurt and scared me" "When I was growing up, you could say Marilyn, and you knew who it was, and you could say Manson, and you knew who it was... that is the contradiction that I enjoy that is Marilyn Manson" Manson describing the inspiration for the song "Tourniquet" "I've always had these dreams about making a girl out of all these pieces of prosthetic limbs, and then taking my hair and teeth that I saved from when I was a kid and very ritualisticly creating this companion" Manson describing the inspiration for the song "Little Horn" "A few years ago, I started having dreams and

visions of the world being destroyed, and me being the only one left. It was like an ultimate retribution for all of the things that have happened to me growing up. One dream took place sometime in the future - it may even have been Fort Lauderdale. Entertainment had gone to such an extreme that they had taken people and made them zombies almost just for entertainment's sake. And I had this strange vision of these women who were completely brain dead - they were just dancing in cages, and their jaws were wired shut so that they wouldn't bite off the dicks of all these guys that were around them masturbating. It was a complete Sodom and Gomorrah. And then I was there and I was like either presenting the whole event or performing in it or something. That was probably the first appearance of what will be Antichrist Superstar rearing its head." "American society has so many things backwards. They can watch people being blown away every night on television, but they find discussing sex, or showing that on TV to be wrong. They say that I'm only trying to be outrageous, that an album like Antichrist Superstar is designed just to shock everyone. Well, believe me, I could be a lot more shocking, a lot more offensive, if I really wanted to be. But I don't want to do that and risk limiting the number of people who hear what I'm trying to say. If you go for true outrage, you may end up with only two people getting the chance to hear you. I'm trying to wake up a sleeping generation that has become numb to so many of the world's harsh realities. They've begun to wake up and identify with my message. I think that's what scares people the most." RECIPE for a Marilyn Manson: take one music journalist from Ohio and add one part sex kitten, one part serial killer. Mix well. Slowly fold in some KISS, Alice Cooper, power chords, Trent Reznor, occultism, and Dr. Seuss. Season with one hell of a marketing campaign. Cover, let simmer, and ladle over the youth of America. Serves four million. Whether or not you buy the neo-Satanism hype doesn't matter--the fans do, and there are enough of them to have propelled the five-piece hard-rock band to platinum status. While they've landed on morality- czar William Bennett's hit list, Marilyn Manson's disciples revel in their outside-looking-in status: being called "filth and crap" by America's self-declared "cultural warrior" has done nothing but increase the fervor of the band's hard-core fans. If you're a death-metal neophyte, you should note that Marilyn Manson is both the name of a band from Florida and the name of that band's lead singer; for the most part, the two are the same.

Marilyn Manson, the singer, came into the world as Brian Warner, a Midwestern boy who spent a fairly typical childhood in Canton, Ohio: his parents stayed together, he hung out at the malls, and he spent plenty of time making crank phone calls, just like any other red- blooded American kid. All of which makes you wonder where his newfound persona came from.

Perhaps most all-American boys relish the idea of becoming the latest personification of Ozzy Osbourne. When he turned eighteen, Warner moved to Florida, where he worked as a music critic in the Tampa Bay area. In 1989, he bumped into a guitarist who, in his post-Manson incarnation, goes by Scott Mitchell. The two hit it off, and discovered they shared some similar ideas about the South Florida music scene. Taking his influences from tabloid talk shows and his name from two sixties icons, Manson convinced Mitchell to change his name to Daisy Berkowitz (a freak- show combo of Daisy Duke and Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz), thereby setting the stage for the names of the new band members over the years. When bassist Gidget Gein and keyboardist Madonna Wayne-Gacy joined up, they actually had a real band--Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids--complete with paying gigs, their own cassettes, and some homegrown special effects (everything from Manson's makeup to Lite-Brite toys reading "Kill God" and "Anal Fun"). They soon replaced their drum machine with Sara Lee Lucas (later replaced by Ginger Fish)--a change that gave them much more of a hard-core than an industrial sound--and in 1992, they were nominated by fans for both Best Hard Alternative Band and Band of the Year in South Florida's Slammies awards. Deciding that the entire band name was too much to swallow, they sliced their moniker down to, simply, Marilyn Manson. This didn't seem to confuse their fans a bit, and during the summer of 1993, they racked up five more Slammie nominations, and won the hefty honor of Band of the Year. More importantly, Trent Reznor dished them up a recording contract with his Nothing Records label, and the chance to open for Nine Inch Nails in the spring of 1994. Manson accepted both offers, and the troop laid down their first full-length album, Portrait of an American Family, which was released in July of 1994. The Nine Inch Nails tour started giving the Mansons the exposure they craved. Twiggy Ramirez had come onboard as the new bassist, replacing the drug-addled Gidget Gein, and the tour generated several episodes which have gone down in Marilyn Manson lore. Banned by the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Manson was invited up onstage by Reznor during NIN's set, at which point he proceeded to rip apart a copy of the Book of Mormon, which led to a frenzied trashing of the dressing rooms. In October of 1994, he arranged a meeting with Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, who bestowed upon Manson the title of "Reverend." Back in Florida after the tour, Manson quickly wound up in jail on a charge of "violation of the Adult Entertainment Code" following a nudity-filled gig in Jacksonville. As soon as Manson was sprung, the band went on tour again, this time as headliners. In South Carolina they ran into the greatest controversy of their young careers: the chicken incident. Apparently, the band decided to toss a chicken from the stage and into the vicious wilds of the mosh pit during their show. But instead of being shredded by belligerent fans, the bird was eventually rescued by a Marilyn Manson/PETA fan. Still, the chicken's ultimate fate did nothing to dispel rumors of Manson offering sacrifices to Satan, not to mention the murmur that he had removed several of his own ribs in order to perform fellatio on himself. The EP Smells Like Children was released in October of 1995, and Marilyn Manson's cover of the Eurythmics classic "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" grabbed airplay, MTV, and media attention. Suddenly, it became cool to dig Marilyn Manson. A five-month weather-bludgeoned tour followed; highlights included Manson shoving Berkowitz off the stage on New Year's Eve, and a snowed-in night in Allentown, Pennsylvania, during which the Mansons found themselves trapped in the same hotel and the same bar as the touring company of "Sesame Street Live" and the Orlando Magic basketball team. Upon their return to Florida, Berkowitz quit the band, and although he's credited in the liner notes, some insiders claim he doesn't actually appear on Marilyn Manson's 1996 LP, Antichrist Superstar. (The band placed an ad in the Village Voice to find a new guitar player, and after sifting through 150 responses, they finally settled on a Chicagoan dubbed Zim Zum.) The album, which was released in October of 1996, debuted at the No. 3 spot on Billboard's charts and acquired general critical acclaim. The songs were lyrically deeper and far more intense than their earlier efforts; it was a far more "serious" effort than the Mansons had yet produced.

Taken from "WALL OF SOUND"

Part II by misreznor