Marilyn Manson turns 53: a life marked by controversy

Marilyn Manson, one of the figures who generated the most controversy in recent decades, turns 53 today. Despite the fact that his career is not what it was in its beginnings these days, his image has always been true to its essence: controversy.

At the beginning of 2021, several of his former partners have accused him of having abused them, physically, sexually and psychologically. One of his ex-girlfriends made a formal complaint, establishing the intention to carry out an investigation against him.

With more than 30 years of career, the most recent work of the musician was published in 2020. It is his latest album entitled “We Are Chaos”, which received very good reviews compared to his previous works. However, the complaints from women led to an indefinite hiatus in his career after being left without a manager or record label.

A boy named brian

The real name of the singer is Brian Hugh Warner, but as soon as he began to dabble in art, he defined a rather particular fantasy name as a fantasy name, created from merging the names of the figures Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Warner was born on January 5, 1969, in Ohio, United States, the result of the relationship between his parents Barbara Warner Wyer and Hugh Angus Warner.

His approach to music, particularly heavy metal, was the accidental result of a lesson his school taught students: that music should not be heard. But it was precisely this “prohibition” that attracted the artist.

Warner graduated in 1987, and three years later he moved to Florida to start work and pay for his studies in journalism. During that period he dedicated himself to writing some articles for a music magazine called “Parth 25”.

Spooky Kids and the Antichrist

In 1989, when he was twenty years old, the artist formed the band in Florida Marilyn manson & the Spooky Kids (later shortened to Marilyn Manson). In the beginning, the band worked with different musicians, but it was not until the summer of 1993 that the group attracted the attention of Trent Reznor, one of the most important figures in the metal industry at that time. Reznor handled the production of the band’s first album in 1994 called “Portrait of an American Family”, which achieved gold certification in the United States.

In 1996 his second and most successful album was recorded, “Antichrist Superstar”, which managed to sell 1.9 million copies in the United States alone and grossed 7.5 million sales worldwide. According to the singer himself, this album can be read as an autobiography where the artist exposes his own version of the world, based on the thoughts of the philosopher Nietzsche.

The album functions as the first part of a trilogy that was later completed with the albums “Mechanical Animals” and “Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)”. Despite the fact that the band continued to compose and record more albums, from the 2000s onwards, its image and influence declined more and more, until it resulted in a kind of presentations considered grotesque and ridiculous that no longer generated the impact that it had in its beginnings. .

The rest of his discography consists of the following albums: “The Golden Age of Grotesque” (2003); “Eat Me, Drink Me” (2007); “The High End of Low” (2009); “Born Villain” (2012); “The Pale Emperor” (2015); “Heaven Upside Down” (2017) and “We Are Chaos” (2020). With all his work, the nominations he received were similarly rare, and he only got one award at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards for the music video for the song “The Dope Show.”

Career as a painter artist

In 2003, during an interview with iD magazine, Manson said that he began his career as a watercolor painter and dry-paint artist in 1999, when he completed five pieces in about five minutes. Since his debut as a painter, he has held several exhibitions of his works, including: “The Golden Age of the Grotesque”, in 2002 in the city of Los Angeles and “Trismegistus”, exhibited in 2004 in two parts, between the cities of Paris and Berlin.

Manson in his sample.jpg

Manson called his works an artistic movement and called it “Celebritarian Corporation”, a name that he also gave to his own art gallery, the “Celebritarian Corporation Gallery of Fine Art”, located in Los Angeles and in which his third was inaugurated. exposition.

Despite the always stunning visuals, the singer has a few repeat buyers including Flea, a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and actor Nicolas Cage.

Cinematic stage

Perhaps one of his profiles to which he was least dedicated, Marilyn Manson also turned to acting in film and television. In 1997 he made his debut in the movie “Lost Highway”, directed by David Lynch, but then he got only supporting roles, as in the movie “Jawbreaker” or in “Party Monster” with Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green.

On the other hand, the singer participated in several television projects, such as the animated series “Secundaria de clones”, and the program “Celebrity Deathmatch”. In 2016 he played a hit man in the movie “Let Me Make You a Martyr”, directed by Corey Asraf and John Swab.

In mid-2007 it emerged that he was working on his directorial debut on the film “Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll,” about the author of Alice in Wonderland. According to the information that circulated at that time, Manson would play the writer, in addition to writing the script for the film and creating the soundtrack for it.

Abuses and complaints

Throughout his career, several of his partners met, including actresses Rose McGowan and Evan Rachel Wood and models Dita Von Teese and Lindsay Usich. Together with his partners McGowan and Wood, he starred in some video clips of his songs, with which, of course, he generated controversy due to the explicit images that were shown. Evan Rachel Wood starred in “Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)”, a video that caused much controversy by showing the couple in scenes of explicit sex or with their bodies covered in blood.

Manson and Wood.jpg

Then came the complaints that his ex-partners made against him. On February 1, 2021, Evan Rachel Wood, photographer Ashley Walters, model Sarah McNeilly, and artist Gabriella – SourGirrrl posted allegations of harassment and abuse against Manson on their Instagram accounts. Added to all this were the accusations of actress Esmé Bianco, who said she had been the victim of physical abuse by Marilyn Manson during their relationship in 2011.

In April 2021, Bianco formalized the accusations through a lawsuit for sexual assault, human trafficking and physical and emotional abuse, alleging that during those situations she was forced to take drugs and alcohol while she was constantly threatened.

One of the statements of the alleged victims includes the account of one of the alleged practices carried out by the singer. They claim that he had a room in his house that he called the “Bad Girls Room”, in which acts of physical abuse were carried out for hours and in the face of any provocation that he thought would make them worthy of it.

Although Manson and his lawyers were in charge of denying all the information, as soon as the accusations were made public, the singer was left without a record label or representative, in addition to having no more dates of presentations or events.

Violence and the grotesque taken to the extreme

Thanks to his album “Antichrist Superstar”, the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, considered him “reverend” for promoting Satanist ideas. Even a mother publicly accused him of being the cause of having led her son to suicide, since at the moment they found the young man that record was playing.

But the violence did not stop at words, since during his concerts the singer carried out all kinds of aggressive acts such as cutting himself with a bottle, breaking Bibles, burning crosses or smoking bones while putting the public at risk. One of the strongest episodes was when he released a puppy to the public and threatened not to continue his show until the animal was killed.

Another of the accusations for which the band is held responsible is to promote the consumption and trafficking of pornography during the promotion of their work and the meetings of their fans.

Currently, the only thing that is known about his legal situation is that the singer would have an agreement to turn himself in to the police for other minor charges and prior to the accusations. As for her ex-partner’s claim, the status of the investigation is not yet known.