Do you buy this at all? I really don't know, but if his career hasn't been all he hoped, I'm thinking it's more that he was just a flash in the pan. Of course (or course!) I've never heard any of his music so I can't say for sure, but I was always so put off by his image I certainly didn't seek out his music. This is all in the context of promoting his new album, of course.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...rd-of-darkness
If anything, I would have thought the Columbine connection would have endeared him to the teenagers of the time. As we all know, teenagers are always out to piss off their parents, so this would have seemed to have played right into that. Of course, once you get a little older, and you realize that was literally the only reason you liked him, well, I can see how you might not be doing the reunion tour (assuming such a thing is possible, since I believe at least a couple of the original members of his band are dead now).
I've heard some of his music. It wasn't very good. At least, not to my ears it wasn't. It was the typical "Oh, I'm so scary" trip, ya know, people trying to outdo Alice Cooper without actually having the musical talent to write songs as good as Coop's. If you thought Kiss were terrible, you certainly wouldn't want to waste time on something like Marilyn Manson.
Actually, I think a bigger hit to his career was when MTV unearthed that clip of him on their afternoon live talk show, from the very early 90's. Apparently, Brian Warner had a crush on one of the hosts of the MTV show, so he apparently got into the audience, was on air, briefly, with a picture he had made of her on his computer, and he talks of asking her to marry him or something. Unfortunately for him, she wasn't actually present on set on the day. Anyway, it's just hilarious, th eother host (a guy) asks him where he's from, what's in NYC for. He says "My band is playing a showcase". Host asks him the name of his band, "Marilyn Manson And The Creepy Kids". Yeah, it was MM himself. Yeah, MM was a dork before he started doing every interview and TV appearance "in character".
Did anyone know who the members of his band were?Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
I saw an interview with Brian Warner early in his career -- 60 Minutes? -- and he seemed like an intelligent and thoughtful kid. Too bad, I thought, that he's adopted this self-limiting Alice Cooper-wannabe character. Then the show showed him singing, if I recall correctly, and it became apparent why he was trying to rely on gimmicks to get noticed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Manson_(band)
^ Looks like a character out of Zippy the Pinhead comics.
Maybe he's going to try to milk it in Europe for a few years....
John5 was in it, at some pont. He has some chops.
I'd like to tell him that since his dress up for Halloween phase is over, perhaps he should get a paper route now...
Is John5 the guy's given name?
Sounds like a hologram to me.
The only person/thing worth a damn in that entire collective. MM needs to dig a deep hole and jump into it.
MM isn't the only musician being blamed, or scapegoated for teen tragedy. Anyone remember Judas Priest being sued over teen suicide?
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
John William Lowery now guitarist for Rob Zombie, he replaced a guy named Zim Zum at MM & SK
And he plays a Telecaster (and apparently has a huge collection of classic ones).
But I was talking about the original band, back in the early/mid 90's, all of whom had stage names comprised of the first name taken from a female sex symbol (eg Marilyn Monroe) and the last name from a male serial killer (eg Charles Manson). I think the guy who formed the band with him (which was originally called Marilyn Manson ANd The Spooky Kids, before that was deemed to be too much of a mouthful) called himseelf Daisy Berkowitz and the longest severing bassist is Twiggy Ramirez.
But I suppose the point is probably moot. The other guys in the band were never as known to the public the way Brain Warner himself is, so I supposed it doesn't really mater who the backup band is.
Ozzy, too. I remember a family (actually a couple of families, I think) tried suing Ozzy because they said Suicide Solution was the song that pushed their son over the edge. Never mind that the song in no way advocates committing suicide, but some ambulance chaser lawyer apparently reckoned that a deranged mind might read the lyrics that way. Anyway, teh suits were thrown out of court because you can't sue someone over song lyircs because it would violate the constitution.
The thing I remember about the Judas Priest deal was the mainstream media portraying the two kids (one of whom actually survived the suicide attempt, before dying of a drug overdose 18 months later) as "being innocent lambs who had been led astray by heavy metal" or whatever. But the big article Rolling Stone on th ematter discolsed the full truth about their history of juvenile delinquency, including the fat that one of them tried strangling his mother while she was driving. I also recall that one of the kids was given a rifle (the weapon used in the matter) for either his birthday or Xmas, the the day before, and he and th eother kid stayed up all night listening to Stained Class and getting loaded, before deciding to go to the church playground down the street to end their lives the next morning.
The reason the Judas Priest deal went to court was because this particular ambulance chaser put forth the argument that the band had planeted a backwards message on the record, and that's what led them to believe "the answer to life was death" (as the one kid said in the note he wrote before he finally died 18 months later).
What was said message? The repeated phrase "Do it". As Rob Halford once pointd out, "Well, do WHAT, exactly? Mow the lawn? Have a pint? I mean WHAT were we supposedly telling everyone to do?!"
Anyway, the band was able to prove that so called message was actually the convergence of other sounds that, when played backwards, sounded like someone saying "Do it", and thus the judge found them not guilty.
I also remember the ambulance chaser giving an interivew where he said someone should "take responsiblity for what happened", apparenlty meaning the band. Gee, I guess one should never expect the person who gave a troubled teen a dangerous weapon as a present to take responsiblity for what the kid does with it, huh?
I have very little exposure to MM. I don't recall hearing any of his music. I think I read one interview, and then saw him as a talking head in the movie Bowling for Columbine. Even in the makeup, MM came across as cogent and thoughtful in the film. But that's where it began and ended for me. In that interview I read, he thought that Alice Cooper didn't take things far enough, which make sense if you see him as taking Cooper's shtick and taking it to a new extreme. (Which I inferred that he did.)
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
MM's short career span has little to do with Columbine and more to do with the novelty waning and his original songs not being very good (at least two of his biggest hits were covers).
"Let's see, a woman's name for a band, loud hard rock sound, garish face paint, lavish theatrical stage show... I wished I had thought of that " - Alice Cooper
LOL! I thought the same thing. Oh, if only Alice had the technology available to Marilyn Manson when the Coop was recording Love it to Death and Killer!
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
Zim Zum f-n rocks!!John William Lowery now guitarist for Rob Zombie, he replaced a guy named Zim Zum at MM & SK
The real shame in the world of pop culture was that Columbine delayed one of the quintessential season finales of Buffy.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I heard that MM had some ribs removed so he could suck his own dirk.
That strikes me like the stories about Alice Cooper and Rod Stewart that we've all heard. And it must have thrilled MM no end!
I remember hearing that when I was a teenager, and looking back it almost certainly had to be false. But like you said, he probably got a kick out of it.
In the early 80s when so called "backward masking" was making the rounds in evangelical circles, most of what people heard was what they wanted to hear. I tried an experiment with a group of friends. I played a tape of a southern gospel song forward, then backward. Then I played it backward again and said, "if you listen real close, you can hear them say 'demons eat burritos.'" Sure enough, that's what they heard and they busted out laughing hysterically. During the Judas Priest trial, my primary question was "is backward masking still a thing?"
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
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