Marilyn Manson birthday - TIMH

Camera got them images, camera got them all
Nothing's shocking
Showed me everybody, naked and disfigured
Nothing's shocking...

The T.V.'s got them images, the T.V.'s got them all
It's not shocking!
Every half an hour someone's captured and
The cop moves them along...but it's just like the show before
And the news is just another show with sex and violence

Jane’s Addiction made that statement in 1988 in their song “Ted, Just Admit It”. As if the rock gods decided to prove them wrong, Marilyn Manson was born the following year. Manson not only succeeded in shocking millions of people he did so utilizing just about everything mentioned in those lyrics.

The man who created Marilyn Manson is Ohio’s own Brian Warner. Born in Canton today in 1969, Warner graduated from Glen Oak High School in 1987. Whereas fellow Glen Oak alums Brian Hartline, Dustin Fox and Kosta Koufos matriculated to The Ohio State University, Warner chose a different path and enrolled at a community college in Florida. While in his pursuit of a journalism degree, Warner wrote for a local music magazine and became acquainted with a number of Florida-based musicians, as well as one important national artist, Trent Reznor.

Warner met guitarist Scott Putesky, later known as Daisy Berkowitz, in Fort Lauderdale in 1989. The two became friends and concocted a band called Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids. Warner’s alter-ego of Marilyn Manson, a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson, would soon become synonymous with the band itself, kind of like Jethro Tull except that the guy everybody thinks is named Jethro Tull is actually named Ian Anderson.

Marilyn Manson the band expanded and all of the members took stage names in the same style as Marilyn Mason. Early members included Olivia Newton Bundy, Gidget Gein, Madonna Wayne Gacy and later Twiggy Ramirez, who would go on to play with A Perfect Circle, on bass. Marilyn Manson shows were visually engaging and, at first, they continued the traditions passed down by acts like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper and KISS.

Since his days with the magazine, Manson had kept in contact with Reznor and invited him to a show. Reznor signed the band to his record label and had the Marilyn Mason band tour with Nine Inch Nails. The band released their debut album, “Portrait of an American Family”, in 1994 and Mason clearly announced he would be much more than an imitator and went far beyond the theatrics of his predecessors. Mason’s lyrics were a blend of horror movies and political commentary that were much more incendiary than anything Alice Cooper ever dreamed of.

The band picked up steam after a largely disappointing debut album and released their second album, “Smells Like Children”, in 1995. A cover of the Eurythics song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” helped the album sell over a million copies. The following year the band released “Antichrist Superstar” which debuted at #3 on the album chart and two years later they had their first number #1 album, “Mechanical Animals”. Manson was now seeping into your parent’s living rooms and your kid’s bedrooms and causing more ruckus than rock had seen since the PMRC days.

The height of Manson’s infamy came in 1999 when he was wrongly connected to the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. The perpetrators listened to Marilyn Manson and it was more convenient for many people to blame Manson rather than examine the hard truths surrounding the tragedy. Media outrage against Manson was furious and he faced the maelstrom with remarkable aplomb. In a widely-seen interview on national television, Manson was poised and deftly not only defended himself but, in keeping with his career-long message, turned that spotlight reserved from him and turned it on the media itself.

Marilyn Manson has released six more studio albums since then and all have reached the Top 20. The most recent, “The Pale Emperor”, came in 2015 and reached #8 on the chart. Manson songs have been featured in dozens of movies and video games and he’s sold over 60 million albums. He will be eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

“Lunchbox” off the album “Portrait of an American Family” 1994: