Everyone knows Marilyn Manson by his shock antics and controversies over political and religious symbols. However, very few people know the man behind the thick, lead-based make-up, various Christian protests, or the layers of blame due to Columbine.
As he grew up in Canton, Ohio he feared his grandfather who had some wacky sexual problems and cross dressed. He has said that part of his persona is the fear that his grandfather invoked on him when he was younger and later said that “I’ve grown up to become the things that hurt and scared me.” His parents, on the other hand, were very normal and caring for their young son and tried to raise him in a religious household.
His obsession of the Christian church stems from his experiences as a young child. He was immediately fearful of the apocalypse and expected the world to end at any minute. He attended a Christian church until he was fifteen years old. While he attended he began questioning everything the teachers told him and since they provided no answers he lost faith in the religion. Eventually he was expelled for selling an AC/DC’s Highway to Hell cassette to a fellow student during school.
Before he started his tenth year of high school, his first in a public system, his family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Incidentally, he was an outcast in the public school system too, cast off for being to strange and alternative. This resulted in three years of high school torment and beat-downs that would influence his angry music for years to come.
By the time Brian was 18 he had developed creative passions for writing and music. Brian was also intrigued by the freedom of speech/censorship debate and got a job as a part-time music journalist and began to write poems and stories. “The road to Hell is paved with good rejection letters,” he would later say. Only one of his stories was ever published but later he would also become a painter and sell his works to famous people such as Johnny Depp, Jack Osbourne and Nicholas Cage.
After his failures he started a band, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, with random guys he met in clubs that never played an instrument before in their lives. Manson, who had a new dream of becoming a singer, never took singing lessons either. However, he had a dream and he wanted to go after it. All the band members used fake names, taking someone beautiful and pure, such as Marilyn Monroe and adding on a serial killer’s last name (Marilyn Manson, Oliva Newton Bundy, etc). They wanted to portray both the good and the evil in the world and show just how connected everyone was.
After the band started growing some popularity Mason’s idol called for an appointment. Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of Satanism, wanted a word with Manson. Manson has publicly said, “I’m not and have never been a spokesperson for Satanism” but it does hold up some of his main beliefs. Satanism is not about worshipping the devil (that would be devil worshipping), it’s about worshipping yourself. It’s a pre-conceived notion, hence the name, that Satanism promotes deviation to society and actually worshipping Satan. However, it’s actually a very nice religion with commandments of its own. These commandments are against rape, child abuse, murder, and the killing (or hunting) of animals. The only difference it has to Christianity is that Satanism sees humans on the same level as anything alive on this planet. They do not give into the notion that we are more “civil” than anything else and so we need to treat everything from trees, to animals, to fellow humans equally.
While Manson and LaVey chatted LaVey told Manson he was destined for greatness but half of the world would hate him. It was just something he would either have to deal with or let it affect his fame. Manson would visit LaVey infrequently but he always appreciated their time together.
Manson definitely did not follow society’s rules and created his own set of beliefs. This caused, as LaVey said, probably at least half of the world to hate him. Four court cases against him have been thrown out of court under “false pretenses”, protests over his concerts and flyers as well as websites have been assembled against him. Much of this propaganda is very false and can not be taken to heart (even though most people do).I don’t believe you can judge anyone’s lives by their enemies because everything will always be over dramatized. There have been claims of brainwashing to join his “cult” of Goth Dom however Manson has said “I never said to be like me, I say be like you and make a difference” to those rumors.
Manson has said about his mistakes on his online tour diary, “Am I right? Am I wrong? And you may tell yourself, My God! What have I done?” Manson has made many, many mistakes like any normal person. He has been arrested two times for indecent exposure, one claim was later charged as false. Plus his band had some sick ways of entertaining themselves in the beginning. They would have fans come backstage and “confess” bad things that have happened to them. One girl’s story was so bad (incestuous rape, family left her out a rest area at sixteen, etc) that they stopped doing the “confessions” from that night forward.
Essentially, Manson is remarkable because he is a determined, hard-worker who knows his limits (he has given up many movie roles, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, because he simply knows that he can not act) and tries to put on the best concerts he can for his fans simply because he knows they expect more from him. However, he also puts up with the “fifty million screaming Christians” that protest him everyday and all the rumors (that are probably more deviate then his lyrics) that are circulating about him. Also, he hasn’t overdosed and he is 38 years old. That’s an incredible feat for a rock star.
