Biography
[edit]Early life
Brian Hugh Warner was born on January 5, 1969 in Canton, Ohio, the only child of Barb (née Wyer) and Hugh Warner. He is of German descent on his father's side, and is a 4th cousin twice removed of Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. As a child, he attended his mother's Episcopalian church, though his father was Catholic.Manson attended Heritage Christian School from first grade to tenth grade where he experienced traumatic brainwashing at the hands of his Christian pedagogues by way of their apocalyptic biblical narratives. Ultimately, out of fear, this led to his own personal rebellion against Christianity, and religious conformity in general. In a quote from Manson's autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, he states: "I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of the end of the world and the Antichrist. So I became obsessed with it, watching movies like The Exorcist and the Omen and reading prophetic books like Centuries by Nostradamus, 1984 by George Orwell, and the novelized version of the film a Thief in the Night."
Manson's interest in rock 'n roll music stemmed from a childhood friend who introduced him to bands such as Kiss, Dio, Black Sabbath, and Rainbow and other bands of that genre. Out of these bands, KISS stood out amongst the crowd, Manson was a card-carrying member of the KISS ARMY and attended his first concert with his father in 1979. At the age of ten, a young Brian Warner was photographed in the make-up of KISS drummer, Peter Criss. It has been thought, though never confirmed or denied by Manson that his stage theatrics and make-up partially stem from his influence by KISS as a child.
According to his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Warner is of German and Polish ancestry on his father's side. Raised in his mother's religion, and attending Heritage Christian School, he later transferred to and graduated from Cardinal Gibbons High School in 1987. In 1990, as a college student, Warner attended Broward Community College. As the assistant entertainment editor of BCC's student newspaper, the Observer, his first published article was a review titled "Jane's Addiction returns to shock crowd at Woody's." Warner was working toward a degree in journalism and theater, though never came into fruition. Manson later lied a local magazine to gain employment and experience in the field by writing music articles for the South Florida lifestyle magazine, 25th Parallel. There he met several of the musicians to whom his own band would later be compared, including My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Manson mentions briefly in his autobiography that he became a musician partly because he wanted writers to gain the same amount of fame and respect as musicians.
Music
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After meeting Stephen Gregory Bier, Jr. (also known as Madonna Wayne Gacy) at the Kitchen Club in South Beach, Miami the two became close friends, going to concerts and poetry readings. After a short period of time the two began compiling poetry that Manson had written and hoped to turn into songs, it was at this time that Manson instructed Pogo to buy a keyboard and they would start a band. Unfortunately, Stephen was not a part of the first incarnation of what would later become known as Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids. It was not until Manson met Jeordie White (also known as Twiggy Ramirez), who was working at a local record shop at the time. The two created Satan on Fire, a faux-Christian death metal ensemble that was more of a joke than an actual band. At that time, Twiggy was a member of the band Amboog-a-lard and thus Manson recruited college friend Brian Tutunick (also known as Olivia-Newton Bundy) as a bass player, though Tutunick would only last two nights and was later replaced by Brad Stewart (also known as Gidget Gein). Scott Putesky (also known as Daisy Berkowitz) would complete the Spooky Kids line up. With Bier, still not with an instrument, appearing as part of the stage show by playing with toy soldiers.
After developing a cult following on Florida's underground music scene, the band drew the attention of Trent Reznor in the summer of 1993. Reznor produced their 1994 debut album, Portrait of an American Family and released it on his Nothing Records label. The band then began to develop a cult following, which grew larger following the release of Smells Like Children in 1995. That EP yielded the band's first big MTV hit "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", a cover of the 1983 Eurythmics song. Antichrist Superstar (co-produced by Trent Reznor) was to be an even greater success. In the United States alone, three of the band's albums have been awarded platinum certification, and another three gold. the band has had six releases debut in the top ten, including two number-one albums.
Manson first worked as a producer with long time friend Jessicka and the band Jack Off Jill. He helped name the band and produce most of the band's early recordings. Manson also played guitar on the song "My Cat" and had the band open for most of his South Florida shows. Manson later wrote the liner notes to the band's album Humid Teenage Mediocrity 1992-1995, a collection of early Jack Off Jill recordings.
Manson has appeared as a guest performer on DMX's album of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood and on gODHEAD's 2000 Years of Human Error album — the only album released on his vanity label Posthuman Records.
Manson has helped or provided full music scores for several major motion pictures, although several of his pieces have been cut, and his name dropped from the credits. Some of his more notable soundtrack score contributions include The Matrix, From Hell and Resident Evil.
After releasing what Manson asserted to be his "farewell album", Lest We Forget (The Best of), Manson's took up another musical project covering the Danny Elfman song, "This Is Halloween". This was included on The Nightmare Before Christmas: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack reissue's bonus disc in October 2006. Shortly after this, he and Tim Skold embarked on recording the sixth Marilyn Manson album Eat Me, Drink Me. Manson has clearly refuted suggestions that the band will collapse, as evidenced by the revitalization of his friendship with Twiggy Ramirez and the recent recording of the album, The High End of Low.
Since late 2009, the band was dropped by Interscope after being on the label for close to 15 years. Subsequent recording on a new album has also begun.
Announced in November, 2010, Marilyn Manson signed with independent European label Cooking Vinyl Records in a joint venture with his own label Hell, etc. to produce his eighth studio album, with the option for another.
Film and television
Manson made his acting debut in 1997, appearing in David Lynch's film Lost Highway as Pornstar #1. Since then he has appeared in a variety of minor roles and cameos, including Party Monster; then-girlfriend Rose McGowan's 1998 film Jawbreaker; Asia Argento's 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things; Rise: Bloodhu; and The Hire: Beat the Devil, the sixth installment in the BMW Films series. He was interviewed in Michael Moore's political documentary Bowling for Columbinediscussing possible motivations for the Columbine massacre and allegations that his music was somehow a factor. He has appeared in animated form in Clone High and participated in several episodes of the MTV series Celebrity Deathmatch, becoming the show's unofficial champion and mascot; he often performed the voice for his claymated puppet, and contributed the song "Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes" to the soundtrack album.
In July 2005, Manson told Rolling Stone that he was shifting his focus from music to film making - "I just don't think the world is worth putting music into right now. I no longer want to make art that other people – particularly record companies – are turning into a product. I just want to make art."
Manson has made several cameo appearances in music videos for the Murderdolls' Dead in Hollywood, Nine Inch Nails' Gave Up, Starfuckers Inc. and Eminem's The Way I Am. He has also produced 23 music videos, most of which have gone beyond the scope of a normal performance video and been well received by critics for their imagery and direction. Three of Manson's more recently released videos, "Personal Jesus", "(s)AINT" and "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)", were voluntarily funded with his own money (to a sum of $1,500,000) and largely not that of the record label. Manson stated in June 2006 that he saw himself "as more a student of film than of music."
He is currently working on his directorial debut, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll. In the film, Manson plays the role of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Rather than a web-only release, he decided to give the estimated $4.2 million budget film a conventional cinema release, originally slated for mid-2007. The film is said to feature special effects using a magician rather than computer-generated imagery, and will have a score comprised of original music rather than previously unreleased songs. Production of the film has been postponed until an undefined period following the Rape of the World tour, which ended in March 2008.
From the beginning Manson has been a recreational painter, the oldest of his surviving pieces dating back to 1995–1996, but it was after his 1998 Grey period that Manson began his career as a watercolor painter, claiming in a 2004 interview with i-D magazine to have begun his career as such when in 1999, he made five-minute concept pieces and sold them to drug dealers. Gradually Manson became more drawn to watercolors as an art form in itself, and instead of trading them, kept them and continued to paint at a proficient rate. On September 13-14, 2002, his first show, The Golden Age of Grotesque, was held at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Centre. Art in America's Max Henry likened them to the works of a "psychiatric patient given materials to use as therapy" and said his work would never be taken seriously in a fine-art context, writing that the value was "in their celebrity, not the work". On September 14-15, 2004, Manson held a second exhibition on the first night in Paris and the second in Berlin. The show was named Trismegistus which was also the title of the center piece of the exhibit – a large, three-headed Christ painted onto an antique wood panel from a portable embalmer's table.
Manson named his self-proclaimed art movement the Celebritarian Corporation. He has coined a slogan for the movement: "We will sell our shadow to those who stand within it." In 2005 he said that the Celebritarian Corporation has been "incubating for seven years" which if correct would indicate that Celebritarian Corporation, in some form, started in 1998.
The Celebritarian Corporation is also the namesake of an art gallery owned by Manson, called The Celebritarian Corporation Gallery of Fine Art in Los Angeles for which his third exhibition was the inaugural show. From April 2-17, 2007, his recent works were on show at the Space 39 Modern & Contemporary in Florida. 40 pieces from this show traveled to Germany's Gallery Brigitte Schenk in Cologne to be publicly exhibited from June 28-July 28, 2007. Manson was refused admittance to Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral), when he was in the city to attend the opening night. This was, according to Manson, due to his makeup. Other sources gave different reasons, however.
A coffee table art book is in the works, initially titled The Death of Art. The last given working title was Quintif. It will be published by the makers of Flaunt magazine.
The price of Manson's works has been a somewhat controversial point for fans and critics alike, with most fans realistically unable to afford the paintings save for fine art editions and lithographs. However, some argue that Manson's prices are realistic and reasonable considering the long-term value at a time when prices for contemporary art have never been higher.
In April,2010, Manson held an exhibition titled Hell, etc. in Athens,Greece hosted by Art Modern Galler
