Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson is an American rock band formed by namesake lead singer Marilyn Manson and lead guitarist Daisy Berkowitz in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1989. Originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids, they gained a local cult following in South Florida in the early 1990s with their theatrical live performances. In 1993, they were the first act signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. Until 1996, the name of each member was created by combining the first name of a female sex symbol and the last name of a male serial killer, as for the band and lead singer name that combine Marilyn Monroe with Charles Manson. Their lineup has changed between many of their album releases; the eponymous lead singer is the only remaining original member.

In the past, band members dressed in outlandish makeup and costumes, and engaged in intentionally shocking behavior both onstage and off. Their lyrics often received criticism for their anti-religious sentiment and references to sex, violence and drugs, while their live performances were frequently called offensive and obscene. On several occasions, protests and petitions led to the group being blocked from performing, with at least three US states passing legislation banning the group from performing at state-owned venues. They released a number of platinum-selling albums, including Antichrist Superstar (1996) and Mechanical Animals (1998). These albums, along with their highly stylized music videos and worldwide touring, brought public recognition to Marilyn Manson.

In 1999, news media falsely blamed the band for influencing the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre. As this controversy began to wane throughout the 2000s, so did the band's mainstream popularity. Despite this, Jon Wiederhorn of MTV, in June 2003, referred to Marilyn Manson as "the only true artist today". Marilyn Manson is widely regarded as being one of the most iconic and controversial figures in rock music, with the band and its lead singer influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in metal-associated acts and also in wider popular culture. VH1 ranked Marilyn Manson as the seventy-eighth best rock band on their 100 Great Artists of Hard Rock. They were inducted into the Kerrang! Hall of Fame in 2000 and have been nominated for four Grammy Awards. In the U.S., the band has seen ten of its releases debut in the top ten, including two number-one albums. Marilyn Manson have sold in excess of 50 million records worldwide.

In 1989, Brian Warner was a college student working towards a degree in journalism at Broward College, gaining experience by writing music articles for the South Florida lifestyle magazine 25th Parallel. It was in this capacity that 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. That December, he met Scott Putesky, who proposed the two form a band, after reading some lyrics and poems written by Warner. Warner, guitarist Putesky and bassist Brian Tutunick recorded their first demo tape as Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids in 1990, taking on the stage names of Marilyn Manson, Daisy Berkowitz and Olivia Newton Bundy, respectively. Bundy left the band soon after, and was replaced by Gidget Gein, born Brad Stewart. They were later joined on keyboard by Stephen Bier, who called himself Madonna Wayne Gacy. In 1991, drummer Fred Streithorst joined the band under the name Sara Lee Lucas.

The stage names adopted by each member were representative of a concept the band considered central: the dichotomy of good and evil, and the existence of both, together, in every whole. "Marilyn Monroe had a dark side", explained Manson in his autobiography, "just as Charles Manson has a good, intelligent side." Over the next six years, all of the band's members would adopt names that combined the first name of a female sex symbol and the surname of a serial killer. Images of both Monroe and Manson, as well as of other famous and infamous figures, were common in the band's early promotional materials.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.