This article first appeared in print journal May/June 1997.

During the past three decades of the rock ‘n’ roll era, a handful of artists and bands have been able to balance controversy and fame, mass hostility with mass popularity.

There was Black Sabbath, the dark, dank pioneering heavy metal outfit, whose lumbering, mind-numbing music was full of lyrics about demons and destruction, and whose lead singer, Ozzy Osbourne, graduated to a lengthy solo career characterized by legendary outbursts—such as biting the head off a bat and urinating in public—that were both highly antisocial and highly publicized.

There was Alice Cooper, the preacher’s son who took gender-bending, shock value, and glitzy theatricality to absurd new heights. One of Cooper’s albums was packaged with a pair of women’s panties. And among the props the singer used in his elaborate stage shows was a huge snake, a set of gallows, and a doll which he hacked to pieces.

And then there was Kiss, the blood-spurting, flame-throwing, ear drum-busting band that combined showmanship and shameless self-promotion into big business. The band reunited in 1996, and their U.S. tour was one of the year’s top-grossing (and grossest) acts.

But just when America’s pastors and parents thought they’d seen it all, along came Marilyn Manson, a band that combines music, showmanship, and controversy in breathtakingly shocking new ways.

The band’s lyrics are a virtual encyclopedia of the crooked, the corrupt, and the chaotic. Their album covers are galleries of the wicked and the obscene. Their concerts are all-out assaults on the senses and are occasionally interrupted by officers of the law arresting one or more band members. Their fame, marked by three popular albums, sold-out concerts, and a run of magazine feature stories—including a recent appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone—means that love ‘em or hate ‘em, the band is giving millions of people plenty to talk about.

Here’s a look at the band, their music, and their controversial frontman, as well as an analysis of the deep bond this relatively new group has forged with its legion of young fans.

Up from Obscurity
Marilyn Manson, the man, was born Brian Warner, a somewhat gawky kid who grew up with a stable family in Canton, Ohio, before moving to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., which Manson now considers home.

For a while, Warner attended a Christian school. His parents had hoped it would straighten out their mixed-up child, but it only gave the youngster an abiding distaste for institutional religion, a theme that flows through much of his music.

His stage name, which comes from a combination of Marilyn Monroe’s first name and Charles Manson’s last, is a fitting symbol of the way the band’s music combines the lofty and the low, the beautiful and the horrible.

Marilyn Manson, the band, consists of four additional musicians. Two follow their leader in the name game: guitarist Twiggy Ramirez (named after the skinny model and the alleged Satanically-inspired killer) and keyboard whiz Madonna Wayne Gacy, (for the omnipresent singer and the man who murdered children and buried their remains under and around his house). Drummer Ginger Fish and guitarist Zim Zum apparently came to their names through some mysterious formula.

The band released their debut album, Portrait of an American Family, in 1994 to little acclaim or notice. That album, like the two Marilyn Manson have released since, was produced by Trent Reznor, the frontman for Nine Inch Nails, the influential pop/industrial band that’s controversial in its own right for its ragged, jagged music and lyrics filled with sex, despair, and hostility toward religion.

MM’s second album, 1995’s Smells Like Children, was a big leap forward musically. The band’s blossoming rock sound was bigger and bolder than its more industrial-sounding debut, spawning the MTV smash “Sweet Dreams,” a macabre remake of the Eurythmics 1983 hit. And Smells Like Children, which also contains numbers about drug addiction, sex with animals and children, and titles like “May Cause Discoloration of the of the Urine or Feces” and “Scabs, Guns and Peanut Butter,” easily earned the “Parental Advisory” sticker that graced its front cover. But still it was easy to dismiss the band as a bunch of poseurs or jokesters. On the cover, the band’s frontman resembles a demented dweeb, not a deranged demoniac.

That all changed with 1996’s Antichrist Superstar, an album that debuted at the number three position on Billboard’s Top 200 albums chart and has gone on to sell millions of copies.

A Twisted Document
With Antichrist Superstar, Marilyn Manson gave notice to the world that it had arrived. Recorded in the studio and in concert, the album is a big, brooding musical document of late-20th century teenage despair.

The album opens with “Irresponsible Hate Anthem,” an edgy number in which Manson suggests, “Let’s just kill everyone and let your god sort them out,” and repeatedly screams, “F— it”. Next comes “The Beautiful People,” an uptempo, heavy metal anthem which seethes with hostility toward the rich and the privileged, especially the religiously self-righteous.

Manson says many of the songs spring from his dark and twisted dreams. For example, “Kinderfield” is about Jack, a man with cracked and dirty hands and toy trains. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Manson said the song is about his grandfather who masturbated while playing with trains while Manson secretly watched.

Like much of the work of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson’s music is full of theological pronouncements. In both cases, God doesn’t exist except as a mass hallucination or a mythical construct. In either case, God and religion are seen as socially and emotionally negative forces which force people into various forms of slavery and inauthenticity.

Manson, on the other hand, promotes a Nietzche-lite gospel. Or as Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss puts it, “he’s a pop icon who encourages people to question the existence of God and believe in themselves.”

Regarding the Antichrist Superstar song, “Little Horn,” Manson told Strauss that the tune about the advent of the Antichrist (“Out of the bottomless pit comes the Little Horn/Little Horn is born…everyone will suffer now”) also came from one of Manson’s dreams about his future. As it happens, a similar dream can be found in Daniel 7 and 8, in which the prophet also dreams about a “little horn” (the antichrist) that would go on to wreak havoc, destruction, and misery.

Fans and Fanatics
Controversy and fans followed Manson at every stop of his recent American concert tour, where he transformed his dark vision into visually confrontational rock theater.

As a writer for San Diego’s daily paper explained it: one minute Manson stood with his arms outstretched in a Christlike pose; the next, the singer “wore little more than a bikini brief, engaged in autoerotic behavior and vibrated his body with visceral intensity.”

When he wasn’t speaking with his body, Manson was delivering anti-religious tirades. “We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of Christianity, and we will no longer be oppressed by the police-state mentality,” said the singer in his comments between songs.

I was teaching an evening class at Point Loma Nazarene College on the night of Manson’s San Diego concert, so I wasn’t able to attend. But I asked a few of my students to go to the venue’s parking lot and interview Manson’s fans.

They had no  problem getting them talking.

It was the second Manson concert for Laura Allen, 19, who sported bright, burgundy hair and a black leather bra and leather micro-mini skirt with a velvet jacket and boots. She identified with Manson’s anti-Christian ideals and respected how he emerged from a tragic childhood and “really made something of himself.”

Tad Kruse, 17, said he enjoys the band’s music because it’s obnoxious. He hoped to get close to the stage where he and Manson could exchange saliva missiles. “It would be an honor to have Marilyn spit on me,” said Kruse, who quoted lines from the band’s song, “The Beautiful People,” as he reviewed the motley crew assembled in the parking lot. “They’re expressing their individuality, and I’m cool by them,” he said.

Many members of the crowd wore T-shirts sporting slogans lifted from or inspired by MM songs: ” I am the God of f—“; “I will grow to hate you”; “Everlasting c—sucker” (the title of a song from Smells Like Children); “Beware of God.”

But even in such a crowd, 20-year-old Janelle Bunch stood out. She had “Porno Queen” written across her chest in black lipstick. More black lipstick was spread thick on her lips, which were also covered with what looked like real blood. That’s likely, because Bunch had cut her arms and rubbed them together, smearing her blood on much of her upper body.

Bunch said she identified with Manson and felt that his lyrics personified her own troubled life. “I was locked in a closet in Christian school, too.”

A Point Loma student exchanged email messages with “deadkate” and “evil_angel,” two Manson fans who quoted the band’s lyrics and discussed their philosophy during an online chat session.

“I think no one is right on, but [Manson] is pretty damn close,” said “deadkate.” Asked what she liked about the band’s music, she said, “The way it makes me feel.” Soon the online exchange began sounding angrier. My student asked, “evil_angel, what are you angry about?” The response says a lot about the appeal of Manson’s anger-filled music:

“My list on that is way too damn long.”

Universally condemned by Christian organizations like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association, Manson is experiencing growing fame as the anti-hero for a whole new generation of lost and angry young people.

“Never has there been a rock star quite as complex as Marilyn Manson,” writes Rolling Stone’s Strauss.

(Point Loma Nazarene College students Michele Avila, Blain Rushing, and David Ulrich helped research this article.)