 
Marilyn Manson Causes A Scene
Jan. 17 [10:00 EST] -- It seems that Marilyn Manson's favorite travel companion is controversy these days. After a Utah venue refused to let the band perform and Oklahoma's Governor decried them as "garbage" ("Kinderfield" live, QuickTime, 800k), Marilyn Manson caused an uproar at an autograph session at a Canadian record store. On Tuesday evening, the band was greeting fans at an in-store appearance in Vancouver, British Columbia, when, according to reports, a crowd of 500 Manson devotees waiting outside grew restless. Many of the fans had been waiting for ten hours to meet their gruesome heroes, and when it seemed that they might not make it inside before the band split, began jostling, jockeying, and shoving. Soon the crowd surged and reportedly shattered the ten-by-seven foot plate glass window at the front of the store. A police spokesperson called the fracas "pushing... not intentional fighting," and told reporters that no one was injured. The band reportedly split the scene, and the somewhat disappointed crowd spilled into the street. According to reports, thirty police officers were called in to clear the area, which the crowd did without incident. Somewhere underneath all the hoopla, Marilyn Manson still has a music career, and the band debuted its new video, "Tourniquet" ("Tourniquet" live, QuickTime, 2.6MB), on MTV on Thursday.
 
David Lynch Meets Manson And Reznor

Jan. 9 [Updated 8:00 EST] -- No matter what parents in Utah think of him, Marilyn Manson has found a kind heart in filmmaker David Lynch. The "Blue Velvet" director has cast Manson and guitarist Twiggy Ramirez in a mock porno film that appears in Lynch's upcoming "Lost Highway."

In vintage Lynch form, the film involves a tormented jazz musician, a randy car mechanic, and Patricia Arquette in two roles (or are they the same woman?).

The "Lost Highway" soundtrack was coordinated by Nine Inch Nail Trent Reznor, who did the same duty on Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers." The film opens next month, and Arquette says Lynch's love of music was only too evident on set.

"He directs musically, he'll listen to certain kinds of music in one earphone, while he'll listen to the scene and watch it," Arquette told MTV News. "He already has his music picked out for certain parts and he writes music... The way he directs, is mostly musically."

The "Lost Highway" soundtrack will feature three new Nine Inch Nails tracks, including the first single "Perfect Drug." "Lost Highway" also carries contributions from Smashing Pumpkins, Lou Reed and David Bowie.

MTV: Meanwhile, in Oklahoma city, a mini-panic has broken out over an impending concert, on February 5th, by the tragically misunderstood Marilyn Manson. Manson and his band are booked to play the city's state fairgrounds, an ultra-wholesome place, presumably, and some locals are so alarmed they prevailed upon the governor, Frank Keating, to stop the show. Keating, surprisingly knowledgeable about Manson, was sympathetic, but not helpful.

The governor hastened to note that he believes the Manson group, "pedals garbage," promotes satanic worship and is "clearly bent on degrading women, religion and decency". However, he said he had no authority to cancel acts at the fairgrounds and suggested Oklahomans simply ignore the gig, which in fact they appear to be doing, as of Monday the gig was far from sold out. The man in charge of the fairgrounds said that he couldn't cancel the show either, noting that, "If I only played shows I liked, we'd only have Willie Nelson or George Jones perform here." Marilyn Manson apparently sees all this as an exercise of religious zealotry. The very thing according to the singer that made him the man he is today.

MARILYN MANSON: Being a 13 year old kid, and having some one tell you on a daily basis, that this is the final hour and that the anti-christ was coming and it was going to be the end of the world. You know, I would stay up every night and have nightmare this and then finally 1984 passed, and all these years that they said was going to be the end, I developed a real hard shell, you know, that really became what Marilyn Manson is, it was a resentment.
 
Snoop And Marilyn Manson Plan A Project

Jan. 8 [14:00 EST] -- Snoop Doggy Dogg and shock rocker Marilyn Manson are planning to collaborate on a rock/rap remix of Manson's hit "Beautiful People."

While the pairing may seem more than a bit odd, the two do have one very important thing in common: their affiliation to Interscope Records.

The two were introduced at the "MTV Video Music Awards" last summer by an Interscope representative and hit it off. According to Snoop's label, Death Row, Snoop and Marilyn spoke in last month in England, where they were both touring. At the time, the two reaffirmed their plans to work together. Snoop told "Spin" magazine he plans to appear in a video for the remix, and that he may invite Manson to guest on a future album.
 
Marilyn Manson Fans Win Legal Battle In Utah

June 24 [12:00 EDT] -- One of the first flaps in the ongoing Marilyn Manson tour controversy has come to an end, with Manson fans coming out on top.

A group of Manson devotees in Salt Lake City, Utah won a $9,300 settlement in their lawsuit against the Utah State Fairpark. The fans claimed that their First Amendment rights were violated after the venue canceled a Manson concert January 11.

Back in January, a federal judge told the Fairpark that its behavior constituted prior restraint and that it couldn't cancel a concert just because it didn't like its content. However, the judge also refused to order the venue to book the concert and the show's promoters, concerned about future relations with the Fairpark, opted to move the Manson concert to Wolf Mountain in Park City some 30 miles away.

After the change of venue, the plaintiffs re-filed their suit, seeking monetary damages. The state Attorney General's office then stepped in and told the Fairpark it had to adopt a new rule saying it wouldn't restrict performances based on content. The Attorney General went on to note that if the Fairpark was fearful of an obscene performance, it could get a court order prohibiting the concert.

The Fairpark's chief executive officer says its beef was never with Manson, but with the promoter, which started selling tickets to the show before a contract was signed.
 
Manson Talks About Being Your Scapegoat

June 25 [7:55 EDT] -- As drama and controversy continue to follow Marilyn Manson on tour, the shock rock icon has chosen the appropriately titled "Man That You Fear" [1MB QuickTime] as his latest video.

Manson himself notes that the song is a fitting anthem for the Satan's spawn hooha that's managed to follow him over the last six months.

At his first Ozzfest gig at New Jersey's Meadowlands (yet another Manson stop that generated public outcry and legal maneuvering), Manson explained to MTV News that while the storyline of the new clip seems pulled from his own experience, it is actually based on the Shirley Jackson short story "The Lottery."

"Its setting is in a settlement," Manson told MTV News. "It separates themselves from the rest of society because they don't have their own rules. It takes place on the last day of my life."

"I'm sort of chosen and picked as a bit of a sacrifice for the rest of mankind, or in this case the small town that I've chosen to live in and it's kinda like how I've been offered up as a scapegoat in America." [1MB QuickTime]

The scapegoat scored at least one victory this week as 14 fans of America's moral scourge won a legal victory in Utah this week. As we reported yesterday, the Utah State Fairpark agreed to pay the Manson fans $9,300 to settle a lawsuit filed in January after the Fairpark canceled a Manson gig after tickets had already gone on sale

If you think you've heard it all concerning Manson and his road woes, you can test your knowledge by playing MTV News Online's "Route 666: The Marilyn Manson Tour Game." The game is accessible at the news area of MTV.com, or is available for download on America Online.
 
Manson May Be Planning To Tell His Story

July 31 [7:55 EDT] -- If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

It seems that Marilyn Manson has taken that theory to heart as he is reportedly planning to pen his autobiography after word surfaced that some unauthorized biographies were already in the works.

However, Manson may not go it alone. The artist-formerly-known-as-Brian-Warner will reportedly team with Judith Regan, the queen of controversial best-sellers. Regan has already launched memoirs by Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern to the top of the nation's sales list.
 
Marilyn Manson: Sneaker Pimps "Very Confused Individuals"

September 16 [7:55 EDT] -- If you've been following MTV News, you know it's not just the religious right that's been comparing Marilyn Manson's music to crap lately.

Last week, the trip-hop happy Sneaker Pimps had their say about working with Manson on "Long Hard Road Out Of Hell," [550k QuickTime] the track they collaborated on for the "Spawn" soundtrack.

As you may recall ("Marilyn Manson Is No Friend Of The Sneaker Pimps" from September 9 in the MTV News Online Gallery), Sneaker Pimps' Liam Howe summarized the experience saying, "We had a chance to polish a turd."

His bandmate Kelli Dayton went on to say, "We knew that they weren't very good. We thought, when we were first approached with it, we thought, 'Well, we don't like the music, but if we can do something good...' But we weren't there at the final mix, which was a mistake, so we have to come back... It was crap anyway, the song was crap." [1MB QuickTime]

Now, our colleagues at MTV Latino have gotten Manson's response in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his South American tour stopped last Friday.

"I wouldn't waste my time having hard feelings. I've already forgotten their names," [350k QuickTime] Manson said. "When we were approached to work with them, it was a bit of a favor, in a sense, because we had already written the song, and I was interested in finding a girl to sing back-up vocals on it, and Sneaker Pimps were someone who were begging, asking to be involved with us. I wasn't that familiar with them. I thought they had a good single, and the girl's voice was great. When we worked on the song, I think they were a little upset, because there wasn't much for them to do because the song was already done. Their participation, and now their opinion, is quite irrelevant to me."

Manson also disputes the Sneaker Pimps' claim that they weren't given tapes to make their own mix of the song.

"They did a mix of the song, so they obviously did receive the tapes," Manson told MTV Latino. "I have a mix of the song. They were begging and begging and asking for us to use it, and I said, 'Okay that's fine. We can put it as a remix.' Now they've come back and said they don't want us to use it. I think they're very confused, very confused individuals."

Manson's Latin American tour wraps up Wednesday in Mexico City, then he'll shoot a video for "Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" (obviously, without the Sneaker Pimps).

Manson, by the way, has inspired protests in Chile against his alleged Satanism from both a bishop and a trucker's union... honest.
 
Manson Sued By Former Guitarist

September 24 [14:00 EDT] -- Marilyn Manson's just been sued by the band's ex-guitarist Scott Putesky, who went by the stage name Daisy Berkowitz in his six years with the band.

He charges the band, its lawyer, its label (Nothing Records), and frontman Manson himself (a.k.a. Brian Warner) with breach of contract and legal malpractice.

Putesky (who took his stage name from "The Dukes of Hazard's" Daisy Duke and Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz) claims he's still owed undetermined royalties. Putesky also claims that he was fired with no warning shortly after Manson began recording its "Anti-Christ Superstar" album, when the band bought him a plane ticket home.

Last September, a month before that album came out, "120 Minutes" host Matt Pinfield had heard about the dismissal of Daisy, and asked Manson and bassist Twiggy Ramirez about it.

"Our old guitar player, he couldn't really grasp the concept of 'Anti-Christ Superstar,'" Manson told Pinfield. "We just had creative differences, and I don't think he liked our fans really. He didn't really understand what we were about, [1.3MB QuickTime] you know, so we just wanted to represent us as honestly as possible, so we thought we'd be a lot stronger if we were to get someone else on the team."

Meanwhile, Manson's manager says Daisy Berkowitz sent the band a letter of resignation, and that he thought the two parties had reached an agreeable settlement.
 
Manson Rebuts Congressional Inquiry With Shakespeare

November 24 [16:00 EDT] -- As we reported back in October, a congressional hearing was being called to investigate the "social impact of music lyrics [sic] violence on today's youth," after a teen's suicide last December in Montana. Fifteen-year-old Richard Kuntz shot himself while reportedly listening to Marilyn Manson.

The boy's father, Ray Kuntz, testified during the first week of November in Washington before the committee. Kuntz talked about his son showing him the Manson CD, "I failed to recognize that my son was holding a hand grenade, and the grenade was live, and it went off in his head."

Manson told MTV his thoughts regarding the tragedy: "Obviously it upset me that someone [would think] I would encourage that type of behavior. I've always said that people [who] would harm themselves or others over music or film or books, [they're] just being ignorant. If people want to be ignorant there's nothing you could do about it."

Manson also had some thoughts for concerned parents: "It's a wake-up call for parents to teach their kids to be more intelligent [ways], to interpret art with some sort of intelligence."

"If you want to blame music for someone hurting themselves, then you can just as easily blame Shakespeare writing "Romeo & Juliet" which is something I was taught when I was a kid, and that's a story about two teenagers that killed themselves because their parents don't understand them and I think the key lesson is that parents don't understand their kids. If you take more time to talk to your kids, your kids are going to live happier lives."