Okay, so I want you to start by picturing two
images in your head. Just hold them there for
a second. Okay. On one side, you've got the absolute
pinnacle of 1950s Hollywood glamour. Okay. Blonde
curls, red lips, that white dress blowing up
over a subway grate. You know the one. The American
dream, basically, in a dress. Marilyn Monroe,
no question. Exactly. Now, on the other side
of your mind, picture the total opposite. The
gritty, terrifying... The underbelly of the late
1960s. A wild eyed cult leader swastika carved
into his forehead. The man who you could argue
pretty much put a bullet in the head of the whole
free love movement. Charles Manson. Charles Manson.
Now here's the thing. Smash those two images
together. What do you get? You get well you get
a thesis statement. You get a brand. A brand.
That's a good way to put it. You get a guy. who
decided that those two figures, the ultimate
sex symbol and the ultimate serial killer, are,
in the eyes of the American public, kind of the
same thing. You get Marilyn Manson. And that's
our deep dive today. We are not just talking
about a rock star who wore spooky contact lenses
and ripped fishnets. No, not at all. We are looking
at a figure who, for, what, 30 years, acted as
a sort of heat -seeking missile for American
outrage. Whatever the culture was afraid of,
he became it. It is a massive story. And I'm
looking at our sources here, the stack of research
and the trajectory is, I mean, it's frankly exhausting
to even look at. It really is. We're going from
a super strict Christian school in Canton, Ohio,
all the way to the absolute heights of MTV fame.
Then to being the dead center of the Columbine
hysteria. And then finally, finally into the
courtroom, into the courtroom battles of the
2020s, where that whole monster persona suddenly
had very, very real and very serious legal consequences.
And that is really the mission today, isn't it?
When you try and figure out how Brian Warner,
who was basically a nerdy journalism student,
how he constructed this Marilyn Manson character,
how he used it to manipulate the media, the public,
everyone. And then the big question, whether
in the end the character actually consumed the
man. And we have to ask that hard question. When
you build your entire career on being the villain,
what happens when the world finally turns around
and decides you actually are one? Let's start
at the very beginning. Because usually when you
hear about these shock rockers, you expect, you
know, the cliche, a broken home, life on the
streets, that kind of thing. Right. The standard
tortured artist backstory. The Brian Warner's
origin story is, well, it's surprisingly suburban.
It is. So he was born in 1969, Canton, Ohio.
Brian Hugh Warner. His background is this this
mix of English, German. Irish. Yeah. Even some
Sioux heritage in there. And his parents. His
father, Hugh, was Catholic. His mom, Barbara,
was Episcopal. But the key detail in all the
early notes, the thing that really seems to have
wired his brain for everything that came later,
is where he went to school. Heritage Christian
School. Exactly. From first to 10th grade. And
you have to understand that this was not just
a say your prayers before lunch kind of place.
Yeah. This was deep, authoritarian, fear -based
religious instruction. The whole nine yards.
There's this one specific detail in their research.
I just love because the irony is so thick you
could cut it with a knife. It feels like it's
out of a movie script. Oh, I think I know what
you're talking about. The instructors there,
they had a very specific curriculum when it came
to music. They did. They would hold these seminars
and they'd play rock music for the kids. Bands
like Black Sabbath, Queen, Led Zeppelin. The
classics of evil. Right. And they would analyze
the lyrics with the kids line by line to show
them exactly how satanic and how evil. This music
was. Which, if you know anything at all about
teenage psychology. It's the biggest mistake
you could possibly make. It's like telling someone,
whatever you do, don't think about a pink elephant.
Of course. They thought they were inoculating
these kids against the devil's music. But for
Brian Warner, it was just a shopping list. He's
just sitting there taking notes. He's sitting
there listening to these forbidden sounds. And
instead of being repulsed, he's thinking, wow,
this sounds incredible. And if these authority
figures hate it this much, it must be really
powerful. So the school, in trying to demonize
it, actually handed him the blueprint for his
entire career. 100%. Yeah. They taught him exactly
which buttons to push to make religious conservatives
absolutely lose their minds. They handed him
the manual. He learned early on that fear is
a form of control, but it's also a form of attention.
That's it. If you can terrify the authority figure,
you have a strange kind of power over them. So
he eventually gets picked out or he leaves. It's
a bit unclear. He moves to a public school and
then the whole family relocates to Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. And this is a part of the timeline that
I think a lot of people just skip over. He doesn't
just grab a microphone and start screaming into
it. He goes to college. Right. Broward Community
College. Yeah. And what he majors in is crucial.
Journalism. So he isn't just an angry kid with
a guitar. He's an intellectual kid who is actively
analyzing how the media machine works. He gets
a job at a music magazine called 25th Parallel.
And look at who he's interviewing. It's not,
you know, the local garage bands trying to make
it. No, no. He is talking to the heavy hitters
of the whole industrial and alternative scene.
He interviews groovy man from my life with a
thrill kill cult. And then the big one. He interviews
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. I mean, that
is a meeting your destiny moment if I've ever
heard one. It really was. But think about the
dynamic there. He's the interviewer. He is studying
Reznor. He's asking questions about image, about
manipulation, about how you construct a persona.
He's learning the mechanics of fame from the
other side of the notepad. Exactly. He's seeing
that it's all a construct. It's all manufactured.
And he's thinking, I can do that. So when he
finally decides to start his own band in 1989,
Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, he's already
treating it like a media project, not just, you
know, four guys in a room making noise. Precisely.
He teams up with a guitarist named Scott Pitesky,
who takes on the name Daisy Berkowitz. And there's
that naming convention again. Right there from
day one. Daisy Duke, the all -American sex symbol,
and David Berkowitz, the son of Sam Killer. The
concept was locked in from the very beginning.
And the early shows they were doing in South
Florida, spectacle feels like a very polite word
for it. Oh, yeah. The notes mentioned things
like amateur pyrotechnics, band members in lingerie.
Naked women nailed to crucifixes, children locked
in cages on stage. I mean, it was pure shock
theater. It sounds like an absolute fever dream.
It was performance art designed to completely
bypass your critical brain and go straight for
the gut. They wanted a reaction. Any reaction.
Disgust, fear. arousal it didn't matter as long
as it wasn't boredom boredom was the enemy there
is one story from that era that i think just
perfectly encapsulates his whole psychological
approach to the audience the donkey pinata oh
this is classic early manson it's so clever in
its own twisted way so set the scene It's a crowded,
sweaty club in Florida. He hangs a pinata over
the audience, and he puts a stick on the edge
of the stage. But he doesn't tell them, hey,
come up and hit it. No, he does the opposite.
He gets on the microphone and starts pleading
with them, please don't hurt this pinata. It's
innocent. Whatever you do, don't do it. Which
is just daring them. It's a perverse psychology
101. Of course. The crowd sees the stick, they
see the pinata, and the guy on stage is telling
them no. So... The mob mentality just takes over
instantly. Someone grabs the stick and they just
smash the thing to absolute pieces. And they're
all expecting candy to fall out. And instead,
they get showered with butcher shop refuse, cow
brains, pig intestines, just unidentifiable organs
raining down on them. And it's just repulsive.
It is. But look at the lesson he's teaching them.
He proved that the crowd's destructive impulse
was their own. They were the ones who chose to
smash it. He explicitly told them to stop. He
made them complicit in their own horror. That
is the Marilyn Manson experience in a nutshell.
I'm just holding up a mirror. You're the ones
reflecting something ugly back. Clearly, that
level of intelligence and that absolute willingness
to cross every single line, it caught Trent Reznor's
attention. Big time. Reznor signs them to his
label, Nothing Records, in 1993. They drop the
Spooky Kids from the name. It's just Marilyn
Manson now. And we get the debut album, Portrait
of an American Family. Which was a solid industrial
record. It was very sample heavy, very kitschy,
full of these weird audio clips from old movies.
But it wasn't the big breakthrough. No, the real
breakthrough comes with the remix EP that followed,
Smells Like Children. And specifically, one track
on that EP, the cover of the Eurythmics' Sweet
Dreams, are made of this. I still remember seeing
that video for the first time on MTV. It was
terrifying. Manson in a tutu riding a pig, just
looking like a glitch in reality. It was inescapable.
And the song itself is so much slower. So much.
Sludgier than the original. That was the genius
of it. Yeah. He took this shiny, bouncing, 80s
synth -pop hit and he stripped all the joy and
gloss out of it. He just left the creepy, voyeuristic
lyrics exposed. Some of them want to abuse you.
Some of them want to be abused. When Annie Lennox
sang it, it sounded cynical and cool. When Manson
sang it, it sounded like an actual threat. And
that video with that song just blew up. It put
them on the map. It did. It set the stage for
what many fans now call the Triptych, three albums
that completely define his career and his impact.
Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and
Hollywood. This is where the band moves from
being a sort of cult sideshow to a genuine main
event. And it starts with Antichrist Superstar
in 1996, produced again by Trent Reznor. This
is the boogeyman era. The music on this album...
It's just oppressive. It's so dense and abrasive.
It's industrial metal at its absolute peak. You've
got these heavily distorted guitars, processed
drums, and Manson's vocals, which we should probably
talk about technically for a second. Yeah, let's
dig into that because a lot of people just dismiss
him as a shouter, but the notes here mention
he's actually a baritone with a pretty massive
range. A three octave range, yeah. He can go
from a really low, grumbling vocal, what's called
the fry register, all the way up to a piercing
whistle register. ginger scream. He had a lot
of tools in his vocal toolbox. But there's this
really weird detail in the technical notes about
something called the pentagram theory. Right.
This sounds like pure marketing spin, but lay
it on me. So the claim, and this supposedly came
from a mixing engineer who worked on the album,
is that Manson uses five very distinct vocal
tones or textures in his singing. Okay. And if
you run his isolated vocal tracks through a phrasal
analyzer, the frequency spikes that show up on
the screen actually form the geometric shape
of a pentagram. Okay, that has to be a myth.
That just sounds way too convenient to be true.
It's almost certainly a studio legend that he
happily encouraged. It's great marketing. Even
if it isn't literally true, it speaks to how
meticulously constructed the sound was. Nothing
was accidental. Nothing. The distortion, the
whispering, the sudden screams, it was all designed
specifically to unsettle you on a subconscious
level. And it absolutely worked. The album debuted
at number three on the Billboard 200. It was
a massive commercial hit. But the backlash was
immediate and ferocious. We're not just talking
about angry parents writing letters to the editor
this time. We're talking about the U .S. Senate
getting involved. Senator Joseph. Lieberman.
He called them, and this is a direct quote, the
sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record
company. You had the American Family Association
handing out pamphlets at their concerts, claiming
the band sacrificed live animals on stage and
engaged in bestiality. Total fabricates. Complete
nonsense. But it brings us right back to that
forbidden fruit idea from his childhood. The
more the senators screamed, the more records
he sold. He became the official enemy of the
state, which is exactly what a disaffected teenager
in 1996 wanted to listen to. He was validating
all their anger and alienation. He was their
champion. But then 1998 rolls around. He's the
biggest, most notorious shock rocker in the world.
He releases mechanical animals and people put
the CD in. They're expecting more of that grinding
industrial noise. Instead, they get glam rock.
This was a massive, massive risk. A huge pivot.
He completely traded the torn tights and the
stage rot for, like, sequined jumpsuits and feathers.
He became an alien. He created a whole new character,
Omega, this androgynous extraterrestrial. He
was channeling David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust 100%.
But why? Why do that? Why mess with a formula
that was so clearly working? Because he was terrified
of becoming a caricature. He said it explicitly
in interviews. He said, I don't want to be a
cartoon monster for the rest of my life. He wanted
to prove he was a musician, a songwriter, not
just a scarecrow. And the music is. It's genuinely
catchy. I mean, the dope show has a massive hook.
It's polished. It's slick. Lyrically, it's this
big critique of the drug culture and superficiality
of Hollywood. But the fan base was deeply divided.
I bet. A lot of the metalheads felt totally betrayed.
They called him a sellout. The album debuted
at number one, which was huge, but it actually
sold fewer copies in the long run than Antichrist
Superstar. It alienated part of his core audience.
It's interesting, though, because looking back
now, a lot of critics point to Mechanical Animals
as his best musical work. It's aged surprisingly
well. It has. It showed he had range and that
there was more to him than just shock value.
But that artistic evolution was it was cut short
by an event that he had absolutely nothing to
do with, but that ended up defining his legacy
forever. Columbine, April 20th, 1999. We have
to slow down here because this is the moment
where the whole Marilyn Manson project stops
being fun and games and performance art. This
is where it gets real. The shooting happens.
Two students kill 12 of their classmates and
a teacher before killing themselves. And almost
immediately, the news media, desperate for a
simple answer, starts saying they were wearing
Marilyn Manson T -shirts, which was false. Completely.
They were super fans. They were obsessed with
his music. Also false. The police investigation
later showed that the shooters. Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold actually disliked Manson's music.
They thought he was too commercial, too mainstream.
They listened to German industrial bands like
KMFDM and Ramstein. Right. But the truth didn't
matter, not in that moment. The narrative was
set in stone within hours. America needed a reason
why two of its suburban kids would do this, and
Marilyn Manson was the perfect, easy answer.
It was a full -blown moral panic. The heat on
him was intense. He had Bill O 'Reilly on Fox
News. The 24 -hour news cycle was just relentless.
Politicians were sending letters to his record
label, Seagram, demanding they stop distributing
his music. The mayor of Denver successfully petitioned
to get his upcoming concert in the city canceled.
And Manson says later in his book that this effectively
destroyed his career. He went from being a notorious
rock star to being an absolute pariah overnight.
He was getting death threats. But this is also
where he showed his intellect again. He didn't
just hide. He fought back. He wrote an op -ed
for Rolling Stone magazine. Yeah, titled Columbine,
Whose Fault Is It? Exactly. I went back and read
that piece for this deep dive. It is incredibly
lucid and well -argued. He basically says the
media is the one to blame. He pointed out the
staggering hypocrisy. The news was broadcasting
the shooters' faces and names 247, making them
famous, giving them the exact infamy they craved.
And yet they were blaming a musician for influencing
violence. He argued the news was creating a culture
of fear because fear sells advertisements and
gets ratings. And then came the interview in
Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine.
That was a huge turning point for a lot of skeptics,
I think. It really was. Moore sits down with
him and asks him. If you were to talk to the
kids at Columbine and the people in that community,
what would you say to them? And Manson just pauses
for a long time. And then he says, I wouldn't
say a single word to them. I would listen to
what they have to say. And that's what no one
did. It was such a surprisingly human, empathetic
response. It completely disarmed his critics.
It made the protesters holding signs outside
his shows look like the irrational ones. It legitimized
him in a way nothing else could have. He went
from being a cartoon villain to a serious spokesperson
for free speech. And his response album, Holywood,
was a direct result of that. It was a return
to that heavy, angry sound. But the anger was
focused entirely on this experience, on being
the scapegoat, on being the nail that sticks
out and gets hammered down. But before we move
on from this, I want to touch on something else
in the scapegoat file, because Columbine wasn't
the only time he was blamed for a crime he had
nothing to do with. No, the media developed a
really ugly pattern. It was like every time a
troubled teenager dressed in black did something
terrible, Manson's name was the first one they
reached for. There was the murder of a nun in
Italy. Yes, and the Jody Jones murder in Scotland
in 2003. The killer in that case, Luke Mitchell,
had bought a Manson album a few days before the
murder. And the tabloids just ran with it. They
ran with it, implying the music made him do it,
as if a CD can possess someone. And then there
were school shootings in Cleveland in 2007 and
again in Louisiana in 2009. And in both of those
cases, the perpetrators either wore a Manson
shirt or referenced him. It became this awful,
self -fulfilling prophecy because the media had
already labeled him the patron saint of school
shooters. So troubled kids who wanted that kind
of notoriety started identifying with him to
fit the role. It's a tragic, vicious loop. So
he survives Columbine, keeps touring, keeps making
music. But as we move into the 2000s, he starts
branching out. He wants to be seen as more than
just a musician. He wants to be a multimedia
artist. And starts painting watercolors of all
things. Yeah, that's surprising. And again, you
might expect him to just, you know, splash some
blood on a canvas and call it a day. But he was
serious about it. He actually collaborated on
an exhibition with the filmmaker David Lynch.
Although the notes here say his early sales strategy
was... Let's say unconventional. Yes. He apparently
traded some of his early paintings to drug dealers.
Like, here's a watercolor of a mutilated body.
Can I have some cocaine? That absolutely tracks
with the persona. But art critics were genuinely
split on his work. Some dismissed it as just,
you know, celebrity scribbles that were only
valuable because of his name. But others, including
critics at the New York Times, admitted there
was a real aesthetic there. It was grotesque,
for sure, but he had a distinct and recognizable
style. And he had a name for it. He called the
whole movement the Solibertarian Corporation.
And the slogan was, We will sell our shadow to
those who stand within it. Which is both profound
and incredibly creepy. It's very consistent with
his whole worldview. He's obsessed with this
idea of fame as a commodity that eats you alive.
That your shadow, your image, becomes more valuable
than your actual self. And then there's the acting.
He makes his debut in a David Lynch film, Lost
Highway. A perfect fit. Lynch's surrealism and
Manson's aesthetic are a match made in heaven.
Or hell. But he also popped up in some surprisingly
mainstream stuff. He played a white supremacist
leader Ron Tully in the final season of Sons
of Anarchy. He was a barber slash surgeon in
the horror show Salem. He even played himself
in Californication. He clearly enjoyed dipping
his toe into the Hollywood machine he was always
criticizing. And we can't forget the booze. He
launched his own brand of absinthe. He called
it Mansanth. Of course he did. Which, and this
is the crazy part, actually won a gold medal
at the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
It wasn't just some cheap cash grab. It was apparently
a legitimately decent product. Critics initially
called the taste plain, but the judges at the
competition disagreed. So by the mid -2000s,
he's sort of settled into this new role as an
elder statesman of goth. He isn't terrifying
grandmothers anymore. He's winning awards for
his looker and he's dating movie stars. And those
relationships are absolutely key to understanding
the next and most difficult phase of his life.
Right. The romances. All very high profile. First,
there was Rose McGowan in the late 90s. They
were engaged. That ended with them citing lifestyle
differences. Then Dita Von Teese. The burlesque
queen. This was arguably his aesthetic peak.
The two of them together look like a living art
project. They got married in a castle in Ireland
in 2005. The ceremony was officiated by Alejandro
Jodorowsky, the legendary avant -garde director.
It was all a very high concept. But it didn't
last long. Divorced in 2007. Dita cited his partying
and his relationship with another woman as the
reasons. And that other woman was Evan Rachel
Wood. And we really need to flag the age gap
here. It is significant, and it's a critical
part of what comes next. When their relationship
was made public in 2007, he was 38 years old.
She was 19. At the time, the media mostly treated
it as just another rock star dating a young actress
story. It wasn't really questioned. No. But looking
back now, through the lens of 2026 and the hashtag
MeToo movement, that power dynamic is, it's glaring.
It's impossible to ignore. Their relationship
was famously tumultuous. On again, off again,
they got engaged, then they broke it off. And
eventually he marries a photographer named Lindsay
Usage in a private ceremony during the COVID
-19 pandemic in 2020. But just as it seems like
he might be settling down again, the bottom completely
falls out of his world. This brings us to section
six of our outline. And this is by far the heaviest
part of the entire story, the reckoning. Because
for a very long time, Marilyn Manson seemed Teflon.
He had survived the Christians, the Senate, the
Columbine blame. But in February of 2021, the
allegations started. And this time, they didn't
come from a religious group or a concerned politician.
They came from the women he had been with. Evan
Rachel Wood posted a statement on her Instagram
account. It was brief, but it was absolutely
devastating. She named Brian Warner Marilyn Manson
as the man who had horrifically abused her for
years. She claims she was brainwashed and manipulated
into submission. And she wasn't alone. No. Within
days, four other women came forward with their
own very similar stories. And eventually, the
number of accusers grew to around 16 people.
We need to be specific about what was being alleged
here because abuse is a very broad term. The
allegations were severe. We're talking about
claims of sexual assault, physical violence,
anti -Semitic and racist abuse, and intense psychological
torture. And that detail about the room in his
house. Several women described a small, soundproofed
glass room in his West Hollywood home that he
allegedly called the bad girl's room. The bad
girl's room. And he would allegedly lock them
in there for hours as a form of punishment if
they misbehaved. That detail. It sounds like
something straight out of one of his music videos.
It's surreal. And that's the deeply disturbing
part. The line between his grotesque art and
his actual life seemed to have dissolved completely
if these allegations were true. So how did the
industry react? Because usually these things
can take time to process. There's an investigation.
This was instantaneous. His record label, Loma
Vista, dropped him within 24 hours. His talent
agency, CAA, dropped him. He was edited out of
episodes of the TV shows American Gods and Creepshow
that he was supposed to appear in. It was a complete
and total industry blackout. Now, Manson didn't
stay silent through all of this. He denied everything.
Vehemently. He released a statement calling the
claims horrible distortions of reality. His core
defense was that his life is intentionally controversial
and provocative art, but his intimate relationships
were always entirely consensual with like -minded
partners. And then he went on the offensive legally.
He filed a defamation lawsuit against Evan Rachel
Wood, and the details of that suit are, they're
wild. It reads like a spy thriller. He sued Wood
and another woman, an artist named Ilma Gore.
He claimed that they had conspired to recruit
other women to make false allegations against
him. But it went further than that. It did. He
alleged that they impersonated an FBI agent,
writing forged letters from the bureau to make
it look like he was under a federal investigation.
Impersonated FBI agents. That was the claim.
To pressure other women into making claims against
him. He also alleged they hacked his personal
accounts to manufacture evidence. He was trying
to completely flip the narrative to paint himself
as the victim of a coordinated malicious plot.
So how did that hold up in court? Mostly it didn't.
A judge threw out the most significant parts
of that lawsuit under what are called anti -SLAPP
statutes. Can you just quickly explain anti -SLAPP
for us? It's a term we hear a lot but maybe don't
fully get. Sure. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit
Against Public Participation. It's basically
when a rich or powerful person sues someone with
less power. like a journalist or an activist,
just to shut them up or drain their bank account
with legal fees, even if the lawsuit has no real
merit. So anti -Cecil AP laws are there to protect
free speech. Exactly. And the judge in this case
ruled that Manson couldn't prove Wood's statements
were made with actual malice and that the Wilder
conspiracy claims just didn't have enough evidence
to proceed. He was even ordered to pay her legal
fees for those parts of the suit. He eventually
just dropped the rest of the lawsuit in late
2024. So the big defamation suit against his
accusers failed. But what about the other side,
the actual lawsuits against him from these women?
It's a really mixed bag of legal outcomes, which
is what makes the truth so hard to parse for
the public. It's not a clean story. Several of
the lawsuits were dismissed. Right. Ashley Morgan
Smithline's suit was dismissed, and then she
actually later recanted her allegations entirely.
She came out and claimed that she had been manipulated
by Evan Rachel Wood into lying. That was a major,
major win for Manson's defense team. And the
suit from his former assistant, Ashley Walters.
That was a legal roller coaster. It was dismissed,
then it was reinstated on appeal regarding the
idea of suppressed memories, and then it was
ultimately dismissed for good in December of
2025. But there were settlements, too. Which
is different. Very different. Esme Bianco, the
actress from Game of Thrones, had sued him for
sexual assault and human trafficking. She settled
out of court with him in early 2023. And another
lawsuit from a Jane Doe was also settled right
before it was set to go to trial. And settlements
are tricky. They aren't an admission of guilt.
Not legally, no. But they usually involve paying
a significant amount of money to make the case
go away. It stops all the details from being
aired publicly in a courtroom. It's a form of
risk management. But the biggest question mark
hanging over all of this was the criminal investigation.
Absolutely. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department spent four years investigating him.
This wasn't a civil suit about money. This was
about potential jail time. And what was the result?
In 2025, the investigation finally concluded
and no criminal charges were filed. Why? If there
were so many accusers with similar stories? The
district attorney's office cited two main reasons.
The first was the statute of limitations. Many
of the alleged incidents happened in the late
2000s or early 2010s. And legally, in California,
too much time had passed to prosecute them as
crimes. The clock had run out. And the second
reason... Insufficient evidence. And we need
to be really clear about what that means. Insufficient
evidence in a criminal context does not mean
it didn't happen. Correct. It is not an exoneration.
It means the prosecutor looked at all the evidence
they had and said, I do not believe I can prove
this case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury
of 12 people. And that's a very high bar. It's
the highest bar in the legal system. And in he
said, she said. Cases involving past relationships,
especially with a public figure known for embracing
BDSM and rough sex, proving criminal non -consent
years after the fact is incredibly difficult.
So he avoided prison. He settled some of the
civil cases. He won others by dismissal. Where
does that leave him now in 2026? It leaves him
in a kind of public relations limbo, but it's
a limbo that he is actively trying to break out
of. In the last couple of years, we've seen a
very clear comeback attempt. He started releasing
new music again. Yep. A song called As Sick as
the Secrets Within in 2024. And another one called
Raise the Red Flag. And he's back to touring.
He went on a big arena tour opening for the band
Five Finger Death Punch in 2024. He's headlining
his own shows in Europe in 2025. It seems he
signed a new record deal with a label called
Nuclear Blast. He's moving forward. And he's
had some support from some of his peers. Billy
Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins has been a vocal
supporter, and most notably Kanye West, or Ye,
as he goes by now. That collaboration on the
Donda albums was a huge statement. It was. It
was Manson. Standing on a replica of Kanye's
childhood home porch next to Kanye and the rapper
Davey, who was also in the middle of a controversy.
Felt like a gathering of the canceled. A deliberate
provocation. For sure. Kanye seems drawn to figures
who are rejected by mainstream society. It was
a very visual signal that Manson wasn't going
to hide. He was going to lean into the exile.
So the big question is, does the audience care
about any of this? Are they coming back? That
is the million dollar question, isn't it? And
the answer seems to be, it's divided. There is
a segment of his old fan base. that truly believes
it's all a conspiracy, that he's being targeted
because he's a controversial man or because he's
Manson. And then there's another segment that
just practices the separate the art from the
artist mantra. They just like the songs and they
don't want to know about the man behind them.
Exactly. It brings us right back to the central
conflict of his entire life, doesn't it? His
entire career was built on blurring the line
between fantasy and reality. He told us he was
the Antichrist. He told us he was a villain.
And when... A significant number of people finally
turned around and said, OK, we believe you. You're
a bad guy. He suddenly turned around and said,
wait, no, hold on. That was just a character.
The real Brian Warner is a gentle, misunderstood
artist. It's the ultimate boy who cried wolf,
but the wolf is his own persona. It is. If you
spend 30 years screaming at the world. That you
are the living embodiment of evil. You can't
really be surprised when people start to assume
you're capable of doing evil things. It's the
inherent danger of living your entire life as
a performance art piece about depravity. At some
point, people stop seeing the irony. So when
you look at the whole timeline, from the Christian
schoolboy in Ohio to the accused predator in
Hollywood, what's the final takeaway? What is
Marilyn Manson to American culture? I think he's
a mirror. He's always been a mirror. In the 90s,
the culture was gripped by a moral panic about
Satanism and its effect on the youth. So he became
the Antichrist. Right. In the late 90s and early
2000s, we were terrified of gun violence and
what was happening in our schools. So he became
the scapegoat for Columbine. And in the 2020s,
our culture is finally having a massive, painful
reckoning with abuse, power dynamics and gender.
And now he has become the face of that conversation.
He just reflects our deepest fears back at us
in every era. And perhaps he's a warning. A warning
that if you wear a mask long enough, eventually
it starts to eat into your face. You can't tell
where the mask ends and you begin. We will sell
our shadow to those who stand within it. That
was his old slogan for his art movement. Yeah.
And I think at the end of the day, he sold his
shadow and eventually the bill came due. There's
this one quote from Mance and I read once that
I think just sums it all up so perfectly. He
said he trademarked the name Marilyn Manson the
same way that Walt Disney trademarked the name
Mickey Mouse. It's a product. A brand name. It
is. And the one lingering question that I can't
shake is this. Did Brian Warner lose control
of the monster he created? Or was the controversy,
the pain, the lawsuits, the outrage, was that
always the only product that really mattered
in the first place? That is something I think
the listeners are going to have to decide for
themselves. A very heavy story. But a necessary
deep dive, I think. Absolutely. It's a timeline
of our own cultural anxieties. To you, the learner,
thank you for sticking with us through this very
complex and very messy history. What do you think?
Is it possible to separate the art from the artist
when the art itself is the artist's life? Let
us know. Until next time.