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Marilyn Manson's 10 Most Controversial Moments

To celebrate all the trouble (some good, some bad) he's caused, we thought we'd look back at 10 notable moments he's raised the collective eyebrows of the public and the media.

During MM's 1994 tour supporting Nine Inch Nails, such was his growing notoriety that the founder of the Church Of Satan himself, Anton Szandor LaVey, contacted Manson and requested a meeting. LaVey ended up making him a minister, and Manson later wrote the foreword to his final book, Satan Speaks! Manson is available for Satanic weddings, baptisms and funerals. Or not.
When performing onstage in San Francisco during the Portrait Of An American Family era, Manson would end up scarring his upper torso for life by smashing a beer bottle and cutting his chest from left to right.
In an interview with High Times in 1996, Manson said that he and founding guitarist Twiggy Ramirez smoked human bones together. They saved bones they found in a cemetery in New Orleans and later convinced a bunch of hangers-on to smoke them in an LA hotel room while on tour. According to Manson, “It smelled like burnt hair, gave you a really bad headache and made your eyes red.”
In 1995, The Phil Donahue Show was one of the most popular talk shows in America, and at the time metal was deemed as unholy or scary as drugs and alcohol. So, who better to talk about the subject than Marilyn Manson, who was already deemed a bad influence on audience members’ children? Remaining cool and collected throughout, Manson was bold enough to say, “I think it’s unfortunate that parents don’t know what their kids are doing. That disappoints me. I think parents should raise their kids better or someone like Marilyn Manson is going to.” Which is probably the most Marilyn Manson thing that he could've said.
Before launching into a performance of The Beautiful People at the MTV VMA Awards in 1997, he told the audience and viewers (from behind a lectern, no less): “We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism called Christianity.” Angry letters were written, livid phone calls were made…
During Ozzfest 2001, Manson – performing in a leather thong and pantyhose – wrapped his legs around a member of the security team's head and put his balls where they shouldn't have been. Manson was held on charges of battery and sexual assault against the guard, with the latter being dropped by the judge. He was forced to pay $4,000 in fines.
Whilst performing in Toronto, a stray bottle found its way on to the stage – and it had been directed at Manson. Instead of letting the fucker who did it get away with it, Manson invited the guy onstage and threw a bottle right at him, hitting him straight in the face. Manson then told him, ‘Get the fuck off my stage.’ It was kinda cool.
At Rock am Ring in 2003, during a performance of The Beautiful People, the God of Fuck deemed it necessary to run over to his guitarist, John 5, and give him a roundhouse to his guitar and chest. Because why not? Unsurprisingly, John 5 was not thrilled with Manson, and the pair got into a bit of a tiff onstage.
In 2013, Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris attempted suicide by allegedly slitting her wrists. According to reports, a family member denied her the chance to go and watch Marilyn Manson perform, and that allegedly contributed to her self-harming. The rockstar paid tribute to Paris by dedicating Disposable Teens to her and miming slitting his wrists onstage with a fake butcher's knife. He later released a statement saying that she always had guestlist to any of his shows in the future.
On November 5, 2017, Devin Kelley shot 26 people in a church in Texas. On the same evening Manson took to the stage at Ozzfest Meets Knotfest in San Bernardino with his microphone replacing the scope on a gun prop. Whether he had that planned before the shooting took place hasn't been established, but it caused an uproar nevertheless, as San Bernardino was the site of a mass shooting in 2015. MM later released a statement saying, “In an era where mass shootings have become a nearly daily occurrence, this was an act of theater in an attempt to make a statement about how easily accessible semi-automatic weapons are…"

Ever since his explosion onto the mainstream cultural landscape in the mid-'90s, Marilyn Manson has been lambasted and vilified by the press, the right wing and – occasionally – the justifiably annoyed recipients of his whimsical ire. 25 years into his career he's still causing chaos and pissing people off – he even managed to do some damage while confined to a wheelchair this week. To "celebrate" all the trouble (some good, some bad) he's caused, we thought we'd look back at 10 notable moments he's raised the collective eyebrows of the public and media. Have a scroll through above!

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