12 Times Marilyn Manson Lost It While Performing

Into the musical landscape of the mid-1990s, already at a peak of edginess with the arrival of punk-inspired grunge rock, came Marilyn Manson. That's the name of both a Floridian goth-shock-hard-metal-sleaze band and socially critical performance art collective, as well as its front man, singer, chief songwriter, and creative director. His real name is Brian Warner, and Marilyn Manson, the guy in charge of the group of the same name, willingly became an enemy of all that is staid, proper, and conservative, taking what theatrical, horrific, and mildly transgressive acts like Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Twisted Sister had done in the past, and moving it into the extremes. Manson's public comments, songs, videos, and stage performances were found to be as offensive by as many people that they entertained and thrilled.

While a Marilyn Manson concert, with elaborate stage pieces, special effects, and realistic if not real depictions of violence and sexuality, was always a spectacle, it could easily turn into a disaster. A disproportionate number of concerts by the band, across its three-decade-plus history, ended early and fell into chaos, confusion, and injury when its eponymous singer acted out. Here are all the times that Marilyn Manson concerts went off the rails because Marilyn Manson made some ill-advised choices.

The band Marilyn Manson released its first album in 1994 and, almost immediately after becoming a nationally known act, front man Marilyn Manson started making headlines for his untoward, relentlessly provocative, and possibly illegal on-stage antics. During a December 1994 show in Jacksonville, not far from the band's origin point of Tampa Bay, Manson performed with his mouth what appeared to be a sexual act on Jessicka, singer for the band Jack Off Jill, with whom his band shared the bill.

Jessicka was actually wearing a prosthetic re-creation of the male sexual organ, but Manson was still arrested for what he described in his memoir "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" (via Hysteria Magazine) as "violating the adult entertainment code." For allegedly publicly performing a male-on-male sexual act, Manson was held overnight by police and released without any charges being filed and after passing a psychological evaluation. He was also brought in by authorities for reportedly urinating on members of his audience during that same show.

Front man Marilyn Manson usually performs shirtless, a confrontational choice that allows the audience to see the self-inflicted scars he's endured in both his personal and professional life. While he was a self-described cutter in his youth, using a small knife to habitually make himself bleed, a grim detail about Marilyn Manson's childhood, the musician gave himself one of his most prominent and lasting wounds in front of a crowd. 

In 1995, Manson and one of the earliest versions of Marilyn Manson the group played a concert in San Francisco. During the show, the musician decided to break a beer bottle and then used a large piece of the shattered glass to stab himself in the chest. And then, according to his memoir, "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" (via Rolling Stone), he pulled the bottle "across skin until it reached the other side," while a small crowd of fans looked on. It resulted in "one of the deepest and biggest scars on the lattice work that is my torso," Manson wrote of how he became one of the musicians who permanently damaged their body performing live.

In 1996, Marilyn Manson broke through into the commercial mainstream with the hit singles "The Beautiful People" and a cover of Eurythmics' biggest and often incorrectly sung hit "Sweet Dreams." The band and its front man were poised for even more success via the support of the upper echelon of the music industry — and Marilyn Manson played a showcase for such personnel in New York City in September 1996. It didn't go well, and the brief concert ended not in accolades or new deals for Marilyn Manson, but rather medical attention and public outcry. During the band's set at Manhattan's Irving Plaza venue, Manson reportedly tossed his microphone stand violently in the direction of his drummer, Ginger Fish. The piece of equipment knocked Fish in the head so squarely and severely that the concert ended with the song he was playing, only the fourth of the night. Fish, temporarily left unconscious from the blow, was removed from the club via an ambulance and taken away to receive treatment for his injury.

"It was disgusting," superstar DJ Moby, an invited guest, witness, and one of many stars who can't stand Marilyn Manson said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. "I'm waiting to see if the police want witnesses. That kind of violence is totally unnecessary on stage."

A November 2000 Marilyn Manson show promoting the album "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom almost went off without a hitch, apart from the choreographed chaos that's just a requisite part of any concert by the band. During the last scheduled song of the evening, singer Marilyn Manson decided to tear apart the drum set while drummer Ginger Fish continued to try to make music with it. Fish eventually joined in the fracas, and the bandmates got so caught up in the destruction of their own gear that the drummer lost his balance, and then he fell off of the substantially raised platform to the stage below.

Manson continued to sing and perform and eventually left the stage with the rest of the band, while Fish continued to lay immobile on the ground. About half an hour later, the house lights came on, and emergency medical workers were allowed to go up on stage and remove Fish and treat him for his injuries. Doctors at a local hospital diagnosed the drummer with a fractured collarbone. "He is feeling fine and will not miss any shows," the Marilyn Manson website reported (via ABC News).

The Marilyn Manson traveling stage circus descended on the Detroit area in July 2001, with a show at the DTE Energy Music Theatre in suburban Clarkston, Michigan. Front man Marilyn Manson did what he usually did during concerts, such as growl out lyrics and stalk menacingly about the stage, until he approached stage-adjacent security guard Joshua Keasler, standing at ground level beneath an elevated Manson. The musician got Keasler to break his concentration to turn back and stare by asking if he thought Manson could perform a sexual act on him, which he then did.

While dressed in his common stage outfit of skimpy leather underwear and hosiery, Manson, above, twisted his legs around the neck of the guard and moved around provocatively, simulating sexual behavior. After the concert, Manson was arrested by local police. Initially charged with a count of improper sexual conduct, Manson entered a plea of no contest to disorderly conduct and assault and battery, paying a fine of $4,000. And then Keasler filed a civil suit, accusing Manson of sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The sides reached an out-of-court settlement with financial terms not revealed to the public.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Marilyn Manson played Rock Am Ring, a hard rock festival, in Germany in 2003. During the band's performance of its big hit, "The Beautiful People," and while guitarist John 5 ground out the song's circular riff, front man Marilyn Manson approached the musician and kicked him through his instrument and in the chest. John 5 was used to this, calling it a common occurrence on stage, but this time it escalated into more anger and violence. "He didn't do anything wrong. I just snapped. It was weird. I went nuts. I didn't even remember," the musician told "Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk" in 2022 (via Blabbermouth). John 5 took off his instrument and threw it down after Manson shoved him a few more times and acted like he wanted to fight. When John 5 backed down, Manson retreated.

He'd just tried to start an altercation with a colleague deep in grief. "What happened was my sister passed away, my sister died unexpectedly," John 5 said. "And I was in a state of shock." John 5 left the band just months later, in 2004.

Soundwave, a festival celebrating dark and alternative rock bands staged annually in Sydney, welcomed two headliners fond of makeup, costumes, and shock value for its February 2012 iteration: Marilyn Manson and Slipknot. The former played first, and the set progressed less than smoothly, with front man Marilyn Manson engaging in a series of odd and aggressive behaviors. While frequently telling the crowd how drunk and high on drugs he was, he also dumped a container of what appeared to be cocaine all over the band's bass player. When he wasn't singing, he fought with stagehands, or he recited, or slurred, improvised free verse poetry instead of lyrics, such as "Remember, we're up over you, down under," he said to the Australian crowd (via Musicfeeds).

The crowd, consisting primarily of ardent Slipknot fans at that point, grew agitated and annoyed by Manson's actions. While crew members built the Slipknot stage set while Marilyn Manson was still performing, audience members repeatedly chanted "Slipknot!" which upset the singer so much that he walked off the stage in the middle of a song, leaving the rest of his band wondering how to proceed.

When Marilyn Manson acts strangely or alarmingly while singing for a crowd, it's usually out of choice or an unpredicted side effect of substance consumption, but on one occasion, Manson's antics could be attributed to a virus. TCU Place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, hosted a Marilyn Manson concert in February 2013. The heavily theatrical show, with transgressive and subversive elements designed to delight and shock audience members, went along as planned until the singer repeatedly vomited on the stage. During "The Beautiful People," Manson abruptly stopped singing and walking around, and collapsed where he stood. The rest of the band continued on, seemingly thinking the singer's barfing was an act, until Manson didn't move and stage workers came in to assist the singer backstage.

Manson went to a hotel room to convalesce, and he reportedly felt sick before the concert but decided to proceed anyway. The diagnosis: Manson behaved so oddly because he had the flu.

The PNC Bank Arts Center of Holmdel, New Jersey, welcomed Marilyn Manson for a concert in July 2015, a stop on its "The End Times" tour. As the band neared the conclusion of its show, it launched into one of its oldest and most fan-noted songs, "Lunchbox," set to feature one of the band's newest members, guitarist Paul Wiley. The tune, first recorded in 1994, builds to a guitar solo, but Wiley missed the lyrical nod from bandleader Marilyn Manson to go ahead with the shredding, which evidently enraged the singer.

Manson unleashed his fury on Wiley for his mistake. He wandered around the stage and repeatedly tried to take down or destroy the guitarist's amps and other equipment. He also threw a water bottle at a photographer and physically confronted Wiley, spreading his arms as if he wanted to fight, giving some shoves, and throwing down his microphone. After uttering an anti-LGBT slur, Manson continued performing.

Marilyn Manson, man and backing band, performed at the Stage AE in Pittsburgh in September 2017. While the group tore through its hit "The Beautiful People," Manson attempted to do a little crowd work, wanting to sing into the faces of the fans right behind barricades separating the stage from the audience. 

While descending to that area, Manson slipped, and when he headed back to the stage after a brief absence, he had trouble walking. He ordered his backing band to stop playing and then told the crowd what was going on. "I just broke my ankle, but it's okay because Alice Glass is going to fill in for me," Manson said (via The PRP), without clearing that first with Glass, lead singer of opening act Wolf Alice. "Come on, you can do it. I told you I'd break my ankle because the tour manager is a fascist."

Despite the band's lead singer suffering a hurt ankle in a show in Pittsburgh in September 2017, Marilyn Manson's "Heaven Upside Down" tour continued uninterrupted, heading to New York City for a show at the Hammerstein Ballroom the very next night. As the band worked its way through its cover of "Sweet Dreams," singer Marilyn Manson decided to climb up onto the centerpiece of the stage decorations. Two gigantic, man-sized handguns, loosely connected by some grids of metal scaffolding, stood there, and witnesses say Manson took just one step onto the prop, which is all it took for the entire weighty apparatus to instantly disassemble and fall down on top of the singer. 

Members of the group and stage workers rushed in to remove the crumbled artwork from Manson, but he still wasn't able to get back on his feet. "He was pretty limp, almost as though he was unconscious," attendee and witness Anthony Biscardi told the BBC. Manson was draped with a black cloth and escorted off stage before organizers canceled the show. Briefly hospitalized afterward, the band called off the rest of its tour.

Making up dates after injuries sustained at his 2017 stage incident at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Marilyn Manson returned to New York City in February 2018 for a concert at The Paramount. That show also ended abruptly, although even earlier and directly due to front man Manson's lack of desire to perform, landing him on the list of musicians who stormed off stage during live performances. "3 songs in and the dude had a mental breakdown," one attendee reported on The Paramount's Instagram page (via Brooklyn Vegan), while fan Alison May said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that "Marilyn Manson put on the WORST show I have ever seen. Played 5 songs, b****ed about people not saying 'I Love You' and walked off."

Witnesses say Manson stated on stage multiple times that he was unable to properly sing but did so anyway to give paying customers what they came to see. One fan said on Reddit that the singer was behaving erratically at the pre-show meet-and-greet. "He was wasted. He was worse on stage. Rambled on and on about us loving him." During what was supposed to be "Disposable Teens," Manson angrily threw down his microphone, pushed over a stage amplifier, and left the stage. About ten minutes later, he returned, ranted incoherently while his backing musicians attempted to play, and then skittered off stage again. Audience members chanted, "f*** you, Manson," and EMTs arrived in case the singer needed medical attention.