Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids was the predecessor of the shock rock band currently called Marilyn Manson. |Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids was based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the United States. In 1989, Brian Warner was a college student working toward a journalism degree, and gaining experience in the field by writing music articles for a South Florida lifestyle magazine, 25th Parallel. It was in this capacity that he was able to meet several of the musicians to whom his own band would later be compared, including My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.
Warner met Scott Mitchell Putesky shortly afterward and, after showing him some lyrics and poems he had written, proposed that they form a band together. Warner, guitarist Putesky, and bassist Brian Tutunick recorded their first demo tape as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids in 1990, taking on the stage names of Marilyn Manson, Daisy Berkowitz, and Olivia Newton Bundy, respectively. They were soon joined by Stephen Bier, who called himself Madonna Wayne Gacy. |Bundy was later replaced by Gidget Gein, born Brad Stewart. In 1991, drummer Fred Streithorst (stage name Sara Lee Lucas) joined, replacing the Yamaha RX-8 drum machine the band used before.
The Spooky Kids’ popularity in the area grew quickly, largely because of radio DJ Scott David of WYNX-FM, an early fan who eagerly played songs from the band’s demo tapes on the air; and because of the band’s highly visual concerts, which drew from performance art and used many shock techniques. It was not uncommon to see on stage “naked women nailed to a cross, a child in a cage, or bloody animal body parts.” Manson, Berkowitz, and Gein variously performed in women’s clothing or bizarre costumes; and, for lack of a professional pyrotechnics, they would occasionally set their own stage props on fire. The band would dramatically contrast these grotesque theatrics with elements drawn from the culture of the members’ youth in the 1970s and 1980s: characters from that era’s children’s television made regular, often somewhat altered, appearances on Marilyn Manson flyers and newsletters, and were frequently sampled in the music. They continued to perform and release cassettes — shortening their name to Marilyn Manson in 1992. |
