Marilyn Manson is one of the most iconic figures in the world of rock in the last 20 years. However, it seems that something is off in recent years. While his most recent album release, Pale Emperor, was a success… I can't remember the last time somebody went to see Marilyn Manson live and was satisfied with Manson's performance.
Uninspired and incoherent are the two phrases I usually hear from fans attending his gigs. I personally stopped caring after a performance at Mayhem Fest in 2008 was so bad, I told myself I never wanted to see Manson again. But in the last few weeks, it seems like things may be getting worse for Manson, and nobody can seem to pinpoint what it is.
A Manson performance on July 10th (from his current co-headlining tour with Slipknot) made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Manson can be seen in the video below, being incoherent, stumbling all over the sound booth, unable to stand still and purposefully knocking over a monitor, pissing off the sound engineer:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/Q18eYQqaK_U[/youtube]
Today, new footage from that show surfaced showing Manson shout out “I don’t want to fall onto my dick with that cord so can you fix it please?” followed up by “and don’t give me that uppity look because you’re not black.” The term uppity usually has racist connotations, although I would like to assume Manson was using the term ironically based on the sentence that proceeded it.
Continuing his tour of awkwardness, Manson accepted the AltPress Icon award exactly one week ago today, and while the backstage footage of Manson announcing his new album title was hard to watch, his acceptance speech is even harder to watch:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/Y2hDAnkrQ5s[/youtube]
Add on top of these two instances a sudden cancellation from Manson last week and I feel there is some cause for concern:
Last month, Limp Bizkit guitarist (and former Marilyn Manson band member) Wes Borland even publicly expressed concern for his friend saying:
"It was entertaining and simultaneously inspiring, and also a letdown at the same time. "That guy is one of the funniest, quickest-witted people I've ever met, but he really needs to be healthier. He needs to start working on his inner organs and stop abusing them so much, because they're going to fail him."
Are Marilyn Manson's demons catching up with him?
On the brighter side of things, I looked up some bootleg footage from Manson's performance on Saturday at the Lakeview Ampitheater, and he seemed rather coherent:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oahjY8Za0pA[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36TMXGCm-M4[/youtube]
Have you seen Marilyn on his current tour with Slipknot? If so, let us know if this behavior was present when you saw him. Hopefully, Manson can get his act together.
