There’s a stereotype in rock music that the more unhinged a performer is on stage, the cuddlier they are off it. We’ve all read about headbanging rockers who enjoy golf and fly-fishing when the spotlight dims, while the debauched lifestyles of laid-back acoustic songwriters of the 1970s are the stuff of infamy.
By that logic, self-proclaimed “Antichrist Superstar” Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, ought to have been a champion Scrabble player and avid knitter in his spare time.
Alas, the portrait of Warner painted in Channel 4′s grim but well put together three-part exposé, Marilyn Manson: Unmasked (Channel 4, 10pm), suggests the opposite: the takeaway is that, just like Russell Brand, the wilfully confrontational rocker was showing us who he was all along.
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked is the second Channel 4 series to accuse a male celebrity of predatory behaviour. The first, which levelled serious charges against comedian-turned-You Tube guru Brand, was a bombshell that came out of thin air.
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In Warner’s case, the documentary follows previous accusations against the musician in 2021 by his former partner, Evan Rachel Wood. “The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” she wrote at that time on Instagram. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”
Wood’s statement essentially ended Warner’s career, with his label and booking agent immediately dropping him. Wood repeats those claims in the second of three episodes, airing across consecutive nights. Part one focuses on Warner’s early years as a star when he became a big fish in the small pond of the South Florida rock scene, where he attracted a fan base of teenage girls.
“He was very charismatic and I was drawn to that,” says Jennifer Pavao, one of the “lunch-box girls” who followed Manson’s band from gig to gig. At the time, it seemed like a grand adventure, though she recalls her father’s disquiet over Warner, in his 20s, calling his school-age daughter for regular late-night conversations; 25 years later, Pavao has a different take on her worship of the musician. “Charles Manson and his family – it does strike a chord,” she says.
In part two, Wood recounts being fascinated by Warner when she met him for the first time when she was 18, and he was in his 30s. She never felt he had a romantic interest in her as he was married to burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese. But the relationship nevertheless became intimate, and she recalls growing psychologically dependent on Warner. “[There were] at least three different versions of him ... I never really knew which one I was waking up to,” she says.
She battles tears as he recalls how she “inspired” his Lolita-themed single Heart-Shaped Glasses (Where The Heart Guides the Hand) – the video of which featured the then-couple squirming under bedclothes while the cameras rolled. Wood describes being pinned down by Manson during the shoot. “I felt so violated ... I didn’t call it rape for many, many years,” she says.
Those claims are rejected by Manson’s lawyer, Howard King, who says it is “demonstrably false that Brian raped Evan Rachel Wood while filming a music video. There were more than 10 people within three feet of the bed ... None have come forward”.
The picture of the music industry painted by the documentary is disturbing. One of Warner’s former bandmates recalls how his collaborator was given licence to act with impunity as a rock star on the rise. “You’re like a group of pirates moving from port to port,” he says. “It’s going to be a test of your virtue.”
