The Golden Age of Grotesque: Marilyn Manson’s Most Shocking Moments

Shock Tactic: In his autobiography, Manson remembers an early concert where he had a pregnant-looking actress iron the wrinkles out of a Nazi flag onstage. “As the show progressed, she sat spread-eagled on the ironing board and pretended to perform an abortion on herself,” he wrote.

Consequences: Trent Reznor eventually signed him and released his debut, Portrait of an American Family, in July 1994.

Shock Tactic: Vice police arrested Manson at a Jacksonville, Florida concert for “jacking off with a strap-on dildo. . .and urinating on the crowd,” as he recalled in his book, and charged him with violating the “Adult Entertainment Code.”

Consequences: Manson had no such toy and was simply wearing black rubber underwear with a “dick hole.” The singer spent a night in jail, navigated his way through a psych evaluation and returned to the general population.

Consequences: The groupie showered off as Manson and bassist Twiggy Ramirez urinated on her. “I think she, too, found it to be art and was having a good time,” Manson wrote in his autobiography.

Consequences: Manson penned the foreword to LaVey’s final book, Satan Speaks!, which came out in 1997. “Anton LaVey shared his magic, and I think it has made this wretched fucking planet a better place,” he wrote in it.

Consequences: By his own account, Manson now has “one of the deepest and biggest scars on the latticework that is my torso.”

Consequences: “It was terrible,” he said. “It smelled like burnt hair, gave you a really bad headache and made your eyes red.” He then convinced someone to smoke a Tic Tac.

Shock Tactic: The singer’s female, alien-like nude body on Mechanical Animals’ cover raised eyebrows at Kmart, Walmart and Target a month before it came out. Two of the retailers refused to carry the record due to its general explicit content, while a Target rep specifically cited the nudity. “This is a family store,” she told MTV in 1998.

Consequences: The album is now available for purchase online at each of those stores, and the explicit version is even cheaper than the clean one at Target.

Shock Tactic: When Spin editor Craig Marks met Manson backstage at a New York show, the singer allegedly threatened his family because the magazine took him off a promised cover. The editor claimed that Manson yelled, “I can kill you, I can kill your family, I can kill everyone you know,” and had two bodyguards pin him against a wall by his chest and neck, according to MTV.

Consequences: Manson described the encounter as a “conversation” about Spin’s “immature business behavior,” MTV reported. Marks sued Manson for $24 million and the singer countersued for defamation.

Shock Tactic: Manson grabbed a security guard during his set at the Detroit-area Ozzfest and ”“ wearing only a leather thong and pantyhose ”“ wrapped his legs around the man’s head and gyrated his genitalia against it.

Consequences: Authorities gave the singer battery and sexual assault charges, but a judge dismissed the latter charge. Manson pleaded no contest in 2002, paid $4,000 in fines and settled a civil suit stemming from the same incident the following year. “I can now go on with my life and try to close this unhappy chapter,” the guard said in 2004.

Shock Tactic: “I have officially been diagnosed, by a real doctor, with the swine flu,” Manson claimed in a statement in 2009, during peak swine-flu hysteria. “The doctor said my past choices in women have in no way contributed to me acquiring this mysterious sickness. Unfortunately, I am going to survive.”

Consequences: He survived.