What Really Happened When a Young Marilyn Manson Threw a Perfume Bottle at His Mother?

In Marilyn Manson's autobiography The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, he describes an incident from his adolescent years that has been cited as self-admission of his violent behavior towards women, even his own mother.

According to the story as recounted by Manson, when he was around 14 years old, as puberty hit, he was going through a difficult time in his life socially and personally, at Christian school and in his home, and he was increasingly becoming more and more frustrated and angry with everyone and everything in his life. He talks about living in fear of his inattentive Vietnam veteran father with PTSD, which pushed him to become a spoiled mama's boy who was overly attached to him. Manson would also be in and out of the hospital a lot because he thought he was sick, contracting pneumonia six times and having allergies to things like eggs and fabric softener. It was only years later that Manson found out that he was never really sick, and his mother suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. This is a form of mental illness where a caregiver — in this case Manson's mother — makes up or causes an illness or injury for someone in their care.

It was in the midst of Manson's increased frustrations and isolation that he reveals his father Hugh suspected his mother Barbara of cheating on him with her first boyfriend. He describes his father's anger towards his mother as infectious, so he likewise began to resent his mother for doing something that he believed would lead towards the end of their marriage. Manson would cry in bed thinking of the consequences of a divorce and what that would mean for him. All the frustration and anger Manson felt at this time was now solely directed towards his mother, which culminated one night when she got home late and would not tell him where she had been. Suspecting her of cheating, he took a blue glass Avon Excalibur cologne bottle shaped like a car his grandmother had gifted him and threw it at her face, gashing her lip and making her bleed, while shards of glass and cologne covered the floor. This injury landed her in the hospital, and the result was that she carried a scar on her lip for the rest of her life. In altercations that followed, Manson says that he "hit her, spit on her and tried to choke her." She never retaliated, just cried, and he never felt sorry for her. His anger towards his mother however did subside when he got to the tenth grade and was allowed to go to public school, then he began to appreciate her more and felt regret for how he had previously treated her.

Stock photo of a cologne bottle described by Manson.

When this incident is put in context, though it is shocking, at the same time one could feel a certain amount of sympathy not only for Manson, but for both of his parents as well. But when Evan Rachel Wood and others with her began to accuse Manson by name of sexual violence and domestic abuse on February 1st 2021, the media was quick to cite this incident with his mother he described in his autobiography as a sign of inherent violent tendencies. It was The Sun that reported on this on February 4th 2021 in an exclusive report, with the dramatic and highly charged title: "'Shards everywhere': Marilyn Manson scarred mum for life by smashing a glass perfume bottle in her face and said ‘I never felt sorry for her’." Page Six followed with a report titled: "Marilyn Manson detailed bashing mom with perfume bottle in 1999 book", even getting wrong the publication year of the "1998" book. Along with this story, media sources began to scour through Manson's autobiography of possible other signs of his abusive behavior from his past that he himself admitted to, presenting everything out of context and in isolation. Evan Rachel Wood herself, who while dating Manson said she never read his autobiography because she got to know him for who he really is and felt no need, now felt like she could accurately psychoanalyze Manson by reading his autobiography, and describes her findings in her 2022 documentary Phoenix Rising. There Evan cites the incident with his mother, going so far as to blame Manson's parents of abusive behavior towards him, which led to him developing abusive behavior that she and other women became victims of. In the same documentary, Evan describes the abusive behavior of her own parents as well, but instead of their abuse causing her to become an abuser, she blames them for making it normal for her to accept being abused and thus easy prey for being groomed by an abuser.

A depiction of Manson's mother Barbara from Phoenix Rising.

This brings us to breaking news exclusively given to us this week by Colonel Kurtz in a new partial interview clip with Marilyn Manson's childhood best friend Scott Alan Wade. In this interview, Scott clarifies and even debunks some stories told by Manson in his autobiography, and one story in particular that he brings up is the incident described by Manson of intentionally throwing the perfume bottle at his mother's face. Scott says that he was with Manson when this took place, but the backstory is not exactly as Manson described. In the full interview, Scott describes Manson as having what looked to him as a normal and happy childhood, with very supportive parents. As for the particular incident with his mom, Scott says that he and Manson would play this game when they were seated at the kitchen table, where they would try and throw stuff down the long hallway towards Manson's bedroom while his mom wasn't looking. It was during such playfulness that when his mom walked by, Manson took the perfume bottle and tried to throw it to land on the pillow of his bed while she wasn't looking, but his mother made a sudden turn to retrieve something and accidentally was nicked in the face with the bottle, causing it to shatter against the wall behind her. In other words, what Manson described in his autobiography as something he did intentionally, in reality was an unintentional accident. As Scott says: "The context wasn't him seeking her out and throwing a glass cologne bottle directly at her; it's a lot more nuanced than that."

 

Scott's description of the incident helps us to better understand some hesitations Manson had when questioned about it in 1998 on The Howard Stern Show while promoting his autobiography. Howard Stern directly asked Manson about this incident as described in the book (beginning at the 15 minute mark in the video below), and Manson says that looking back it is probably the one thing that he found most regretful in his life. But when Howard asks him what it was like to spit on his mom, Manson replies: "I don't remember that so much, and the details of it and how I was feeling at the time." Then when asked if his mom was really having an affair, he replies: "I don't know. We can call up my dad and ask him." Earlier on in the interview, Manson says that his dad just finished reading the book the day prior, and he implied that he told his dad not to worry because they were all lies and people wouldn't believe it anyway. When Howard asked if the stories in the book were true, Manson says: "As true as anything I say, I suppose. You can take it however you like to." Also, when in the pre-interview he commented that if asked about anything in the book he was ashamed of, he could always say it was fiction, the interviewer laughed and asked: "So you would lie and just say you made everything up?" To which Manson replied: "I did anyway, so it doesn't matter."

 

This brings us to the issue of how Manson's autobiography should be read, in light of all the stories we hear that it is loaded with exaggerated and sometimes outright fictional stories, though with elements of truth. It seems to me that Manson approached his autobiography as an opportunity to tell his own version of his own story, whether it was entirely true or not, the only thing that mattered was what he wanted people to believe about him, and he wanted it to have some entertainment value as well. The book is also an opportunity to understand who Manson really was in light of all the rumors going around at the time, and even though some of these stories in the book are not absolutely factual, he didn't want other people making up rumors about his life when he could control what rumors he actually wanted people to believe, so the autobiography was an opportunity for Manson to make up rumors about himself mixed in with factual stories of his life. Another reason I believe the book was written was because Manson was not only misunderstood, but he was in a period of transition as the Antichrist Superstar era was coming to a close, so it provided an excellent opportunity for him to explain his coming transition with the Mechanical Animals era, where he claimed to have found his soul.

When reading Marilyn Manson's autobiography The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, you will notice by its title that it follows the arc of a redemption story where everything leads towards the prewritten conclusion. In this story the protagonist describes himself as a worm that must descend through all the circles of hell described in Dante's Inferno in order to achieve the power he seeks, and everything in his way to achieve that power gets destroyed, and this process is metaphorically described as the process of a worm getting his wings. The descent into hell as modeled by Dante's Inferno is fueled by drugs and alcohol among other things and leaves the protagonist in a "soulless cocoon of nonfeeling", but once he gets off the drugs and alcohol then his once drained out humanity rushes back into him with all its emotions, emotions which once he thought made him weak now made him strong, and he begins to believe in himself and becomes the rock star he always dreamed of becoming, an Angel with scabbed wings, the Antichrist Superstar. This is basically the outline of Manson's autobiography, which is a similar outline to Manson's sophomore album Antichrist Superstar.

Antichrist Superstar is a concept album modeled after the concept albums Manson grew up with and loved, such as Pink Floyd's The Wall, which is also a metaphorical album conceived by Roger Waters modelling the fictional character of a rock star named Pink after himself and Pink Floyd's former member Syd Barrett. In the story of this concept album, Pink's father dies in World War 2, leaving him to be raised by his domineering, overprotective mother. It's at this point that Pink starts to build a metaphorical wall around himself, adding brick upon brick to this wall as he grows up. One brick in this wall, for example, is Pink as a child being tormented at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers. Memories of these traumas become metaphorical "bricks in the wall". These become self-destructive for him, which even lead to violent outbursts of rage, even violent fantasies against his wife. This leads to his depression and isolation, even though he is in the middle of a tour. In an unresponsive state, paramedics inject him with drugs in order to get him to perform, but he hallucinates that he is a fascist dictator and that his concert is a Neo-Nazi rally. When the hallucination ceases, he puts himself on an internal trial before an internal judge who orders him to "tear down the wall" as punishment for his actions, and the wall of isolation he has built up is torn down. The end of the album has Pink beginning the cycle again that we first hear at the beginning of the album.

Antichrist Superstar is also cyclical and follows a similar outline to The Wall. Dante's Inferno also describes the journey of a fictionalized version of Dante himself through hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. By stressing the cyclical nature of their albums, both Antichrist Superstar and The Wall become poetic guides like Virgil for leading people out of darkness and despair to achieve one's potential through radical transformation. The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell is Manson applying this concept to his own life. The issue however is that in order for Manson to show that he is descending through every circle of hell exactly described by Dante, he needs to come up with a story from his own life to fit that corresponding circle. The Fifth Circle of Dante's Inferno is "Wrath", and in Manson's autobiography the objects of his wrath are his parents, which in turn is directed to the world in general. This is why Manson had to create a story that showcases his wrath in the best possible way to make his story pack the punch he needed. After all, what is worse than taking out your wrath on your innocent mother. In The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, the protagonist needs to find some redemption, needs to transform from the ugliest and darkest person possible, and like Pink in The Wall, he needs to lose his emotions and conscience in order to get them back in a more purified and powerful way.

 

Barbara died following a long battle with dementia when she was 68 on May 13, 2014. Manson says that her diagnosis helped drive him to a deep depression in 2005-2006, among other things, and was one of the reasons he wanted to quit music at the time. He always expressed great love for his mother and took special care of both his parents all his life, which is the least he could do because they always supported and loved him. When his mother died, on Mother's Day no less, he posted the following on social media:

"To my Mother, the first and greatest believer in me... I hope I see you again someday. But not now, because I have more things I promised I would do. I'll make you proud and satisfied that you know you made the son you wanted. I love you."