Marilyn Manson was terrorizing concerned citizens of Britian for some reason back in 1996. Petitions had been made to councils to ban him from playing local venues and his debut UK live appearence was bounced from The Electric Ballroom, to The Astoria (as shown on my ticket) to finally Kentish Town’s The Forum on the actual day of the gig! I’ve no idea how we found out it was at The Forum given that movbile phones and the internet were not generally widely used back then.

I, along with probably most fans at the time, first came across Marilyn Manson because of his fantastic cover of The Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” which charted in the UK in 1995. That led to me picking up his debut “Portrait of an American Family” album and “Smells Like Children” EP. I wasn’t overly enamoured with either of these in full but picked up “Antichrist Superstar” when it was released in October 1996, which I thought was much better, and grabbed a couple of tickets for his debut UK show for that December.

The gig was a bit mixed for me. My girlfriend, Mel, and I were pretty much breaking up at the time and she had just returned from Uni and we really needed an evening to go and chat through things rather than attend a gig. But we got dolled up and headed to the show regardless. I can’t remember anything about Fluffy, the support act, and whilst I enjoyed the Marilyn Manson set I had other things on my mind and couldn’t really emmerse myself into the show. I saw him again a few months later in 1997 where he completely blew me away, so I’m putting my experience at this one largely down to other things that were going on.

Still, I’m very pleased I managed to see his first ever UK show.

SETLIST

1. “Angel with the Scabbed Wings”
2. “Get Your Gunn”
3. “Dogma”
4. “Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World”
5. “Tourniquet”
6. “My Monkey”
7. “Lunchbox”
8. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
9. “Irresponsible Hate Anthem”
10. “Minute of Decay”
11. “The Beautiful People”
12. “1996”
13. “Cake and Sodomy”
14. “Misery Machine”
15. “The Reflecting God”
16. “Man That You Fear”