Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, was born on January 5, 1969. His parents, Hugh and Barbara, were permissive, trusting, and present throughout his childhood. But his grandfather Jack was also present, and it was Jack whom Manson called “the ugliest, darkest, foulest, most depraved figure of my childhood” to The Guardian. He claimed that Jack maintained a basement full of toy trains, which he would play with while masturbating. Manson used memories of seeing his grandfather’s sexual activity for one of his songs, “Kinderfeld,” and later said that the experience caused recurring childhood dreams of sexual violence.
Manson has alleged another fetish of grandpa Jack’s, also kept in the basement. In his memoir “The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” Manson said that he and a cousin found a collection of pornographic photos, apparently from a mail-order service, that depicted bestiality. Of finding the pictures, Manson wrote, “It wasn’t just that they were obscene. They were surreal.”
