“It was terrifying,” Marilyn Manson told Yahoo! Entertainment of being crushed by his giant gun prop, adding that the “pain was excruciating.” The prop-toppling incident happened on September 30, 2017 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. It effectively ended the show that evening, although fans got the opportunity to see Manson pinned under a colossal symbol of violence for several minutes while stagehands did their best to free him. They also had the opportunity to record the whole thing.
Reports at the time generally claimed that Manson himself caused the prop to fall. On The Guardian, one concert-goer described it thusly: “It happened in the middle of his song ‘Sweet Dreams.’ He performed it and all of a sudden he climbed on to the two guns … At end of the song he bent over holding one of the poles [on the prop] and tipped over.” Other outlets like The Sun stated that the incident happened when Manson “tried to climb on the prop mid-set.”
Actual footage from the night, however, shows a different story. Manson was kneeling down and singing in front of the giant gun prop, which was connected to a small scaffolding unit. The prop fell forward and onto Manson, he raised a hand to protect himself, and then vanished under the scaffolding as folks on stage raced to the rescue.
