Portrait of an American Family is the debut studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on July 19, 1994, by Nothing and Interscope Records. The group was formed in 1989 by vocalist Marilyn Manson and guitarist Daisy Berkowitz, whose names were created by combining the given name of a pop culture icon with the surname of a serial killer: a naming convention which all other band members would conform to for the next seven years. The most prominent lineup of musicians during their formative years included keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy, bassist Gidget Gein and drummer Sara Lee Lucas.
The band's visually spectacular concerts earned them a loyal fanbase in the South Florida punk and hardcore music scene, eventually gaining the attention of Nine Inch Nails vocalist Trent Reznor, who signed them to his Nothing Records vanity label. The album was initially produced by Roli Mosimann at Criteria Studios in Miami under the title The Manson Family Album. However, the band was unhappy with his production, and this material was then re-produced and remixed in various Los Angeles recording studios by Manson and Reznor, along with assistant producers Sean Beavan and Alan Moulder. Parts of the album were re-recorded at Reznor's home studio at 10050 Cielo Drive, where members of the Manson Family infamously committed the Tate murders in 1969.
Gidget Gein was not invited to the L.A. recording sessions. He had been fired from the band in late 1993 due to his ongoing addiction to heroin. Gein was replaced by Twiggy Ramirez. Despite this, Gein is credited with performing the entirety of the bass work on the album, while the majority of Sara Lee Lucas' live drumming was replaced with electronic drum programming from Nine Inch Nails keyboardist Charlie Clouser. The record contains a wide array of cultural references; Interscope delayed its release on several occasions due to the inclusion of references to Charles Manson, and also because of objections to its controversial artwork.
Portrait of an American Family was released to limited commercial success and mostly positive reviews; in 2017, Rolling Stone deemed the album one of the greatest in the history of heavy metal music. The group embarked on several concert tours to promote the release, including appearing as an opening act on Nine Inch Nails' "Self Destruct Tour", as well as the "Portrait of an American Family Tour". "Get Your Gunn" and "Lunchbox" were issued as commercial singles, while "Dope Hat" was released as a promotional single. The record was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2003 for shipments of over 500,000 units in the United States.
Background Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids was formed in December 1989 when vocalist Marilyn Manson met guitarist Daisy Berkowitz at the Reunion Room, a small nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The two were writing original compositions by the beginning of 1990, with Manson the sole lyricist and Berkowitz composing the majority of music. Until 1996, the names of band members were derived from combining the first name of a pop culture icon with the surname of a serial killer. The earliest incarnation of the band also included Olivia Newton Bundy on bass guitar, and Zsa Zsa Speck on keyboards, along with an electronic drum machine. Speck was hired by the band on a temporary basis as their original choice for keyboardist, Madonna Wayne Gacy, was unable to obtain a keyboard. The original lineup was retained for two performances, the first of which took place at Churchill's Hideaway in Miami, with 20 audience members in attendance. As Gacy could still not afford to purchase an instrument, he appeared on-stage at their second show – at the Reunion Room – playing with toy soldiers. Speck and Bundy both exited the group sometime after this performance.
The band's highly visualized concerts primarily drew from elements of shock art. Their live shows routinely featured naked women nailed to crucifixes, young children locked in cages, amateur pyrotechnics and sadomasochism, as well as piñatas filled with butchered animal remains and experiments in reverse psychology. These concerts quickly earned them a loyal fanbase among the South Florida punk and hardcore music scene, and were playing sold-out shows in 300-capacity nightclubs throughout Florida within six months of forming. In February 1990, while working as a journalist at 25th Parallel, Manson interviewed Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The pair remained friends afterwards, and Reznor was eventually presented with a compilation of the band's demo recordings. After being impressed by the material, Reznor offered the group a spot opening for Nine Inch Nails and Meat Beat Manifesto at Club Nu in Miami on July 3, 1990.
In early 1991, the group signed a record deal with Sony Music. However, Berkowitz later recalled that the president of A&R at the label, Richard Griffin, "personally rejected us within minutes, saying he liked the show and the idea but 'didn't like the singer'". They used the proceeds of the deal to fund the recording of subsequent demo tapes. Bassist Gidget Gein and live drummer Sara Lee Lucas would eventually join the band, and they continued touring and releasing EPs independently for the next two years. In November 1992, Reznor invited the band's vocalist to attend "strategic talks" in Los Angeles, and to appear as a guitarist in a music video for the Nine Inch Nails track "Gave Up". By the end of the year, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids were the first act signed by Reznor's vanity label, Nothing Records, shortening their name to Marilyn Manson in the beginning of 1993.
Recording
Marilyn Manson held recording sessions for their debut album, then titled The Manson Family Album, in July 1993 at Criteria Studios in Miami with producer Roli Mosimann. The album consisted of re-recorded versions of songs originally demoed by the group during their formative years. According to Loudwire, Mosimann's original production aimed for a "sleazy, groove-laden" sound. Sessions concluded several months later in the autumn. At this point, Mosimann created a radio edit of "Snake Eyes and Sissies", indicating that this song was intended to be released as the lead single. However, the band was unhappy with Mosimann's production, claiming it to be unrepresentative of their live performances, while Manson claimed the songs sounded too polished, saying: "I thought, 'This really sucks.' So I played it for Trent, and he thought it sucked."
Before reworking the album in Los Angeles, the band played shows in Florida under the name Mrs. Scabtree, which consisted of members of Marilyn Manson, Amboog-a-Lard, Jack Off Jill and The Itch. Manson had produced various releases by both of the latter bands in 1993. The band then travelled to the Record Plant in L.A. to remix The Manson Family Album over a seven-week period with Reznor, with Manson explaining: "We spent seven weeks redoing, fixing, sometimes starting from scratch. That was our band's first experience in a real studio on a project this big. We didn't know what to expect. It was fifteen-hour days, with a team – Trent, Alan Moulder, Sean Beavan, and me – bringing out the sound." Berkowitz was initially reluctant to re-record the album, saying: "I felt doing this was unnecessary, and worried it would make us look like a Nine Inch Nails/Reznor spin-off. The final result, however, is a very high-quality piece of work."
Berkowitz re-recorded some of his guitar work in L.A., and the vast majority of Sara Lee Lucas' live drumming was replaced with drum programming created by Nine Inch Nails keyboardist Charlie Clouser. Gidget Gein was not invited to these sessions. He had been fired from the band a few days before Christmas 1993 due to his heroin addiction. Berkowitz clarified that this was "the second or third time [he was being fired], for being a junkie and not showing up. And playing really horribly live." He was replaced by Jeordie White of Amboog-a-Lard, who was renamed Twiggy Ramirez. Despite this, Gein is credited with performing the entirety of the bass work on the album, with Ramirez credited for "base tendencies". Gein later died of a heroin overdose in 2008. Following this period of re-recording, The Manson Family Album was retitled to Portrait of an American Family. Mosimann was listed in the liner notes as an engineer, with no mention of his original production role.
Sections of the album were recorded and mixed at 10050 Cielo Drive: the address of the house where members of the Manson Family committed the Tate murders in 1969. Reznor rented the property in 1992 and built a recording studio inside the residence, which he named 'Pig'—a reference to that word being written with Sharon Tate's blood on the front door of the house on the night of the massacre. The studio is credited as 'Le Pig' in the album's liner notes. Reznor denied renting the property in an attempt to have the infamy of the massacre associated with his music, and chastised Manson for doing so, saying: "I wasn't trying to create some manufactured spooky thing. Any shock value to what I was doing was about trying to sneak subversive things to a wide audience. With [Manson] ... he knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what would be shocking. Those were very conscious decisions on his part. What I was doing wasn't the same thing." The house was demolished in late 1994, with Reznor transporting the original "Pig" door to New Orleans, where it was installed as the entrance to his subsequent recording studio, Nothing Studios.
Composition and style
The record contains a wide array of cultural references, beginning with the first track: the poem recited in "Prelude (The Family Trip)" is an adaption of a poem originally from the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which later appeared during the tunnel boat ride scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Manson explained that the lyrics to the second song on the album, "Cake and Sodomy", were inspired by a trip to New York City in 1990. He said that he wrote its lyrics in a hotel room after spending several hours viewing public-access cable television and "watching Pat Robertson preach about society's evils and then ask people to call him with their credit card number. On the adjacent channel, a guy was greasing up his cock with Vaseline and asking people to call and give him their credit card number." The song's intro contains several samples, including Marlon Brando in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris saying "Go on and smile, you cunt!", and Mink Stole's character from John Waters' 1977 film Desperate Living repeatedly screaming "White trash!".
"Lunchbox" was inspired by a 1972 law introduced by the Florida Legislature, which made it illegal to carry a metal lunch-box on school grounds. It tells the story of a bullied child who uses a lunch-box as a defensive weapon, and proclaims that one day he will be a "big rock 'n' roll star". The track incorporates elements from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's 1968 single "Fire". "Organ Grinder" makes use of various dialogue excerpts of the Child Catcher from the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while "Cyclops" contains a distorted sample of the preacher from Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986). "Dope Hat" contains various samples of dialogue spoken by Charles Nelson Reilly – the actor who portrayed Horatio J. HooDoo – in Sid and Marty Krofft's television series Lidsville (1971–73). The lyrics to "Get Your Gunn" were inspired by the murder of David Gunn, who was killed by a self-proclaimed pro-life activist. Manson later described his murder as "the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people killed someone in the name of being 'pro-life'." The song also features audio from the televised suicide of Pennsylvania Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer.