It’s funny whenever rock n’ roll heavy weights join together for a huge tour.
It usually ends with their egos butting heads and that was exactly what happened in the late
90’s when Courtney Love’s band Hole toured with Marilyn Manson. Also on the bill was
Monster Magnet whose frontman David Wyndorf described the tour by telling Louder Sound
“I knew it was going to be a complete fing disaster.” Stay tuned for the full story
Late 1998 saw both Hole and Marilyn Manson dominating the album charts. Hole’s new release
at the time celebrity skin was number 10 on while Manson’s album Mechanical Animals was
number 1 during the same week. Both albums also shared the same producer in Michael Beinhorn.
The idea behind pairing the two rock n’ roll heavyweights came from Hole’s management company Q
Prime. Ahead of the tour being announced, Courtney Love dropped hints in the press that she actually
wanted to tour with Alanis Morisette, while her management company pursued Manson. Even before the
tour was announced, Love and Manson had a pretty rocky relationship It stemmed from Manson’s 1998
autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell in which the rocker had nothing nice to say about
Courtney Love. Manson also had reservations about the offer to tour with Hole as he would tell NME
magazine in 1998 "Courtney never bothered to say hi to me until I sold a million records.
She's an opportunist and I wouldn't consider her a friend ... the ayway she's behaved towards me
in the media has seemed very exploitative. I'm not interested in being anything to her" he'd s.
That’s not to say Love was a fan of the idea either because According to an MTV report at
the time Love said she had reservations about the effect of Manson's apocalyptic shows on her
daughter, Frances Bean. In all fairness both acts needed one another. Manson was dealing with the
controversy and the backlash that some retailers who refused to cary Mechanical animals over it’=s
controversial front cover and the album, while successful failed to meet sales expectations.
Manson’s label Sony Records was expecting the record to sell 300K copies in it's first week,
but it only sold 230K copies despite peaking at number 1 on the charts.
According to Producer Michael Beinhorn who told Loudersound. It wasn’t enough,
the label lost interest, they took down the huge billboard they had in times square for the album.
The President of the label called Manson up screaming at him for having tits on the cover.”
Hole needed Manson just as much. The tour would prove to be Hole’s
first major US tour as according to the band’s guitarist Eric Erlandson previous attempts to
launch a full scale tour in the US had failed because they couldn’t find someone to tour with.
The bands agreed to tour with each other provided it was billed as a co-headlining tour, and costs
and revenue were evenly split. Manson would jokingly tell MTV why he agreed to the tour saying
"There was some tussling' going on, and then I realized what better role models to lead the
youth of America into the new millenium than us two, so it had to be done."
Tickets for the show hovered around $30 US and the venues housed around 10-20,000 people.
Titled the beautiful monsters tour it was supposed to run from February of
1999 to May of the same year, totalling 37 shows, but it unraveled after only 9 dates.
MTV Staff Writer Gil Kaufman who covered the tour would remark to Louder Sound
how different both personalities were saying "Here you had two artists that were going for
the brass ring in very different ways,” “Manson was in his glam metal apex and was being as
debauched as he could, while Courtney had become a star, with a Golden Globe nomination and she’d
made a much slicker pop album. She was trying to be the ultimate Californian rock star" he'd say
Kaufman also remarked how the band’s brought attracted completely different crowds.
According to him,Manson’s fans were cyber-goth, whereas Hole’s fans were hipster rock and i
quote “coachella babies.” Each crowd seemed to be repulsed by the other and Manson’s fans especially
made their displeasure known to Hole during the band’s set, which we’ll get to in a bit.
Despite all the hype around the tour, ticket sales were not that good. MTV would report
that the opening night in Spokane, Washington only saw the arena about half full with 8,000 attendees
out of a possible 16,000 tickets. Also adding to the problems was fighting between the bands.
Divisions over who should open and who would pay them resulted in uneasy compromises.
Manson wanted Monster Magnet to open, but Hole didn’t so Manson ate the cost of the opener.
On top of that according to Hole and their management company, Manson’s production was
much more elaborate than Hole’s yet they were splitting costs 50/50. And onstage things were
just as uneasy as during the tour’s second stop in Vancouver, Canada, Manson insulted Courtney
on stage and she would run and jump on Manson’s back during the live set.. Later on during the
same show, Manson’s fell and injured his wrist and ended his show early. And this is something that
happened throughout the rest of the tour. Sniping between the camps became a nightly occurrence on
stage. February 28th in Spokane, Washington but from night number 1 there was back and
forth sniping both in the press and on the stage. Did you guys have time to take a nap during Hol?
When we're done some guy with a blue head is gonna come up with a sign that says drugs. Manson's make
up was just one target of Courtney's jabs. She also knocked his use of pyro and his alleged
lip syncing, while for Manson, there were plastic surgeon cracks and remarks about Courtney's age.
And I show for the older people on this tour. The grandmothers. Tonight he made
another like grandma crack. What did he do? He said a grandma? That guy is a year and a
half younger than me. Is that right? yeah okay so if I'm a grandma he's a grandpa.
And the band’s also conducted themselves much differently backstage as Manson and
his badmates were known for their hard partying lifestyle including illegal substances. Courtney
Love meanwhile, was fresh out of rehab and trying to maintain her sobriety.
And soon enough the tour was making headlines for the wrong reasons. The tour fell apart after only
9 shows as Hole played their final concert with Manson on March 19th, at the Inglewood Forum in
LA. Love would announce from the stage that night that they were finished with the tour.
So it begs the question, why did Hole leave the tour with Manson?
Well the Tampa Bay Times highlighted several issues that led Hole to leaving the tour:
According ot the times, it was a combination of poor ticket sales, infighting, production issues
and Manson’s fans that were to blame. Hole would leave the stage early in Portland Oregon after
Manson fans booed the band during their set. An editor of the website pollstar was quoted
as saying “the pairing looked good on paper, but it may not have been the best idea. Manson
had been getting a disproportionate amount of the audience and Hole was playing in front of
an audience that wasn’t that appreciative” he'd say. Peter Mensch of Q Prime management
claimed to the Times that it was production cost overruns. Mensch would claim that they
underestimated the cost of Manson’s elaborate stage production and since the production costs
were deducted before band’s split the money, the tour was in the red revealing “We couldn’t have
afforded to stay on the road. We would have lost $150 to 200K” by the end of the tour" he'd say.
When Hole left the tour, Manson and company continued playing live shows under the moniker
the Rock is Dead Tour. The next several years for Hole’s would be pretty difficult as the
band’s label Geffen Records was merging with Interscope The type of rock n' roll that Hole
was playing was no longer a priority as the label turned their attention to Rap and Metal.
So you're maybe wondering. What ever happened with Manson and Courtney Love’s relationship?
Well In 2014, 15 years after the conclusion of the beautiful monsters tour it seemed like Love
and Manson had patched up their differences. In December of that year Courtney Love posted
an image on Instagram of her with Manson and Smashing Pumpkins leader Bill Corgan with a
caption that read “all hatchets buried.” In a 2015 interview with Esquire Manson elaborated on their
relationship saying “We never reall had a falling out. We’ve always been weird with each other
beause she’s slept with pretty much every one of my friends supposedly. Not me though”
In 2018 Love would appear as a Nurse in Manson’s video for Tattooed in Reverse.
So that does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button and
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