Well, 97.1 The Eagle seems to think so. The station announced Manson and Chevelle as co-headliners for the 2025 BFD concert back (taking place May 25 at Dos Equis Pavilion) in December — a whole month before the LA Special Victims Bureau cleared the charges — and fans were thrilled by the news.
“Manson has to be headlining this!” a user commented on Instagram.
“will there be meet and greet for MR MANSON ?” one brave user asked.
It doesn’t look like there’ll be any trouble packing Dos Equis Pavillion on May 25. The biggest complaint came from someone who was more offended by the frequency of Manson’s visits to Dallas than any of the alleged assaults.
“lol really Marilyn Manson again? 'New' Eagle but same recycled acts. Surprised Rob Zombie isn’t on the bill. Oh wait that will be Freakers Ball if that is brought back,” a jaded user commented.
The whole situation started back in 2021 when the Antichrist Superstar got slammed with a long list of allegations of abuse from several people, ranging from fans to former partners and employees. The first person to step forward was his former girlfriend, actress Evan Rachel Wood, who named Manson as the previously anonymous abuser she described as committing heinous and ongoing abuse in her 2018 statement to Congress in support of the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights Act.
From there, more women came out with their own stories of mistreatment at the hands of Manson, including one that was said to have taken place in Dallas in 1995.
In 2023, Bianca Allaine said she went to see Manson perform at Deep Ellum Live to celebrate her 16th birthday, and that she went to the band’s bus for an autograph after the show. In the recently released Marilyn Manson: Unmasked documentary, she says that things started friendly, with the then 26-year-old asking what grade she was in and for her phone number and address (not at all creepy) and ended with Manson kissing the underage girl and then pressuring her into performing sexual acts on the tour bus. Allaine alleges that another sexual assault happened in December of 1995, then again in 1999 when she was 19.
This was only one of several similar stories that were brought to light, but, of course, Manson’s team denied this as they have with every other accusation sent his way, and his fans couldn’t seem to care less. Manson still went on tour in 2024 and announced his most recent string of dates three days before the news the investigation had closed.
In 2021, another one of Manson's former partners, Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco, called him a “monster who almost destroyed me and almost destroyed so many women.” Woods, Bianco and several other women detailed the alleged abuse in the documentary Phoenix Rising — Part One: Don’t Fall.
“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” Manson said in an Instagram post in 2021. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
Even during the height of the controversy, many of Manson’s fans remained indifferent or even supportive. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but from the start, Manson's mission statement was to be provocative, and everything that came out of his mouth was so obscene that it carried a sort of implied sarcasm, making it impossible to tell if he was ever speaking in earnest.
In an interview from 1999 with Midnight Blue, Manson recalled a situation where he and his bandmates were awoken by loud knocking at their door. They opened it to find cops and an angry father there to collect his 14-year-old daughter, who had run away and had been staying with the band. The father was concerned that his daughter had slept with the whole band, and after the interviewer asked Manson whether or not she had, he replied, “She didn’t, in fact, which is a shame, but I was proud to be a part of such a scenario.”
When he was asked in the interview why he got into rock, Manson replied, “It’s just a front for a child pornography ring,” with a straight face.
Some could easily dismiss this as part of his profane persona, but it’s hard to read it as sarcasm after hearing the stories from his alleged victims, some of whom claimed to have sent Manson racy Polaroids of themselves while they were underage. The way Manson constantly demeaned women and referred to them as sexual objects didn’t help, either.
While it might seem like rock and misogyny go hand in hand, that’s not always the case. Nirvana was a Marilyn Manson contemporary and another massive influence in the rock/emo scene, and the band supported women. Like Manson, lead singer Kurt Cobain was revered by fans as a rebel and bonafide rock star, but Cobain made a point to speak out about his respect for women. He spoke in many interviews about how he felt women were oppressed and mistreated across society. He interrupted several shows to address women being groped.
Hearing Cobain stop the music to say, “If I see one more person grope a girl in the breast or the ass or anywhere else, you’re just gonna hear about two hours of feedback and we’ll just leave,” is a stark contrast to Manson’s comments, including how one of his favorite parts of sex is choking his partner because of, “the thrill of not knowing whether they’re going to pass out or not.”
Regardless of Manson’s presence, it’s good to see KEGL bring back the BFD concert. The last one was in 2022, right before the station's big rebrand to The Freak, so if anything, maybe having Manson’s name on the bill will help spread the word. And oh yeah, did we mention Chevelle is headlining, too?
