Marilyn Manson’s former keyboard player Stephen Bier, aka Madonna Wayne Gacy, is suing Manson for $20 million. His claims include Manson’s using the band’s earnings to buy drugs, assorted Nazi paraphernalia, ex-wife Dita Von Teese’s engagement ring, a stuffed grizzly bear, a pair of baboons, and the skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl.
Legal documents indicate that Manson plans to call Von Teese and ex-producer Trent Reznor to the stand in his defense. I suppose the baboons wouldn’t do well in cross-examination.
Nine Inch Nails’s Reznor will likely testify about Bier’s role in Portrait of an American Family, the album he produced for his Nothing Records label when the two had an amicable artistic relationship in the mid-1990s. Manson and Reznor subsequently squabbled over creative and personal differences, culminating in Reznor’s tribute to his former friend, “Starf*ckers.”
Von Teese will likely testify about the engagement ring and wedding, which Biers claims were paid for with the compensation owed to him.
If Von Teese is unable to appear in court, I think either Evan Rachel Wood or Isani Griffith, Manson’s recent girlfriends, could stand in, as they both are the spitting image of his ex.
Here’s hoping Manson and Reznor rekindle their old creative sparks. Manson could use Reznor’s flair for modern radio success and Reznor could use a little crazy.