Sympathizers for the Devil

Marilyn Manson and the storm in Fitchburg

by Ellen Barry

There were a hundred reasons to go to the Marilyn Manson show in Fitchburg last Friday, and Marilyn Manson was only the most obvious.

Long after the last dog collar had been confiscated and the concertgoers had filed inside, the entrance to the Wallace Civic Center was still teeming with partisans. The Foursquare Pentecostalists, for example, had driven over from Leominster to convert the concertgoers; the undergraduate free-speech crowd had stopped by to protest the infringement of free speech, or, as one young picketer put it, "protest the Christians."

Certain environmentalists were on hand, criticizing all the activists for their use of paper flyers. A Catholic-affiliated country-and-Western band was hoping to play a few sets as "alternative entertainment." Some straight-edge fans from Fitchburg were there hoping to kick the shit out of the Marilyn Manson fans, whom they derided as "conformists," and a group of Young Ones-style punks came over from their "flophouse" in Danvers with the idea of collecting spare change.

The hype machine had done its job. Friday's concert promised to be a photogenic face-off between Satanic shock-rockers and the forces of censorship. Controversy has dogged Manson's "Antichrist Superstar" tour, and the conservative town of Fitchburg, which has a history of First Amendment conflict, was a good spot for a showdown.

But Friday night, outside the institutional façade of the Wallace Civic Center, offered more anticlimax than Antichrist. Three camera crews and half a dozen print correspondents milled around and occasionally resorted to interviewing one another. The Fitchburg police were also present in force, although the high-water mark of criminal drama would come around 10, when one officer would discover and open a heart-shaped chocolate box full of Tampax and Midol.

In fact, the one group not in evidence was the famous Catholic-backed anti-Manson movement, which had called for the banning of Friday's concert. That group had adjourned its planned all-night vigil to an area church at the last minute "for fear that the kids might respond violently." In the end, those fears seemed misplaced, and the violence centered on the camera crews, as Goth teens in fishnets jockeyed for airtime. Everyone half hoped to see the Knights of Columbus marching shoulder-to-shoulder down Fitch Highway, just to liven things up.

The concert itself may have been a non-event, but a legitimate First Amendment drama is being played out in Fitchburg City Council meetings, where the censorship lobby stands a good chance of gaining city veto power over all future shows. At a meeting on the issue last week, city councilors expressed unanimous opposition to the concert.

"There are going to be some major bylaw changes," said Ron Downey, a parishioner at St. Cecilia's who had come to the concert to offer counseling but was keeping a healthy distance with his five-year-old daughter.

"Did you see those T-shirts? `Kill your parents'? My daughter could go see that band, come out and say, `F you, Dad. I don't need you anymore,' " he added. "We have no control anymore. If they're going to be into hip and Satan and this and that, then that's a scary thought."

Nearer the entrance was Al Hunter, a Pentecostal minister from Leominster, who was attempting to spread the gospel to a dozen skeptical girls in halter tops. "There are two ways of being rebellious," he was saying. "There is a wrong way and there is a right way."

The one clear beneficiary of all this attention was Marilyn Manson himself, who was inside the stadium, performing in front of a large stained-glass window depicting baby angels impaled on spears. At one point, the stadium was converted into a Nazi-style rally, with Manson himself singing from a podium, occasionally swinging his body like a limp marionette over the front.

Although most fans were savvy enough to appreciate the free publicity, one purist, Bill Robertson, expressed a lofty contempt for all the hype, which he said has packed the stadium with posers. "There were only four people who really listened to Marilyn Manson before all this started," said Robertson, a skinny 14-year-old in a knee-length Marilyn Manson T-shirt depicting a police officer shooting himself in the head. "Now everyone's into it.

"Death is a gift," he added, cheerfully, apropos of nothing.