Variety: Marilyn Manson was injured onstage at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom Saturday night when a stage prop either fell on him or caused him to fall backward.
A statement from the singer’s rep says, “Manson suffered an injury towards the end of an incredible NYC show. He is being treated at a local hospital.” A source close to the situation told Variety shortly after the incident that Manson “should be fine,” but that was not an official comment.
2 comments:
This article reminds me a lot of "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," because in it, astronaut Chris Hadfield, talks a lot about learning to, "sweat the small stuff." If a prop was loose, the props people should have thought of every possible way the prop could go wrong. The structure was unstable, and the article says it wobbled, so the deck crew should have thought of all possible ways that Marilyn Manson would scale the structure, and find ways to make it intrinsically stable. To counter that, Marilyn Manson should have also taken the time to figure out what is the best way to make the daring stunt, and work with deck crew to build something that offers the kind of support necessary. Another thing, is that if stunts like this are going to take place, there needs to be a safety measure in place for everything. There should always be a backup plan.
The contradictory nature of this article leaves much to be desired. Did it fall on him or did it make him fall backwards? Maybe we’ll never know. However, the truth of the matter is that somebody screwed up pretty badly. After a little more digging on the internet is clear that the “stage prop” was really a metal truss tower that had two large wooden painted pistols attached. When Manson hung onto and tried to partially climb it fell forward and crushed him. He has now gone on to cancel the next nine dates of his tour to recover after breaking an ankle and bruising some ribs. I wonder if staff even considered the possibility of Manson climbing on the truss. These are the kinds of conversations that should have occurred long before the performance even began by the designers or artistic director or tour manager or the equivalent thereof in the concert world. Safety should always be a part of the conversation.
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