Influences and precursors Screamin' Jay Hawkins has been seen as a pioneer for shock rock. After the success of his 1956 hit "
I Put a Spell on You", Hawkins began to perform a recurring stunt at many of his live shows: he would emerge from a
coffin, sing into a
skull-shaped
microphone and set off
smoke bombs. Another artist who performed similar stunts was the British singer-songwriter
Screaming Lord Sutch. in 2005. During live performances and in the promotional television video, Brown performed the 1968 song "Fire" wearing black and white makeup (
corpse paint) and a burning headpiece.
1960s–1970s: Origins The 1960s brought several proto-shock rock artists. The term was originally coined to describe the music of Frank Zappa and his group the Mothers of Invention. At one show in 1970, Pop smeared peanut butter on his body and threw it into the crowd. On seeing Arthur Brown,
Alice Cooper, often described as 'The Godfather of Shock rock', stated, "Can you imagine the young Alice Cooper watching that with all his make-up and hellish performance? It was like all my Halloweens came at once!"
1980s–2000s: Popularity Subsequently,
Roky Erickson coined the term "horror rock" in 1980, when describing the music of his band
Roky Erickson and the Aliens, whose music influenced by
horror movies was retroactively noted by
Compass News,''
The Plasmatics were an American
punk rock band formed by
Yale University art school graduate Rod Swenson with
Wendy O. Williams. The band was a controversial group known for wild live shows. In addition to chainsawing guitars, blowing up speaker cabinets and sledgehammering television sets, Williams and the Plasmatics blew up automobiles live on stage. Williams was arrested in
Milwaukee by the Milwaukee police before being charged with
public indecency. Jim Farber of
Sounds described the show: "Lead singer/ex-porn star/current weight lifter Wendy Orleans Williams (W.O.W. for short) spends most of the Plasmatics' show fondling her family size breasts, scratching her sweaty snatch and eating the drum kit, among other playful events". In the 1980s in Richmond, Virginia,
Gwar formed as a collaboration of artists and musicians, and since 2024, has been touring consistently for over forty years. The band members make their own lavish monster costumes, which they claim are inspired by many of the creatures from
H. P. Lovecraft's literary multiverse, the
Cthulhu Mythos. Gwar frequently incorporates extravagant theatrics into their shows, such as mock
jousts and pretending to murder each other. The
Mentors cultivated a shock-rock image by wearing executioners' hoods in concert and making deliberately outlandish statements to the press. In the 1990s, vocalist
Eldon Hoke also began incorporating onstage sex acts into the band's repertoire. has widely been described as a shock rocker. In the 1990s and 2000s,
Marilyn Manson became perhaps the most notable and well known act in shock rock.
His band was once dubbed by former
US Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) as "perhaps the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company." Manson's stage antics, such as burning the
American flag and ripping pages out of the
Bible, have been the focus of protests throughout his career. Manson argued that every artist has their means of presentation and that his visual and vocal styles are merely a way for him to control the angle that his audience and the general public view and interpret what he is trying to convey artistically. ==See also==