Beautiful Monsters Tour

The Beautiful Monsters Tour was a North American concert tour co-headlined by American rock bands Hole and Marilyn Manson. Launched in support of each band's respective third full-length studio LPs, 1998's Celebrity Skin and Mechanical Animals, the tour was planned to run from February 28, 1999, until April 27, with 37 shows confirmed. However, due to a highly publicized altercation between the bands' respective lead vocalists, the tour only visited arenas until March 14, for a total of 9 shows before Hole withdrew from the bill. The tour garnered a large amount of media attention and was billed by MTV as a "potentially volatile mix" due to the public feud between each band's outspoken vocalist.

The co-headlining tour was conceived by Hole's management company, Q Prime. Hole singer Courtney Love teased the press that she aimed to launch a tour with Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette. However, Hole's management aggressively pursued Marilyn Manson's eponymous band, even amid a public feud stemming from Manson's depiction of Love in his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. Nevertheless, the groups agreed to tour together provided that costs and revenue were split 50/50.

The tour was marred by on–and–off stage exchanges between Love and Manson, as well as private disputes over the tour's financial arrangements, which resulted in Hole unwittingly financing most of Manson's production costs which was disproportionately higher relative to their own. After Hole left, Marilyn Manson continued the tour under the name Rock Is Dead. Marilyn Manson released two recordings that documented portions of the tour: a live video album titled God Is in the T.V. and a live album titled The Last Tour on Earth. Love and Manson finally reconciled their differences in 2015, more than 15 years after the end of the tour.

Plans for a joint tour were conceived by Hole's management company, Q Prime, during the band's stint at the 1999 Big Day Out music festival in Australia in order to support their third studio album Celebrity Skin. Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson admitted that the band itself had "anxiously been awaiting" their first full-scale U.S. tour for some time, but their previous attempts "kept falling apart because we couldn't find someone to tour with". Erlandson said he was "just psyched to hit the road with anybody". Hole frontwoman Courtney Love toyed with the idea of touring with Canadian pop rock singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette in the press. During an interview on Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM, Love claimed her opinions on Morissette had changed. She had previously maligned Morissette's pop work as being "too commercial [for Morissette] to ever be considered a genuine feminist symbol". Nevertheless, Love, who was one of the most prominent and prolific figures of feminist music in the 1990s, began to see Morissette as a positive influence on female empowerment.

I'm not mad that he said he'd kick my ass, I just don't want to be used in the same sentence with Courtney Love.

In 1998 and 1999, Love and rock singer Marilyn Manson were engaged in a highly publicized feud and regularly traded insults with each other in the press. Love took offense to Manson's depiction of her in his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. In spite of their disagreement, Hole's management aggressively pursued a joint tour with Manson's eponymous rock band. Manson was initially reluctant to accept the offer. He had reservations about Love, whom he pejoratively described in an interview with NME as "an opportunist" who he felt tried to exploit his band's new-found fame to bolster hers. He noted that Love never attempted to befriend him until he had sold a million records. Love also voiced her concerns about touring with Manson, whose explicit stage shows, she felt, were potentially deleterious to her young daughter, Frances Bean. Despite their mutual hostility, Manson accepted the offer to support his band's own third studio album. He joked that he agreed to the tour because he realized "what better role models to lead the youth of America into the new millennium than us two? So it had to be done".

During their negotiations, both sides agreed that the opening act from the inaugural show until their scheduled performance on April 4 in Philadelphia would be Manson's option, stoner rock band Monster Magnet. A dispute arose on who would take over. According to Erlandson and Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, the two groups had a two-hour meeting to arrive at a resolution. Manson and his band voted for early 1980s Britpop groups like Fun Boy Three and Fine Young Cannibals, while members of Hole wanted "more modern" bands. Auf der Maur noted that "we want romance and they want theater. We want love and they want shtick. We had to explain to them that those kinds of bands make them look good, but us look silly". Eventually, Manson's band ceded the selection of the subsequent opening act to Love, who chose Imperial Teen. During their negotiations, both bands agreed to split the production cost and revenue earned at each show 50/50.

Love officially announced Manson's attachment to the tour on January 6, 1999, by phoning in to the MTV show Total Request Live. She told host Carson Daly, "Yeah, Brian [real name of frontman Marilyn Manson] wants it", claiming that the two had reconciled and had mutual admiration. She also confirmed the lineup for each respective date on the tour. The tour was scheduled to begin on February 28, 1999, with 37 dates confirmed, spanning a total of 8 weeks. Tickets retailed for $30 and the concerts were to be hosted at 10,000-20,000 capacity venues.