Talking Garbage
TWO DECADES ON FROM THE RELEASE OF HER BAND’S OVERLOOKED THIRD ALBUM, FRONTWOMAN SHIRLEY MANSON TURNS BACK THE CLOCK WITH
IN Shirley Manson’s mind, the history of Garbage’s third album, Beautiful Garbage, will forever be tied up with the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.
“It was an international trauma,” the riotous, quick-witted Scottish singer explains. “We were really excited about releasing this record. But two weeks before it got its debut the world changed.”
The band was grounded at their studio in Madison, Wisconsin, just as they were meant to fly to London to promote the record.
“We were trapped, of course, like everybody else – all Americans. We couldn’t fly.”
Shirley recalls “the toll it took on the world and also on us, and also on our record”.
Beautiful Garbage suffered from a lack of promotion and its lead single, Androgyny, faltered in the charts. But Edinburgh-born Shirley, 55, and her American bandmates – Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig – have revisited the record on the 20th anniversary of its release.
There’s much to love: electronica and hip hop collide with the band’s alternative rock sound, and 1960s girl group and 1980s new wave acts inform its melodies.
This anniversary, of course, comes shortly after that of September 11.
“We had enjoyed such a fantastic trajectory as a band,” she says, simultaneously indignant and self-deprecating.
“We had 16 playlisted singles on Radio 1 in the United Kingdom, which of course is my country so it means so much to me.
“That all came to a stunning end with the release of the first single off Beautiful Garbage, which was Androgyny.”
The band remember holding a crisis meeting with their label boss just before going on stage at Top Of The Pops, in which they were told Androgyny had not been playlisted for Radio 1.
“It was the end of that record already,” she sighs. “Before we even got off the ground. It was the end of a certain period in our career, which had been so joyful and so easy.
“And then all of a sudden, it felt like this bizarre smackdown.”
Written and recorded over the
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course of a year, the sessions for Beautiful Garbage offered Shirley
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an escape from her failing marriage of four years to Scottish artist
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Eddie Farrell.
Living in a decrepit hotel on a
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lake she describes as being like something out of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, it was only a short walk to the band’s studio.
“It was a funny place to spend your darkest hours,” she quips.
“It is, of all our albums, the one that triggers a lot of bad memories, truth be told,” she recalls.
Beautiful Garbage was not a failure commercially or critically but it didn’t make the impact the band hoped. In the intervening years, there’s been something of a reappraisal, especially of Androgyny.
“Being a woman who has got a lot of male traits, I’ve always really identified with this idea of non-binary,” she offers. “Because, as I’ve often quipped over the years, I’ve definitely got bigger b***s than my band. So the idea of identifying within the spectrum of gender has always made sense to me.”
As a female singer in the maledominated rock industry, Shirley faced scrutiny from the public, while music contemporaries such as Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan did not. She thinks things have improved somewhat and that young women in music are more switched on.
“In the 90s I was one of a few women in music that was very outspoken. Now it seems to me, which I very welcome, that almost every single pop star and rock star is awake. They are speaking out and they are unafraid to use their voice and their platform, so I think that in itself is a change. It’s exciting and it can only continue.”
“I don’t think young generations of musicians will put up with the same kind of s*** that we all did,” she adds. “The way I was spoken about it in the press was astounding.
“When I look back on it now,
I’m like: ‘Oh wow, no wonder I had problems’. I managed to weather it all. But at the time it was really unpleasant.”
I ask whether the music industry is still waiting for its own Me Too moment.
“The music industry is just a microcosm of our society – and in our society men have to really start giving a f***. This is not a female problem. This is a male problem.
“As I keep saying, a Me Too movement is not a female movement. It’s a male movement, in many ways, in that women have said their piece.
“We’re looking at the lack of support that we enjoy from our husbands, from our boyfriends, from our sons, from our fathers.
“Nobody seems to really give a s*** and therefore women look at each other across the room with the knowing look and an understanding that we’re on our own here.
“Until we galvanise support from all genders, but specifically men, because it seems to be men who are wreaking the violence upon other human beings for the most part... Only then will we facilitate change.”
Shirley has always been unfiltered, with fans and the press – and she remains as honest as ever.
“We took a lot of chances on that record – for which we were gloriously punished,” she says with a cackle. “Now that we’re 20 years down the road, we’re still playing a lot of these songs in our live sets, and some of the songs on that record are our most beloved. “It feels like a triumph.”
The 20th anniversary reissue of Beautiful Garbage is released on November 5
Two weeks before it got its debut the world changed Shirley Manson on the Beautiful Garbage album