Shirley Manson on Chrissie Hynde, Crises of Confidence, and 20 Years of Garbage

photo: Rick Kern/WireImage
photo: Rick Kern/WireImage

On Sunday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. ET, Yahoo Live will live stream Garbage's concert from the Orpheum Theater in the group's home base of Madison, WI. Click HERE to watch!

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since Garbage released their (recently reissued) self-titled debut album. And it may be even harder to come to terms with what's changed in the music industry since Garbage frontgoddess Shirley Manson, she of the red-hot hair and white-hot wit, first emerged on the scene. The mid-'90s were ruled by riot grrrls; female-fronted and coed rock bands (think Hole, No Doubt, Veruca Salt, Sonic Youth, the Breeders); and the Lilith Fair set. Not so much anymore. And while Manson tells Yahoo Music, "From where I sit, I think any time is a good time for women in music," she admits that the '90s were "definitely a different era."

It was the era of The Misfit.

"I love that word, 'misfit,'" Manson giggles over the phone, as she prepares to play the first night of Garbage's 20th anniversary tour. "It's wonderful to be a misfit! Even if we're all led to believe that it's not. Right now, the biggest stars we have are female pop stars, and that's amazing. But what was beautiful for me in the '90s is we were privileged to the minds of the rebel girls who weren't conforming to the expected norms of so-called, at the time, female behaviors. You saw all the girls who weren't playing by the rules. And they had the chance to do mainstream radio. We got onto front covers of magazines and we were always on television, all over the world!

"Don't get me wrong, there's so many pop stars [today] that I adore. I'm obsessed with Rihanna and Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. They're fantastic and I'm not trying to diminish them at all; that's not my intention," Manson continues. "I guess what I'm trying to say is all these girls that are successful right now, they were the 'cheerleaders.' They were the ones who were the best singers; they had the best bodies. But what was great about the '90s was that it was all the fragile and f---ed-up people who had their chance to be heard. And they were the ones that ruled the mainstream. I'd say the one commonality between everyone who loves our band is this feeling of not being 'the winner.'"

It is the always outspoken Manson's willingness to put her fragility and "f---ed-upness" on display that has made her such a hero and role model to countless alt-rock fans. ("Not a day goes by where I don't receive a message on Facebook or a tweet or an Instagram message with a fan talking about how our music has pulled them through," she says proudly.) In many ways, Manson is to Generation X as the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde was to Manson's era. Manson has gone on the record multiple times about how she worshipped Hynde when she was a troubled, bullied teenager growing up in Scotland, and she has said the Pretenders' music practically saved her life. Garbage's own 1998 hit "Special" even featured a vocal interpolation of a lyric from the Pretenders' "Talk of the Town."

So naturally, Manson's conversation with Yahoo Music eventually gravitates towards the controversial rape remarks that Hynde made in her new memoir and in recent interviews (when Hynde took the blame for her sexual assault at age 21 and implied that women might provoke sexual predators if they dress sexily.) Manson speaks frankly, but chooses her words carefully, when discussing her childhood idol.

"Well, first and foremost, I love her to death and I was a little taken aback by her choice of words in describing what had happened to her," Manson begins. "I think most importantly, despite our love of our heroes, tigers are tigers for a reason -- don't be surprised if the tiger acts errantly occasionally. Nobody's perfect. All of us have been known to say some really stupid things or some things that are open to interpretation. I think you have to remember in the situation where someone has been a victim of a violent crime, that their perspective is colored by a lot of issues. Hearing Chrissie speak, we still don't know all the details of her experience and we don't know the full story of how she recovered -- if she's recovered. So I disagree with her; I don't think anyone plays a role in playing a victim of a violent crime, and I don't think she did either. Yeah, so she was high on drugs and yeah, she was wearing a short skirt, but I still don't think she played a role in being victimized. What I took from hearing her speak on the subject, even though I disagree entirely with how she chose to speak on the subject, I think what she's struggling to say is just be alert, and be careful at all times. It doesn't guarantee safety, but it can, you know... just be careful. That's what I think she's trying to say. But if somebody is vile enough to want to hurt another person, they will. Doesn't matter what you're wearing, what you're doing, where you walk, how you walk. They will do what they want to do. That's how I feel.

"I have never pretended to be perfect. I will continue to make sloppy mistakes. I will continue to hurt people and offend people. In this case, Chrissie has done that," Manson continues. "She's offended so many people and hurt so many people who were so disappointed, but she's not perfect either. She's to be forgiven, too, because she's done so many other great things for women. And I wouldn't have had an opportunity to be in this position had it not been for a fearless warrior like her. Yes, there are some people who cannot forgive what she said. I think that's a pity."

Some people might be surprised to learn that a rock icon like Manson, who projects what appears to be almost superhuman confidence onstage, was once an awkward child, and that she considers herself a "misfit" to this day. "I didn't have any confidence at all. I really didn't. I know it sounds so ridiculous," Manson laughs. "I had courage, I had drive, I had ambition, but I didn't have confidence. But I happened to have an incredible, amazing mom, and my mom somehow managed to get me up onstage when I was a little girl. After a while, it becomes just a habit. But make no mistake -- it's not confidence that drives people up onstage. Yes, there are a few of these ghastly entertainment freaks that we all see every now and again with this terrifying kind of confidence, and these people tend to gravitate towards a certain kind of music style. But in general, I think people who make alternative music in any way, shape, or form... well, it's not confidence."

Even now, at age 49 and after a quarter-century in showbiz, Manson grapples with nerves; the night of Garbage's tour kickoff this week, she tweeted about the "fear in my belly" and posted: "Is it wrong to feel so much when you are my age? I thought I was supposed to feel dead from the neck down at this point? But I don’t."

Manson admits in this interview, "Yes, I do feel nervous. I've always felt nervous, no matter how much experience I have under my belt. But I find that it's a great mechanism on which to springboard from. It's important to me that we serve our fans well, so I guess I care a little too much. That's why I get nervous. But I think it's important to care, because I'm so over people saying, 'I don't care.' Well, you know what? I f---ing do care, and there's no 'whatever' in my vocabulary! You know what I mean? F---ing have an idea, have an opinion, decide upon a direction, be prepared to be wrong, be willing to fail. But don't be apathetic about anything. I feel sorry for some performers who aren’t able to do that [anymore], because they're robbing themselves of so much joy."

Things have never gone entirely smoothly for Garbage, whose ranks include seasoned multi-instrumentalists Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, and Butch Vig, the latter probably most famous for producing Nirvana's Nevermind. The day that all four band members first met up to discuss the Garbage project, on April 8, 1994, was the day that Kurt Cobain was found dead. ("I loved Nirvana, I was a huge fan, and like millions of people around the world we were pretty devastated when Kurt died… We will always be inextricably linked in the weird musical history just because of Butch and his deep connection with that band," Manson muses.) Then, when Manson -- a veteran of the indie bands Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie and Angelfish, whom Garbage's members first spotted on MTV's 120 Minutes -- gave her real Garbage audition, she claims she totally "flunked it" and "Butch hadn't wanted me in the first place." Thankfully, after a second try, the lineup gelled and pop history was made.

But it still wasn't an easy ride for the unlikely foursome. The band members have experienced their share of infighting, for instance. "We're lucky there's always been love and we've never said anything destructive to one another, which is so great, because no permanent damage has ever been done," Manson stresses. "Yes, we get on each other's nerves. We're much like siblings. But I think after everything we've been through, everybody just feels like, 'My God, how lucky are we?' We're this lucky because of one another and I think through all the really testing times that come along in any relationship… I feel like what I have with my band is precious and unique. That kind of chemistry doesn't come along very often in your life."

And then there was the initial backlash to Garbage's pop-crossover sound. Many '90s rock purists, particularly those mainly familiar with Vig's production work for Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, considered the group's incorporation of electronic elements downright blasphemous at the time.

"Whenever an artist releases any work, it's yin and yang," Manson shrugs. "There's always those who adore you and those who decry you. That's just the nature of being an artist. You'll always have your detractors, and you'll always have those who are completely ambivalent, and then you'll always have people who'll connect with you deeply -- and we enjoyed all three of these responses and everything in between! But ironically, when we were set with the task of reissuing our debut album, we started going through a lot of our storage lockers, and I was shocked, looking back and reading a lot of the press that had been written about us in 1995. My personal memory of it was that a lot of it was negative, from people who thought it wasn't 'rock' enough or wasn't 'authentic' enough. But when I got to revisit all these reviews, actually the press were incredibly kind and good to us, and we enjoyed a phenomenal run of positive exposure."

Yes, eventually critics and fans alike came to realize how groundbreaking Garbage were -- and the band's influence is still felt 20 years later. "Back [in 1995], I think things were very compartmentalized musically. Butch is a very humble man and he doesn't really talk a lot about his game, ever, but I do think he was sitting in an incredibly privileged spot and was able to look at the soundscape of the times, and he had a way of helping us create a really new identity, a sonic identity, which was brand-new back then," says Manson. "Obviously bands like the Beatles had done [genre hybrids] before, very successfully. But it hadn't really been fully realized until the '90s, really."

Two decades later, Garbage sounds surprisingly, thrillingly fresh, both on its new deluxe reissue and live in concert, and a new, sixth Garbage album is due out in 2016. And Manson, who quips that she was "considered old back then" when she joined Garbage at age 29, shows no signs of slowing down. "I am grateful that I was a bit older and that I was ready and prepared for what came next [when Garbage made it big]," she says. "I don't know if I'd be able to sustain this kind of career if it had come along in an earlier point of my life. It's hard, sometimes.

"It isn't easy, but I think clearly I'm meant to do this with my life. I'm fitted for it. I'm good at it. Like, I flourish under the kind of pressures that come with what I do. If I step onstage, I flourish. If I have to get up at 4 in the morning on tour, I can do it. I'm a freak of nature that way. It doesn't f-- with my brain; it doesn't f--- with my body. It's some form of survival. I need to do this in order to survive."

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