Shirley Manson

Echoes of Rebellion: An Unfiltered Dialogue with Shirley Manson

From the earliest days, your incendiary stage persona has always mesmerized fans, media & music critics. What was the process for constructing such a unique stage presence?

So, Big John Duncan, who played guitar in Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, the first band I was in, was a former member of The Exploited, a very influential and famous punk band out of Scotland in the 80s. And he was super fierce, they all were very fierce performers. The lead singer to Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie was a very dramatic kind of performer himself. And I had to match my energy to there, you know, I was very, very young. They approached every audience fiercely. And I guess I just learned that was a way of performing that I connected to and enjoyed. It was also when I understood what forming a deep connection with an audience felt like. There was no fear and there was no shyness. The connection with an audience is what I’m seeking. I’m not on stage, to be fond over or clapped at, I’m there to try and reach out and connect with another human being so that I feel less lonely. I think, ultimately, that’s my drive if that makes any sense.

The band’s debut album, self-titled Garbage, was a phenomenon that received acclamation from specialized critics and the general audience. Tell us how conquering almost immediate success affected you, in particular, and also your fellow group members.

Well, from the outside looking in, it looked as though we became successful overnight, but all of us in the band had paid our dues. You know, I had been in a band for a decade before Garbage. I had participated in a Scottish band that enjoyed some minor success both locally and nationally. Because of this, I had played and toured a lot before joining Garbage so I didn’t feel success was an overnight thing at all. Far from it, actually. 10 years is a long time to be working as a musician, so nothing really felt overnight. In a similar way, my bandmates had all been in bands, and also in Butch’s case, he’d been producing for a long time. So none of that came very easily to any of us. So, by the time we did enjoy that insane success that came with our first record, we were already pretty well versed in how the system of the music industry worked; We knew that the attention we were getting wouldn’t be around forever. We also knew everybody wasn’t going to love us the same way they were loving us on that first record because no artist possibly enjoys constant success. Even the giants have times when things are not going very well; Bob Dylan had times of complete, like rejection by the general public, Madonna has had ups and downs. You know, even the Beatles, so, the words precedent in the back of our minds were always that we had to just get on the pony, ride the pony, have an amazing time, and keep our sort of noses to the ground and not get too full of ourselves and not to take anything for granted. And we worked so hard. Like… When I think about what we did, and how we did it. One of the biggest things in my life that I’m most proud of is just how hard we worked. And we took advantage of every opportunity that came our way. And we never, we never ever took it for granted.

It was all intense. Yes, in many ways. And mind-blowing, I mean, we have been struggling musicians, and then all of a sudden to have you know, thousands of people come and see us and buy our records. It was surreal, really surreal. Thrilling. I mean, I, it was fucking thrilling. But it also comes with a price, you know, that kind of attention comes with a price that we weren’t particularly happy about paying. Because at that time, you know, in the 90s, the mid-90s onwards, that it was like the height of tabloid culture and so, all of a sudden, we’d have cameras in our faces at airports or walking down the street or in restaurants and, and it all began to feel quite intrusive. Yes. And we, as human beings, just didn’t buy it. I can only speak for myself, I personally did not enjoy that amount of attention. It felt it was all a little crass, you know, that kind of attention. I didn’t enjoy people sort of picking over my appearance and printing my picture in magazines and newspapers, I found it a little uncomfortable. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love all the photos, the glamorous photoshoots, and being creative and creating imagery. I love that. But I didn’t enjoy being in newspapers or having tabloid photographers follow me down the street, I find that really, really horrible. And I think those stars, these big stars in our culture, they sort of love the feeling of that kind of attention. They feed into it, you know, and they feed off it. And that’s why they become such big stars; Because they get turned on by that kind of attention. And they can handle it. They’re maybe just better human beings than I am. I don’t know, but I just didn’t like it. So, I’ve never thought really to be famous and I’ve never thought to be popular; I’ve never really been interested in mainstream culture. Even though we accidentally became mainstream, mainstream culture just doesn’t really hold much fascination for me. I’ve always loved subcultures and the underground that’s just what I’m turned on by, I’m turned on by the avant-garde. I’m turned on by experimental art and music, and so on. That’s what excites me. So, yeah, I didn’t enjoy the kind of insane attention we got, not just for our first record, but our second record, too. I just sort of when I look at these really famous people, yes, I often wonder how they don’t get bored of themselves. You know what I mean? I just got sick of seeing myself in magazines, to be quite frank. I got sick of seeing myself in newspapers. I just felt embarrassed by the amount of coverage. And I’m sort of amazed by popular culture where all these big stars can’t seem to get enough attention. It’s just never enough for them, they want more, they need more. And I’m fascinated by that. And I, you know, I respect it. I’m just not wired that way.

Garbage went through a hiatus during the early 2000s, a gap when you experimented with writing solo material. How was this moment in your intimate feelings?

Oh, well, my God, the band’s hiatus was really painful. Because we basically took a break from the music industry. We were beginning to feel that it was fucking with our minds and our mental health. And we felt under all this pressure from our record label to basically do anything at all to ensure our popularity. We disagreed with that approach, we felt like we really should be true to ourselves, you know, and whether that was sort of the popular direction or not, we wanted to make the kind of music that felt authentic to us, but our record company had other ideas for our future. And it was so frustrating to us, and so disappointing, that we basically, we were just sort of like “Let’s just go home and forget about this for a while and reconvene when we’re all feeling ready to deal with this industry.”, which is a brutal, unforgiving, capitalist-driven industry. And so we took a break. That’s when my mother got very sick. And she was basically dying, to be brutally frank. And so the hiatus went on a little longer, as a result of the fact that my mother was really ill, and I genuinely didn’t feel like making music very much. So it was this intensely difficult period for me, and the record label was sort of trying to encourage me to make a solo record. And I thought, I, you know, a bit naively that would allow me the creative freedom that I wasn’t able to enjoy with the band. But I was completely wrong about that. As it turns out they had equally strident desires. For me as a solo artist, they had a very fixed idea of who I should be, and how I should be signed. I worked on a record with Greg Kurstin, an amazingly incredible musician and producer in his own right. And we presented this record to the record label and they just thought it was too alternative sounding so they didn’t want that for me. They wanted the pop record, so I just told them to go fuck themselves. And I went… I essentially went home. I got a job on a TV series, quite a big TV series that was part of the Terminator franchise, and I busied myself for a year with the TV series. Then, the band got back together again because we just felt like it was time. And we were all determined to just stick to our guns and do things our way. And that’s exactly what we did.

You have always been courageously vocal about your political and social sentiments. Do you feel this has ever created some sort of resentment about your figure within the music industry?

Yes. You ask really, really big questions. Look, as a human being, I’m very opinionated. And I’m pretty straightforward. And I’m very outspoken. And I’ve been like that since I was a child, you know, it’s just the way that I interface with the world. So, naturally, that comes out in my role as a lead singer of a popular band. I’m not going to lie, that has caused me some issues, both within the band and outside of the band. I feel a lot of people would prefer that I keep my mouth shut. But I have fought against that opinion from other people my whole life. As an outspoken woman, I’ve spent my entire career being told to keep my mouth shut. Needless to say, I’ve never listened to one of them. I have no interest in being told what to do, what to say, or how to behave by another person. And so I, generally speaking, stick to my guns. As an artist who has a relatively large platform, I have the luxury of using that platform as an attempt to fight for those who don’t have a platform or certainly don’t have as big of a platform. And I have particular things that I feel very passionately about. Human Rights, in particular, are of great interest to me. I do perceive there is so much injustice in the world that, when I die, I want to believe that I’ve helped somebody. It doesn’t have to be a million people or 500,000 people. It can just be one person. If I’ve saved one person from misery then I will have done my job as a human being. And that is of the utmost importance to me is that I don’t go to my grave feeling like I haven’t tried to make something better for someone to make their existence easier, to make their existence happier, to make their existence safer. I feel this electricity as a wire that runs through my body at all times. Because I realize how unbelievably privileged I’ve been as a human being not just with my career, because obviously I’ve had a fabulous career for which I’m eternally grateful but also because I grew up in an incredibly gentle country. I grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was a very gentle city. There was very little violence and very little social conflict. Now, that’s an enormous privilege and I realized that very few people enjoy that in their life. I also grew up in a household with two parents who loved each other. And that, again, is an enormous privilege. And so I try and carry that gratitude with me and I am determined to make sure that I pay back that privilege before I die. I guess that’s why I choose to be outspoken. To be perfectly blunt, I do not consider myself courageous in any way, shape, or form. I do what I consider to be a decent thing, which is seeing unbelievable suffering and speaking on behalf of the people under enormous duress.

In the mid-90s, alongside the larger exposure, you encountered many facets of public scrutiny towards your personal/public image (which were never intended for the male gaze). Do you see any significant differences in the treatment offered to women by the media ever since?

I do not. It’s frustrating and disappointing, although I do believe it’s slowly changing. What I think is encouraging and makes me feel good is that, as a result of social media, young women are way more equipped on the new generations that have followed me. So I’m kind of contradicting myself in some regards, because I think it’s a complicated question that requires a complicated answer. Of course, we’re seeing the enormous success of female artists who are dominating the charts, but, unfortunately, they make up such a small percentage of most working musicians, which I think the general public has a problem seeing. Because they see these big stars, and they’re female, and they’re dominant. I think they mistake that as a general representation of the industry when it is the actual real statistics that speak. Gender inequality in the music industry still lingers to this day; I don’t believe that female artists are talked about in our society with the same reverence as, perhaps, their male counterparts. It’s so much harder for women to be admired. And, often, they are admired simply because of their economic power, which is based on mainstream success. People grudgingly give Taylor Swift respect. Why? Because Taylor Swift made everybody get down on their fucking knees as she just grew hard on the agenda without listening to anybody. I mean, it’s kind of stunning when you think about it. But, unfortunately, most female artists are still struggling against this idea that we’re meant to be seen and not heard, that we can be really cute dancers and really amazing sexy bodies. We’re not seen as artists with philosophies, ideologies, and artistry behind us. It’s just something that’s not truly acknowledged in our society. I guess the positive I would take from that though is that I think the younger generations that have followed in the wake of my own generation are way more switched on and way more powerful in how they choose to present themselves. And I was reading an amazing article yesterday, about the sudden and overwhelming phenomenon of women talking about their sexuality in music, whether it’s girly, whether it’s Billie Eilish, whether it is St. Vincent, you know, talking about sexual satisfaction outside of the male gaze and outside of mainstream culture. It’s fascinating. It’s brilliant. That would never have happened, in my view. So, I’ve got to assume we’re progressing; That women’s voices and all our different varieties and gender expressions and sexual identities are all getting expressed in different ways. And that’s brand new and it’s enormously exciting.

Are there any strategies you have developed to stay true to your essential beliefs within the music industry context?

Oh… Also a great question, Anna! You thought into this. It’s very refreshing to be asked different kinds of questions; I’ve never been asked these kinds of questions in my career, ever.

Well, I don’t have anything specific other than I was born in Scotland, a bass small island. As a community, our identities are formed by a somewhat socialistic mindset. And the Scottish are very plain speakers. I’m generalizing, of course. But in general, the Scots are kind of, they’ll say what they mean, and they’re not afraid about being straightforward. Honesty in Scotland is very apparent. I notice a real difference living in America where people are much more careful about self-expression. When it comes to Scotland, we all sort of take pride in being who we say we are. For the better and bad, we are a very blunt sort of culture. There’s not a lot of bullshit. And there’s not a lot of posing in Scotland simply because we don’t have a Hollywood, we don’t have a massive, you know, entertainment industry in Scotland, we don’t have a record industry in Scotland. We’re just kind of a strange little unknown anomaly. And that has helped me very, very much with sticking to who I am. I think we talked about this earlier about celebrity culture, I never really bought into all that, partly because of how I am sculpted, you know, just inherently who I am as a person. I just am not fascinated by wealth, I’m not fascinated by the flaunting of wealth and I’m not fascinated by those who seek power; I’m not interested in power. It is quite the opposite. The things that I’m interested in, the things that I am passionate about, are in direct opposition, most of the time, to mainstream culture. And that has allowed me to be very true to who I am in my job as a musician.

Was the introduction to the industry from a young age and progressing to wider visibility in your adult years a more self-preserving experience as an artist?

Definitely. I mean, I got an education long before I joined Garbage. You know, I was in the band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie in Scotland for a decade, an entire decade. And it taught me everything I needed to know when I eventually found myself in Garbage. I was a fully developed adult with a consistent experience as a working musician. That undoubtedly helped me keep my shit together. When I had a lot of pressure and attention on me, I already knew the game, the chessboard. I understood exactly what I was up against as a woman. And as an artist. And as someone enjoying sudden, global attention. I was definitely more prepared than a lot of people, you know, in my situation, because of my experience for 10 years in my first band. There’s absolutely no argument there.

This whole conversation felt like a free pass to another dimension… With a sorrowed heart, I must head to our final question. So, what do you think is the role of constructing a wardrobe in personal and artistic spheres?

You cracked me up! (laughs). In my perception, how you choose to present yourself to the world is something vital as an artist. And I think it’s also vitally important, in my view, to be sure that you have created an identity for yourself that makes you different from everyone else. I have no interest in looking like everybody else. I mean, obviously, I won’t at this point so it’s easier for me because I’m older. So, you know, there are not a lot of older women doing what I do. It is kind of already right there, I already have my own individual identity by the mere fact that I survived this long in the music industry. This whole scenario which is very unkind to women and even more unkind to older women. As I gained visibility in the American media throughout the 90s, I looked so different from everybody else that it captured people’s attention at the time. Because it was at the height of MTV and we had unbelievable MTV exposure. We got played I think 16 times a day on American television, let alone anywhere else in the world. And the video was a powerful tool to promote music back then, even though, you know, it’s almost irrelevant now. But back then, it was as good as if not better than getting on the radio. So it was everything. And every time I’ve ever gone to be dressed for a video, there’s been a lot like opinions that I’ve hailed, things I’ve wanted to avoid. I refused to be presented as a Sex Kitten, you know what I mean? Like, I was not part of that kind of presentation, I was uninterested in appealing to the male gaze, and I still have no interest in the male gaze at all. And, yeah, so I guess identity is everything. I think when you’re a musician, you’re speaking to your people saying “Look, this is this is kind of where I’m coming from.”, and then it allows people to decide whether you’re worth them spending a few minutes of their time to see if they like your sound. Back in the 90s, fashion was sort of at the height of its power. Designers often weren’t these huge, mega-brand names, they were a lot of these incredible designers that I love, like Helmut Lang. I’m just trying to think of all the people we felt excited by and wanted to wear because they weren’t fashion houses, they were designers in their flats in London or, you know, Madrid or wherever in the world, making clothes with a philosophy behind them. They, too, had a message to send to the world, they didn’t just want to be designing a world of clothes. Those artists had a very strong sense of the world and how they wanted to work within it. Now, it just seems like “How can we possibly get Kim Kardashian to wear our clothes?”. It doesn’t seem, to me, like a specific view of the world. Instead, it just feels to me a lot of the time that the industry functions like “We’re just trying to sell, sell, sell. We don’t care about the destination of our clothes, we just want to sell them. We want to be popular, we want to be mainstream, we want to be huge. And we want Kim Kardashian to wear our dress.”, that’s all it seems to me currently. And I find that really depressing. It all comes down to what is both successful and what is biggest. And that, as we all know, is such a crock of shit. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been excited, by far ahead the concept of fashion excites me. But only when it’s done brilliantly. I’m also concerned, obviously, about sustainability and nurturing and protecting our globe, our planet, and our climate. There are some horrific statistics that state there are enough secondhand clothes in the world to last eight generations of people ahead of us. And it is just really frightening. The same research said that the average person currently in America buys 53 articles of clothing every year, and, essentially, the planet simply cannot absorb this amount of waste. So yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But the world is changing. And we’re in the middle of a massive shift in human thinking. It’s all kind of wild.