Shirley Manson: I don’t know how much time Garbage has left

After every gig on Garbage’s current tour, Shirley Manson says farewell to the city she’s in – as she doesn’t know if she’ll ever play there again.

The frontwoman has been one of rock music’s most dynamic performers for more than 30 years, but the Edinburgh native is aware of the passing of time.

“Life is so precious,” she says, speaking from her band’s latest stop in Barcelona.

“The older I get the more I enjoy life, I understand time is running out on me and it has allowed me to enjoy a sense of urgency, to harness it and put into my work. I don’t know how much longer we can go on and do this.

“I’m the youngest member of the band and I’m turning 58 in a couple of weeks. So we are just enjoying every moment right now.”

That does not means Garbage are riding off in the sunset just yet though.

The quartet – Shirley, Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker – intend to bring out a new album next year, and this Friday they will be one of the top acts at Glasgow’s TRNSMT festival.

A headline gig in Edinburgh follows on Sunday, and although Manson has lived in America for more than three decades, her Scottishness remains undimmed.

“My dad’s still alive so I come back to Scotland a lot,” she says. “I’ve still got a home in Edinburgh so I never feel like I’ve left per se.

“I’m in a no-win situation because in America I’m not considered American, but when I come home to Scotland everyone says I’ve left. I’m a person of no fixed address.

“But I’ve always believed Scotland to be my home.”

Living in America has been less comfortable for the singer in recent years.

Manson feels the country, and in particular the Republican party, is “waging a war on women”, pointing to the overturning of the Roe v Wade abortion law.

She believes that attitude feeds down to the rest of society, including in the music business.

“In the 90s it felt like things were changing and there was a lot more opportunity for women,” she said.

“There is still a lot of opportunity for women in the music business if you are willing to play the game. That means if you’re pleasing, if you’re sexy and you’re willing to mind your mouth and your manners then you can flourish very well.

“But for any women that’s an alternative – it’s still very, very hard to be seen and supported, and that disappoints me.”

Manson has never been one to mind her mouth, from her start with Edinburgh noise-makers Goodbye Mr MacKenzie through to alternative band Angelfish and then on to Garbage.

Famously she was spotted by future bandmate Steve Marker when he saw an Angelfish video on TV, and thought she would be the perfect vocalist for the new rock band he was forming with fellow producers Vig and Erikson.

Some critics may have sniffed at the band early on, dubbing them a “studio project” but acclaim and chart success followed.

A barrage of hits came during the 90s and early 2000s, including Stupid Girl, I Think I’m Paranoid and James Bond theme The World Is Not Enough.

The 2021 album No Gods No Masters showed they had lost none of their fury, with a fast and chaotic assault on racism, sexism and capitalism.

The record also came when Manson was starting to suffer problems with her hip, due to injuries sustained when she fell off a stage in 2016 – a situation that led to a “sobering” hip replacement operation for her in 2023.

Yet despite her health situation and the “turmoil” in America, the group’s next album will be “more melodic and more loving”, according to Manson.

She says she would have “lost her mind” if only focusing on the current state of the world.

However as well as the future, the band have reflected on the past too – and the memories are not always pleasant.

Earlier this year they issued a vinyl release of fourth album Bleed Like Me, which came out in 2005.

The making of that album proved so difficult the group went into hiatus for several years afterwards, after constant interference from their then-record label, Interscope.

“They were trying to mould us into a pop band,” recalls Manson.

“There were a lot of bands willing to adopt a more pop approach, and it was just something that we decided we couldn’t live with. We wanted to be who we were, for better and for worse.”

When the record label Interscope dropped the band, Manson felt the group was finished – having been told there was no room for the record company to promote more than one female rock band (they are alleged to have selected No Doubt instead).

But against those odds, Garbage have survived and thrived – something Manson hopes resonates with others, whatever their career.

She said: “I was 40 at the time, and I was thinking ‘no woman in alt rock has got out of this situation with her career intact’. I really believed my career was over.

“It has been a great surprise to me, and a delight, to dig myself out of that. I was very wrong about my career, as it turned out. I like to tell this story because I feel so many women run up against a brick wall, where society is telling them they’re too old and it’s all over.

“I want women to understand it’s not over, if you just refuse to sit down.”

The same time period also left Manson feeling isolated as the only woman in an otherwise all-male environment. It’s something she has tried to change since then, with the group’s current bassist Ginger Pooley – formerly of the Smashing Pumpkins – just one of the women the singer has helped bring into the fold.

That includes the support on their current tour, Glasgow group Lucia and the Best Boys, who Shirley refers to as “my wee sister, or my child” with a laugh.

“I didn’t understand that I could say to the band that I needed more women around me, and that has changed over the course of my career,” she explains.

“We have a woman lighting designer, we have a woman selling our merch, we’ve had women as production assistants and we do our very best at this point to change the dynamic.

“That has helped my loneliness immensely. To look across at Ginger during rehearsals and feel that connectedness with someone who understands what I have gone through – that has often moved me to tears.”