Garbage singer Shirley Manson in an interview: The frontwoman of the second wave

Shirley, in 1995, when the first Garbage album was released, you embodied a new type of woman: emancipated, opinionated, political. I imagine that the punk poet Patti Smith is your role model. Is that true?

Yes, very much so. She was a huge driving force in my life, a huge influence, for sure.

What do you admire about her?

Oh my God, I wish we could do a whole interview just about her. What I love most about Patti Smith and some of her colleagues like Grace Jones, Chaka Khan, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, or Stevie Nicks? For me, they are the first wave of a new kind of woman. I'm just copying what they taught me. These women pushed the boundaries. What we're seeing now, that they're still pushing their careers forward in their 70s and 80s, is something humanity has never seen before. These women changed the world, not just for women, but for men too.

What do you mean?

As we all know, until World War II, women weren't even allowed to work. This is the first generation of women earning their own money and enjoying creative careers visibly in public—and that's pretty damn wild. I'm grateful to Patti Smith for that, grateful for her power as a woman, for her androgynous way, which shows that women don't have to succumb to the male gaze but can express themselves in any way they want, even in ways that don't correspond to their gender. I love her poetry, her literary sense, her intelligence. Back when she first emerged, critics didn't treat her very respectfully. She was often laughed at for daring to recite poetry in public. As she's gotten older, she's gained a lot of respect. Age has made her even more powerful. She has weight and influence, and that's an extraordinary message to our youth-obsessed world.

Are you a role model for Taylor Swift?

My God, no, I don't think Taylor Swift needs a role model. She's also a new kind of woman. What I love about her is that she made this damn patriarchal music business her bitch. She didn't have to do anything traditionally required of women to emerge on the world stage. She did it entirely on her own terms, and I find that very exciting, and yes, I admire her very much.

Men like Bob Dylan are celebrated for performing at the age of 80. Keith Richards is celebrated for every new wrinkle, so to speak. Why are there so few women of that age performing on stage?

We're seeing the first wave of women doing this. Patti Smith has the same status as Bob Dylan, or at least close to it, finally. The rules of the game in the music industry were made by men for men, and so it's been very difficult for women to break into the game. I find it interesting that you mention Taylor Swift, because people laugh when I call her a genius. People scoff when I say she's a Bob Dylan in her own way. In a very divine, feminine way, because she writes and sings about experiences that the patriarchy doesn't understand and therefore belittles. But women understand them perfectly. I find that really fascinating.

The British tabloid Daily Mail recently published an article about Garbage titled "The iconic American rock band is unrecognizable in the promo photos for their new album." They harshly criticized the newspaper for age discrimination against women.

A year earlier, the newspaper had run the same headline. That time, it wasn't about the band, but about me personally. They printed photos of me and my husband on vacation in Mexico. Next to them, they put pictures of me as a young Garbage singer. In both cases, "unrecognizable" referred to me. I'm at an age where I really don't care if people think I'm too old. I really don't care if you think I'm old and done. It doesn't hurt my feelings. I think it says more about you than it does about me. Because you've swallowed all these ideas that have been drummed into you. I'm speaking out now because I want things to get better for young women and artists coming up. I don't want them to be hurt by ageism, sexism, and misogyny the way I was.

“I'm not dead, I'm not done” is what you sing in the song “Chinese Fire Horse”.

"Chinese Fire Horse" is about a real situation that occurred while we were promoting our previous, seventh album, "No Gods No Masters." Two journalists independently asked me on the first day of press when I planned to retire. I was 53 years old. They would never ask that question of a 53-year-old male rock star.

Garbage's new album, "Let All That We Imagine Be The Light," is a plea for love as an antidote to hate. Can love end wars like those in Ukraine or Gaza?

You know, as trite, as clichéd as it may sound: love is the only thing I can think of that can possibly change this world. I truly believe we are on the verge of the collapse of the world as we know it. The signs I see are devastating. As a child of parents who lived through World War II, as a child of grandparents who lived through World War I and World War II, I'm simply shocked.

Which characters do you mean?

Many people seem to have lost their sense of right and wrong; they're unable to distinguish between good and evil. I have no idea what's causing this incredible apathy. You mentioned Gaza. It seems to me that everyone has lost their minds a little. I can honestly say that I've cried every single day for the past year and a half.

What's going wrong?

For at least two decades, maybe even three, we've been encouraged by governments around the world to believe that money and status symbols will make us happy. I believe we're currently witnessing the collapse of extreme capitalism, which I believe is the reason for the outbursts of rage among rich white men. I believe we're witnessing the death throes of the old system once created by rich white men.

With your record you call for positive thinking despite everything.

Yes, I believe in that. We shouldn't give up and say, "Well, those damned idiots in charge are going to sink the Titanic, and we're all going down with it. What can we do about it?" I believe we can turn things around. It's possible. Humanity is capable of it; its ingenuity is astonishing. Earlier this year, I was in Egypt and—you know, that cliché—you stand in awe of the pyramids. Nobody knows how they were built. We can do extraordinary things, but we have to tackle them now with the utmost urgency, or we're all doomed.

In the song "Waiting for God" from the previous album, you asked, "What have we become? What do we do now?" Now you sing, "There's no future that can't be created—with imagination and a wonderful mind."

"Waiting for God" is about the injustices in a racist, white-dominated world. I was so angry when we recorded "No Gods No Masters." Now, five years later, I realize it's too late to be angry. There's no point.

What did you do?

The Black Lives Matter protests forced me to educate myself about racism and confront it. When I saw George Floyd murdered, I realized, shamefully belatedly, that I knew too little about the Black struggle in America. I did know a little about the Civil Rights Movement; I'd heard of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and so on. But I hadn't really delved into Black literature or Black playwrights. I hadn't really thought about colonialism, racism, white supremacy, and what that means for people. The state of the world today is the reverberation, the result of colonialism. Even the Russian attack on Ukraine is a form of racism. It's definitely about occupation and domination, about exploitation.

Where has your anger gone?

I realized that there's no point in being outraged anymore. I can only bring my own love into my world. I decided to put more love into an album than I've ever put before. Because love is optimism. Love is hope. Love is resistance, love is disobedience in many ways, love is the refusal to accept the current state of the world.

“Age has made her even more powerful”: The American musician Patti Smith (78) is Shirley Manson’s role model.

Source: IMAGO/ABACAPRESS

You say, “When I was young, I tended to destroy things.” What did you destroy back then and why?

I was—and this won't surprise you—a very emotional, hypersensitive, red-haired child. I couldn't really feel love back then. I felt like I wasn't loved, even though I knew full well I wasn't. That triggered a lot of anger in me.

How did this manifest itself?

I was very creative, very musical, but my domineering father, who was an academic, wanted me to pursue an academic career like him. And so there was this constant battle with him. This led to me often lashing out. I was in a really rebellious rock 'n' roll band at the time: Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie; we were really wild. We mocked convention, the church—the list is endless. As I got older, I began to love the idea of ​​community because I enjoyed the support of our fans. It's a pretty pathetic admission: When I was on stage, I felt loved. I felt part of something. It was only in recent years, when my body was breaking down...

You fell off the stage in 2016.

Yes, I fell off the stage onto a security barrier during a performance. Five years later, on tour with Alanis Morissette, I felt incredible, stabbing pain, and another year after that, on tour with Tears for Fears, I had trouble walking. This was followed by two hip surgeries within two years. During my rehabilitation, I was forced to take care of myself for the first time in my life. I had to try to love myself. I had to be patient with myself, I had to be kind to myself, I had to believe in myself. I began to realize, as I was learning to walk again, how much I needed love. I needed to truly invest in love: I wanted to learn not only to love myself, but also to love the world I live in, nature, our oceans, our animals.

"I never believed I was an artist until my mother died. I felt it was her last gift to me," you told the Guardian. Why didn't you believe that?

My father graded everything. If I didn't give 100 percent at something, I'd get criticized. So I stopped trying hard at school because I knew I'd never be able to live up to his standards. When I joined Garbage, Butch Vig was at the peak of his artistic powers. In every interview we did together, the interviewer was desperate to talk to Butch about Nirvana. I understood that, but it subconsciously paralyzed me as a singer and songwriter, as a creative person. I felt like I wasn't as good as Kurt Cobain, which at the time meant I felt like a nobody. I felt belittled. I've struggled with that my whole life.

And when your mother died?

Garbage had taken a break after being dropped by Interscope Records. We were no longer in tune with the times. Our sound was no longer modern. We were all depressed. When my mother died, I realized I had to make a decision: Do I want to quit or keep going? I chose to keep going. I knew that if I did, I had to believe in myself and my band. You know what I mean?

Did you become more self-confident?

I realized I had to take on a much more dominant role in the band than I'd ever given myself credit for when I was younger. I had to believe that I was an artist, that I had a vision, that I had a future, and I owe that to the power of my mother, who backed me up. I didn't want to disappear; I thought, 'I'm my mother's child, I'm going to go out into the world and be the best I can be.'