October 4, 2012
Shirley Manson of Garbage on Girl on Guy
Rock star Shirley Manson (“Garbage”) sat down for an interview with actress and comedian Aisha Tyler (on her podcast Girl on Guy). Here are some highlights:
Manson on her first band
“I was in a theatre group and a boy joined the group and he was in a band and he asked me if I wanted to join his band and I was like, ‘I can’t really play anything’ and he said, ‘You can play the piano’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I can play the piano’, and he’s like, ‘come and play piano in my band and sing back up’ and I was like, ‘okay’– actually he just wanted to get into my pants, and he did get into my pants.”
Manson on the formation of “Garbage”
“I was in a band called Angel Fish we had one video on MTV and it was shown on 120 Minutes at 2 o’clock in the morning… once. And Steve Marker, [who later became] my guitarist in Garbage was sitting up one night, saw me and thought, ‘You know, she’s kind of interesting looking and I love her voice and I’d love to meet her and see if she is interested in singing in the band.’ That’s essentially what happened.
I just got plucked out of the blue and I went to meet the band. They kind of auditioned me and I was terrible and I went back to Scotland and their manager called and said, ‘How did the audition go?’ I said, ‘it was dreadful’ and she said ‘Yeah, I kind of heard it was dreadful, would you like to take another crack at it?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So I went back up and this time I was so much more relaxed, the worst had happened. So we just hit it off and I sang a song and they loved it and it went on from there. It was very strange and… kismet. True kismet.”