This week during her 90s at Noon feature on KROQ, Nicole Alvarez got a visit from Shirley Manson and Butch Vig from Garbage, who helped curate the music for the day and offer up stories about recording classic tracks, creating through pain to make their new album, and the shadow of Nirvana that loomed over the early years of the band.
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Just a few days away from the band's upcoming album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, Shirley shares that pain medication from a hip replacement played a part in the creation of the new project. "I had performed at the KROQ Weenie Roast many years ago now, and I had fallen off stage and hurt myself on the crash barrier and battered my right hip so badly that it kind of disintegrated on me. A couple of years ago we were on tour with Alanis Morissette and all of a sudden I'm like, 'oh my God, I can't, I can't walk properly. What the hell's going on?' And I needed a full hip replacement," recalls Manson. "Then a year later, last summer, we were just about to play Wembley Arena in London and I was so excited about it and I had a similar experience on my left hip. I'm like, 'oh my God, not again.'"
"So I was on a lot of pain medication whilst we were making and completing this new record. So if and when I said I I was insane during the making of it, I was dealing with a lot of pain and pain will drive you out of your mind."
Throughout the hour the band looked back and played a few of their favorites from bands like L7 and Nirvana, including tracks from Nevermind which Vig famously produced. It's a credit that people will never stop discussing because of the impact of that album, which Butch doesn't mind... now.
"it's such a huge part of my life. Garbage wouldn't exist if Nirvana had not happened, and obviously my career would probably be a lot different if Nirvana had not happened," reveals Vig. "There was a time though when Garbage started, where no one knew who Shirley was. They didn't know who Garbage was, and we would be doing an interview and I could see the journalists just getting fidgety... They just wanted to get the Garbage section over so they could go, 'what was Kurt Cobain like?' After a while I told our publicist I don't want to talk about Nirvana, you know, for a couple of years I didn't really say anything in the press."
"The specter of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and their legacy, which is enormous, you know, it's historical. It concerned me a little because I felt like we were going to get drowned out by that legacy," admits Manson. "But we have survived and somehow managed to negotiate ourselves around that specter, and I'm very proud of Butch and proud to be in a band with Butch who's had this incredible experience, and with a legendary record that is one of the greatest in Rock and Roll history."
For much more from Shirley Manson and Butch Vig, don't miss the whole conversation above.