Garbage icon Shirley Manson has spoken to NME about being invited by The Cure‘s Robert Smith to play his curated Teenage Cancer Trust gigs alongside Placebo, as well as the fallout of ‘beach ball gate’ and their future as a touring band.
The show comes in the midst of a huge year for the band. Fresh from the release and critical acclaim of 2025’s ‘Let All That We Imagine Be The Light‘, Garbage recently completed their “final” North American headline tour before they return to the UK and Europe for a long run of dates, including co-headline shows with Skunk Anansie.
“I feel good about the year ahead,” Manson told NME. “We’ve got a lot of amazing things planned. I’ve been struggling with having lost my dad, but that’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be devastated when they go.”
“I’ve never lost anyone as dear to me as my mum and dad, so I really do feel unmoored in a way I didn’t expect. There is so little discourse about death in our society, and disease, which brings us nicely to the topic at hand…”
The alt-rock pioneers will be playing as part of a stacked line-up at London’s Royal Albert Hall this month in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust – a cause close to Manson’s heart. Having stepped in as curator for this year in place of The Who’s Roger Daltrey, Smith has hand-picked a week of gigs from the likes of Wolf Alice, Manic Street Preachers, Chvrches, My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai and Elbow.
The NME Icon Award alumni revealed that the invite came through via one of Smith’s legendary all caps lock emails, at which point she “just about fucking lost my marbles!”
“I’ve loved The Cure for as long as I can remember, since I was about 14-years-old,” she told NME. “To get one of those famous emails from someone I admire so much was gobsmacking, really. He just asked us if we’d be interested in performing in support of Teenage Cancer Trust.
We didn’t really need any introduction and all of us were immediately like, ‘Yes, we are going to do this’. Management were like, ‘Hold on!’ but we said, ‘No, we have to make this happen’. Bless our management for figuring it all out.”
Manson explained how it was “immensely important” for Garbage to perform, having recently lost a friend’s “beautiful young” daughter to cancer.
“I’ve experienced first-hand what teenage cancer can wreak, not just on the teenager struggling to recover themselves but also the families,” she continued. “It’s very, very difficult. Teenagers seem to fall between the cracks of cancer care all over the world.
“It’s particularly difficult for teenagers to wrestle with not just the consequences of the disease but the impact on the rest of their lives. These are ways that might not impact young children or older people. Teenagers are still so vulnerable, their bodies are still developing, their minds are still developing. It’s a very serious and pressing part of the treatment of cancer. It’s very complex and upsetting. We’re very honoured to have been asked and delighted to assist in any way we can.”
To mark the occasion, could we expect a special one-off cover of The Cure from the band?
“Never you mind! You might think that,” laughed Manson. “I couldn’t possibly comment…”
The night will also see Garbage share the stage with fellow ’90s rock outsiders Placebo, who’ll be opening with a stripped-back set as they gear up to celebrate 30 years since their debut album.
“I’m obsessed with Placebo, I really love them, and we’re delighted to be paired with them,” said Manson. “I’m particularly touched because they could be headlining the show on their own terms and they very graciously took the decision to play an opening acoustic set. We’ve known them since the ‘90s, of course. We toured with them in South Africa, of all places, a long time ago. It was exceedingly memorable and wild, so the less said about that the better!
“I love them dearly. I think Brian [Molko, frontman] is a very rare kind of frontperson.”
It’s a fitting combo, given that the bands were kindred spirits in the ’90s as going against the grain of the prevailing machismo of Britpop, US arena grunge and rising nu-metal scene of the time. “We were this weird thing that operated outside of that,” said Manson. “Brian was always so fucking cool with me, and not everyone was. There was a contingent of male fucking popstars who weren’t so kind, but Brian was always one of our kind of people.
“I’ve always been very attracted to the androgynous aspects of Brian’s approach to presenting himself. I loved that he wore make-up and female clothes and that it was beautiful, slightly dangerous, exciting and not something to be ashamed of. I really responded to that and it spoke to me deeply.”
Speaking of fellow effortlessly cool ‘90s freaks, Garbage will also be touring the UK with Skunk Anansie this summer. “It just gets better and better!” said Manson. It’s a dream come true to share a stage with Skin [frontwoman]. We’ve got so much shared history.
“I admire her so much. She’s a national treasure, remarkably humble and ridiculously talented, tenacious and with remarkable endurance. Again, we have so much in common with Skunk Anansie. Skin and I basically had the same past, aside of course from it being 100 times more difficult to be Black and young in Britain rather than white and older.”
Manson continued: “She’s got remarkable fortitude for her to have excelled the way she has. That can’t have been easy. I speak from experience because it wasn’t easy for me, and what she’s had to endure would have been at least 100 times harder. I have so much respect for her. There’s true sisterhood between us, it’s very sincere and real and I’m proud to know her.”
This comes at a time when Garbage have just played what appear to be their final gigs in many cities in North America, while suggesting that their upcoming homecoming Edinburgh gig will be their “last headline show in Scotland“. Having previously put their reduced touring down to the “thievery of the record industry” making it “very, very difficult”, Manson suggested that the upcoming UK and European headline tour could be their last.
“We have never said that we are stopping playing entirely – despite how some of the media has chosen to report on this,” she told us. “We have made the decision that our touring will be a different model from here on out.”
“We did the maths. I think this is a fascinating statistic: we played about 40 shows in North America, and Billy [Bush, husband] is such a nerd and did a bunch of equations to realise that we could have earned exactly the same amount from the entire tour if we’d only played 10 shows. That would have been approximately five shows on the east coast, and five shows on the West. Instead, we went into the middle of North America and toured all the way through it because we wanted to say farewell to a lot of the places we know we will never go back to because we can’t afford to go there.
“So we would have earned the same amount of 10 shows as 40. Let that sink in. I don’t think the world has yet fully grasped how insane the economics are. I’ve said my peace on that and could go on and on!”
This comes after rising band Witch Fever revealed that they were left “broke” after just two months as a support band on a UK and European arena tour. Manson said that it was becoming an all too familiar story.
“It’s truly perplexing,” she said. “We had Starcrawler out with us; a truly fucking amazing band, they’re playing is off the charts and they’re so disciplined and talented. She [Arrow de Wilde] is a fucking force, one of the greatest frontpeople to come out of their generation. They’re very, very special. On one night of the tour, one of the tyres blew out on the van. They couldn’t get a proper pick-up service, they were stranded in some crack alley, all because they couldn’t afford a proper tour bus. That’s putting young people in really perilous positions. It’s literally putting them in danger.”
Mason went on: “A band like that back in my day could have easily covered the costs of a tour because we were selling proper tangible products. We were selling enough records at gigs to be able to afford a decent bus. That’s now a thing of the past. You’ve got trust fund kids though…”
The artist, now 59, pointed to how the ongoing crisis facing artists who can’t afford to live was an existential one – but largely for those just entering music now.
“It’s frustrating and makes me frightened, she admitted. “Young people deserve our protection and to be able to make a living from their creativity. It’s a real state of emergency for musicians of a certain ilk. Of course the pop stars will continue to flourish, and long may that last. We need pop stars, they’re fantastic and fun.
“But the kind of artists that are creating the work that’s original, esoteric, original, authentic, challenging, rebellious and furious, they are getting choked out by the current system. All we’re getting are the pop stars that are like puppy mills: cheap to produce, cheap to support and they make a big profit for the people in charge. That seems like a terrible squandering of generational talent.”
She added: “I’m not saying this for myself, I am golden. I’m saying this as an elder in an industry that is punishing young people.”
That same frustration was the true cause of Manson’s now infamous comments about a fan who threw a beach ball at the band in Australia. Admitting that was “fed up of not getting fucking paid properly”, she previously said she “made no apologies” for her riposte – before the viral moment and tabloid reaction led to the band being showered in “glorious beach balls” at the following shows. Using the attention to speak out for Palestine, Manson admitted that “that kind of press is very helpful” but that ultimately the incident “had nothing to do with beach balls”.
“I was astounded by the intensity of criticism,” Manson told us. “To be fair, I lost my composure. My dad died on October 3, I’d been touring solidly since and it was now December. Clearly, I should have been at home but I carried on working. It was a bad call, but it something I had agreed upon with my dad. I had just buried him the week before.
“This is not an excuse, I’m just saying that I lost my composure. People are human, they make bad errors of judgement, I made a bad error of judgement and I shouldn’t have gone off like that. But you would have thought I’d have killed a fucking baby! There were calls for me to be deported from Australia. It was ludicrous. In the end they got so hysterical in their desire to punish me that the whole thing turned around.”
Manson added: “Shit happens. I just felt bad for my band as 100 beach balls came sailing over the crowd the following day. Luckily for us, we all have a really good sense of humour. We knew it was coming and already called it. I’m sure there will be hundreds of beach balls for the rest of our career.”
Feeling “somewhat speechless to be honest” at the state of affairs in America at the moment, where she resides in LA with husband Billy Bush, Manson said that the States felt like they were hanging in “a very perilous moment in time” under the shadow of the Trump administration and ICE. “Racism and xenophobia has been allowed to run rampant and the dogs have been unleashed,” she went on. “It’s heartbreaking to witness.”
Still, Manson said that she had hope in the power of people and that everything else in her life “wonderful” and left her feeling optimistic for what’s to come.
“I’m grateful to be alive,” she said. “Losing my dad has been profound, but it roots be harder to the ground. I’m grateful to work with gorgeous people, I have a gorgeous job in which I try and make other people feel better. When they come to our shows, we have communion and share a way of thinking about the world that is powerful.
“I’m deeply grateful that I’m still here at this age. It’s statistically unusual and I can’t believe that I’m one of the people that has got to do this for the majority of my life. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, which sounds mental but it’s true.”
While admitting that another new album from Garbage could be a while away yet as her bandmates are “very ponderous and slow”, she still enjoyed being part of such a positive force as “a band member for life”.
“I believe in bands, I believe in people coming together,” she ended. “I’m tired of dictatorships, as shiny and brilliant as they can. I love the idea of group effort and community, that excites me.
“There’s no better way of living than to operate within in a group at a time when they’re trying to dissipate community and get us all to believe in individualism. I believe in society and the power of coming together.”
Garbage headline London’s Royal Albert Hall with Placebo for Teenage Cancer Trust on Saturday March 28, before a UK and European tour including dates with Skunk Anansie. Visit here for tickets and more information.
