One was an outlaw at 17, the other a privileged kid;

one was sacked from Sex, the other demoted at Miss Selfridge; one

likes it the old fashioned way,the other prefers artificial

aids;one embraces stardom, the other is past caring.

Will Shirley Manson and Chrissie Hynde ever agree?

Interview: Sylvie Simmons. Portraits: Nick Haddow.

Transcribed/formatted for the web by Garbage2.com

Room service..." SHIRLEY MANSON, BENT DOUBLE OVER the directory, is running a long finger down the list of services. "Aren't Hotels brilliant ? The only place were a man waits on you hand and foot. Where the fuck is room service ? Oh, excuse me ..." Posh voice, "The pantry will deal with our requirements."

No answer from the Butler, though, so Shirley throws an exquisite wobbly, "Operator? I've been calling the pantry for three minutes!" she barks.   "Superstar," Chrissie Hynde mock sneers, "No, I`ve always been like this," Shirley grins. "I have no problem with being a cunt." Vodka, cakes, and a silver tea service arrive expeditiously. Shirley and Chrissie give the sweetest of smiles.

We`re in a plush suite in a private club in London, once the house where a rich, titled old girl entertained her gentlemen callers.There's a four-poster bed for the purpose-a bit on the short side with a monogrammed purple cover (perfect for Prince).And an elephants foot umbrella stand by the door, Chrissie got caught trying to sneak it out to the garden square to give it a decent burial. The two women are relishing each others company. Six hours they've been talking , and still finding common ground- sex, songwriting, suicide. Two decades and 3,000 miles apart, both were fucked-up, friendless teenagers saved by rock`n`roll. Both have mythical reputations ( Chrissie: McDonald`s and firebombs; Shirley: crapping on cornflakes and chauvinist boyfriend) as women not to be messed with. And both front bands on the cutting-edge of mainstream rock.

MOJO: An American with a British band, a Brit with an American one. How come ?

Shirley: In my case a total accident. I fell into Garbage by default. The head of the American label that signed the first band I was in, Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, managed Talking Heads and he put me into the studio with Chris Frantz and Tina Waymouth, which is where Steve Marker and Garbage found me. I`d had no thoughts of going to America before that.
Chrissie: England was kind of a mecca. I thought I`d get off the plane and there would be Marc Bolon playing in a coffee house.But I didn`t come here to get a band together, I came here to get away.
Shirley: Were you playing in Ohio ?
Chrissie: I had a short stint when I was 15 with Mark Mathersough, who later formed Devo, but I was way too shy to let guys see me play guitar. I was playing my little blues songs in my room alone.
Shirley: When did you pick up a guitar ?
Chrissie: I had a baritone ukulele that I got when I was about 14. I thought my hands were too small for a guitar-then an acoustic guitar. I started learning some cords from a book. There was something about the electric guitar. It was the violin of our generation, the sound of a cord to me was everything.
Shirley: I was forced to go to piano lessons when I was five. I was playing violin, piano and clarinet all the way through school.
Chrissie: Didn't you want to be a singer ? I`d wanted to sing since I four years old. I remember having a vision of myself as a singer, and a dream like hallucination of me carrying an electric guitar on a train, I`d never been on a train.
Shirley: I never wanted to be anything like that.I felt an ugly, disenfranchised teenager. All the cool people seemed to have these weird sounding elitist bands they listened to that they guarded really preciously, so I began to go out and buy these records: Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Television, Siouxsies. Mostly I was attracted to female musicians. They felt closer to me.
Chrissie If there had been some girls in bands I might have connected with them, but there weren`t. It was more an androgynous thing being in a band in those days, and that was the beauty of it for me. Because I was a late developer, though my teenage years I was very shy and innocent. I didn`t get together with any guys, but I did love the guys in bands.

What caused the jump from loving rock to doing it ?

Chrissie: Desperation and fear.
Shirley: I agree
Chrissie: One of the last jobs I had when I was living in Ohio, I kept thinking about shooting myself. I remember having to leave a couple of times and lie down on the grass outside the building and try to stop thinking about it because it was swimming around my head so much. I came from a part of the US which had the highest suicide and homicide by gun rates in the country and produced a high percentage of serial killers-Jeffery Dohmer was a local. I also put it down to some weird karmic energies from the Indian burial grounds there, plus this deep burning racial hatred that seemed to be dwelling in the hearts of the people around me, and the fear of anything that wasn't the perfect American family that you`d see on the cover of Life magazine in 1953. Also, when I was a teenager the Vietnam War was raging and there were hallucinogenic drugs and a cosmic consciousness that was not only alien to my parents generation but extremely anti-American in its statement.

A big turning point in my life was at 17 when I stopped eating meat setting me apart from the rest of my society, which is when I got fascinated with bikers, and anybody who seemed deviant by white suburban standards.
Rock for me had nothing to do with ego. It was a survival instinct, coupled with the background of my childhood and growing up with the best rock music ever made. As Bob Dylan said, when youv`e got nothing youv`e got nothing to lose. That made me fearless. Because nothing was better than staying where I was.

Shirley: I on the other hand grew up in a really nice city with a wonderful family, but I never felt comfortable,ever. I know it sounds ridiculous but I was a redhead, and anybody who is red-haired will understand and anyone who isn`t never will know what it`s like to be different from everybody from the time you go to nursery school. You either buckle under or you become defiant, and thats what happened. I was well spoken and well educated too, which made me an immediate target for bullies, so by secondary school I became really aggressive.

Shirley: She did. The teacher that looked after our year was some kind of perverted Jehovah Witness who, because I was willful, used to enjoy pitting me against this one bully. So I couldn`t depend on the teacher to defend me, I couldn`t communicate with my parents because they would belittle the problem, and I didn`t really have any friends. I used to lock myself in my bedroom and listen to Chrissie`s records, and at that age there`s this kind of love for whoever you`re listening to -" she understands me, she`d like me if she meet me. " It`s an alternative reality. But it`s hard to imagine what it was like for Chrissie.There were no examples for her to follow, like my generation had.
Chrissie: But I had all those books like Jack Keronac, visions of Americans jumping on trains, hobos with sticks and little parcels of clothing, which I thought was really the American dream. And this backdrop of racism- I thought, " Hang on a minute, I`m white, I can get a passport and have freedom if I wanted. " All the music I listened to talked about freedom. I saw slavery all around me in the white suburbs- slavery of the mind.
Shirley: You never played in a band with girls ?
Chrissie: I had a couple of girlfriends in school I played with. It was a different time. Around `65 women were only just getting started to pop birth control pills and deciding not to have children. Women had different positions, and I`m a great believer in knowing your place, that's what being in a bands all about. I didn`t get into a band because I was a girl. And I didn`t think that being a man was a job qualification. Over the years I`ve unfortunately had to advertise for guitar players and bass players at times and never specified it had to be a male. But I never had any women apply for the jobs.
Shirley: I don't mean to make this a gender issue, I`m just trying to struggle with that whole idea of pioneers.
Chrissie: I was about 24 and living in London when it occurred to me that maybe I could play. I went over to someone's house and there were some teenagers playing, making up these lame heavy metal songs, except it wasn't even heavy metal yet. I said," You guys only know a few cords, why don`t you play something like White light White heat ? " And they said, " what`s that ? " And I said " May I ? " and I took this kids guitar and , " There you go "It made me think, " Gosh, I forgot I could do that." But my journey to find a band was a long one.

What part did punk play ?

Chrissie: There was six months in that punk phenomenon, 1976, just pre-punk, when there were alot of chicks on the scene, Siouxsie Sioux, Gaye Advert, The Silts and I sort of snuck in there.It only lasted about six months before the New York bands started bringing heroin over and all the speed freaks started shooting smack and then it was over, but up until that point the whole punk scene was pure and about non-gender discrimination. I thought it was a moment when I could slip under the net and being a girl would not make me a novelty act. I waited till it was safe to come out.I didn`t have much confidence-other than to know that I didn`t want to keep modeling at St.Martin`s Art College for the rest of my life, and I was running out of time and visions and gas.

Shirley, you were 10 when punk happened- too young for any impact ?

Shirley: My experience of punk was two or tree years later and it was watered down by then. I fell madly in love with The Clash, who were at the tail end of the of it, and The Sex Pistols eventually worked it`s way towards me when I was about 15.

Chrissie, true you offered Sid Vicious two quid to marry you ?

Chrissie: No !
Shirley: I heard that. I can`t believe you would even consider that.
Chrissie: It was Rotten that offered me.
Shirley: That's romantic. Rotten is a genius and smart.
Chrissie: I didn`t want to marry anyone, I wanted to stay in the country. No-one was a romantic in the punk days. No-one had boyfriends that I knew of. I played with all these guys- I tried to get a band together with everyone in the punk scene.

Was that through working at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienna Westwood`s shop Sex ?

Chrissie: I knew them way before it was called Sex, when they had slogans like " The Truth Loves To Go Naked "
Shirley: Gagsville ! Then, I worked in the Edinburgh Miss Selfridge for five years from the time I left school. They didn`t even promote me to manageress. In fact they demoted me -put me in the stock room for being rude to customers. So how did you get the job as a journalist for the NME ?
Chrissie: That was from me spouting off about something and a guy in the pub, who turned out to be the assistant editor, says, " You should write for us " There was one cool drugstore in Acuran where you could buy the English music paper, even though they were weeks old. I`d think, " Wow, England must be so great- whole papers dedicated to music." On my hallowed walls, next to pictures of Brigitte Bardot, Keith Richards, and a lyric of Bob Dylan`s, I had this picture of Iggy Pop from an NME article. When I left for England, I put it in my suitcase with three albums, Fun House, Raw Power, and White Light White Heat.
When I got here I didn`t know anyone, and I met this guy, a DJ, and lent him my albums and he disappeared. I was crushed. I`d come to the mecca homeland. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree was number 1, and no-one had heard of Iggy Pop. That night I was at a party with all these skanky kids I didn`t know and I said, " Today someone stole my three prize possessions " and I heard a voice go, " I know Iggy Pop "
Lo and behold it was Nick fucking Kent, the guy who wrote the article. After the party he said, " I need a place to stay tonight ",and I said " Theres an empty room at the house where I`m staying." I didn`t stay with him or anything-he was a geeky guy. He said " I`m moving and I need a somewhere to leave my stuff for a few days, can I leave it here?" Then the next day this U-Haul van turned up outside.

One difference you two have is Chrissie chose the men in her band, shirley was chosen by hers.

Chrissie: I am the band leader, unquestionably. I have the vision and the songs. But they make my songs sound much better than if I`d played them on my own. I need them,they need me.
Shirley: I don`t think there is a leader in Garbage. I consider myself a forth of what they do, it`s a very symbolic relationship, everybody excelling at different things, literally at different times of the day. I think what we have is very rare.
Chrissie: I think what you have is something that I had but lost. In the early days it was a total band ethic, I would never even allow a photo of me without the rest of the band, and I always maintained throughout the James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farmdon days that if any one of us ever left we`d have to change it`s name. Then when we fired one member because he was so strung outwe couldn`t work with him, and Jimmy died two days later, I had a decision to make. When Jimmy died suddenly it was just me, three months pregnant, and the drummer.After two albums and a long struggle to accomplish this thing it was, " I`m going to throw it all away ?"
I decided Jimmy didn`t need to die like that, it was a mistake, and since the only thing that meant anything to him was the music, at least I could insure that the sound he and I had created wouldn`t die. Thats why I have continued to call it The Pretenders, and evey musician I`ve brought in plays sensitively in the spirit of that original idea.
Shirley: I was asked to do a photo shoot by myself once and it was going down like shit. Eventually my publicist said, " You`ll have to get the band in," and the minute they walked in it was like an injection. The gang was here and I was smiley and confident. As they say in the National Hockey League in America, you`ve " got bench "- if someone comes in and beats up on you, there are people on the bench to make sure your OK.

Still, you`re still the public focus of your band. As women, can you get away with looking like Keith Richards, or is there constant pressure not to look like shit ?

Chrissie: We never look like shit.
Shirley: I do, I`m past caring.
Chrissie: The worst thing- which has nothing to do with gender- is the realization that even though you feel anonymous, which I do, people recognize you. For example, you go into a chemist to purchase pessaries for thush and the guy who brings them over goes, " So, anymore touring in the future ? " You lose your freedom as a civilian. I`m very shy about any personal matter and I don`t want to go public with them.
Shirley: I feel the complete opposite. To me one of the biggest responabillitys a pop star has is to be a conductor for experiences that other people suffer on a day-to-day level. The most amazing thing I`ve experienced about doing this is when someone comes up to you and says, " I heard you used to cut yourself when you were a teenager." Everybody was horrified when I spoke about it publicly, but I said if somebody I looked up to , like Chrissie- had done something similar, I wouldn't have felt so isolated.
Chrissie: That`s what the songs are for. Thats where the pain comes out and the connection with the audience is made.I`d spent about 20 years in civilian life being a person with my own way of dealing with people before becoming a public figue, so personal freedom was a very important thing to me. I want the right to sit on a doorstop and eat a pizza and be left alone.
Shirley: I feel the complete opposite- because of the great things I get to do in my life, the small payback I have to endure is the fact that I can`t ( do that ) I feel very much that a rock star is like a doctor- they can`t afford to turn people away. Interestingly, Garbage were on tour with Alanis Morrissette last month, who`s been a pop star since she was 13. She said " I got to the point where I was refusing autographs.", and I said, " Why ? Its your " duty " as a pop star to give them something that`s so insignificant to you in exchange for the fact that they are maintaining your lifestyle. You could be cleaning toilets for a living..."
Chrissie: In theory I agree, an autograph is signing a contract that says, " I will never waitress again. " But, apart from the fact that I find it highly embarrassing, I demand the right not to. I don`t owe them that. I don`t even owe them the music. If they want to buy the record, they can buy the record, if they don`t want to buy it, tape it-I`ve always encouraged home-taping.

Who are your fans ?

Chrissie: I have no handle on that at all.
Shirley: About 50/50 girls and guys. Most of the mail comes from teenagers, the odd one from a 60 year-old or something weird. I don`t think we get any more than the average number of really obsessional fans.