Or two - SHIRLEY MANSON, queen of alterno-rock stars Garbage , has just a wee bit of trouble adjusting her internal levels after the global rock'n'roll tour bubble bursts and the homelife begins. Husband thinks you're a drug addict? Cold sweats in the supermarket? She's been there...
Source: Music365Network.
Interview: STEPHEN DOWLING.


AH, THE SHOWBIZ GLAMOUR of the Grammies. The glittering night when the US music industry celebrates itself in an orgy of statuettes, designer-labels and back-slapping.

And a suitable setting for the world to get another dose of Shirley Manson, The Star. Garbage's leading lady is one of the night's cavalcade of celebrities handing out awards to those smiled upon by the Grammy gods. After her brief plug for a fellow musician's good fortune, she swans from the stage. Shirley Manson's big moment has passed with distinction.

Well, almost. "I was walking back from the podium and I heard this voice go 'Shirley'," Manson says, perching over her coffee in her London hotel room. "And I turned round and it's Madonna, and I'm thinking, 'Fucking hell, it's Madonna!' But I say 'hi' and she grabs my hand and she gives me the famous blink and says, 'I think you're amazing' in that tiny voice she has.

"And I'm thinking, 'OK, try and be cool, this is possibly the biggest pop icon of our life, be cool'. I tried to say something even remotely understandable and instead just garbled my words. I had high heels on and I hardly ever wear high heels, and I lurched towards her, and I could see the alarm on her face, thinking 'who the hell is this?' And I lurched off flustered without even saying goodbye."

She laughs at her own lack of grace. "I always blow my big moments!"

Well, maybe not all of them. Garbage's success over the last four years is testament to that. ' Garbage ' was one of the most powerful debut albums of the decade, while last year's ' Version 2.0' might have consolidated their position as one of the biggest bands around, massive but still with a core of alternative cred untarnished by endless MTV plays. Not bad for a self-confessed awkward vocalist picked up by a trio of fortysomething American record producers - Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker. Shirley Manson may now be rubbing shoulders with the pop elite, she never really feels part of the scene.

Realise the ludicrousness of the pop star life and you'll go a long way to surviving it, Shirley Manson seems to believe. Well, at least you might not mutate into the publicity-hungry unfortunates that Manson at has encountered populating VIP enclosures years after their reason for being famous has faded away.

The latter's one thing the 32-year-old Manson really can't abide. She may have her face on hundreds of magazine covers, and be the biggest female star to come out of
Caledonia since, well, Sheena Easton, but each interview and every photo shoot just convinces her more and more that the day will come when all this attention is switched off.

Not that she's complaining, it's just that no-one quite warned her of what happens when a six-month tour ends and you try and get back to normal life. Shirley Manson is fighting hard to keep two sides of her life running smoothly. On the one hand there's the life that Garbage's success affords her - celebrity events, the continent-swallowing tours and a place many rungs up the alternative rock ladder. Then there's the life back in Edinburgh with her sculptor husband Eddie, a life that Manson has been able to enjoy only fleetingly in the last few years. But the last time she came back to that normal life, the results frightened her.

"I've never had a problem until very recently - the last trip I thought I was going to die," Manson says, her tone frank and even. "My husband said it was like living with a drug addict going cold turkey, it was really worrisome. I was bouncing off the walls. I live in this constant bubble - a band is an institution, and then I was let loose into the real world and it was a wee bit frightening. It's what I imagine life must be like for alcoholics when they suddenly become sober.

"I really related to Kate Moss being frightened about doing her first catwalk without any alcohol. It's that same feeling, walking into a shopping center by myself was really terrifying. I realized I hadn't been alone in public for six months. I came out in a cold sweat, I was shaking, I really felt like a drug addict.

"I think that experience was brought on by the fact I'm trying to straddle both worlds. It's easy to straddle one, but it's difficult to do two. The fact I'm aware of it is going to work in my favour. I think it was a good reminder to keep tabs on myself." She laughs. "You dance with the devil anytime you step out into any magnified world."

But Manson still seems to enjoy the dance. She's almost breathless with excitement whilst relating Garbage's recent jaunt to Russia, of driving through snowbanked fir forests and waking up to see the dawn over the icy River Neva. Or equally, of the wide, vaulted sky over the Arizona deserts on a baking summer's day. The mundanity of the hotel-to-hotel lifestyle is a factor, but Shirley Manson can't bring herself to complain about it.

"We realize that we've been incredibly fortunate, we're living a life that millions of people dream of, and we want to max it out. It's not going to be there for us forever - it's going to be taken from us at any given moment. So when someone says, 'Do you want to go to South Africa?' You go, 'fuck yeah! Let's go!' We've seen things that almost anyone we know can only dream of."