Shirley Manson, well known for her singing role in the band "Garbage", and her bright red hair. Shirley was an angry child, often teased and beaten-up by other students because of her green eyes and red hair. They called her names like "posh", "bloodhound", and "frog-eyed". As she grew older she became more violent and was constantly unhappy. She planned to drop out of high school at the age of 16.
As Shirley grew into her late teens, she got more interested in drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll. She began to smoke and use drugs on a regular basis. Her father became really worried about her, and didn't know what to do with his bad-ass daughter.
A big influence on Shirley came from "Chrissie Hynde" a powerful female singer in a local rock band. Shirley became more interested in music and decided that she wanted to be in a band. Shirley joined a couple bands such as, "August 1984", "Wild Indians", and "Mr. Mackenzie" before moving on to her biggest success "Garbage". Her current band well known over Canada and the US, have a very unique style of music combining hard guitar-riffs with melodic keyboard tunes.
In 1995 the band released "Garbage", their debut album. The album sold over 8 million copies worldwide. The band was an instant hit and their popularity grew with each show they played and every song played on local radio stations. The band released "Version 2.0" in 1998. Their much hyped second album had waiting fans eager to get out to the stores and purchase it. Shirley's lyrics always from the inside show her true emotions and feelings. The band is a big success and can leave the quetion out there to fans all over the world. What will the band come out with next?
By - Aaron Lewicki
Bio 2:
Real Name: Shirley Manson
Date of Birth: August 3rd, 1966
Location of Birth: Edinburgh, Scotland
Occupation: Singer
Marital Status: Sorry boys, this supervixen is married!
Career Hilights: First semi-successful band was "Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie," who had a single that reached No. 66 on the Billboard UK charts. After that was Angelfish, who did achieve notice in the US. Joined Garbage after Butch Vig and Duke Erickson saw an Angelfish video on MTV. It was the only time the video ever aired.
The 'ugly' sister of three, Shirley was [born on August 8, 1966 and] brought up in a funky area of Edinburgh[,Scotland]. Her father was a geneticist. In an early, proto-Garbage incident, one of his experiments involved dead chickens left in the family shed. When Shirley unknowingly came upon them five days later, they were dancing with maggots and she screamed the place down. Her father, as most fathers do, became quite bewildered when she came into her teenage-hood.
She had no self-esteem then, and she has none now. When asked to put a date to its inception, she mentions constantly comparing herself to her 'beautiful' sisters, bullying at school, and a circle of teenage girl mind-fuckery. "I've only just worked it out that there was this really big confidence-losing event," she says. "I was best friends with two girls, and I was so glad not to be on my own it didn't occur to me that three is always a bad number."
When Shirley was 15, she told them a lie, "And," she shudders, "my whole life ended there." She won't say exactly what it was.
"I still think it was the single biggest mistake of my life. It was such a terrible, pointless lie. When I was found out, I was just sick-to-my-stomach with dread. And that was It."
Pause.
"No-one in school spoke to me again. I had to hide in the science block every day: showing my face was too provocative. Any little confidence I had disappeared utterly."
To make matters worse, one of Shirley's teachers had it in for her like crocodiles have it in for stray swimmers' legs. Shirley would be repeatedly ridiculed in front of the whole class, "Until, I think, everyone in that school thought I was less than human. I felt ugly, weak, overwhelmed - I couldn't imagine being capable of doing anything. I certainly never thought I could be in a band. This was a dream it didn't even occur to me to dream about."
These feelings were manifested in 'delicate cutting', snipping the safety guards off Bic razors and scoring a furious lattice work of red threads on her arms. It is what girls and women do when they are trying to teach themselves the physical lesson 'Never, ever allow yourself to be this unhappy again.'
Books and music were her Narnia at the back of the wardrobe, Siouxsie Sioux and Chrissie Hynde the Ice Queens therein. "When Fiona Apple wrote that line, 'When I'm strong like music', I could've killed her, I was so jealous. That's exactly what it is," Shirley says. "Exactly."
When mutual lust dragged her into the local hunk's band, she doubled-up jobs and worked at Dorothy Perkins to support them both. And when both the relationship and Goodbye Mr Mackenzie eventually fell apart, she stayed with music. Her new band, Angelfish, got some airplay on MIY, and it was there, "like some weird kind of tele-dating," she smirks, that The Boys saw her, rang her, and asked her to run away from everything she'd ever known and join them in Madison [,Wisconsin].
Shirley joined Garbage in 1994 after the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" was caught by Steve Marker on late-night MTV. He quickly tracked her down. "I didn't know who they were," she says. "I told my record company, 'This guy Butch Vig called' and they just about dropped the phone.".
While Angelfish were touring the USA, Manson flew over to Madison, WI for an introductory session. Their first meeting was, according to Shirley, "hideous". There was no isolation booth, so she was set in front of a mic upstairs with Steve's two cats glaring at her, whilst downstairs the boys drank beer and listened. "I remember thinking I was cheap and disgusting," recalls Shirley with a shudder, "because it felt like an audition and I'm not a session singer, even though when I first met them in London and we hung out, I loved them all as people... But the audition was an absolute disaster."
Shirley had another bash, and somehow or other, a connection was made. It was when she ad-libbed "Joan of Arc coming back for more" on "Vow" that she clinched it.
"I thought, this is cool, there's something going on here," remembers Butch. "That was the line she sang that really connected with me. I can't imagine having made the first record without Shirley. We didn't know what we wanted to do but, after she joined us, we became a band."
