GarbageGarbage singer Shirley Manson has opened up about the impact of her on-stage blasting of beach balls being thrown around during the band’s Good Things Festival set back in December.
In case you missed it: Manson expressed her distaste for beach balls being thrown around during bands’ sets, describing the act as “disrespectful.” A fan was trying to get her attention with their beach ball on the first day of the festival in Melbourne, and she wasn’t impressed.
“Big guy with your big fuckin' beach ball! Oooooh, I'm sooo scared of you, so thrilled by you! What a fuckin' douchebag! Fuckin' dudes, wow,” she said.
In addition to sharing her explicit-laden thoughts on the matter, it was when she threatened the said fan with violence that things took an awkward turn. “You're a fuckin' middle-aged man in a fuckin' ridiculous hat, and you're a fuckin' fuckface. And I want, literally, to ask people to fuckin' punch you in the fuckin' face,” Manson said.
A few days after the incident, Manson issued an apology on social media, saying that she “HATED THE FUCKING BEACH” and used the attention to speak about Palestine.
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Apologising for potentially upsetting punters with her thoughts about beach balls, Manson said, “Maybe a beach ball brings you joy, and for that I apologise. If I upset you about your blessed beach balls, I humbly apologise.
“However, I would really like it if the governments of the day apologised for what the fuck is happening in Palestine.”
In a recent interview with NME, Manson admitted that her tirade against beach balls actually “had nothing to do with” beach balls.
Last October, Manson’s father sadly passed away, and he was buried just a week before Garbage landed in Australia to perform at Good Things Festival. She acknowledged that she was grieving and should have been at home, but things didn’t unfold that way.
“I was astounded by the intensity of criticism,” Manson told NME. “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 [was] something I had agreed upon with my dad. I had just buried him the week before.”
She continued, “This is not an excuse, I’m just saying that I lost my composure. People are human; they make bad errors of judgment. I made a bad error of judgment, 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 concluded that “shit happens”, and she felt bad for her bandmates, as their subsequent festival appearances were packed with beach balls. Luckily, the band have a sense of humour about it all.
“Shit happens. I just felt bad for my band as 100 beach balls came sailing over the crowd the following day,” she said. “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.”
