Lead
singer of the band
Garbage, Shirley Ann Manson was born on August 26, 1966 to a
former
jazz singer, Murial Manson,
father, and a
university lecturer in the
genetics of
chickens, Mitchell Manson,
mother, in Edinburgh,
Scotland. As a child, Shirley was
teased and nicknamed "bloodhound" because of her
red hair and "frog-eyes," which
contributed to her
desire to drop out of high school. At age six she was what she called
herself to be a "horrible creature" that became violent with her younger sister.
By the time she was a teenager, Shirley was getting in huge fights with her father, who
was also her Sunday school teacher, over religion. And to this day Shirley still does
not believe in God. Shirley was sucked into the rock star world of sex and drugs. She
found pleasure in music and became passionate about it.
She joined a band in August of '84 around this time called Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie where
she played keyboards and sang back vocals. She got involved with the lead singer and though
were together, he openly had sex with groupies on the side. Shirley also became a model
for a UK teen magazine called Jackie. Shirley, after the breakup of Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie,
joined a group called Angelfish that had a single "Suffocate Me" aired on MTV's 120 minutes.
Butch Vig (of Garbage) saw Shirley and decided that she had to become a part of Garbage. The three
musicians in Garbage met with Shirley in London on the day that Kurt Cobain died.
Shirley joined the band and later on September 7th 1996 married her long time boyfriend
Eddie, a sculptor, in Scotland.