Garbage singer Shirley Manson said she was “astounded” by the backlash she received after the now-famous beach ball incident at last year’s Good Things Festival.
The Scottish rocker made headlines following an incident at the Melbourne leg of the festival last December after she reacted to a large inflated beach ball being passed around the crowd during Garbage’s set.
“Big guy with your big fucking beach ball! Ooh, I’m so scared of you, so thrilled by you! What a fucking douchebag!” she shouted.
“We’re fed up of not getting fucking paid properly and fed up of having to play for douchebags like you. You’re a fucking middle-aged man in a fucking ridiculous hat, and you’re a fucking fuckface. And I want, literally, to ask people to fucking punch you in the fucking face. But you know what? I’m a lady, so I won’t.”
The following set in Brisbane was met by a large number of beach balls being thrown around by punters. “I just have to address your glorious beach balls, they’re very impressive!” Manson initially joked. “And not only are they impressive but they are very, very big.”
In a new interview with NME, Manson reflected on the incident.
“I was astounded by the intensity of criticism,” Manson said.
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“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 something I had agreed upon with my dad. I had just buried him the week before.
“This is not an excuse, I’m just saying that I lost my composure. People are human, they make bad errors of judgement, I made a bad error of judgement 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.”
“Shit happens. I just felt bad for my band as 100 beach balls came sailing over the crowd the following day. 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.”
During a sideshow in Melbourne days later, Manson offered an apology to the festivalgoer she berated at Good Things, who identified himself as a fan of the band.
“If that person was indeed who he said he was – if he was a Garbage fan – I would never have spoken to him the way I did,” she said.
“I would like you to bear in mind that everything is contextual. If you’re not given any context, you have no idea what went on.”
