For one week, the world has been gripped by the nerve-rattling feud between Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson and the entire idea of beach balls. During Garbage’s set at Melbourne’s Good Things Festival last week, Manson got extremely upset at a guy with a beach ball in the crowd. I mean, she really went off on him. She said she wished she could tell the rest of the crowd to beat him up.
After the set, Manson doubled down on hating beach balls is a Threads post, writing, “I joined a band because I HATED THE FUCKING BEACH.” It must be noted that she did this in Australia, where beach balls are apparently a key element of the national identity, and she did it when Garbage still had more Australian festival shows scheduled. Naturally, tons of people brought beach balls to Garbage’s ensuing sets. In Brisbane, Manson told the crowd, “If I upset you about your blessed beach balls, I humbly apologize. However, I would really like it if the governments of the day apologized for what the fuck is happening in Palestine!”
Earlier tonight (it’s night in Australia), Garbage played a headlining gig at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre, where beach balls were presumably less of an issue. During the band’s set, Manson took a moment to explain the context behind her original outburst, though she never clarified why she was so mad at that one guy in the first place. Here’s what she had to say:
I need to say one last thing about the bizarre beach ball thing. And I want our fans to know: If that person was indeed who he said he was, he was a Garbage fan, I would’ve never spoken to him the way I did. 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 wrong. Second of all, I’ve had a 30-year career. I have never spoken to any fan like that in my life before except one cunt who spat on me once. He spat on me once, I went fuckin’ nuts, and you know what happened next is I got a fuckin’ gig as a Terminator on a massive TV show. Thank you to the Fates, thank you to the true fans. We love you. I’m sorry I lost my cool, but I still fuckin’ hate beach balls, and I always will.
All of this sounded a lot more charming when she said it with that accent, as you can hear below.
Manson was indeed in 17 episodes of Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles in 2008 and 2009. I don’t think I knew that before today.
