Convinced her guitar playing "was shit," Garbage's Shirley Manson decided to start taking lessons before recording the band's third album. The ardent Beatles fan then bought herself an Epiphone Casino guitar, a remake of the one John Lennon used on Revolver and Let It Be.
"She's always either playing Beatles songs or Motorhead riffs," says drummer Butch Vig. Bolstered by Manson's growing guitar skills, the band has spent the past several months working out more than thirty songs in a Madison, Wis., studio.
The fourteen strongest pieces, Vig says, are "really thick and dirty and heavy," thanks, in part, to the vintage recording console they've been using -- a device snagged from England's legendary Trident Studios that, according to Vig, was used by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Vig describes one song, "Shut Your Mouth," as "Sly and the Family Stone, on quaaludes," and says another song, "Drive You Home," is "spare and haunting, and the lyrics are some of the most personal lyrics Shirley has ever written."
No release date has been set for the album, but the band hopes to get it out by spring, in time to launch a summer tour.
JENNY ELISCU
(November 22, 2000)
