Cards on the table, my introduction to Garbage was through an obsessive playing of the film soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s hit film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. Alongside tracks from Radiohead, The Cardigans, Gustav Mahler, Kym Mazelle and plenty other luminaries, Garbage’s song ‘#1 Crush’ emerged as a clear favourite. The CD (which I harvested from HMV Princes Street a few years after the film’s release) was played until the point of disintegration. In fact, to this day, when asked by sound engineers what music to play as audiences come into my show, I request this same film soundtrack. The request is greeted by either yelps of rapture (by those aware of its musical pedigree) or grunts of disapproval (by the uninitiated fearing this might be a playlist of Shakespearean soliloquies).

From that day forth, Garbage were up the top of my teenage hit list of the best bands in the business (alongside REM, No Doubt, Counting Crows and The Cure) and I needed an album. Version 2.0 was the first of their albums I purchased and went all in on: track by track with conviction. After questing through this tour de force of anthemic splendour and sonic majesty, with its introspective, rallying and kooky cauldron of lyrics, I was totally rapt. I’ll point out this release contains such belters as ‘I Think I’m Paranoid’, ‘Special’, ‘The Trick Is To Keep Breathing’ and ‘Push It’ which is undoubtedly the only track in history to feature both The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Salt ‘N’ Pepa in its songwriting credits. The album is obsessive, obscure and ensorcelling: all my favourite flavours. It spoke into the search for sanity in a wayward world and brandished its vulnerabilities openly. It was a clarion call to love unrelentingly and yet kicked back with gusto.

I kept an ear in on Garbage’s sensational unfurlings in the years that followed, though got all zealotry over a few heralded 60s singer-songwriters and then went a bit indie-gross with a Libertines and Strokes addiction. That said, my admiration for Garbage remained consistent and clear; they were a distant lighthouse blasting out a lustrous beam to regularly remind me just how present and vital they truly were.

Shirley’s first appearance in my professional life was reading a section of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark for our Neu! Reekie! TV: The Christmas Special, broadcast in 2020 amidst the haze of the pandemic. Actually, prior to that, in 2019, we had been conjuring the notion of a mini Scottish take on the Meltdown festival (rather one big show that birthed mini shows) with Shirley as the inaugural co-curator (to be hosted from Summerhall, Central Hall or Leith Theatre). This didn’t come into being for various reasons but I’m still manifesting it.

In the years that followed, through assorted wee social and creative interactions, I got to know Shirley more personally, and she went from fond acquaintance to veritable friend, and then on to one of my most cherished people on this planet. I should point out some of those interactions were Garbage concerts and toasts afterwards; Scotland wise, we’re talking Dunfermline’s Alhambra Theatre and then, more recently, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. Over in Europe I saw Garbage take to the stage in Barcelona at the infamous Razzmatazz: it was truly one of the best live gigs of my life. My gig going buddies (Hollie McNish and Kat Gollock) were both as awestruck with wonder, Hollie having joyously wept at the majesty of Shirley tearing across the stage like a blazing bolide.

Weirdly, my fascination with the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson also played a key role in my friendship with Shirley, who grew up as the daughter of an RLS aficionado, a thoroughly charming, sweetly quirky and kind-hearted professor whom I too got to know enough to call a friend (and am also supremely grateful to for his warmth and erudition). I love to think of a young Shirley longing to be taken on some cool city-break holiday as a kid and being told instead they were going to Wick to retrace the steps of Stevenson (I have no idea whether this happened but it sounds legit).

Shirley has also blurbed and hosted book launches for me and been similarly supportive to many of my favourite writers and artists (Jenni Fagan, Nicola Sturgeon, Hollie McNish). In fact, I know her to be one of the most passionate and tireless advocates of other artists I’ve ever encountered (that’s both in real life and on social media). And it doesn’t stop there, far from it; her engagement and promotion of humanitarian causes and the general pursuit of human betterment is, quite frankly, astounding to behold.

As Edinburgh Makar, when touring the globe (Ullapool to Ulverston), I take great pride in lionising Edinburgh’s brightest stars/most glistering citizens. Shirley Manson is ALWAYS amongst them. If anyone audaciously, or erroneously, replies ‘I think you’ll find she’s American!’, they get an exuberant explosion of just how stridently Edinburgh Shirley is. Of course, that’s understandable: Shirley is mostly in LA, all the other members of the band are American, and Garbage are undoubtedly extolled more over the other side of the pond. Then again, what I see here is an opportunity for Scotland to celebrate Garbage’s cultural output far more vivaciously than we currently do.

When Garbage announced their latest album, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, I was approaching it both as a friend and a fan. Suffice to say, it fulfilled me in each capacity and surpassed my expectations on both levels. A zeitgeist album that rings with timelessness, personal truths unravelled in a fashion that feels effortlessly universal. It is anthemic and esoteric at once. ‘Hold’, ‘Love To Give’ and ‘Chinese Fire Horse’ are my personal standouts.

To now have the opportunity to see Garbage play a headline gig at Edinburgh Castle in July, in the year Shirley celebrates her 60th birthday, is downright dreamy in its scope for splendour. If at the bottom of this article you are readying yourself to call me a Shirley sycophant, know I’m already retorting ‘aye, and what of it?’ I’ve done years of sedulous research on this outstanding human and can think of few people more worthy of such vehement praise. So how about you come and join all of us here? You’d be so very welcome. Shirley would make sure of it.

Garbage are touring the UK and Ireland until Saturday 18 July; Michael Pedersen’s Muckle Flugga is available in hardback and paperback or in audio where it’s read by Jack Lowden; main picture: Joseph Cultice.

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