SHIRLEY MANSON – Teenage Rebellion, Sexism and Witches

This week, I’m joined by my own personal icon and legendary trailblazer, Shirley Manson, front woman of 90s rock band Garbage. 

We discuss teenage rebellion, sexism in the music industry, the patriarchal systems that shape our world and the history of witches in Scotland. We also delve into the cultural landscape of the 90s, celebrating the nonconformity of British women in music and Shirley's own journey of self-acceptance and authenticity, and how different the possibilities for growth were for women in our mothers’ generation.

From navigating body image and aging to the joy of life's simple pleasures, Shirley's candid reflections offer a refreshing perspective on personal growth and resilience. We discuss the importance of kindness and connection in healing a fractured society, the challenges of political divides, and the global crises that shape our times. Whether it's planning future travels, indulging in pastries, or cherishing the memory of a lost pet, this episode is a heartfelt celebration of a life lived fully and fearlessly.

Follow Garbage on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garbage

Chapters

• 15:12 Unpacking Patriarchy in Feminism
• 29:00 Embracing Authenticity and Defiance
• 43:54 Fostering Kindness and Understanding
• 49:39 Navigating Political Differences and Moral Compass
• 57:04 Life's Fullness and Enjoying Pastries

Transcript

Clementine Ford: 0:00

Untethered is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country and their elders, past and present. Remember wherever you are, know whose land you're on. Hello everyone, and welcome to Untethered with me, your host, Clementine Ford. Untethered is a weekly podcast exploring courage, choices and the catalyzing moments in a person's life that lead them to define themselves on their own terms. Whether you're desperate for some sage advice or looking to be inspired, Untethered will nurture the hopes, dreams and goals you have for yourself and give you the toolbox to do so with confidence, while listening to some fucking amazing people. My guest this week is a personal hero, an icon, someone I have loved since I was 15 years old, listening to her music in my bedroom and feeling all of the feminist rage I had yet to articulate.

Clementine Ford: 1:06

Shirley Manson needs almost no introduction. She's the front woman of 90s rock band Garbage and she joins me this week to discuss teenage rebellion, sexism in the music industry, the patriarchal systems that shape our world and the history of witches in Scotland. I loved recording this episode. I love Shirley so much. You can find out more about her in the show notes here, where you will find out where to follow her. If you are one of the 10 people in the world who may not know who she is In the meantime, welcome, Shirley Manson. Shirley Manson, I finally got you. I'm so sorry. Technology, it is not my friend.

Shirley Manson : 1:49

It's not my friend either. I spend my whole life dealing with technology and it failing me, so I don't worry about it.

Clementine Ford: 1:57

How do you manage it? Because I feel like I mean you're an artist, I know that you've had, like a lot of creative people, a lot of insecurities about expressing that term of yourself. I want to talk about that as well, the way that we can kind of create things that mean so much to other people but sort of suffer under this terrible, crushing insecurity ourselves. But the technology side of things and the kind of like itsy bitsy stuff is so anathema for me to the creative process that I'm really curious about how you deal with it.

Shirley Manson : 2:31

Well, like you say, you know, I joined a band who were famous for their abilities with technology. So, as a result, of course, I'm incredibly lazy. So, as a result, of course I'm incredibly lazy. You know, my band has one of the 90s. You know, arguably the most successful and skilled producer of the 90s is in my band, you know, and my husband is a is a ridiculously accomplished engineer and also a music producer. So my relationship with technology is one of immense frustration. I'm super OG and I'm disappointed in myself at every turn. But um, that's just how my life panned out. And um, I guess I could have spent a lot of time learning about the technology, but instead I just wanted to concentrate on on the other creative aspect of what I do, you know. I mean, I think, technology is amazing.

Shirley Manson : 3:29

I'm enthralled with it in many, many ways. I just they, just technology doesn't like me, particularly because I'm a lazy cow who hasn't educated herself enough.

Clementine Ford: 3:41

You know, it's when I used to play Roller Derby one of my. I said this to my kid the other day actually, because he was he's. He's got a very self-critical lens and I god I have no idea where he gets that from, um. But he was saying something like I'm really bad at this. And I always try to say to him you know, you're not bad at it, you're just learning or you're practicing. You know all the things that I'm not very good at saying to myself. But I was telling him about one of my old roller derby coaches who would always say you know, particularly with roller skating or something like that, you often say something like, oh, that's my bad side. And she would always say it's not your bad side, it's your other side. So it's kind of like when you're dealing with tech it's like, oh, that's just my other capabilities, not my bad ones, just my other ones.

Clementine Ford: 4:27

So I deliberately didn't read any back. I mean, obviously I've been a huge fan of yours since I was a teenager. I spent a few years living in England in the early nineties and I really started listening to your music when I was about 15 years old and obviously it spoke to the complicated whirlwind of emotions kind of teenage girl that lived inside me. But ahead of this interview with you I deliberately didn't read much about your sort of personal life because I wanted to. This is going to sound really weird, but I've been doing this meditative practice recently and I know that you have a spiritual side to you that is very anti-organized religion. But I've been doing this meditative practice where you kind of try and tune in to energies. I guess I know that sounds really wacky, but just go with me on this.

Clementine Ford: 5:29

And part of the meditation that I did this morning ahead of talking to you was kind of trying to imagine you as a teenage girl, because I love teenagers and I'm really fascinated especially with teenage girls because I feel like they have such an abundance of emotions and they're the most intuitive creatures that we know.

Clementine Ford: 5:41

But we just completely discredit them and teach them to doubt their gut and their instincts. And I suddenly had this image of you. I don't know if you ever wore knee socks to school or something like that, but it was a very kind of like religious connotation. And so then I was unsurprised to read that you grew up going to Sunday school and then kind of had this sort of explosive argument with your father over the Sunday lunch dinner table, I think, where you were like fuck God, it's all bullshit. Can we talk about that transition for you when you? Because it seems to me that that's a really. That's one of those bridging moments between being a child and being an adult where you're really starting to express who you are and what you feel, and doing it fearlessly.

Shirley Manson : 6:28

Wow, there's a lot of questions in there, clementine Ford. Sorry, do you want me to reduce it to one? No, no, no, I can keep up. First of all, it's the first time I've ever heard my knee socks referred to as sort of religious, but I totally get what you mean. Second of all, why I fell in love with you, clementine Ford, is when I read your book Fight Like a Girl, I felt that you were talking about me, and talking about me as a kid, and then my ensuing years that followed and never really got the chance to actually thank you. I was hoping that you and I could do this interview face to face, because we were due to come over to Australia at the end of this year and play some shows, and I was very much looking forward to forcing you to come to dinner with me. You would never have to force me, but I am deeply grateful to you for writing that book, and I mean in particular. It did speak to this teenage girl that you're talking about right now, but it it spoke to me about my entire life as a woman in the world, and so for that I'm eternally grateful.

Shirley Manson : 7:35

Um, to go back to this conversation with my dad at the dinner table. You're absolutely right. It was a moment of, I think, in my life where I set myself apart from my family and my parenting, not out of hatred or frustration or rebellion in any way. It was just a realisation that my thinking was not in line with the family. And you know, as you so rightly pointed out out, my dad was my Sunday school teacher and we were forced to go to church every day, every Sunday, including certain occupations during the week. You know whether it was, I don't know, my bloody beetle drive or a concert party, you know, show, um, there were all kinds of things that we were involved in as kids.

Shirley Manson : 8:25

Um, but in that moment, when I challenged my dad about whether god existed or not, um was a pivotal moment in my development as an individual thinker, and I'm very grateful to my parents for allowing me at least that freedom, without punishment, you know, and they tolerated my, my arguments, um, I mean, my father sneered a little at me because obviously he's a deeply religious man, or certainly was at the time. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, I, I, I, religion and and unorganized religion fascinates me in general. You know, full stop, you and I could talk about this literally for about four hours, and we will one day, and we will one day. But yeah, that was the beginning of my life as an independent thinker.

Clementine Ford: 9:22

I mean I love that that was the catalyst, because for me as well, I didn't really grow up in an a house that was devoted to organized religion, but my mother was Catholic and she was kind of a last Catholic. Yeah, she was, she was sort of a last Catholic always a Catholic.

Clementine Ford: 9:42

I think that she, she had her own kind of I wouldn't even call it rebellion, but her own moment of hang on. A minute. This doesn't seem right when I remember her telling me stories about the nun, the convent school that she went to, and firstly, how brutal the nuns were. But she was, you know, this would have been pre-Vatican too, so this was a roundabout, and she was learning about purgatory and what's limbo, that's right, the soul's going to limbo. And she sort of said, she put her hand up and she said I don't understand, how can babies who die go to limbo? They're just babies, you know. Know, they've not been old enough to accept christ or whatever. Um, and of course the nuns said be quiet. And they wrapped her over the hand with you know, a ruler or something like that.

Clementine Ford: 10:34

But I think that that, for her, was similarly to you, that kind of, you know, I feel like you're a very inquiring spirit, you have that kind of energy of the witches inside you and I don't know if it's because you're Scottish and obviously there's a lot of history around the persecution of women and witches in Scotland and I think that that I mean I'm a very big believer in our environment obviously influencing our internal kind of navigation system, particularly if you're open to it and you strike me as someone who is very absorbent, not just of energies around you. I mean, I imagine that you're the kind of person who can walk into a room and feel instantly like who is, you know who is friendly and trustworthy and worth talking to, and you probably also immediately get that kind of bad vibes around someone who you know. It's kind of like the in the animal kingdom, like the predatory sense that you know who to avoid. Is that true?

Shirley Manson : 11:37

Yeah, that is very true. I mean, my husband often jokes with me like he's. He's often like you are a witch. There's just no doubt about it. And I think the word witch, of course has has developed as a description of, of powerful women. You know, a powerful woman is it's necessary for a woman to have that instinct, I think.

Clementine Ford: 12:02

And we're taught not to have it know.

Shirley Manson : 12:03

That's what I'm saying well, exactly, society definitely tries to suppress that talent which I think innately exists in women, full stop. I think a mother has to have these kind of protective instincts, you know, to protect the child. You know. You know, historically speaking, I'm talking obviously generationally, um hundreds and hundreds of years of development. But, um, I am witchy. Like I can walk into a room, I can meet somebody and I'm often walking away saying to my husband that person's in real pain and he's like what?

Shirley Manson : 12:39

are you talking about. You know they were having fun and I'm like, yeah, but I, I can tell that this person is in pain or they were you know a self-harmer, or they have you know issues with addiction or you know all that kind of stuff. I definitely have that and I think it is just. I am unbelievably nosy, like I'm unbelievably curious about other people and I have come to realize as I've gotten older and older that actually a lot of people are not curious about others and they are much more interested in themselves and their own internal experience, which I also have. Don't get me wrong, I've got that too.

Shirley Manson : 13:20

I'm very interested in myself, but I also have this ability to like, I want to go to dinner or go to a party or meet someone and find out about them. I'm uninterested really in in really talking about myself, because I already know everything about myself for the most part. So, yeah, when I meet people, I'm very, very curious, um, and that I think is part of like what my mum used to call the highland instinct, which is the you know, the northern part of Scotland, yeah, where all the witches abided um, listening to nature, listening to rhythms, listening to watching patterns, you know. I think that's definitely part of me and my life and why I'm so attracted to fellow witches like yourself.

Clementine Ford: 14:08

I'm so flattered by you saying that and I meant to say this just before as well. I wanted to go back to the words that you've said about my book. They have always been so profoundly important to me and so special, because you know, like I, I'm a huge fan of your work and you've impacted me greatly. But to feel I think it's a you know, given we're talking about witches, it's a powerful form of magic to find someone who has that kind of simpatico with you. You know where you read something or you hear something and you're like.

Clementine Ford: 14:39

That's my experience and I think one of the things that we are kind of conditioned into as women I mean, the reason why they pursue and pursued women as witches was because they were healers. Largely they were healers, they were midwives, they had this kind of control or understanding of life and death, health, knowledge yeah, exactly the wisdom. And I think when we're kind of conditioned out of feeling you know one of my favorite authors who I talk about all the time, marilyn Fry. She's a feminist philosopher and she has this incredible essay. I'm going to send you her book. Actually I'm going to.

Shirley Manson : 15:17

Please do, or just send me the name so that I can order it. Yeah, I've never heard of her, so I'd love that.

Clementine Ford: 15:24

She has an essay. It was written, or the book was published in 1983. It's incredibly contemporary, which is both amazing and sad, and it's called To Be and Be Seen, and she talks about how patriarchy retains the right to author perception. And so in this constructed reality of patriarchy and patriarchy's agents, which of course can also be women as well, you know, women sign up to patriarchy enthusiastically and I'd like to talk to you shortly about the American, I guess, political landscape right now, given that you live there. But she says, men retain the right to author perception and women have to essentially agree to a whole lot of conditions in order to live within that reality.

Clementine Ford: 16:06

And one of the conditions, obviously, is pretending that the reality is real, pretending that this is our reality, that we have no subjectivity, and so I feel like we kind of, you know, we absorb that and we're conditioned into this belief that the traumas and the insufficiencies and the insecurities and the that subjectivity and the softness and all of those things, that whimsical magic that we have as, as girls, we get to the point where we're like I'm a weirdo, no one else thinks this way, no one else feels this way. And then, of course, you come across other women, or you read something or whatever and you're like, oh my God, this is my experience. Maybe I'm not crazy, maybe I'm not all of these things, except you're still. So you know, it's like bell hooks talks about um, one of the great tragedies of patriarchy is that, and and women's experience within patriarchy is that it's a very natural condition to love and it's a natural condition to want love and to crave love.

Clementine Ford: 17:04

But women are shamed for wanting love and we're also taught to accept the very barest minimum of love, like we're taught that we have to earn love, that we are born as women inherently unlovable and that we graduate into earning the love of patriarchy and earning the love of men. And I feel like that's something that you know. I know that you, like me, have struggled in your life with body dysmorphia and with self-harm, and I will put a content note at the top of this episode. I don't want you to go into it too much if you don't want to, but I think that that impulse we have as very deeply feeling girls and women to, we don't know how to handle those deep feelings because there's no avenue in the world that respects them well, I would argue, there's not really much space for male experience and feeling either.

Shirley Manson : 17:59

You know, we live in a very hard society, and the reason we live in a hard society is because there's been a patriarchal power in place since the beginning of time and you know, men primarily, I think got sent out to war to kill things, whether it was to kill animals or kill other men, and so, you know, over the ages they've hardened, and so we live in a hard society and that doesn't benefit men either. Now, again, I go back to your book and I'm not trying to sit here and jerk you off, because I really wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it, but I find the language in your book so clear and I did hear, like find myself in your book and I felt that I was seen, but not only that. And I did hear, like find myself in your book and I felt that I was seen, but not only that.

Shirley Manson : 18:47

But I learned a lot from reading your book, um, and there was a lot of things that really hit me hard, and one of the things that hit me hard was this idea that, you know, if you're a woman living in a primarily all male environment, I mean, I'm living in one, I'm not just working in one, I exist primarily in one. Um, and I always thought like being one of the boys was something to you know, you know want, you know like reach for. And it wasn't until, really, I read your book when I was like wow, oh my God, like well, I didn't know I was playing this game, um, and it was really helpful for me in being able to actually see the disadvantage that I was at as a woman in our society, cause, of course, I've been very successful, right, and so you know I didn't see a lot of the uh, second class treatment I was enjoying in adverted commas, because I was also succeeding at the same time. Does that make any sense to you at all? It makes.

Clementine Ford: 20:00

I don't know if I'm being clear. Yeah, it makes total sense it's only really you.

Shirley Manson : 20:07

I was on a journey anyway before I got your book. Your book really set me off into a whole other level of realisation and I became willing to really look at what was happening, not just around me, but what was happening to women I loved, and it was a real dawning. So this is why I have so much affection for you, because the language you use is very simple. Like you know, bell Hooks is an incredible writer. You know Rebecca Saul, incredible writer, but they're very academic and intellectual Not to say that you are not.

Shirley Manson : 20:46

But the language you used in your book really spoke to me in a most direct way and I think that's why your book was so powerful, because oftentimes I'm reading you know feminist literature and you know I'm a pretty well-read person and I've had a really good education but I find a lot of the time I'm struggling to maybe understand a particular passage and I'm like I spend the time reading trying to figure out what exactly is being said and being frustrated at myself for not being smart enough to necessarily understand every single word, and I think that can often be a barrier for some women you know who are trying to learn about this world that we all inhabit and how we can start to deconstruct these incredibly unfair systems that disadvantage women.

Clementine Ford: 21:42

Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that, because I I agree with you. I think that, um, you know, I'm not academic, I I think I'm well read, but not everyone has had the privileges of you know an education.

Clementine Ford: 22:01

Yeah, privileges of an education, but also the privileges of you know, my mother was a, a autodidact. She was forced to leave school at 13 to go out and work and but she was one of the reasons I think probably I'm I'm so passionate about the work that I do and it wasn't something that I kind of went that's what I'm going to do to fix that problem. It was more like that kind of it's just it's, it's woven into the cells of your body and you know, your, your mother, carries you in her womb and you're kind of like, absorb all of that stuff. Um, but I think it's because on some level I know that you know from in my, on my maternal line side my sister and I are the only the first women really to have had opportunities, because my grandmother, my mother's mother, was a concentration camp survivor.

Clementine Ford: 22:53

You know there was just a lot of destruction and decimation on that side and my mother was this brilliant woman who was complicated and and quite impenetrable in some ways, who could have been anything really, could have gone and done anything, but like so many women, so many countless nameless women, just didn't have the opportunity to find out who she was. And so I think, on some level, when I write, I'm writing for that kind of person you know, who is seeking something but didn't have necessarily the opportunities or the kind of language you know. I just want everything to be really simply accessible, and I think that we make this mistake in the world of believing that if something is simple to understand, that it means it's basic, and I don't think that that's true at all and I think that that works to keep a lot of people out of.

Shirley Manson : 23:51

Oh, 100%. Yeah, but unfortunately, you know, it goes back to what you were saying about how women authors were having to struggle against this patriarchal idea. Yeah, like what constitutes a fine writer. So a lot of women, in order to be taken seriously, have had to be incredibly intellectual and highbrow and academic in order to be taken seriously. And luckily for you and I, we are into the second, third, fourth wave of feminism and we can also, as well as reading these texts and being inspired by them, can also proffer ideas that are easier for someone like your mother, someone like my own mother, who did not go to a higher education, um, was of very sort of lower working class, wasn't allowed to do what she wanted to do and basically, you know, was a housewife for her whole life.

Shirley Manson : 24:56

The very fact that my mum was described as a housewife, in adverted commas, appalls me. The very fact that we had that terminology I grew up with that terminology, you know, know. It shames me that I would describe my mother as a housewife. Um, I do it now, ironically, in my own mind at least. Um, but my mother was tied to a house to clean a house, keep a house, feed her children, which she did beautifully and elegantly, um, but I too have a very invested feeling for those who have not had the luxury of an education, and I'm currently living in the States where education is clearly no longer a priority, or certainly hasn't been for at least 12 years, which I find astounding and terrifying, because, of course, an uneducated populace is an easy populace to push around.

Shirley Manson : 25:50

And you know when, when Bush Jr started sneering at intellectuals and academics on on on our TV screens, I knew we were doomed. I knew that that was the beginning of something very, very worrisome. So, yeah, I think it's important to have simple, managed messaging. It's. It's so powerful, you know, and and becomes unarguable. That's the great thing. The less less words, the more direct the words, the less arguable it becomes, and so that's why I'm a big fan of that kind of very simple strategic storytelling and with an educative bent, one of the things that you know.

Clementine Ford: 26:41

Again, going back to Marilyn Fry, one of the things that she says in this essay is that she's kind of. The essay opens with her she's a lesbian and at the time, in the 1970s, when she was writing these essays, the Oxford English Dictionary defined lesbian as someone from the Isle of Lesbos. So she kind of. It's a very playful sort of opening where she says that, you know, she and a bunch of other feminists sat around at a philosophy conference and they were trying to figure out what is a lesbian, because clearly the law says that we don't exist, because we're not included in the criminal code. The dictionary kind of doesn't really have a definition for us, but we know that we're real but also we're not real.

Clementine Ford: 27:19

So she essentially, kind of, through this essay, comes to the conclusion that in this patriarchal reality where we're, you know, led to this belief that men are at the centre of everything and obviously this can be applied to any kind of power structure but that women are just kind of the dutiful backstage hands or, you know, the housewives, these kind of like tethered beings to these structures.

Clementine Ford: 27:46

But the lesbian is the person who sees the women beyond the kind of artifice of the foreground of men's stories, and she sees the women and she's like I want to know more about them. And the great thing that she says about it is that in being seen, or in being, in perceiving themselves to be seen, women then understand that they can see and that they can, you know, create thoughts for themselves, which, of course, is what's so fucking terrifying to a system that that wants well, as you said. Going back to what you said about the, this idea that you know we should aspire to be one of the boys, that, if we're chosen to be one of the pack, that somehow we've made it, you know, I'm really interested. I'm interested to know, uh, particularly given your own kind of wrestling, which is very similar to mine, like I, I feel almost like we could be the same person. Maybe we're descended from the same witch.

Shirley Manson : 28:49

I do hope so.

Clementine Ford: 28:51

I mean I do have Scottish in me. Well, there you go, it's settled. I felt in my life, you know, when I was younger, I felt really grief stricken in a way that I didn't feel like other girls. You know I didn't feel pretty like other girls. You know I'm quite tall and I'm sort of stocky. You know my friend Hannah calls it a good solid girl. She says that about herself. You know, good solid lass. You know I've always sort of joked that I can climb up a hill carrying like bales of hay.

Clementine Ford: 29:24

And I felt really when I was younger like I'm not like other girls. I'm not like other girls, I'm not small, I'm not feminine, and I felt the loss of that keenly. But in a way I feel like now, at the age of 43, I spent, I was able to spend most of my adult life once I kind of got over that. I sort of accepted in some weird way um, okay, well, that's not for me, I'm not ever going to be the object of attention, I'm not going to be the girl object of attention. I'm not going to be the girl who walks into the room and everyone turns to look at her, whether or not that's all just internal stuff or not. That's how you feel, and it kind of freed me really to then not only figure out who I was but also to go well, the only other thing I've got is a voice, so I'm going to use that instead, and I'm not going to worry about what people think about me or whether or not they find it attractive or not, because I kind of am not operating in that sphere anyway.

Clementine Ford: 30:17

And I feel the reason I mentioned my age is because now that I'm in my forties, when the world tells women that you're on the decline and I think that thankfully we're all starting to disagree with that now but I see these women who have been enormously praised for their physical appearance when they're younger, this sort of like fecund, fertile, kind of bouncy, femininity, and there's a perception in them, I think they feel the loss of that somehow and there's a transition that needs to be made at this stage of their life that perhaps. Well, I feel like I went through in my early twenties and I'm wondering if you have found that to be true for yourself too that the sort of hypercritical lens that you might've cast on yourself, or this, this discomfort in your body, that it, in one way, was obviously deeply distressing, but in another way kind of enabled these other aspects of you to come out. You know your ferocity on stage, your, your feminism, your kind of like unfuck with ability well, you and I kind of had a different experience.

Shirley Manson : 31:28

I mean, you see, the problem is, when I grew up I was flat-chested for a start and it was just a given. It was just accepted that flat-chested girls weren't attractive. Now, as we know, that's such a whole load of rubbish now. I know this. But back then I didn't necessarily know that but, like you, I, I just stuck my fingers up at it and I quite liked it because I realized it actually protected me and I didn't have men leering at me, I wasn't being wolf whistled at in the street. I was happy about that.

Shirley Manson : 32:08

And I also identified with really androgynous figures in our culture, namely, you know, susie, sue, david Bowie, patty Smith, you know, and none of these figures were adhering to any particular gender category, you know, they were all playing around with identity and self-expression, and so I was lucky in that regard, like I really couldn't have given two fucks, and I also found androgynous men and women attractive, you know. So I was lucky right from the start. I kind of rejected the male gaze. I rejected the female gaze too, like I wasn't interested in what most other women, young girls, at my, when I was that age and growing up into a teenager, into a young woman. I wasn't interested in the things they were besotted with. I just found it a bore. I liked the weird. I was just naturally attracted to the weirdness.

Shirley Manson : 33:14

Now, now that I'm nearly 60, I realize I was turned on because I understood what loving the underground, what that meant, what it was rejecting and I'm really lucky I understood that very early on. I'm like that's. What I fell in love with was all the ideas and the music and the style that were sticking fingers up at what I was allegedly supposed to admire so much. You know and I see it now, you know, with this bizarre obsession with the Kardashians, I'm perplexed. To this day I'm perplexed. I've not really quite figured out how there are so many people sitting at home enthralled to this and somehow judging their own lives against this, what seems to me like madness, like incredible, like wealth and strange fixations with, with appearances and so on and so forth. I'm like blown away by how this has captured the hearts of everybody all over the world, you know. But, like I said, I've just not been turned on by that kind of stuff since I was a child. You know, literally a child. Um, yeah, I'll carry on please.

Clementine Ford: 34:34

Oh no, I was gonna say I think that that's one of the things that made you so fascinating and like, just, you know, okay, so you know, like in the girls school kind of thing of like the the year seven girl having the smash on the year 12 girl, you know that kind of very the girl crush sort of aspect where, um, I as a teenage girl I looked at you and I was like, oh my god, I just I feel like if you were a prefect at my school I would have just run around behind after you saying what can I do for you?

Clementine Ford: 35:06

You know that kind of like you see these women it's a weird way to describe it, but it's just, it's what came to me. This sort of like, it's an adoration that is both I want to be you and I also want to be like in your orbit or you just to be around. This kind of magical energy, like I think when I you know, cause when I was in England, the bands that were big were Blur, oasis, you know, there was Suede, but it was mostly like the sort of Brit pop to me was kind of like passed through boy bands, not just take that, but like just bands made up of boys. And I feel like when I kind of came across you I was like, oh my god, this woman is like just fire.

Shirley Manson : 36:00

Well, you're like, you're a very, you are very kind to me you of you really represent that.

Clementine Ford: 36:08

That first kindling moment of there could be like a different way for me to be, and I think you really coincided with with that moment where I mean I was so shy when I was young and I moved around a lot as a kid and I was always starting new schools and always having to feel like how do I fit in? And I already feel like I stand out because I'm weird in all these different ways, but I don't want to stand out, and you kind of, I think, were one of the first influences that made me think maybe it's good to stand out and maybe I can stand out in a way that actually feels really true and authentic to myself.

Shirley Manson : 36:46

Well, that is. I'm honoured to hear you say that. But what I think really, and again, this is only things I'm realizing now as I slowly creep towards, you know, my 58th birthday. It's taken me a long time to really understand and process what happened to me. But, looking back now, I was one of only two British women really at that time, um, in a sea of Britpop which, as you so rightfully described, was mostly boys, aside from Elasticon, sleeper, uh, catatonia, I guess, also were three great British bands, um, I'm thinking namely of skin from skunk and Nancy and garbage me and garbage. Uh, we were, you know, the British girls, um, who were also selling shit loads of records.

Shirley Manson : 37:42

Um, at a time when it was, the whole scene was dominated by men and I, I think, I think that had a big impact on on people in the United Kingdom in particular.

Shirley Manson : 37:54

Um, because we were, we were just such an anomaly, you know, and we were also incredibly, um, you know, sort of outspoken and defiant, and I think that captured a lot of people's imagination, you know. And and also, you know, looking back, I was told I was weird looking and ugly, and this, that, and the next thing. I look at photographs now from that period and I'm like, holy shit, I was absolutely gorgeous, you know, and literally in the light, the right light, would resemble, you know, a Kate Moss, for a random example, right at the beginning I'm talking about, you know, and so I had a similar kind of face, you know wide set eyes, huge forehead, pouty lips, and so I sort of was a sort of muse for that period, you know, just because physically I embodied the mood, you know, of the United Kingdom at that time. You know, I was flat-chested, I was way fish, um, I was just very I was a modern girl for that period, yeah and uh, I I think, looking back, that's why there were so few women to emerge out that very testosterone driven period, um, even though of course they were amazing, like I, no doubt, but they were from the states, they infiltrated that system and there's a lot of amazing women.

Clementine Ford: 39:17

But I think we just somehow caught the imagination, somehow, of people back then you know I I share your sentiments about the Kardashian kind of phenomenon and what they represent. And listening to you talk about you know particularly all of us looking back on those photographs of ourselves as young girls you just want to reach through them and just go oh, you are just perfect. You're just perfection, you're heaven. Stop hating yourself. You're just divine, I know it's so sad.

Shirley Manson : 39:48

It really really kills me, yeah, and I see that with all the women I know now even now, you know, from young teen to to my, my friend's ages and beyond is women thinking they're just not enough. When you're, they're so wrong and it's so crazy. And again, it's just a society that is constructed to prey on these bizarre ideas we hold about what holds agency and we've been hoodwinked into believing our agency is is being considered beautiful by other people. That is what we have been sold is. This idea is oh, that's my agency, oh, therefore, I can't control that agency at all, when in fact, point of fact, you know our agency is in all other aspects of ourselves that we're not taught to tend to and care for and, uh, allow to blossom. And it's very frustrating.

Shirley Manson : 40:48

But I do see a change. I don't know about you, but you know I see such a great change in in all the generations that have followed behind mine. I mean, you're a whole generation or two behind me anyway, but like all these young kids who are coming out, there's a very different attitude. I think, um, and I find it exciting, you know to, particularly you know in music, because obviously that's my, that's my world, but you know to see a Charlie XCX or a little Billie Eilish talking about their sexual preferences, with these very traditional cisgendered male gaze, appealing appetites, and I think it really is important. I think I think all these things help break down these bizarre gender cages that were all pushed into a very early age and um I I think this is why I feel so greatly about the LGBTQIA community, why I so want to see trans women flourish, because all that breakdown of the traditional gender binary is so good for everyone, particularly women.

Clementine Ford: 42:01

Oh, absolutely, you know yeah, I completely agree, and I feel like I mean, apart from anything, how exciting to live in a time when there's so much more complexity and possibility available to us, and language, and language.

Clementine Ford: 42:22

And language available to us, like at a core level. One thing that surely we should all be aspiring for as humans although of course this is not what everyone wants is to just keep progressing and growing and becoming more complex and more open. And something that has become really important to me, I think, in my middle age and also just in observing the state of the world and how heartbreaking it is so frequently is the I know it sounds cheesy, but to me, the most important thing for me to feel and to and to devote myself to is really love and compassion and kindness for others, because I feel the same. Yeah, there's no amount of ambition or success or what I mean. What does it mean if you you said before earlier in our conversation that you walk into a room and you can kind of sense from talking to people if they're in pain. You know you, you, you have that kind of empathic ability and also part of that is born from your, your deep curiosity and nosiness about people, which I love. But I think that to have that curiosity, not just about the world and not just about other people, but also about yourself, is such a profound importance.

Clementine Ford: 43:54

I think that a lot of people are not know particularly people might worry about getting a relationship, or you know, oh, what do I do if I'm single? Or all of the kind of obnoxious, grotesque, misogynistic sneering at you know single old cat ladies or whatever, which traces back to the witches. Funnily enough, of course it does. Which traces back to the witches? Funnily enough, of course it does. But really, when you think about it, the most important and certainly most long lasting relationship any of us will ever have is with our own selves. You know, we're born with ourselves, we die with ourselves. If we can't spend time in our own company, getting to know ourselves and being curious about ourselves and really kind of understanding human existence through the relationship that we have with ourselves, how can we possibly connect really all that deeply with other people or with the experiences around us? You know that curiosity that you have is so incredibly rare and so important.

Shirley Manson : 44:58

Well, see, I see it slightly different from you, because I don't think everybody is capable and maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying here, so forgive me if I'm putting words into your mouth that are inaccurate, and maybe we're actually on the same page here but I literally don't think it's possible for certain people to sit with themselves and have the ability to reflect and have the courage necessarily to look at themselves, like and I don't think there's anything wrong with that like I don't think, if you're not wired that way, that makes you lesser of a person, or or um I I therefore, I feel the most important thing is not to think about yourself, not to reflect on yourself, not to know yourself, but to know someone and understand somebody else. Out with you, because ultimately, I think that is the only way we're going to heal the, the societies we're all living in currently, which are terribly fractured, and you know we're watching a, an extreme decline in organized religion, which to me is a good thing because I'm a non-believer. However, the the problem with a decline of organized religion is you also lose what has been tenets of organized religion, some of which are incredible and amazing and have helped forge the fabric of our societies, and without that influence we now have just a complete void. We have less and less spending on communities, on social services, etc. Etc. And so we have ailing communities and by ailing I mean not just physically but spiritually can't be spiritual in themselves and they need instruction and they want rules to live by because it makes things easier for them.

Shirley Manson : 47:04

So with the decline of these kind of directives, some of these, as I said, positive parts of organized religion and community services, we're seeing a real, I think, crisis in mental health and therefore in our communities. We're all fighting amongst each other and things politically have gotten very extreme. No matter where you are politically on the spectrum, I think we can all agree, things have gotten really extreme. There appears to be no middle ground for anybody, and that's crazy, it's unhealthy for everybody, it's unhealthy to have that kind of extremism in our politics. It doesn't benefit anyone, it doesn't behoove us any single person that functions and exists in our society and in a community.

Shirley Manson : 48:03

And so therefore, I am with you when you say I'm now focusing on kindness, because I think without that, without being kind to each other and trying to understand each other and trying to tolerate our differences while slowly moving the dial towards kindness, then we are all doomed, and I really sincerely mean that. I feel like if we cannot pull ourselves together, if we cannot care for one another, these incredible societies that we've all enjoyed for hundreds of years at this point will suffer, and God only knows where that's going to go as we progress into the unknown of of climate change, you know, um, so yeah, I'm all about kindness and I'm I think we've all we're all done at this point thinking about ourselves and and, uh, I think we would improve our own mental health if we thought about the mental health of somebody else.

Clementine Ford: 48:56

That's just how I see it no, I really love that and I think that you, you know, this is again one of the reasons why I you've always been such an icon is that you have this wisdom. Um, yeah, and I think that that's that's definitely given me a lot to sort of ruminate on. I guess I mean when to be clear, not to not to get into self-defensive mode, but to be clear when I say, like the curiosity that we have about ourselves, I agree with you. I think that too much navel gazing and too much self-fixation and what do I need? That's definitely not what I'm talking about is like I'm not talking about a sort of a self-focus and like I will take care of my own needs first.

Clementine Ford: 49:36

No, not at all. I'm with you about the. It is such a it's so difficult to try and have empathy or understanding for people who are so wildly opposing, you know, in their political beliefs or in their actions, and I I try to be, you know, to sort of go easy on myself when I find it difficult to do. But I agree with you that we all have to that, that in having that empathy and in striving to kind of see, I suppose, the ways that we all, we're all linked, yeah, yeah whether we like it or not, we really all are.

Clementine Ford: 50:21

We're tied together and it's so easy as well to sort of say well, I would never do that, but I think that that's an interesting exercise in itself as well, as to is to realize that actually we don't know what any of us would do, or what we're, or what we're capable of until we're presented with the experience of it.

Clementine Ford: 50:44

I think that we are. You know, we're kind of like. Maybe every society has felt like this. Maybe every society fears that it will be the last one. Certainly every society feels that it's the most profoundly important one, maybe, but it is scary to think about what's coming in the future and you know if you feel comfortable talking about it. I'm really interested to know how you feel living in America at the moment when there is a real shift back to very regressive values.

Shirley Manson : 51:19

Oh my God, I mean, yeah, it's like being dragged back into the Middle Ages. I've been really shocked by it, actually, and I've been shattered by America's response to Gaza and the Palestinian struggle. I've been really shocked, I have to say, like I have a lot of love for Israel, a lot of love for Israelis and a lot of love for Jews and a lot of love for all my Jewish friends, my Jewish manager, you know, my Jewish bestie. The list goes on. And I've been shocked, however, that somehow America's placed itself 100% in the hands of Netanyahu, who seems like a very extreme, very cruel, very punitive leader to me, and I've just been shocked that there has been no moderation whatsoever and we've literally watched a slaughter unfold in front of our eyes.

Shirley Manson : 52:30

I have been intrinsically changed by that, I have to say. I mean I thought it was bad enough living in America watching what was happening to black Americans. That was a couple of years ago now, when all the protests took place outside of my house and the foundations of my house were shaking. It was so intense Watching the murder of George Floyd on our telephone screens and then watching the eradication, almost entirely, of women's reproductive rights in America. I've been astounded by that, but the thing that has absolutely irrevocably changed me and my relation to government and to politics and to people in power has been an astounding shift in how I see the world, how I wish to move through the world and how I wish to interface with other people.

Clementine Ford: 53:32

You were one of the first people with such a huge platform and arguably some would say you know a lot to lose who began to speak out and to protest and to speak up in favour of children. And you know, I find it, as I'm sure you do, frustrating but also hurtful, or I don't know if those are the right words, but there's a sort of a naivety to me, like a childish naivety. First and foremost. That's like how can this be happening? This sort of like inability to understand really, but also a frustration, that to want one group of people to live in dignity and freedom and, you know, without having to bury their children all the time is not and has never been about wanting another group of people to suffer.

Clementine Ford: 54:26

And I find that's one of the most frustrating things for me is that, you know, I don't see wanting and I feel like it's anathema actually to everything I understand about Jewish culture and the Jewish faith and the Jewish people that I love, who are also very pro-Palestinian liberation. The association of wanting Palestinian liberation with somehow meaning that you don't want safety for Jewish people is, to me, one of the most egregious kind of accusations being made in all of this, because it's because of your value for human life and your understanding of what history has shown us, that people are speaking up and refusing to accept this. And it's bizarre to sort of. Do you ever feel like you're kind of living in a weird mirror world where you're like are you not seeing what I'm seeing? How can you look away from it? How can you be okay with this?

Shirley Manson : 55:32

Yeah, Well, I have felt like I've been living in an alternative reality at times. But I also know a lot of that is just self-protection, like people just cannot bear to tune in, and you know, I understand that too. I think it's again. There's just, you know, I feel like I am an artist.

Shirley Manson : 55:53

I have an artist's eye and that was just something I was gifted when I was born. You know, I don't think you can cultivate it. I think you either can see or you can't see, or you can sit in discomfort or you cannot, and so I understand why some people are just unable to tune in. It's a very deeply disturbing modern horror scape that we're all unfortunately bearing witness to, and although of course, we could argue for days, I'm sure, about this, that and the next thing thing, I think it's pretty simple. When you see people being slaughtered in tents at the hands of a very well-armed military army, I just feel that I was taught by my father and my Sunday school and my church that this is inherently wrong and there will be nothing and no one who can change my mind about that.

Clementine Ford: 57:04

Before we wrap up Shirley, beautiful Shirley, witchy Shirley. When I was doing my little meditation this morning to try and tune into young Shirley, I pulled some tarot cards and one of the cards that I pulled for you was, I said, what's Shirley, who's Shirley and what's Shirley really good at? And I don't know if you're familiar with tarot, but you know, for anyone who's listening they'll know that I'm I'm super into it. Now I got the eight of cups and the eight of cups depicts a figure who. Firstly the eight is the number of strength, but also the Eight of Cups, in particular, is a very intuitive card.

Clementine Ford: 57:40

A lot of the cards I pulled for you are very much about intuition, and the Eight of Cups depicts someone who is walking away from Eight Cups towards where they don't know, but they just know that they can't stay here.

Clementine Ford: 57:53

It's like that song you know you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. And the message that I got from that is that you are someone who has whether or not you've always been like this or you've worked very hard to get to this point in your life you know when it's time to leave something if it's not working out for you, whether or not. That's work, relationship, whatever it might be. You have the courage and the faith to do what a lot of people can't, which is to go out in search of something better for you. I would like to know, as you approach you know you mentioned your age before you're 57, you've got all of that beautiful, rich wisdom of life and so much more to come what is it that you are walking towards now? As an artist, as a woman, as just a person who embraces all of the guts and the grit of living?

Shirley Manson : 58:49

Oh, I love that question. I'm walking towards a full fullness, I think, and what I mean by that is I don't want to be tethered and I don't want to be scared, and I want a life that is as full as my young life, which, you know, from the age of 15 onwards. I've not looked back. I've had an incredible adventure filled life, but I realized that the vigor I have won't be with me forever. I'm really aware of that. You know, I've just had to cancel all my tour dates for the remainder of the year as a result of an injury, and it's made me really aware of my fragility. I know I've still got a lot of vigor and I come from a father who's still vigorous at the age of 87. I'm not scared of losing my vigor, but I'm scared of losing fullness in my life, and so I hope that I will have the force of personality and will to ensure that I have a different life, but one that is equally as full. And, of course, as a person, I love to travel.

Shirley Manson : 1:00:05

I'm currently planning a trip to Egypt. Um, which has been on my bucket list since I was a child, when I was obsessed with Cleopatra and I bet you were too, um, so that's kind of like what I mean by that. I have. I have certain plans, things I want to do, um, outside of music and, um, have more to do with less, less to do with a career and more to do with a full life. I want a garden, I want, I want animals in my life.

Shirley Manson : 1:00:35

I lost my dog a year ago, almost a year ago today. Yeah, it was awful, but I realized that without her, a life without beautiful animals in it is no life for me. So I'm planning a life where I can be somewhere for longer periods of time than I am currently with, with surrounded by animals, and, uh, I and, like I said, uh, of a forged future, of forged fullness. That's that's what I look for, but I love that. You said that about the cups. That's for a billion or one reasons. Um, you have inspired me with that, uh, tar. So thank you for that clementine ford, I love saying your name.

Shirley Manson : 1:01:20

It's the most beautiful name. I hope you're. I hope you're you praise your parents for naming you such a glorious well it's my.

Clementine Ford: 1:01:28

My mother chose it and I do and, of course, when I was younger, I hated it because it was so weird and different and it was just another thing that I felt I had to apologize for. You know the, the inconvenience. But now I love it. What a great name. I did a full tarot reading for you. I'll send it to you privately. Oh, that would be amazing. Thank you so much my pleasure.

Shirley Manson : 1:01:51

We do have plans to come to your part of the world and I really am serious about taking you out to dinner and loving on you.

Clementine Ford: 1:01:58

Whenever we're in the same place, whether it's Australia, whether you know, next time I'm in LA, wherever it is, if we're in the same environment. I would love to take you to dinner and talk to you about all things.

Shirley Manson : 1:02:11

Well, we can fight about the check when we're actually in the restaurant. We just have many, many dinners.

Clementine Ford: 1:02:16

Maybe one day we'll meet in Greece and go and you know, swim around and eat some delicious food, like life is for I know, again, it's another cheesy thing, but the more and more I just think, like God, I read something actually I know we're going to finish soon, but I read something about your. You did this beautiful Sunday sort of feature in the Guardian back in April in this year 2024. And you know it was one of the things that you you honored your mother by cooking a Sunday chicken roast and I really loved that too, um, but you said something about how you had been off bread, and now you're back on bread.

Clementine Ford: 1:02:50

You've been eating croissants with your husband and it's just one of life's simple joys, and you know to, oh my god that, um, as part of these kind of like meditative practices that I've been doing, I, you know the thing is it's spooky, woo, woo, whatever.

Clementine Ford: 1:03:07

But essentially, if it you know, whether or not you're connecting to a higher energy or just actually like getting an answer that you need for yourself, it doesn't really matter. I did this meditation where I kind of tuned in and you sort of do automatic writing and stuff, and the first thing that I heard or felt in my head was you need to eat more pastries because I and the thing is I, I, I still so restrictive in what I allow to go into my body because it's so hard to let go of all of that, just shit, basically. But whether or not it was some higher power or just my own mind saying to me you know what Life is for fucking living, it's for enjoying. You don't have to. You know it's okay if you eat a chocolate croissant, you know just, you need to eat more pastries because a coffee and a croissant, Gosh what a fucking joy that is to experience.

Shirley Manson : 1:04:08

It's such a joy. But I just think I always go by what my mum said, which was a little bit of what you fancy, does you good? I mean you can't have a fucking pastry every day. I mean you could, I guess but you wouldn't.

Clementine Ford: 1:04:19

You wouldn't feel the joy of it and you wouldn't feel the joy, you wouldn't enjoy it quite so much yeah I used to be able to shut your eyes right and like, oh my god, this cross on it's like

Clementine Ford: 1:04:29

heaven um, when I I went to london a few years ago and I was staying at my friend's house in the east end and she had this bakery near her house that I think is one of those kind of like very famous family bakeries that's probably been in East Enders or something like that, but also is just a very like working family bakery and they, they cook everything on site and they um, they obviously take all the little off cuts of the croissants and they just make these tiny little bites for people to have with their coffee.

Shirley Manson : 1:04:56

So I was like fuck, why does that?

Clementine Ford: 1:04:58

Why do not everyone just have little croissant bites at their bakeries?

Shirley Manson : 1:05:02

That sounds absolute heaven. Yeah yeah, a little taste treat. Yum, a little taste treat. Go have a pastry today in my honour.

Clementine Ford: 1:05:12

I will. I will, shirley Manchin.

Shirley Manson : 1:05:14

And enjoy it.

Clementine Ford: 1:05:15

You are a living legend.

Shirley Manson : 1:05:18

Back at you. Clementine Ford. Thank you for your lovely voice and your amazing questions today and my tarot reading, which I will treasure. You have inspired me. I've actually scribbled it down because it meant something to me.

Clementine Ford: 1:05:30

There's more cards Send. Thank you so much for coming on.

Shirley Manson : 1:05:34

I send you so much love, I send you love it.

Clementine Ford: 1:05:39

Thank you so much for I send you so much love. I send you love it's. It's all right. I'm coming sending it to you in waves and all right. Um, it's been such a thrill for me. A little 15 year old clementine my teenage self would be absolutely agog with wonder that this is happening, and I love that I can send that gift back to her and that you thank you.

Shirley Manson : 1:05:58

I accept your beautiful gift and the many gifts you've given me through your writing it's been a pleasure.

Clementine Ford: 1:06:05

I will let you go and all right, you know.

Shirley Manson : 1:06:08

Have a great day, clementine Ford stay cool, you too, love you bye. Love you too. Untethered is hosted and produced by me, clementine Ford, with audio production and Love you, babe, love you too.

Clementine Ford: 1:06:18

Untethered is hosted and produced by me, clementine Ford, with audio production and sound design by the incredible folks at Cardigan Creative. If you love what you've been listening to, don't forget to subscribe and you'll get new episodes dropped straight into your podcast listening box each week. Please consider rating and reviewing the show as well. It really helps to get podcasts out there so that more people can listen. You can also find me, clementine, on Substack and Instagram with all of the details listed in the show notes. Until next time, stay untethered.