On Garbage farewell tour, Butch Vig talks defying projections from Nevermind to Garbage launch at 40
Written by: Ian Saint
30 years ago, Butch Vig didn’t anticipate he’d spend his 70th birthday playing a stadium in Texas with a Scottish frontwoman and his longtime Madison, Wisconsin colleagues. That would’ve been a dream for the longtime drummer, who was instead renowned as a rock album producer — over the preceding 4 years, producing blockbuster albums by the likes of Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, and Soul Asylum — and took a “leap of faith” with a project he hoped would manifest an album and tour cycle.
Instead, Garbage has produced eight albums, including their latest: Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, released on May 30. Shirley Manson said in a press release that the new LP embodies “a sense of mortality and vulnerability” that contrasts with its 2021 predecessor, the “very confident, aggressive” No Gods No Masters. The accompanying tour similarly evokes another sense of mortality: the end of life on the road.
Garbage has christened the Happy Endings Tour their final North American headlining tour. In Dallas on Tuesday, they are returning to the well — playing its legendary Deep Ellum district for the first time since they launched their 1996 tour in support of their debut album at Deep Ellum Live.
That’s a full-circle moment for Vig and his legacy of defying projections, whether it be the longtime success of Garbage — or even tracing back to his production career’s breakthrough, Nevermind by Nirvana, who played an infamously bombastic show at Deep Ellum’s small Trees club five weeks after Nevermind was released (and ultimately became one of the greatest-selling albums in world history).
Garbage plays the Bomb Factory (2713 Canton St.) in Dallas on Tuesday, October 7 and ACL Live at The Moody Theatre (310 W. Willie Nelson Blvd.) in Austin on Wednesday, October 8. The Bomb Factory is next door to the former Deep Ellum Live venue, where Garbage launched their 1996 tour.
This final US headlining tour is also Garbage’s first US club tour in 7 years. It follows several high-profile performances in Dallas-Fort Worth, including Vig’s aforementioned 70th birthday while Garbage opened for My Chemical Romance at Globe Life Stadium on August 2. They co-headlined a spectacular amphitheater tour with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds in 2023, which I reviewed. They also supported Tears For Fears’ Tipping Point Tour and Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill 25thAnniversary Tour in 2022 and 2021, respectively; and played the star-studded, mammoth one-time KAABOO festival at the Dallas Cowboys stadium in 2019.
[While you’re here, check out my 2023 discography-spanning interview with Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson for NPR’s Ohio affiliate, WOUB Public Media.]
On a day off from the Happy Endings Tour, Butch Vig spoke with me for Buddy Magazine. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
IAN SAINT: Hi, Butch. We look forward to the Happy Endings Tour coming to Texas. Both shows take place at significant venues: the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum for Dallas on October 7, and the theater where Austin City Limits tapes the day after.
BUTCH VIG: I have a story about Deep Ellum. We’d played a handful of shows at the end of ’95, and then we started a bigger tour in ’96 — and Deep Ellum was the first show we played. We rehearsed for about 10 days in Madison, and it was 30 [degrees Fahrenheit] below zero. At the place we rehearsed, on the south side of Madison, the bathroom pipes froze. I remember Daniel [Shulman], our bass player, peed on the sidewalk and it froze. We were really happy to head down to Dallas to start that tour — because man, it was cold!
[Garbage played Deep Ellum Live on February 24, 1996. That venue’s storied history was chronicled by DFW music historian Peter Orozco last year. Deep Ellum Live is also displayed in a new history exhibit, “Behind the Music: The Venues That Defined Deep Ellum,” at the Deep Ellum Community Center (2826 Elm St.)]
We’re thrilled that you recall Deep Ellum from so long ago. It’s wild to fathom that first Deep Ellum gig was before “Stupid Girl” became a single. You’re playing “Not My Idea,” a deep cut off the first album that you played then, on tour for the first time in a decade. How’s does resurrecting that deep cut feel?
Well, we played it in New Haven [Connecticut] last night and Shirley was laughing through the song because she couldn’t sing. We did 5 out of 6 nights or something, so her voice was kind of shot last night. So she was going [dramatically] “this is not my idea of a good time…” [laugh] It’s fun to do some deep tracks on this tour. Shirley put up an Instagram post right before rehearsals and asked our fans, “What would you like to hear?” And we got a shitload of responses. She tried to pick some things that she thought fans seemed really excited about.
Which songs off the new album have you chosen to play?
We’re playing four songs. We’re playing “Hold,” which is great because it’s a really heavy guitar riff — almost sounds like the track is down-tuned, but it’s not.
I love “Hold.” Your drumming on that trips me out, because the pattern is a bit erratic at times. Is it tricky for you to play that song correctly?
It is. There’s quite a bit of syncopation, and a lot of “stop and go” little accents on the kick and snare pattern. It’s a tricky one for me to play live. It’s weird — sometimes I can’t think about what I’m playing in the middle of a song. If I analyze, “What am I doing? What is this pattern?” then I’ll completely fuck up. So I have to watch what Shirley, Duke, or Steve are doing, just to get out of my head and let the muscle memory kick in.
We’re doing “Chinese Fire Horse,” which is great because the lyrics are about women getting called to task about getting older in the music business. They never ask me if I’m going to retire, but Shirley keeps getting asked “when are you going to retire?” [even though she’s 11 years younger than me]. She’s like, “Fuck off, I’m not going to retire until I can’t play anymore.”
We’re also playing “The Day That I Met God,” which is one of my favorite tracks on the new album. It’s very big and cinematic. The lyrics are very personal for sure — Shirl wrote them when she was recovering from hip surgery and felt really fragile. Every night, she says the song is about everyone you’ve known and loved — so it’s about our fans, too. It’s about everyone whom we’ve connected with over the last 30 years, and it’s pretty epic. It’s a big, sprawling number that we close the show with, and I fucking love it.
I’m glad you guys are performing “The Day That I Met God,” because it’s my favorite track on the album. I was gobsmacked by how epic and symphonic it is — almost in the spirit of Electric Light Orchestra, but in Garbage’s unique vein.
Speaking of ELO, you and Duke have played together since the ‘70s. I recently interviewed Andy Summers for Buddy, and he says that although The Police are widely associated with the ‘80s, they were the last great ‘60s band — alluding to how Andy was a pillar of London’s ‘60s heyday, playing in bands like The Animals and Soft Machine. Garbage is heralded for pioneering ‘90s alternative music, but songs like “The Day That I Met God” make me wonder if you have strong roots from other eras?
Well, Ian, it’s funny you say this. We just played a 50th anniversary show for Spooner, the band that Duke and I were in. We went back to Madison in June, and played one show. It was a lot of work, because we hadn’t played those songs for 30 years. You know, Duke was the lead singer. We had to slow the songs down a bit; we had to drop some keys because he can’t quite hit those high notes anymore, but it was great. We sold out the gig, at a new venue [Atwood Music Hall] in Madison, our old stomping grounds. The show was packed, and it was like a love fest. It was so cool. We played a 90 minute set, and it made me appreciate how I loved those songs that we wrote back then.
Being in Spooner informed me as a songwriter and as a producer, because we made all those records — it was very DIY back then. It’s a bummer that we only got to do one [reunion] show, but it was very celebratory and fun to do. You should’ve been there.
[A few days after our interview, Vig and Erikson’s Spooner bandmate Dave Benton passed away. Read Vig’s tribute to Benton here.]
Your return to Deep Ellum evokes a huge project in your history between Spooner and Garbage. Nirvana’s Nevermind club tour played Trees, a 550 capacity club in Deep Ellum, on October 19, 1991 — five days after MTV added “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to the Buzz Bin. The show was massively oversold, Kurt Cobain was punched by a security guard he’d knocked with a guitar — and the full show was captured on bootleg video.
Oh, wow, right on. It’s probably on YouTube, right? I’ll check it out after our talk. That’d be cool to see.
I’ll embed it in our story. And there’s a great documentary clip with Jeff Liles, who booked the show at Trees; and Turner Van Blarcum, the security guard who rowed with Kurt — they both remain Deep Ellum staples.
Yeah. Send it to me. That’d be cool.
[Below is Nirvana’s Trees Deep Ellum show on October 19, 1991. During “Polly,” which starts at the 30:55 mark, Kurt Cobain smashes his monitor. The infamous row with the security guard takes place during “Love Buzz,” which starts at 40:21.]
Since you’re returning to the neighborhood where it became obvious Nevermind was soaring past industry expectations… What was it like to witness that record you’d produced skyrocket, and how did it affect your direction thereafter — including forming Garbage?
Well, it completely changed my life. I mean, no one saw it coming. I knew it was a great record. The band was tight and focused. I pushed them really hard in the studio, and they were up for it — contrary to what people think about the grunge bands, they were really not slackers. (Nirvana) had rehearsed every day for six months before we went in to record that album. And I thought, “Wow, this record’s really good. Maybe we’ll sell as many albums as the Pixies.” That was sort of our goal at the time. [laugh]
Garbage wouldn’t have happened without Nirvana’s success. Everybody who worked closely with Nirvana, it changed everyone’s lives. It was a zeitgeist moment, that allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to do. I did Nirvana, then Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins and Soul Asylum… (by the mid-90s) I had done a thousand punk rock records, and I was getting fucking bored with guitar, bass, and drums. That’s why I started using samplers, and doing remixes for artists like Beck, Nine Inch Nails, U2, and Alanis Morrisette — and that’s what led to Garbage. That approach to recording, using samplers and cutting things up, and not necessarily trying to record a band live “au naturel.”
[Sidebar: below is Butch’s remix of Nine Inch Nails “Last” from their 1992 Broken EP. NIN’s Trent Reznor and Chris Vrenna combined the ending of this remix with “Suck,” resulting in the “Throw This Away” track on the subsequent Fixed EP.]
Nevermind was before my time, but it’s incredible to look at the charts and see that the big rock songs before “Smells Like Teen Spirit” were the likes of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” and Poison’s “Unskinny Bop.” As someone who didn’t get to live that era of rock music in real time, it’s amazing to look back on how the pendulum swung — with the Nirvana record you produced at the forefront of that tsunami.
Coming out of the ‘80s, I think, that was just a moment for Nevermind to happen. The ‘80s (by then) felt, to me, sort of stagnant… we came out of Reagan-ism, and it felt like people were looking for some authenticity — something that felt more real and honest — and I think that’s why Nevermind exploded at the time.
To emphasize how Nevermind changed lives: me and the founders of Ireland’s folk music conference Your Roots Are Showing just saw “Weird Al” Yankovic’s tour in Nashville, and he played his “Smells Like Nirvana” parody. Al has often said that Nevermind, the record you produced, rescued his career from being pigeonholed by Michael Jackson parodies.
Right on. He just played Madison. A bunch of my friends went and saw him at Breese Stevens Field, an outdoor football field — he played to like 10,000 people, and they said it was incredible.
I actually interviewed Weird Al right before you. Al and his band are crushing this tour — they even sold out Madison Square Garden. Al posted a clip of young people moshing to “Smells Like Nirvana” at Riot Fest, and it’s surreal to think they were all born after Nevermind.
I think it’s great. I have to say: as an artist, if Weird Al covers you, you know you’ve made it. I know that Nirvana was into it, man. It’s an honor — you know, you got big enough to be on Weird Al’s radar.
[Sidebar: “Weird Al” also parodied Soul Asylum’s “Misery,” from their 1995 Let Your Dim Light Shine album that Butch Vig produced. The parody is “Syndicated, Inc.” released on Yankovic’s 1996 Bad Hair Day album.]
Going back to Garbage. I think it’s remarkable that you were 40 when the first Garbage album came out. I hear so many brilliant musicians voice concern about launching a full-time music career after, say, 30 — maybe the scrutiny of social media has exacerbated that anxiety… What takeaways do you have, looking back on your rock band pivot at 40? I imagine one could’ve argued that you were already very lucky to have a successful full-time career in music as a producer, and you better not squander that.
You know, I had to take a leap of faith. Because a lot of people told me that I was really stupid to stop producing full-time and start a band. But I was getting burned out on being stereotyped as I only know how to produce big rock records, because I love all sorts of music. The Freedy Johnston record [1994’s This Perfect World] is one of my favorite albums I’ve produced — I love Freedy, he’s like a brother to me.
I’ve been in bands since I was 16, and I like being in bands. So I just made that commitment: we’re going to make a cool record, and we’re going to go out and tour. Now, I did not intend to tour as much as we did. I thought, we’ll go out and do a tour and support the record; then I can go back to producing. Then Garbage took over for four albums [through 2005’s Bleed Like Me, before a 7 year hiatus]. And we’re still here for 30 years.
Looking back, I remember I was anxious because I knew if the record failed, I would be the one held accountable. No one really knew who Shirley was. Duke and Steve hadn’t had the sort of success I did — so I was like, “my ass is on the line.” But luckily we hit a home run.
Do you feel like launching Garbage from Madison, Wisconsin — outside of the industry hubs’ scrutiny — helped you to get through those anxieties?
Yeah, definitely. I decided to not move to LA or New York or London, even though I had offers to go there after I had [produced] big albums, because I like being left to my own devices. And not being influenced so much by the media centers — New York and LA, especially New York — and also from the label. There was nobody around. You know, it was always two flights to get to Madison, so you couldn’t just pop on a flight and be there in a couple hours. You had to fly through Minneapolis, Chicago, or Detroit, and then wait and get a puddle jumper to land in Madison. So we were kind of isolated out there, and I liked it.
It’s marvelous to look back on “Stupid Girl” soaring up the pop charts, reaching #26 on Billboard’s Hot 100 — remembering how the likes of “Macarena” and Ace of Base ruled the pop chart in 1996. “Stupid Girl” starts out with just the drums hooking the listener in — similar to “Billie Jean,” I suppose. What’s your memory of assembling that infectious drum part? And how did it feel to have your “40 year-old rock band gamble” attain a Top 30 pop hit?
“Stupid Girl” was written almost like we were putting a remix together. We wrote the song over a drum loop from The Clash song, “Train In Vain.” We just looped that; then I put some kick, snare, cymbal, and distorted drum fill accents over it. Steve initially played the bass on that, and he was playing these sort of loopy bass lines. I remember I was like, “Just play something really simple and groovy — not really Motown-y, but sort of Motown-y.” He came up with that, and then Duke started playing that little [impersonates guitar line] “ber-DEER-dee-DOO doo-DOO-doo-DOO.” We recorded those parts and put them into a sampler, then looped them for 10 minutes. There was no arrangement. Then we came up with different parts of the song, like the pre-chorus, where it changes. The whole song came together from me [playing the loop and] just muting sections — turning things on, turning things off.
I originally sang a scratch vocal on there before Shirley sang it. Because I was so insecure, I kind of sang it like Trent Reznor — really distorted into a Stomp Box pedal. Then Shirley, like everything she did on the record, sang it in such a cool sort of subdued, sultry attitude — that was quite different than a lot of the alternative singers who were singing with a lot of bravado, and it just made sense.
Literally, the song was remixed by just turning things on and off into the final arrangement. And I mean, we had no idea it was going to go into the Top 40. We were lucky. We still play that song live pretty much every show. I still love playing the live drums over The Clash loop every night.
This is an unexpected pivot, but it has to do with your first album. I love the beautiful eulogy you wrote for your father, Dr. DeVerne Vig. It was so heartwarming; and I love that he and his twin brother both went into OB-GYN medicine. You wrote that he loved Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. Buddy was just at Herb’s show in Dallas’s Arts District this year; Herb is 90 and still doing his thing.
The first Garbage album was released on Almo, the label that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss co-founded after selling A&M Records to Polygram and leaving in 1993. What was it like to sign with Herb, knowing that your father loved him? Did you and Dr. Vig ever discuss the personal significance of you signing to Herb’s label?
We did. It was really cool. You know, I grew up listening to so many different styles of music. My Mom and Dad were part of the Columbia Records Club — you paid a penny or something to start, and then you get records delivered every month. It could be Simon & Garfunkel or the Tijuana Brass, whoever. Music was always played in their house all the time, any different kind of style.
It was cool when we signed with Almo. Initially, we didn’t even know who it was, because I knew that Jerry Moss and Herb had sold A&M. They had huge success with that label with The Police, Supertramp, and The Carpenters. The Tijuana Brass sold [more than The Beatles and Rolling Stones in 1966]. Herb and Jerry were like good cop, bad cop. Jerry was the tough nut, the business guy. Herb was the good cop. He was lovely, real sweet. I told him that my mom was a big fan of Herb’s song, “This Guy’s In Love With You.” He wrote on a card to my mom: “Betty, this guy’s still in love with you.” I gave it to my mom, and she was like “Oh, my God!” It was on our refrigerator in our kitchen in our house in Viroqua, Wisconsin.
You produced Smashing Pumpkins’ first two albums, Gish and Siamese Dream. If I can ask about only one song, it’s “Today” — you might’ve been the first person Billy Corgan presented that song to, and I think the track is a masterpiece of production. That high-pitched guitar part at the very start of the song always makes me picture opening a music box. I’m dying to know, did you guys aim for that to sound like a music box? Or is that just me being a weirdo?
It’s a little bit of you being a weirdo, but we spent a lot of time getting the sound on that guitar part. And I had to record a click track for the intro, to go back and work on the guitar before Jimmy [Chamberlain] came in on drums — I can be pretty meticulous about timing, pitch, and phrasing, and the feel has to be right. I think Billy probably did that riff 100 times until we got a perfect one, I’m not kidding.
And Billy was as driven as me. He goes, “that’s not it.” And we do it again, do it again until it just landed and had the perfect feel. [That riff] is almost like, it kind of disappears — it’s so effortless in its sound and performance, but it took a long time to get it. I knew the song was great. By the time we went into Triclops [recording studio in Marietta, Georgia] to record that [Siamese Dream], we were pretty focused. Most of the songs [I’d heard, as] I’d been at rehearsals with them when we’d done pre-production stuff, so I knew it was going to be one of the standout tracks on the record.
Smashing Pumpkins supported Green Day’s stadium Saviors Tour last year, and I reviewed that tour for Buddy. Green Day performed Dookie and American Idiot in entirety, in addition to emphasizing their new album; but they included “Know Your Enemy” from 21st Century Breakdown, the album you produced for them, in that crowded set list — and it was a huge crowd-pleaser. They brought fans onstage and it was really cool.
Yeah. We’re playing [Eddie Vedder’s] Ohana Festival with Green Day on the bill this weekend. They just got back from South America. I’m going to hit Tre and Billie Joe up, and see if we can get dinner or something. It’ll be cool hanging with them.
Heck yeah. It just dawned on me, you’ve produced huge albums on all parts of the sales projections spectrum — Nirvana and Gish had modest expectations, Siamese Dream had “the next Nirvana” type aspirations from Virgin Records, and 21st Century Breakdown was Green Day’s hotly anticipated follow-up to American Idiot. That level of scrutiny sounds stressful.
Yeah, it was a difficult record to make. We spent a year on it, and at least seven months of that was pre-production rehearsals — working on songs, going into rehearsal, playing them, deconstructing them, rewriting them, Billie was tweaking lyrics. I recorded everything, whether it was in Billie’s garage or in the studio. We moved between Oakland and Newport Beach; we went to Hollywood. But by the time we went in the studio, the songs were pretty focused — we kind of knew what kind of record we were going to make.
But I really pushed them after American Idiot to not take a step back. Initially Billie thought maybe they should make a record that sort of goes back to their punk [roots], leaning real simple and straightforward. I was like, “No, you made American Idiot; I think you have to go even a notch higher. We have to make this really epic-sounding epic album.” And they wholly embraced that, so it was cool — it was a lot of work, though.
Back to Garbage’s new album and tour. Are there any other new songs you’d like to add to the set list?
One of my favorite songs is “Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty.” It has a little New Order feel to it. I think it’s a stomper. We rehearsed it very briefly, so it would probably be a train wreck if we played it tomorrow night. But if we can keep working on it during sound checks, we may work that into the set.
Thanks so much for speaking with Buddy. We’re very excited for Garbage to return to Texas, and it’s so profound that the Happy Endings Tour lands at the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum — next door to where Garbage launched that first major tour in 1996. Talk about a full-circle occasion.
Man, we’re excited. We have a huge fan base in Dallas and Texas. We definitely play Dallas and Austin on every tour. Sometimes Houston, sometimes San Antonio. We’ve always had a really great fan base down there.
This is probably our last headlining North American tour. We’re not quitting, but I don’t think [we’ll headline something of this scope again] — this is almost a 40 show run we’re doing. It’s physically hard and expensive to tour, and I just don’t know that we’re going to keep doing it.
If you’re a Garbage fan, you may want to come out and see us, because who knows if we’ll be there again? Come on, Texas. Don’t wimp out!
We’ll show out in droves.
Right on. Thanks, Ian. Bye, bye.
For all Garbage tour dates and tickets, visit https://www.garbage.com/tour-dates/.
