Last October, Garbage singer Shirley Manson said that at this point in their three-decade career it doesn’t feel feasible for the group to mount another extensive headlining North American tour. “It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts,” Manson told fans at Denver’s Mission Ballroom during a show on their aptly named Happy Endings tour.
Manson lamented at the time when “most of the music industry” is not comprised of mega pop stars making “billions and billions” of dollars, but rather working musicians grinding it out, sleeping in vans and working multiple jobs to afford hitting the road it’s getting harder to justify the expense of a traditional coast-to-coast tour.
Billboard caught up with drummer/producer Butch Vig this month and he offered some clarity on what touring might look like in the future for the group — which also includes bassist/guitarist Duke Erikson and guitarist/keyboardist Steve Marker — and what they are cooking up for their follow-up to last year’s Let All That We Imagine Be the Light studio album.
“Shirley was referring to us not doing 60-show a headlining tour like we did last year, which is a lot for us,” said Vig, 70. “The grind of traveling wears you down and it’s more expensive to put on the kind of shows we put on, so we won’t tour like that anymore.”
That doesn’t mean the “Only Happy When It Rains” band is saying no more live shows at all. In fact, this week they added three more dates to their 2025 U.K./European tour, at Stockholm’s Grona Lund Tivoli (June 3), London’s Roundhouse (July 14), and Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens (July 18). Those shows join a roster of 23 gigs lined up for this spring/summer across Europe, a mix of festival stops and headlining concerts.
Before the new shows announced, Vig joked, “Boise, I love you, but I’m not sure we’ll be back,” adding that singer Manson was in “peak form” at the moment and, “we are already talking about shows in Europe next summer… it’s easy to do festival runs.”
Vig, who just finished producing the next album by Silversun Pickups and a “weird, abrasive” synth-focused soundtrack for the upcoming “nasty” home invasion horror film The Third Parent, also gave a sneak peek at some ideas Garbage is kicking around for their as-yet-untitled ninth studio album.
He said they’ve been talking about starting work on the LP in the fall and possibly doing some “stripped down” shows with an orchestra, or residency runs in Los Angeles or Berlin, as they work out the new songs. “We’re thinking about taking that approach as we work on the new songs and try to put a show together that’s different from a full-on rock show,” he said.
And while they’re just starting the writing process and it’s not clear yet if the orchestral bit will make it onto the final product, Vig said he was inspired by a gig Garbage did in 2002 to mark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise, The Sound of 007 in Concert.
Vig sat in on drums for his band’s 1999 Bond theme song “The World Is Not Enough” at the show that was curated by five-time Bond composer David Arnold and also featured Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, as well as Bond theme singers Lulu and Shirley Bassey.
“We got to play with Hans Zimmer and an orchestra at [London’s] Royal Albert Hall and it was incredible,” Vig recalled. “My drums were in front, right next to Hans Zimmer and the orchestra was right behind me. It was hair-raising, and we only did the one song, but the good thing is we got to rehearse it five or six times that afternoon during soundcheck. And I was like, ‘can we just keep playing this?’ It’s so fun. The power of that many musicians… so it’s something we’re tinkering with with Garbage and we’d like to approach that possibly during next touring cycle.”
Garbage will kick off their 2026 run of shows on March 7 with a headlining slot at the Isle of Light festival in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where they’ll be joined by Cazzu, Mon Laferte, Sofi Tukker and Bob Moses, among others.
