Garbage

It was the best of times, it was most assuredly the worst of times.

Initially, 2001 looked like a banner year for peppy techno-rock quartet Garbage. Still swooning from the alterna-chart success of its eponymous 1995 debut and punkier ’98 followup “Version 2.0,” the band—comprised of three brainiac producer/ prodigies and a Scottish siren named Shirley Manson—believed the release of its third salvo Beautiful Garbage would be a career-topping cakewalk. But Dickens himself couldn’t have scripted a more disastrous downfall.

Trouble began almost as soon as the set hit the street. First 9/11 shattered the group’s once-tranquil universe. The subsequent vice-tightened airport security made touring the globe quite difficult, recalls Garbage mastermind Butch Vig, who’d cemented his studio-whiz reputation back in ’91 with Nirvana’s Nevermind. “The world had changed dramatically since when we started the band,” says the Madison, Wis., native, over an afternoon beer in his new part-time home of Hollywood. “We also started going places, only to find that people there really hated Americans. And when you live in a world like that, it can’t help but start to seep into the music.”

But Garbage’s gauntlet had just begun. As the (not so) “Beautiful” tour continued, percussionist Vig contracted hepatitis and was forced to hire a replacement drummer while he flew home to recuperate. By the time the juggernaut hit Russia, it was on its last legs. Manson discovered “something seriously, seriously wrong,” she recollects. “We were headlining a lot of huge European festivals, and my voice started disappearing on me after 30 seconds of being onstage. And I’d never had any vocal problems my entire career.” Now she did. The Bolshoi hospital’s diagnosis: A vocal-cord cyst, sighs the flame-haired, workout-trim diva, who’s also been residing in L.A. “At first I was really excited about going to the Bolshoi, because this specialist I saw had treated all sorts of famous operatic singers in Russia,” she shudders, rubbing her slender throat. “But I went in and … and … I can’t even put it into words …

“There was a woman in overalls there, like an old washer-woman, with a stick with a piece of cloth tied to the bottom of it, cleaning blood off the floor. And they sterilized the instruments they used to go down my throat with a naked flame. I was really freaked out. The national health care service of the United Kingdom was beautiful by comparison.” An operation was eventually performed at Mount Sinai in the States, sidelining Garbage again. And the former Angelfish crooner (whom Vig discovered, as legend has it, fronting her old combo on MTV late one Wisconsin night) couldn’t speak for a week. “Which doesn’t sound like much,” she allows, in her still-briar-bristly voice. “But I’m really verbal, so not saying a word for seven days was quite disturbing, really bizarre.”

Bespectacled guitarist/keyboardist (and comedic Manson foil) Steve Marker pats his pal on her delicate shoulder, lets out a long sigh, then picks up the tragic tale. “So we soldiered on, got through all that, then got to the studio thinking ‘Whew—we made it through!’” he scowls, shaking his clean-shaven head. “But it turns out we hadn’t, because it just went downhill even farther after that.” Long-simmering dissent erupted into full-blown bickering. No one, not even silent, sagelike axeman Duke Erikson, could agree on the proper musical direction for album number four. “Panic had set in, the panic of not being able to come up with ideas,” Erikson says. To make matters worse, lyricist Manson was beset by a writer’s block so blackening, it often reduced her to tears in the studio.

That’s when Vig made his fateful decision. Instead of reconnoitering for another unproductive session, he phoned each member and requested individual meetings. He gave everyone the same bulletin: Garbage wasn’t necessarily broken up, but it was going on indefinite hiatus. Today, Vig chortles, eyes twinkling mischievously behind his yellow-lensed wraparound shades, “Folks probably think Garbage is all washed up.”

Manson chuckles along with her chum. The irony is not lost on her. Although she is, by all glowing fan-site accounts, probably one of the most gorgeous women in rockdom, she’s diagnosed herself with another ailment: mild body dysmorphia, wherein she’s never quite satisfied with the reflection she sees in the mirror. She’s gradually overcoming the handicap, thanks to her personal trainer, who’s prescribed a heavy exercise regimen that includes boxing. “It’s scary, because I’ve never had anybody come at me, punching for 10, 15 minutes straight,” she swears. “But my trainer says I was a born boxer, because I was born Scottish.” And her first step to Garbage recovery? Seeing Catherine Hardwicke’s film Thirteen one creepy night, Manson says. The shocking junior-high tailspin of author/actress Nikki Reed felt déjà vu spooky, like her own turbulent experiences at that age. The writer’s block melted away. She went home and promptly penned the words to “Bleed Like Me,” what would become the title ballad of her band’s barnstorming new comeback for Geffen.

Bleed Like Me feels like one of those suckerpunch TKO’s a boxer never sees coming. From the opening jawbreaker “Bad Boyfriend” (propelled by the primal wallop of Dave Grohl his badself), the album never lets up, coursing through New Order-ish sugarpop (“Run Baby Run”), frantic proto-punk (the kickoff single “Why Do You Love Me”), scathing anti-Bush discourse (“Metal Heart”) and perfectly-sculpted power ballads (“Happy Home,” “It’s All Over But The Crying”). It’s songwriting on a grand, brilliantly inventive scale; One cut, “Right Between The Eyes,” even dares to insert its clever hook inside the screaming guitar lead that follows the chorus. Hey, Vig shrugs, sometimes you have to lose your own plot in order to find it again.