Joe Rogan - Shirley Manson on How Spending £100,000 on Drugs Changed Her Career

Hello freak bitches. But when you were young, when did you know that you wanted to be a singer? I don't think I ever knew I wanted to be a singer. Today? Do you know now? Yes, I know now. Something happened somewhere along the line. But very recently, I mean literally in the last, I'm serious, in the last 10 years I was like, I'm really good at this actually and I enjoy it and I guess this is what I do for a living. This is my thing. In 10, the last 10 years? 10 years. So what was going on with you like when Stupid Girl was coming out? Well, I felt like I'd stumbled into that opportunity, which I did. I wanted to be, first of all, I wanted to be a writer, then I wanted to be an actress. And then by total default, I was in a youth theatre when I was young and I met this guy and he was like, oh, would you come and play keyboards in my band for a weekend because we've lost our keyboard player and I joined the band. And then I just ended up being in that band for 10 years playing keyboards and doing back vocals. I was quite happy. I didn't harbour any ambition to be a lead singer at all. And then just a billion and one things happened and I ended up being the lead singer of this very same band just so that we could survive because we'd been dropped by our record label for going to Berlin and spending all our money on our record advance on drugs. And coming back and not have anything to show for it, so the record company dropped us but kept me. And so then I pulled the band in as my band. So we just shifted all the roles. Oh, wow. I find myself as the lead singer by default. And then our video drugs. Oh, it was mostly speed and ecstasy. Speed? How much money you've spent on speed? Jesus Christ. It was an inordinate amount of money that I've spent. It was our entire record advance. How much was it? I can't remember. I think it was something like £100,000. What is that? Like $50,000? American somewhere on there? I think it's double that. Oh, it's £200,000? It's double? Oh, I'm doing the opposite. Oh my God. How far did you spend £200,000 on speed? I don't know. I don't know how we did it. I mean, it wasn't all on speed and it was alcohol and going out and drinking and partying and just wasting time. In America, we call that going off. We went off. You guys went off. We went totally off. And I wasn't one of the really... I was one of the sober ones for the most part. And I know I did my share, but by comparison, I kept my shit together. But anyway, we wasted our opportunity there. But by default, it became a lead singer. Our video got played on MTV and then I just chanced upon garbage. The garbage boys needed a singer and I got hired. And so I always felt I just fumbled into it by going off, so to speak. That's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty mad. And then I never believed in myself for my whole first half of my... I call the first phase of garbage.