Shirley Manson Says She “Lost Her Composure” Over The Beach Ball Incident Due To Her Father’s Recent Death

Shirley Manson has added a somber note to the whole #beachballgate incident, noting that she was still dealing with her father’s passing.

Did you follow the whole Shirley Manson beach ball thing? Lord knows we did. In short, while Manson was performing on stage with Garbage at Good Things Melbourne in December, audience member Ben O’Brien – known to his mates as “Gig Pig” and to the world as “Beach Ball Guy” – was tossing around a beach ball, as audiences are wont to do at massive outdoor festivals. Manson was having none of it and promptly ripped into the inflatable plastics aficionado in front of the entire crowd.

It was, as we say carefully, not a good look, and Manson did herself few favours in the subsequent days, making a mocking post on social media and a weird onstage statement saying that we should all be worrying more about Palestine than beach balls (which we should, but c’mon now…).

But everyone you meet is fighting their own secret battles, and Manson is no exception. In a new interview in NME, Manson revealed that at the time of the festival, she was still wrestling with the recent death of her father.

“I was astounded by the intensity of criticism,” Manson said. “To be fair, I lost my composure. My dad died on October 3, I’d been touring solidly since and it was now December. Clearly, I should have been at home but I carried on working. It was a bad call, but it something I had agreed upon with my dad. I had just buried him the week before.”

Manson went on to say that this was not an excuse, but insisted that the reaction to her outburst was over the top. “I made a bad error of judgement and I shouldn’t have gone off like that. But you would have thought I’d have killed a f***ing baby! There were calls for me to be deported from Australia. It was ludicrous. In the end they got so hysterical in their desire to punish me that the whole thing turned around.”

Still, she seems to have accepted that there’ll be no shortage of beach balls at future Garbage gigs. “Shit happens. I just felt bad for my band as 100 beach balls came sailing over the crowd the following day. Luckily for us, we all have a really good sense of humour. We knew it was coming and already called it. I’m sure there will be hundreds of beach balls for the rest of our career.”