Garbage covered The Cure as they came together with Placebo for an emotionally-charged night at the Robert Smith-curated Teenage Cancer Trust gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall last night (Saturday March 28). Check out footage, photos, the setlists and more from what went down below.
With Smith taking over from The Who frontman Roger Daltrey to put the bill together for this year, this week’s line-up was kicked off by Elbow before huge sets from the likes of Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine, with Manic Street Preachers covering The Cure’s ‘Close To Me‘ in the icon’s honour and Chvrches debuting new song ‘Conman‘.
In attendance for the stacked bill of Placebo and Garbage last night was Yungblud, who’d previously joined Brian Molko on stage and was also photographed with Smith after catching My Bloody Valentine the night before.
In honour of their friend and collaborator Smith and the worthy charity cause, Placebo offered to open for Garbage with a stripped-back set at their first live show in nearly two years since the tour for the lengthy tour for 2022’s acclaimed ‘Never Let Me Go‘.
Kicking off a set of mostly reworked tracks, the band opened with their spectral cover Sinead O’Connor‘s ‘Jackie O’ – performed live for the first time in over a decade – before landing a crowd favourite with a tender rendition of ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’ single ‘Special Needs’.
“Thank you ever, ever so much,” frontman Brian Molko told the crowd, before thanking his band, as well as Garbage, “the legendary Robert Smith”, Teenage Cancer Trust and the “breathtakingly amazing work that they do”.
“We haven’t played a gig in like two years,” he continued, before admitting that the band were “kinda shitting it”. “I need to apologise to the front row. It smells like Donald Trump up here.”
Highlights included an epic outing of staple Placebo single ‘Pure Morning’ (performed for the first time since 2018) as well as a dramatically reworked ‘Taste In Men’, less pulsing but still rhythmic, stripped back but still heavy, and elevated by some dark orchestral flourishes.
Clearly touched by the audience rising to their feet for applause after ‘Follow The Cops Back Home’ (aired for the first time in over 15 years) Molko led the capacity crowd in the iconic hall into mass participation to clap the beat to a new take on ‘Slave To The Wage’ and a huge sing-along to the “bada ba ba ba da da da” vocal hook of a much more soulful and cinematic ‘Special K’.
After a simmering ‘Post Blue’ and an almighty crescendo build up for ‘Meds’ befitting the scale of the room, Placebo closed under the glitter ball lighting for the tender ‘Centrefolds’, which hasn’t been performed live since the 2004 ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’ tour.
“Thank you so much,” ended Molko to a standing ovation. “It’s been such an incredible pleasure to be with you tonight.”
Placebo’s setlist was:
‘Jackie’ (Sinéad O’Connor cover)
‘Special Needs’
‘Begin The End’
‘Pure Morning’
‘Taste In Men’
‘Blind’
‘Follow The Cops Back Home’
‘Beautiful James’
‘Slave To The Wage’
‘Special K’
‘Post Blue’
‘Meds’
‘Centrefolds’
Arriving on stage to Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ from Twin Peaks, Garbage kicked into new album ‘Let All That We Imagine Be The Light’ highlights ‘There’s No Future in Optimism’ and ‘Hold’, with frontwoman Shirley Manson adopting her signature circular prowl as the band dug into the muscular and industrial gothic heft of their recent material.
Manson then paid tribute to the “greatest musical community of this country”, Teenage Cancer Trust and “the bad ass motherfucker” young patients who spoke on stage beforehand, as well as the efforts of “the great Robert Smith”.
“We are also incredibly grateful to the magical, wonderful, incredibly unique Placebo for sharing the stage with us tonight,” she continued. “They could be headlining here themselves, but they have chosen to come and work with us, work with the charity towards the greater good. Our respect for them is endless.
“We’ve known them since the ’90s, we all grew up together, so it feels particularly special for us to be sharing the stage with them tonight. What an incredible fucking performance you got tonight – that is something very magical that doesn’t come along very often, so big shout out to Placebo”.
She then went on to speak up for the “inspiring” city of London, and those who took part in the huge anti-far right protests earlier that day, “to fight against fascism”.
“I don’t know if any of you were there today, but if you were there, our undying gratitude to you and our undying respect,” she went on.
“I know that people hate it when people like me with a fucking microphone and a PA start talking about shit like this, but it would be remiss of me. We have an incredible country here and we must go out of our way to protect it.”
Highlights came with Manson squaring up to the front rows of the stalls to get up close and personal for ‘Fix Me Now’ before the ’90s banger ‘I Think I’m Paranoid’, and the “bucketlist moment” of Garbage debuting their pared-back and yearning cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovesong’ (“a song by a band who inspired us to form a band”, said Manson).
Manson was typically outspoken throughout the show, making a strong statement when introducing ‘The Men Who Rule The World’.
“It’s very fitting that today it should be ‘No Tyrants, No Kings’, because our record that came out five years ago was called ‘No Gods No Masters‘,” she said. “We had a slight inkling of where things might be going, which felt kind of scary to us. In the ensuing five years, oh boy, we’re fucking happy we wrote this song’.
Manson was inspired to speak up again, when amplifying the voice of the trans community given the recent decision in the UK for transgender girls to be thrown out of the Girl Guides.
“I just find this the most astoundingly weird, cruel and nonsensical drive by any government in about a billion years,” she said. “I’m sorry if there might be any trans girls in the Girl Guides, it’s probably about three in the whole country. So well done picking on the most marginalised, most beautiful, most vulnerable community that we have here in the UK. We wrote this song a long time ago, long before we understood the term ‘gender fluid’. It was just something we were grappling with intellectually.”
The NME Icon Award alumni went on: “This is getting very personal, but my band are way more feminine than I am. And I am often more masculine than they are. The only explanation we can use as a band as some kind of directive is we are not all born into these fucking funny little stations where ‘I am a man’ and ‘I am a woman’. It just doesn’t fucking work like that. Maybe in your life, you haven’t had the pleasure and the privilege of meeting people who are more gender fluid, who are not fucking stuck in trad wife roles or fucking masculine patriarchy.
“My experience in my life is that I have always known so many fucking amazing men who are beautiful and in touch with their femininity who don’t want to fucking beat women, rape them and kill them in alleyways. Also, and I mean this literally, I don’t know any women who have the single mind to come home and cook dinner after holding down a job.”
Manson added: “I’m not trying to be controversial, but I really think we need to start talking about this: if you have a wife who’s home and miserable, I would suggest maybe cooking her a meal every now and again. Then with women, just don’t be so fucking girly all the time. Just go on see-saw where sometimes he’s powerful, sometimes you are. It’s a glorious dance, let’s lean into it. It makes us all so much happier.”
Despite admitting that she was struggling with a cold, Manson’s voice sounded full-bodied and powerful. After a mass sing-along of the poptastic ‘When I Grow Up’, she introduced “our favourite song of our entire catalog” with ‘Push It’, adding: “And if you don’t like this then you might as well fucking leave because it doesn’t get any better than this.”
After ‘The Day That I Met God’ closed the first set, Garbage returned for an encore revealing a backstage chat in which the band decided “thee general consensus is we didn’t fuck up”, with them feeling like things usually go wrong when they play London. She went on to thank her band, their team and families, as well as paying tribute to her recently deceased father who would attend their every show in the capital, then closing with their biggest hits ‘Stupid Girl’ and ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ with the whole crowd on their feet.
“We’re sill around thanks to fucking weirdos like you,” Manson told the Royal Albert Hall, noting how “the younguns” were particularly “kind and supportive”. “Tonight feels like fucking magic and it’s the kind of world I want to live in.”
Garbage’s setlist was:
‘There’s No Future in Optimism’
‘Hold’
‘Fix Me Now’
‘I Think I’m Paranoid’
‘Vow’
‘Run Baby Run’
‘The Trick Is to Keep Breathing’
‘Not My Idea’
‘The Men Who Rule the World’
‘Wolves’
‘Lovesong’ (The Cure cover)
‘Chinese Fire Horse’
‘Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)’
‘When I Grow Up’
‘Push It’
‘The Day That I Met God’
Encore:
‘Stupid Girl’
‘Only Happy When It Rains’
Visit here to donate to Teenage Cancer Trust, or text ‘RAH10’ to 70085 to give £10.
Speaking to NME ahead of the show, Manson explained how was was “obsessed with Placebo”.
“I really love them, and we’re delighted to be paired with them,” Manson told us. “I’m particularly touched because they could be headlining the show on their own terms and they very graciously took the decision to play an opening acoustic set. We’ve known them since the ‘90s, of course. We toured with them in South Africa, of all places, a long time ago. It was exceedingly memorable and wild, so the less said about that the better!
“I love them dearly. I think Brian is a very rare kind of frontperson.”
Manson continued: “Brian was always so fucking cool with me, and not everyone was. There was a contingent of male fucking popstars who weren’t so kind, but Brian was always one of our kind of people.
“I’ve always been very attracted to the androgynous aspects of Brian’s approach to presenting himself. I loved that he wore make-up and female clothes and that it was beautiful, slightly dangerous, exciting and not something to be ashamed of. I really responded to that and it spoke to me deeply.”
Garbage return for UK and European tour including dates with Skunk Anansie this summer. Visit here for tickets and more information.
Placebo meanwhile are gearing up to release ‘RE:CREATED’, a reimagined version of their debut album ahead of a winter 30th anniversary tour celebrating their first two records. Visit here for tickets and more information.