Garbage ‘will never’ tour U.S.’ again
Last month, days before kicking off their “Happy Endings” tour, Garbage announced that this will likely be the band’s last US headline tour.
“We haven’t played an extensive headline tour like this one in the States for almost a decade,” they wrote in a statement shared to Instagram. “If the truth be told, it is unlikely we will play many of the cities on this tour ever again… We are going out in style and we hope you will join us. That’s life my friends. Nothing stays the same forever. Everything must change. All beautiful things come to an end. We love you.”
Now, during Garbage’s recent show at The Anthem in Washington, DC, frontwoman Shirley Manson explained to the audience why they have decided to forgo future headline tours.
“We have as a band decided that, due to basically the economics of the music industry, that we have to curtail our headline touring business,” she told the crowd. “It has, thanks to the thievery of the record industry, made touring very, very difficult.”
“We’re not complaining, we’ve had a f*cking great run. I bring this up only because my concern is of course for young musicians who go out there and tour, they’re holding down jobs, they take two weeks off their work and they go around the country. Sometimes they’re sleeping in their van, sometimes they’re staying in really, really dodgy so-called motels and it’s dangerous and it’s really unacceptable and it really has to stop. Whatever’s going on, it really has to stop. It’s unsafe and it’s unacceptable.”
Manson continued: “So we have just decided that the economics have become untenable, so this is kind of the last time that we’ve decided we’re going to get on a bus and just tour all over North America. It’s a fantastic privilege and it’s so beautiful and exciting and amazing. And all the more so because I doubt that we’ll do a tour this size ever again.
“We all feel that we’ve been so immensely privileged and we’ve enjoyed unbelievable support from our fans, from you. At times in the music industry, they’ve told us we’re old, we’re over, nobody’s interested, nobody gives a f*ck, nobody wants to play us on radio, nobody wants to interview us. And then you lot came along. You were like, ‘get behind us, Satan’. And we won’t forget it.”
Rock band tours are costly
Garbage’s announcement also shines a light on a larger issue destroying the entire touring industry: rising costs for both artists and fans. For bands, the price of buses, crew wages, fuel, visas, and insurance has skyrocketed since the pandemic, leaving even veteran acts struggling to break even on long headline runs. At the same time, fans are being hit with higher ticket fees, service charges, and travel expenses, making it harder to fill arenas and theaters night after night. Even successful tours have reported slimmer profit margins, forcing artists to shorten routes, rely more heavily on festival appearances, or switch to one-off residencies instead of traditional tours.
For younger bands, the situation is even tougher — many can’t afford to tour at all without outside jobs or crowdfunding. It’s an unsustainable cycle that has raised alarms across the industry and explains why more groups are re-thinking extensive North American tours. A band like Garbage are better off accepting lucrative festival offers rather than doing full headlining tours.
