Butch Vig's Vertigo

few days after September 11 we came over to Europe to do press for beautifulgarbage and it was bizarre, ’cos it just felt ridiculous to try and promote a pop album while there was this terrible misery; it just made everything we were talking about totally irrelevant. About a month after that we started the U2 tour. It was good for us, we were really excited about it because in my eyes they’re still the biggest band in the world, have been for a while, and they set the bar as far as you could go while still maintaining dignity and credibility and putting out amazing records. So we were just psyched to be playing shows with them.

“It felt weird to go out and celebrate on stage, and yet if there was any band in the world that could communicate what was going in the world, it was definitely U2. In those shows Bono had taken on the aspect of a preacher man, there was some healing going on. Their shows have always had that, but 9/11 made it even more significant.
“But for me personally I remember from the very first show we did, which was Indiana, then Chicago, Montreal and Chicago, I felt shitty. I thought I just had a cold, but I kept feeling shittier and shittier every day. There was a show-must-go-on mentality, but it got worse. I remember those two shows in Chicago, after the first night U2 were having a private party in some hot hotel downtown and they’d invited us to go hang. I was so excited; I wanted to be able to just go… party! And just feed off the vibe and the energy that they have. I’ve spent time with the band in the past and it’s always amazing to walk around with Bono and see how people react to him. But he always has a tendency to make everybody he’s with feel like they’re the centre of attention, and I think that’s one of the things that makes their concerts great, he has the ability to make everybody in the room feel like he’s talking to them one-on-one.
“So anyway, I was ready to ramp it up, but I felt so shitty I had to go lay down. The next day we got up to go to Baltimore, and I was delirious on the flight, I think I blacked out a couple of times, and when we landed, our tour manager said, ‘Man, I’m taking you to the hospital’. I can’t remember a whole lot about that other than sitting in a wheelchair in an emergency room, this really rough scene, some guy came in, he had his leg shot off, there was another guy laid out on a stretcher howling in pain, but I was so out of it at that point it was like watching The Twilights Zone, I was an observer out of my body.
“So they checked all my vitals and I was really close to passing out and going into a coma. At the time I wasn’t aware of it but I’d lost something like 15 lb, so they put me on IV fluids and checked me into a hospital and all I did for the next few days was sleep. So I missed the show in Baltimore. And then I had a private car pick me up at the airport, I went to see a doctor in New York City, plus we were scheduled to shoot the video for ‘Cherry Lips’ and play Madison Square Gardens with U2.
“I knew that show was going to be incredibly important because September 11 had just happened, but there was no way we could get someone to fill in for me at short notice without any rehearsal, so I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to try and play the show’. But when I started to walk I felt dizzy and nauseous. I had no strength, plus I started getting these terrible migraine headaches, I think it was from the toxins that accumulated from my liver not being able to pass stuff through. It was like the worst hangover headache I’d ever had in my life.
“So I called our management and said, ‘I’m gonna try and play the show, but I can’t play any rockers. We have to play the mellowest stuff we can’. So the rest of the band decided that would be okay. But I was still extremely worried that I’d lose my sense of balance and might fall right off and pass out.
“And at that point U2 knew that something had happened to me, and after I checked the kit out at sound check, Larry came up and said, ‘I’m gonna stand behind you for the whole set. If anything happens, I’m there’. And literally, that’s what he did. He knelt behind me during our set for 40 minutes just watching, ready to grab me and also ready to take over on the drums and carry on and finish the set, which I thought was going beyond the call of duty because he’d never played with us, we'd never done a rehearsal or anything. An amazing gesture. Instead of warming up or sitting backstage he made sure that I made it through the set.
“Then when we finished the show I lay down on a couch in the dressing room and I got the doctor’s results and it was Hepatitis A. I sort of traced it back – there’s a 30-day period where it incubates in your system – and I remember I ate oysters, or it could have been from shellfish that hadn’t properly been cleaned. And they said, ‘We don’t know who you’ve come in contact with, so everybody in the band and crew has to have a shot – including all of U2 and their crew!’ So the New York City Public Health Department came and gave everyone a shot. I very quickly became known as Typhoid Mary. Nobody was very thrilled about getting a shot in the butt or the shoulder.
“At that point I knew I couldn’t play the rest of the tour, so we called in Matt Chamberlain to learn the songs before the next U2 shows. And at the end of that run there was a show in Florida and Larry actually came up and sat in with the band and played ‘Only Happy When It Rains’. I think it was cool that he actually was able to get up and play with Garbage.”

Butch Vig
Favourite U2 album
“I still think Achtung Baby is my favourite. I’ve probably listened to that more than any of the other records. I think they caught a trashier, grittier sound. I know when we were starting the first Garbage record that was a bit of an influence on us. It was the vibe that they caught on it.”
Favourite U2 single.
“I’d have to say ‘One’. It transcends everything.”