Steven W. Marker (born March 16, 1959) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the co–founder and guitarist of the alternative rock band Garbage.
Previously an audio engineer for the band Fire Town with future Garbage members Duke Erikson and Butch Vig, Marker was responsible for the sourcing of lead singer Shirley Manson for Garbage, following the music video for "Suffocate Me" from Manson's band Angelfish being broadcast during an episode of MTV's 120 Minutes. Impressed, Marker, Vig and Erikson contacted Manson in Scotland, advocating for her to travel to the United States to lay down vocals for, what was at that time, one track. Manson would later provide all vocals for the bands breakthrough debut album Garbage (1995).
With Garbage, Marker has released eight studio albums – Garbage (1995), Version 2.0 (1998), Beautiful Garbage (2001), Bleed Like Me (2005), Not Your Kind of People (2012), Strange Little Birds (2016), No Gods No Masters (2021), and Let All That We Imagine Be the Light (2025) – as well as three compilation albums, recording the 1999 James Bond theme, and have sold over 17 million albums internationally.
Early life
Steven W. Marker was born on March 16, 1959, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lived in Highland Park, New Jersey, Iowa City, Iowa and Mamaroneck, New York, through his childhood and teenage years, except for a year in Germany as an AFS exchange student. At the age of six his parents bought him drums, but at 12, he took up the guitar. He graduated from Rye Neck High School in Mamaroneck.
Marker graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in film. At the University of Wisconsin he met Butch Vig, who played with the band Spooner which in 1979 was attempting to record a 7-inch single. Marker became interested in music production and bought a four-track reel-to-reel deck which, with Vig's microphones, became a home studio in Marker's basement. Marker and Vig also started a small label, Boat Records, to release records by Spooner and other bands they liked.
Career
In 1983 Marker co-founded Smart Studios in Madison with Butch Vig and continued to engineer, produce and mix records. In 1994 he formed Garbage with Vig and Vig's bandmate in Spooner, Duke Erikson.