Gavin Rossdale is quite a happy camper, and why shouldn t he be? His band, Bush, are enjoying huge sales for their third LP proper, The Science Of Things, when many prophetsof doom predicted their demise long ago.
The fact that Bush broke the US market before anyone in their home country knew who they were, allied to their straight-ahead rock sound, meant that the band came in for some fairly heavy criticism in England, a lot of it unjust. It seemed that there were certain people disgruntled by the fact that they didn t discover the band, how dare Bush sell millions of records without their seal of approval, etc., etc.
There was a lot of that, admits Rossdale, through clenched teeth.
Does the fact that Bush are still selling LPs by the lorryload years later make him feel somehow vindicated.
I always felt you could stamp your foot, ring someone up and complain, but the proof was always going to be in the longevity and the pure talent of the band, he says evenly. It was always going to be about the band s ability. I hope that is becoming apparent, that we cannot be dismissed like, perhaps, we could have been after the first record.
You can t do this forever, he admits. I think it s improtant to enjoy what we re doing, get out there and play good music, and not get het up about things. I just want to be a musician. I didn t want to be a tabloid sensation: I don t want to be in the papers. I don t feel it is necessary to do that to be in a credible band. The bands I grew up listening to weren t caught in those traps and I ll leave all that stuff to everyone else and I ll stick to being in a band that I care about.
Noble sentiments, but for a man whose football skills nearly had him taking up space on the back page of tabloids, Rossdale has had more than his fair share of column inches wondering about his on-off relationship with No Doubt s Gwen Stefani and recently linking him to one quarter of All Saints. Do tabloid hacks and snappers hassle him a lot then?
It goes through phases, he muses. If I go to certain places, they do but they don t hassle me outside my house. I m not big enough news that people give a shit what I buy in the supermarket. I m a simmering celebrity.
I just like music. That s why I chose this life and that s what I m into. Otherwise I would have been in a pop band, or something. Because I m not a soap star or in a ridiculously successful boy band, I m medium news, which I think is a blessing. I don t know what it must be like to be consistently hassled, poked, prodded and stared at.
Obviously, there is a side of his personality that enjoys the attention, though.
Of course, he agrees, Or else I wouldn t be doing it. I used to be really shy and I suppose my way of getting over that was to be fearless on stage.
Bush s powerhouse live performances have always gone down well Stateside, so much so that they recently became the first UK act to headline the Woodstock festival, which must have been gratifying.
It was quite an honour, really smiles Rossdale. I really enjoyed doing it it was a lot of fun.
What about all those people who would say that Woodstock doesn t have the same vibe any more, that it has become a corporate cash cow for an already bloated music industry?
That s because they didn t play it, he laughs uproariously, before conceding. It isn t the same it s on the airbase where the bombers used to take off from, so it s kind of ironic. It s now just a large festival, but it s got all this history. The shadow cast over it by the fires last year was a shame because it s a great celebration of music that s why so many people go there. It was a little bit agressive last year in terms of the line-up, he continues. The bands were hardly your peace and love outfits, but we had a great time doing it.
Headlining Woodstock 99 was the start of the tour to promote Bush s latest opus, The Science Of Things. While the album isn t exactly a ground-breaking tour de force of innovation, it does vary from the blueprint laid down by their debut Sixteen Stone and its follow-up, Razorblade Suitcase, trying out more than one suit for its buzzsaw hooks and grunged-up vocals.
I tried to get a litle bit more direct about what I was writing about, more focused, explains Rossdale. I used a lot more textures this time. Last time around, we did a record with Steve Albini and just tried to make guitars work in certain ways. This time, I wanted to get some other stuff in there, keyboard textures, drum programming, stuff like that.
The album s genesis, too, was different from previous work. Rossdale relocated to Cork, between Skibereen and Baltimore, to write the songs that eventually became The Science Of Things.
A friend of mine has a house near there and heard of this great place that I got to work in. For three months, I lived a monklike existence, apart from my forays out to the pub, he laughs. Well, it wasn t a monklike existence in terms of my living, but in terms of my devotion, it was very calvinist. But I had a great time writing there.
The period was a very prolific one, Rossdale returning to the rest of the band with a shit-load of songs, which were eventually whittled down to the 12 that made the album. Since then it has been business as usual for the band who have clocked up more hours on stage than Maureen Potter. They re currently in the midst of a UK tour which is going really well, and the affable Rossdale is enjoying every minute of it.
We re being pretty traditional in our approach and pretty radical in our execution, he enthuses, as in, trying to do wild shows, ensuring each show has a different quality to it, and changing the set-list regularly. We re just really having fun being in a successful rock band.