GAVIN: Yeah, well, I'm from London. I'm not from Shepherd's Bush, I mean, I just, I wanted to call the band Bush.

ROBIN: And we recorded our first record, er, in Shepherd's Bush basically, you know, there is, we have a lot of affinity with that vicinity.

G: And my mum got robbed, er, in Shepherd's Bush when I was about, er, 8 years old, my mum got punched, knocked to the ground, ripped a bracelet and money off of her. Ever since then, when I was a kid, I could always sense when I was driving through Shepherd's Bush because I'd get quite scared, you know what I mean, it was scary for me, you know, I was only like, small and, um, so I just think I've had my revenge on Shepherd's Bush (laughs).

G: We were signed by an American label and, really simply, the record came out there and because, as a direct consequence of it doing well, they wanted us to follow up on it and, being Americans, they just felt that no other, no rest of the world existed and what did they care if no one else knew of us anywhere outside of North America. The problem is that you can't do what we've done, in a short amount of time, whilst you're touring other countries. We toured America like, you know, only American bands do.

K: And do you think that has been the key to your success? Over and above the video play, but that just hard work, slogging it out...

R: Yeah, there is no substitute for playing live, for people seeing who you are and I believe...you know, there's a certain amount of, er, theatre, that goes with playing live that can only, people can only relate to, when they see you, you know. It adds so much more to the picture, the mental picture that they've got, or the visual picture that they have from videos and the picture they've painted themselves when they listen to your album is, you know, the final real installment is to see you and it all be as real as they'd hoped or better.

G: Success brings judgement, it's a, it's a really weird thing that the more successful, the more records you sell, the more squinted people look at you.

R: But yeah, I know what you mean, I think people always listen to you much more now, during the parties(?) or if you're somewhere amongst strangers or people who've known you...

G: Finally! (both laugh)...find me (?) I'll be on my own(?)

R: (mimes strangling someone) I'm a musician! I'm a musician! No, no, but you know what I mean, but with that comes people sort of hanging abit, which is ok, you know, but you have to catch yourself 'cause sometimes you realise those people are just listening to you because they, because of what they perceive you to be rather than, er, what you really are.

G: There's a long way to go for me, sort of, to be totally happy with what I do and it's not that I think it's great, but I do know that it, um, it effects people in a certain way because people will come up and tell me about that. To me, personally, lyrics are really important. It might not be important, every single line, and you might, in a song, only get a sense of it and a few of the lyrics, but that's fine, you know, and it's really important to me in a song--there's no song that I can think of that is my favorite song that I don't know the words of at some point, you know, not like top to bottom, but there'll be a line in it that I'll know, that I go: that's why I, you know, that's how I connect myself with that song. Because there are only so many chords.

K: I've noticed you signed the autographs with a fountain pen; quite unusual these days for someone to carry a fountain pen. Was that yours?

G: Yeah, yeah, I have loads of them.

R: Yeah? So do you have a background in English...that's usually the sign of a letter writer.

G: No, I just, you know, write. I mean, I like writing so it's really important to me to have er, a pen, and I always lose...I get a really nice antique pen and I lose it.

R: Basically, we want him to write lyrics.

Gavin begins to doodle on the table.

K: No don't, you'll ruin the nib. So, so, are you an English student? Are your, are your band sort of literary influenced.

G: No, never read a book in my life. (grin)

K: You're lying.

G: Yeah, no, er, I just like pens.

G: In the words I kind of vent; on the one hand you can call it venting your thingy, other things like complaining, er, isolationism, all those things, you know, I sing about them a lot, you know, I have tons of it and, um, what's weird about it is that, irrespective of how, however people view that, I see the response, we see it when we play every single night. There are certain, er, states of, that people are in, that have existed for centuries and if you, you know, to, to articulate them and to put them into music, put them into art, put them into books, it doesn't, it doesn't change the fact, you know, you always are going to be changing the, er, the, the, the ways to describe it, or the ways to, um, er articulate it, but it will never change the simple fact that people are lonely, er, love fades, er, wild sex is great, and you always try to look for it, maybe don't get it as much as you can, you know, all those kind of, all the contradictions are just always going to be there, always have been there, and I don't think it's that suprising. The trick is, is to kind of talk about it or approach it in vaguely different ways.