"The bands that will have the hardest times are the real nihilist bands," says singer-guitarist Gavin Rossdale of the September 11 aftermath. "Everyone is just celebrating and appreciating life so much, and we've always been at pains to do that, and even the darkest and most strung-out, loneliest songs we've ever done have always been with a sense of trying to come back into sort of normal things, or looking for the good in stuff. We've never been seen as a violent kind of band--maybe dynamic and strong, but never sort of aggressive or over-violent."

If anything, Bush were lucky. Their album cover was supposed to feature the silhouette of a plane--which, considering the timing and people's sensitivity, would no longer have been appropriate. A plain gold cover will now stand. "It would have been a horrendous cover to have," admits Rossdale. "But prior to those attacks, when a plane was just an instrument of travel, and change, and motion, of all things good, it was an amazing cover."

Reading Rossdale's lyrics to songs such as "Land Of The Living" ("Airwaves, jet planes/Safe landing, life branding...This is the land of the living/The land of survival") or "Headful Of Ghosts" ("At my best when I'm terrorist inside/At my best when it's all me/I was there when they took all the people"), the effect is almost eerie. Rossdale's feelings are mixed. Of the "terrorist" reference, he feels that cuts too close. "It was really just a total poetic moment, liberal freedom with words. Now, I don't know...I don't think I can sing it in the same way anymore, so I've got to change that."

However, Rossdale is also aware that art changes lives, and that inaction would be the worst reaction of all. "It's going to take weeding out all these terrorists, of course," he says. "But then there's going to be a rebirth, a meeting of cultures and a sort of understanding of cultures, like the First World and the Third World. There's really such an imbalance of things, and we really need to get the best out of this and preserve the memories of those people who died and whose families have suffered so much out of this. I think the best thing we can do is to create a forum, and to create a situation where this can happen never again, and this comes from dialogue after the war."