Metal Hammer
December 1999


SHY RETIRING TYPES is one way of describing British band Bush. When not getting slagged off by the press or selling millions of records Stateside, Gavin Rossdale admits to Neil Kulkarni a liking for periods of solitude

"I guess I just needed to be alone with myself," muses Bush vocalist Gavin Rossdale, the best looking man in rock you've ever met. He's got the kind of eyes that flirt with you even when they don't mean to. He's talking about making the follow-up to an album (1996's 'Razorblade Suitcase') that sold more copies in America than almost any British band has ever previously sold. Rossdale's a star, and he's coming over all Garbo.

"I have to be alone to write, and being in a totally isolated environment enabled me to be totally locked in on my own thoughts, totally engrossed in what I was doing, and totally able to explore the emotions and thoughts I wanted to. You can only write from alienation, so I want to the most alien place I could find. Out where I was, you can't see another soul. And that's also what I've often felt like in a crowd."

Not a trace of irony. Not even a curve to the lips or a self-conscious smirk. From anyone else you'd put down such gauche adolescent indulgence to a smug sense of self-importance, but this man has you believing in sentiments and conventions you'd normally find repellent; he makes you believe that the whole student-style poet-in-a-windy-garret view of creativity is true, justifiable and worthwhile. For one his body language, the hunched intimacy, the stressed murmur, speaks of a sincerity that's unmannered and real. For another, this man's creativity sells by the shitload to an undeniably huge chunk of the world. Gavin Rossdale may just be the best actor on the planet. He may just be utterly honest. Either way, he's a star. And I'm suckered completely. Damn.

Cos you think Bush will never get to you, new album, 'The Science Of Things' (their third), will do nothing but prove you wrong. Throw it on, and even if until now you've resisted their uncanny knack for writing hooks bigger than Jesus and riffs that latch to the psyche like limpets, you'll find yourself tapping a hand, nodding a head, finally submitting in a flood of adrenalin. It's a damn thrilling rock album. Once you've checked no-one else is in the room. Bush's problem, if any band that's sold over 15 million records could be said to have problems, is that people have problems with them. The wrong people. Whilst the conventional wisdom that they're a band popular only amongst dumb Yanks has long since been proved false (they sell pretty strongly over here too), nonetheless if you've read any UK press on the band in the past three years you'd get the idea that they're lucky to set foot in Britain without getting lynched.

Critics fucking hate Bush. They hate the fact they're successful for a perceived simplification and dilution of 'better' bands that came before them (those Nirvana-lite accusations have always stuck). They hate the fact that a band has got this huge without their permission. And Bush's apparent frustrations and ire with the UK press has merely added fuel and fury to the condemnation. It's a game Rossdale admits he's been guilty of perpetuating past its sell-by date; in a spacey Norf Lahndan studio he's affable and relaxed, and wondering why it ever bothered him in the first place.

"It made the press feel more important than they really were," he admits, as his shaggy hound, Winston, sniffs around my ankles. "The fact that we got rattled by it was all the excuse they needed. It got to us because we thought it was unfair, we thought it was based on envy and felt the fans were getting a raw deal from the writers. And because the press sensed we weren't just gonna sit back, take it and be happy, they smelled blood. And that made the whole thing even more venomous. I think what really irritated those people is that we got to a certain level without their help, we vaulted the usual band process whereby the press are perceived as being absolutely vital to getting anywhere."

"That's it exactly," affirms drummer Robin Goodridge, who along with Rossdale, bassist Dave Parsons and guitarist Nigel Pulsford make up the Bush camp. "From the beginning we went over the heads of the press, the people who supposedly mandate who and what can be heard, and we took it staight to the people. We played solidly for about three years. That's work, that's a slog, and it worked; we realised immediately that it was gonna be our direct relationship with our fans, not with the vagaries of the press, that was gonna sustain us. And because that kind of communication is so direct, is so unmediated by the opinions of other people, that frightens the press, it almost makes them seem redundant. So the hostility should've been entirely expected."

Rossdale: "But it wasn't and it hurt. Because you had no control over people lying about you. I don't care if you're in a band or not, when someone is disseminating utter fictions about you, that's gonna piss you off. And they loved that, of course."

Goodridge: "What was annoying was that it all seemed to detract from the music. And that's all we want to be judged on. That's all we've ever been interested in. All those other things, all that other bullshit, never interested us. But we got kinda sucked into this antipathetic relationship with the press, cos the attacks were so sustained and so personal."

Rossdale: "They started it! And our fans finished it. I'd say any debate about us has probably waned now, and that's good . We've never really liked being in the spotlight, even though we're big and I go out with Gwen (Stefani, No Doubt frontwoman who guests on the new album). We've always stood slightly out of it. And that means we get treated unfairly, even though we sell loads of records and mean a great deal to a lot of people. We still don't get the kind of attentions that bands with far less fans get. And that's reflective of how we are as people - shy, retiring - but at the same time it's done us nothing but favours. I'd rather we stayed making music, and being able to be dedicated to the songs rather than be some fly-by-night band that makes a big splash, makes no difference, and sells to fucking nobody. All the bands that the press were whooping up when they were slagging us off aren't really around anymore. We still are. And that enables me to say that I really don't give a fuck about the press right now. It's alway nice to be appreciated, but if we're not liked by all the right people then that doesn't bother me, and fuck, I'd rather inspire hatred than indifference. If someone just 'didn't mind' us, I'd give up."

So what do you think the consensus will be after people have heard 'The Science Of Things'? Robin: "Hopefully people will give us a chance." Gavin: "Certain people never will. S'their loss."

Damn right it is. Held up by legal wrangles, 'The Science Of Things' is a startlingly bold move by a band with such a huge fanbase to please. Soundwise it's instaneously identifiable as Bush, yet pushes forward their own template in brilliant experimantal touches. It reveals the band as impelled by their past to seek out new territory at all costs. So whilst 'Jesus Online' and 'English Fire' are classic anthems that'll galvanise stadiums through next year's world tour, there are enough departures from the expected (the dreamy trip-hop of 'Dead Meat', the sheer pop fizz of current single 'The Chemicals Between Us') to surprise even their most stalwart critics. More crucially, this band sounds fucking fantastic; there's a gleaming propulsion and incendiary blaze to much of the LP that puts most other UK bands to shame. This is coupled with gorgeous pop twists and a textural riot of loops and noise that takes them light years beyond the occasionally four-square backlot of debut album 'Sixteen Stone' and its successor 'Razorblade Suitcase'. For Gavin, it's the culmination of their career.

"I wanted something more textured after 'Razorblade...' cos that was such a live record. After we'd finished touring we went our separate ways to recharge..." "And basically cos we were sick of the fucking sight of each other," laughs Robin. Rossdale: "Yeah! We had spent pretty much three years in each other's pockets, so we needed to get away. I retired to this very remote house in County Cork with no distactions - well, except that satellite telly for the footie - and wrote a load of new songs. I'd walk for miles, mulling things over, just being able to reflect for a while was exactly what I needed to inspire me to write. I could be so self-obsessed it was fucking brilliant...a cross between John Lennon and Anthony Hopkins doing Picasso."

Did the environs affect the songs at all? Gavin: "There's a lot of references to water but no, not really!! I've always had to be on my own to really do anything. Even when I was writing the first two albums, they were pretty much written in my flat in Shepherd's Bush whenever I could get a moment. I'd be sat in the kitchen trying to write and there'd be people coming in pissed, or with some new substance for me to try; it was an enormously frustrating, laborious experience because there were so many distractions all the time. In Cork, there was nobody at all. Just me able to concentrate on the music. I made demos of the songs and sent the tapes to the rest of the band for their input." Robin: "What was weird was that these demos sounded exactly like us. He'd programmed the drums, the bass and the guitars with all the mannerisms that we have, so the songs really haven't changed that drastically from those really early stages." Gavin: "I was just getting really bored of the sound of us four in a room, that's what I realised when we were rehearsing. Things needed to get wider, get different, change, and I think they have. Everything's just a little darker, twistier, weirder now."

So are you ready for the circus again: the travelling, the screaming groupies, the adulation...? Gavin: "No, thank god. You should never be ready for it. It should always be a surprise. What's weird is that we're kind of anonymous in the UK. That keeps you grounded, but at the same time it means that every time you're reminded that people love this band it's just a shock. For instance, you're playing a song, and then you realise ten thousand people are watching. I have to stop and just think, 'Fuck, how the hell did all this kick off?!' So long as it keeps feeling that fresh, so long as it keeps happening too fast for us to really get our heads round it I think there'll always be something in it for me."

And if Bush can keep sounding as fresh and compulsive as they do on 'The Science Of Things' there'll be something in it for all of us. Even us critics.

Thanks to Bestminds