Sadly, it does. So do fame, glory, beauty, anger, even blue jeans. Gavin Rossdale seems well aware of this. As Bush hand off their second record, Razorblade Suitcase, and gape across the canyon from instant hugeness to lasting stardom, Rossdale has added ambivalence and fame's existential dilemma to their catalogue of public torments.

Rossdale has just wrapped his segment of an upcoming MTV special. We're sitting in a tiny, glowing sideroom of the nouveau-gothic New York loft where the show was taped, sharing a few beers and a plate of steamed vegetables. Aside from being adored by young girls, Bush's Apollonian singer, songwriter, and guitarist would seem to have little in common with filmmaker Woody Allen, the geeky neurotic and creator of the classic swat at the meaning--or meaninglessness-- of life, Annie Hall. But Rossdale talks openly about inspirations like the Pixies, Nirvana, and painter Francis Bacon, and they have a noticeable place in his music. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who quotes Woody Allen verbatim feels the irony of his movie's basic premise that life is divided into horrible and miserable.

"I don't think, by the way, that I'm any more dysfunctional or weirded out than anyone else," says Rossdale, fumbling for a light, but otherwise lively, lucid, and eloquent in spite of his documented devotion to ganja--which he is currently demonstrating. "I've had specific instances of hard upbringing that are not unique to me. Many people experience that difficulty. All that's happened to me is I get a chance to sing about it."

"Aaaahh!" He gives a quick shriek, like I might give if I'd just seen a mouse. Actually, he's dropped an ash on his jeans and is laughing at this most unsuave move while he frantically pat-pats it out. "I'm really cool, really...," he chuckles, sounding more like he's trying to convince himself than me.

Maybe he's lulled by the loft's warm hues or the gunmetal smell of burning candelabras, but Rossdale appears friendly and unpretentious. He seems to have a watchful eye on an ego that his current status as musical cash cow and international sex symbol could easily send into orbit. "I don't want someone to come in and be really shitty to me," he shrugs, perhaps clarifying his earth-bound demeanor. "I want someone to come in and be like, 'Hi, I've got a deal with you on a certain level, let's just get on with it.'" So we do.

Rossdale is in town for the first stop of a six-day, twelve-city junket of listening parties to introduce Razorblade Suitcase to the American spin doctors. He's the lone Bushman on this run: drummer Robin Goodridge's girlfriend just had a baby, guitarist Nigel Pulsford just got married, and bassist Dave Parsons is apparently back home in London with a loved one. "Looks like you're the last holdout, dude," MTV's Lewis Largent jokes with Rossdale. "Yeah, well..." Rossdale looks away, scuffling his feet a little. He offers no explanation.

"Everything Zen" was not a love song. It was, though, the first single from Bush's debut, Sixteen Stone, and an anomaly on a record filled with lyrical shreds of miscommunication, unfulfilled love, and the smoke and mirrors people hide behind. But Bush's obvious Nirvana influence, coupled with the song's grunge-certified distress call, may have made "Zen" an unwise choice for first single. Critics immediately dubbed Bush sloppy seconds.

"Yeah, there's always stuff you could do differently," ossdale chafes at the inference. "But it really doesn't matter. We're really all only trying to get through it, you know. People will judge you, and people will be hard on you. Anyone can put holes in anyone, it's as easy as pie, you could do it in your sleep. You just have to have faith in what you're doing."

"It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to see where I prefer to be," he says defiantly about the slots people try to fit Bush into. "I'm as sorry as anyone that Kurt is dead. I think he's the only person that could have still been making music that would have scared me. He had the potential to be terminally scary."

Sniping at bands like Bush is easy. As long as a band appeals to a limited audience, the music elite gets all puffed up about their own sense of discriminating taste. Plenty of bands, like Garbage, Everclear, even Soundgarden, have sold a respectable amount of records, yet still benefit from this perverse logic. But ask a Pearl Jam or Alanis Morissette what the payback is for stirring something universal. If you've got the double-whammy, like Bush, of success and beauty, you're in real trouble: that's just the kind of thing that makes people feel really small.

"It's really weird," he goes on, "because I'm English, and the mentality of the English people is that there's always someone better. We're not a nation of winners, they don't breed us like that." Whether he gets proper kudos or not, Rossdale feels a kinship with the trophy-holders of the gloomy northwest. In England, he says, "the weather's really grey. It's pretty desolate, pretty bleak. It's ironic, because when you spend time in Seattle, the weather is not that dissimilar."

He claims he's come to terms with the accusations of jumping on the Seattle bandwagon. "I'm the one who's been on the road for two, three years," he says, sighing into a question he's obviously done battle with. "What frustrates me," he continues, throwing up his palms in exasperation, "is I've had way more contact than any wee journalist with a laptop. I see real people every single night that don't think like that."

Bush have toured non-stop since the release of their debut, graduating from tiny clubs to arenas. Live, they rock the mosh pit hard and energetic. Rossdale defies most rock front stereotypes: no cock-rocker or self-indulgent shoe-gazer, he glides around the stage with the graceful elegance of the former soccer player he is, frequently pausing to pogo. A tall and lanky hormone rush with long, expressive fingers, his onstage force seems composed, never veering towards the unstrung abandon of some rock wildboys. The girls in the audience go Beatlemaniac.

So, buoyed by an MTV "Viewer's Choice" award and about seven million fans to date who've bought Sixteen Stone, Bush must have a lot of faith, because Razorblade Suitcase sets them up for an even worse drubbing. Famously cranky producer Steve Albini, who produced Rossdale's beloved Pixies, produced Bush's new one, "along with about 200 other bands a year for about 15 years," Rossdale points out, trying to deflect a hailstorm. It doesn't matter: even he knows that all anyone will notice is Albini's most famous recording credit, Nirvana's In Utero.

And on first listen, Razorblade Suitcase serves as an almost uncomfortably close reminder. The basis is already there: Rossdale's raw, yearning vocals and pained lyrics; a sudden pierce of feedback; the chunky, bass and guitar tagteam; soft songs that whip into frenzied, bee sting guitar blasts, then see-saw back again. With Albini at the helm, pulling the band in a more live, low-fi direction, the record feels familiar, like an old friend. Some will hear "Scentless Apprentice" in Bush's "Insect Kin," and Rossdale delivers the lullaby intro to "Mouth" in a heart-shaped box.

To add to the potential cries of foul, the artwork for Razorblade Suitcase was done by Vaughan Oliver, who did all of the Pixies album art. "I didn't get to be in the Pixies," Rossdale smirks triumphantly during his MTV taping, aping a tea-drinker's clutch of a teacup filled with beer to assuage the cameras, "but I certainly got to work with a couple of people who worked with them."

That's the Bush paradox: They want credit for their contribution, but don't claim to be revolutionaries. Maybe they just want to do right by their heroes? "I'm happy for everyone that wants to be an English mod band," Rossdale says to the MTV cameras, "but it never turned me on. What's wrong with being inspired by something that's really brilliant?"

Apparently nothing. Because the fact is, with repeat listens, the songs on Razorblade Suitcase do detach themselves from other references and take on a beguiling life of their own. "Swallowed," the gnashing, melodic, cry from inside the isolated bubble of fame, is only the first single from a record that's probably good for about eight hits.

Rossdale says he's proud of the record as a whole. He hesitates to pick favorite songs, saying that would be "like separating spokes from a wheel." Still, there are a few tunes he enjoys listening to right now: "Communicator," a quiet song, ponders dissatisfaction and wonders whether he's met the woman who will be his wife; "Personal Holloway" is more cryptic, but seems to question abilities and scold personal shortcomings. Given the amount of time the band has spent in America, it's not unrealistic to think the song's flashpoint might be Wanda Holloway, the overdriven Texas mom who did away with her cheerleading daughter's main rival.

Scribes point to Bush's musical touchstones, but gloss over a more obscure but equally important influence. Jake Scott's video for "Comedown," Pulsford explains during his MTV taping, "came out of Gavin's obsession with Francis Bacon."

Recently, on a trip to New York, Rossdale wandered into Marlborough, the local gallery that represents Bacon, who died in 1992, and bought himself a little present for a job well done. "I went in there," Rossdale says incredulously. "It was like, 'I want everything on the walls. What am I going to do?'" He bought two triptychs (three-panel works that Bacon favored) and a single painting. Art prices vary wildly depending on a lot of factors, but here's a sampling: a small single Bacon sold at auction in June of this year at Sotheby's-London for almost $400,000; a larger single panel sold a year earlier for nearly $2 million. Theoretically, Rossdale's got seven of those panels to hang on the bare walls of the London basement flat where he lives and writes, a place that's been in the family for years and that he's recently upgraded "from squat to semi-squat."

"They were...really expensive," Rossdale says a little sheepishly, unwilling to reveal what he laid out. "An obscene amount of money, right? And what's so ridiculous is...I have that money."

Rossdale's mordant lyrics clearly take cues from Bacon, whose work ethic he describes as based on revealing, ripping away surfaces, eliminating all pretension. He's adamant on one point: "He represents, to me, everything that I hold truest about what I do."

Lyrically, Rossdale gets less credit than he deserves, spewing brooding, pensive shards of broken glass with more than a few moments of poeticism. Mainly dissecting the confusion of personal relationships and the elusive search for someone to call home, Razorblade Suitcase adds the baggage of a confusing, quick rise to fame. He rejects sweeping statements about his life based on a song: "I was writing a song and that's what I was thinking about. It doesn't have to be a slogan for my life." But he admits that pain is a necessary jolt to his artistic vitality. "I think I probably wouldn't be very good at writing a happy song," he explains. "I could try, but when I'm happy I want to go and make out and have a laugh."

He concedes with a matter-of-fact shrug, though, that his life is splattered all over this record--and it's not necessarily a barrel of laughs. "My life is crap in many ways," he says. "You know, my life has fallen apart since I've been successful." He seems grateful for his success, though, and is quick to dispense with any whining. "It is hard, but it's harder working in a factory in New Castle. None of it, none of it, none of it," he insists about life as rock royalty," compares to where I've been and to the desperation that I have felt."

At some point during the taping, No Doubt's powerhouse frontkitten, Gwen Stefani, arrives with a friend, picking up Rossdale for drinks at Soho's fashionable Spy Bar. Both have publicly denied the speculation of a romance, but Rossdale throws an awkward arm around her and they kind of look like they want to be alone. We're not done, though, so the girls get shooed away, with Rossdale promising to meet them soon. "Did you see Gwen?" he quizzes me, seeming to want this noted. "Doesn't she look great?"

"If I love someone, " Rossdale says later, "and if I'm with them, I'm really for them." Personal relationships, he says, are the most important things in his life. And you only have to listen to his lyrics to realize that they confuse the hell out of him. "So much in my life, and people's lives, comes down to communication, and that's when I have felt most out of synch with someone or something--when thing haven't been spoken about."

He is, he says, most recently out of synch with a now-ex girlfriend he was with for five years. "I think it's because I haven't been there for three years," he grumbles, citing Bush's demanding tour schedule, "because I'm so torn in so many different directions."

Those tears are evident in his songwriting. He claims that every band is political, and for him, the politics are personal. Juggling each hand like he's weighing objects, he goes on a funny little tirade about how much people baffle him. "If you're in a situation where you've invested time in people, and you're in this mutual situation, you're like, 'Oh, you, me'," his eyes hop mechanically from his left hand to his right. "Whether it's a lover, a friend, or a business thing, professional, but 'you, me,' and suddenly," he makes a whooshing motion with his hand, "they're gone. I mean, hold on, where was I? 'I was there with you, where were we? Oh, we weren't there. Fuck, where were we? I got it wrong. Damn.'"

If he too often gets caught in a perplexing web, it may be because he is, as he describes himself, "formulaic, in every single level of my life." He uses the word a lot, seeming to fear it in both songwriting and living. But he admits that he can't always avoid it, getting tired, excited, or sucker-punched at the same moments.

"They really sucker-punched me," he snarls about his sexy, come-hither pinup shot that graced the cover of Rolling Stone earlier this year. The story's photos were taken by Mark Seliger. The photographer co-directed Hole's video for "Violet," which Rossdale thought was great, and he hoped he too could work with him in the future. "So I didn't really want to ruin the vibe between me and him and be really uptight and say, 'Look, hey, I'm not taking my top off.'" He claims the lensman convinced him that the shirtless photo of him having tea on the bed was meant only as a small story insert, and that a headshot taken in the pool at L.A.'s Chateau Marmont was planned for the cover.

"And then they have the fuckin' cheek to put on it, 'Why doesn't anyone take me seriously?'" He's pissed off. "They didn't need to fuck me up like that. They could have been really nice about me or just neutral. Because the article resolved itself, it concluded really positively about us."

Yet a few months later, Rossdale shows up in the Details music issue--dressed, but in an oddly seductive, gender-bending photo. With his arms raised to clutch his tousled, tongue-lolling head, his loose jeans slipped to far below his navel and his midriff jean jacket hugged his chest, almost hinting at a protruding nipple. The photograph was shot from an angle that suggested an unsettling pear shape. Was it a brilliant satire of the kind of media objectification usually reserved for women, or was it simply another effort to sell sex?

"Mmmm, no, I wouldn't say it like that," Rossdale thinks out loud about whether his intimidatingly good looks get in the way of people taking Bush seriously. "I wouldn't say, 'No, please, don't even look at that, look at the music.' I'm in full control of my faculties, so I understand that it's an integral part, but that's all it is." His ego-meter seems pretty in check here, too. "It's part of it, and isn't that lucky? I am lucky, you know? I'm really fortunate."

So fortune will shine on Gavin Rossdale's bare chest once again, this time in the video for "Swallowed," directed by friend and first-time video director Jamie Morgan. "This is the most arrogant you'll get me at," he says, "which is that MTV has served us brilliantly. It's so self-righteous to sit there and be like, 'It sucks, MTV sucks.' Yeah, corporations suck. It doesn't mean that you cannot do interesting stuff within the medium."

On this take, artistic license could be granted for Rossdale's shirtlessness. A kind of Calvin Klein-models-party-with-the-cast-of-Kids-with-Bush-as-house-band, the video, Rossdale says, is "just trying to be true to the song." The band can only play, revving up everyone else who flirts, makes out, looks for love. "It's the most human song I've done," Rossdale says about his outside view. "I'm with everyone and yet not. I'm surrounded by everyone and accompanied by no one."

Razorblade Suitcase is sure to find a lot more love-struck fans dreaming that they can take away Rossdale's poison pen, but he's gearing up for a few more years of not being there in the guise of touring. "Not that I need to tell anyone I love 'em, but I have friends that I've really missed. I've got a couple of friends...especially two of them...it's good fun to tell 'em, 'God, you know, I really missed you. I've been away.'"

And even with the rigors of another tour ahead, romantic hope springs eternal. "I believe in absolutely wild, upsetting, true love," Rossdale reflects. He's quick to add, "It doesn't mean I've found it."

At the end of Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells this joke. A guy tells a doctor that his brother thinks he's a chicken. When the doctor asks why he doesn't do something about it, the guy says it's because he needs the eggs. "I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships," Allen concludes. "They're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but, uh...we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs."

Fittingly, there's a song at the end of Razorblade Suitcase that turns the record on its head. After over an hour's worth of derision and gouging, Rossdale gets uplifting. "Sooner or later masturbator lose," he sings, but then turns around and clutches hard at hope in the chorus: "I'm gonna find my way to the sun/If I destroy myself I can shine on." It's exactly the kind of life-affirming anthem that will get arenas full of Bics swaying in unison.

"How can I sit here and complain?" Rossdale asks. "It's pretty ridiculous, you know. The whole thing of being a rock star is tough. I mean, I just can't...," he trails off, "I just get on with it." And he does, because he, too, needs the eggs.