MUSIC365: Does everyone have a solo album in him or her? And where did yours come from?

Nigel Pulsford: "I guess the idea came about when Judith and I were in the States in between Bush albums in the spring of last year. I thought it would be nice to do something to help promote Collecting Dust [his sister Jan's eclectic online label]. I realised I had loads of old songs - Bush rejects, I suppose you could call them (laughs). I started to do an EP and basically, it became a full album when I realised it wasn't so bad after all."

You've been a musician since you were 16 - why make your own record now?

"Because I couldn't sing. What happened? I started singing! No, seriously, there are a few examples of me singing a few years ago which are, mmmm, interesting, let's say. But this time I just thought I would go for it, and the confidence came from the privacy of doing it with no one around, and with the encouragement of my sister and my wife. I suppose I could have done it before, but I was lazy."

Your mother says she was surprised, when she heard this record, to hear what a nice voice you have.

"Well, it's not Andy Williams or Perry Como, according to my mother (laughs). It's unique, anyway."

Some people would expect that the last thing you'd want to do was go into the studio when you were finally having a holiday after playing someone else's songs on the road for two years straight.

"It's just fun. That's what I do for fun. It was an obvious thing to do anyway, because I was already messing around anyway, writing some songs with my sister for a few other people. Most of which I don't think got used, especially the one I wrote for The Corrs... which was absolutely hideous, if I do say so myself. But we knew a publisher who'd said, 'Look, we need some songs for The Corrs - do you have any?' I'm not sure what I imagined them to sound like, but I expect I must have thought they sounded pretty awful (laughs). So there I was trying to write songs for other people yet again, and thought, hang on, why am I wasting my time doing this crap for other people? Maybe I should just do my own stuff. So I did."

And where's this titular 'Paradise Road'?

"It's a place in south London, in Stockwell, where I lived for a few years. Does it live up to its name? Well, some people loved it. I hated it; I had a really miserable few years there, and it nearly killed me but I survived. Horrible place, actually. I joked about calling the album 'Dying In Deathsville'. Some people assume it's a fairly light title, comforting - you know, having a particularly lovely piece of toast somewhere nice. In fact, it means toast as in 'you're toast', or a play on 'heavenly host'. In fact, it's a stupid play on words: yeah, don't look too deeply into this one, folks, it's a typo!"

So were these really songs that Gavin [Bush's only songwriter to date] rejected for the band?

'Well, some of them. 'Deep In The Water' was one reject; 'What Would You Think' existed in another form prior to that. 'Love Is Dying While Washing Is Drying' was written on a plane from Brazil to Mexico City [on tour with Bush]. It was one of those rare really good plane journeys with loads of booze; you could smoke and drink, and I was sitting next to the Brazilian Ambassador to Mexico who was absolutely brilliant, telling us all these hair-raising stories. 'Average Town' ["... aka Platinum Proposition", a hilariously apposite look at the starmaker machinery in the American music business] was a quite an old one as well. I thought that calling it 'College Town' would have been a bit mean, so I looked for the nearest euphemism. Some people have assumed that the storyline came from my experiences with Bush, but in fact I wrote it years ago when I first toured America with King Blank and got told that famous line about "it's a college town ... you'll do well here, you know." It was my first sight of the machine."'Deep The Water' is because I've always loved pop, and I've always wanted to write a song about Eskimoes, so there it is. And 'October' [named for the month Pulsford's daughter Olivia was born] was originally written for a John Coltrane tribute album when we were distributed by Atlantic. They actually wanted Bush to do a track for it, which seems a bit odd, but that's how these things go in the business there - someone has an idea, and they look around for whoever's handy... 'Hey, who's a jazz fan out there? Guys, have you ever heard John Coltrane? Tori Amos, maybe? What the heck, Beck's pretty weird, let's get him...' So the tribute album didn't happen, but I liked what I wrote and figured I could just retitle it and stick it on '... Heavenly Toast'. It's jazz, but it's fake jazz. Then again, most jazz is fake. Just a bunch of riffs being played at different speeds and different keys. It's just all recycled... and besides, a lot of recycling goes on in every type of music."'Tower Block' got its name because I lived in a block of flats in Dalston for three days and then I moved out - it's the same one Sid Vicious was brought up in - and it was on the 17th floor and I remember looking out the window and watching how those buildings do, in fact, sway in the wind [shudders]. And the block across the road was the one I squatted it with a friend of mine, Geoff, and it's all about us getting evicted, because there had actually been an eviction notice up before we arrived, but the people who were there before us took it with them. Which was nice of them."

And what about 'Sounds Like...', which features the remarkably unhinged and very Kim Deal-like screams of your good wife, Judith?

"'Sounds Like...' is just because everyone has already said that Bush sound like them. The funniest thing was playing it to Gavin, and before it got to the punch line of the song, he turned to me and said, 'Hey, this sounds kind of like the Pixies'... just before the song did! (Laughs) Actually, it sounds remarkably like a song he wrote for Bush..."

Some listeners might have expected a Joe Satriani-style showcase for your guitar skills on this album, but it doesn't appear to have materialised.

"Oh, god, that's just boring, isn't it? I didn't bother. I do enough of that in Bush anyway; I've done enough guitar playing to last a hundred lifetimes. Guitar was the easiest part, really, and the fun stuff was playing bass and piano and recording it and trying to put it all together."

And what do the rest of Bush think of it?

"They'd heard bits when I was making it. I think they think it's all right, I think; Robin and Dave said it was quite good, and Gavin went really quiet for about an hour. And my mum really liked it, and in fact she was the person who inspired me to do it, suggesting I should. My dad's not around to hear it, but both of them encouraged me when I was growing up, as did my sisters."

And what do you reckon Bush fans will think?

"I'm sure they'll love it. (Grins, then shrugs) Who knows, actually, because it's not really written with anyone in mind. So I have no idea."

Is this record stating that you don't feel like you belong in Bush?

"No. Definitely not. I love being in the band. It's much better than not having anyone to play to, that's for sure. And it's nice to be liked. That gives you the confidence to take a few risks."

How do you feel about 'The Science Of Things' now? You have said you found the recording process lengthier than you would have liked.

"I really like 'The Chemicals Between Us' and 'Warm Machine'. In fact, I like the whole thing now; I always gradually warm up to a new record as I play it live, and I think it's a really strong album. It seems as though it's shutting [the band's detractors] up, actually, because when it comes down to it I don't think we're a grunge band particularly, we just play rock songs. And I think it's a really good rock record."

Are you happy you decided to release 'Heavenly Toast...' via the Internet?

"I think it's a really good way of doing a record because it really is completely independent. No record company, no distribution, it's just what it is. It's completely independent of all the scum of the world, and no one can control it. And it doesn't get hyped too much and it's just there, rather than being stuffed into some shop window, collecting dust or not. Obviously lots of people think that MP3s, downloadable files are the way to go, but I really wanted to have a whole album, a package, something you could hold, as well. And David [Yow, of The Jesus Lizard] has done a great job with the sleeve. In fact, that's what he does, artwork, has done for years. I just thought of him right away, since he's so creative and clever. All the right qualifications with a nice slant on life, and I thought, rather than send it to a company who'd slog over it for a few days, I'd pass it on to him. I'm optimistic that the Internet will eventually be of benefit to artists and fans, but only when everyone's got free unlimited access and not have to pay huge telephone bills. That's why it's good in America but not here in the UK, because if you are going to download big sound files, you're going to need to be online for a long time. Most people in the States use an online file, which they set to download at 2 in the morning when they're not on line themselves, because it takes hours and hours to download albums."

How pessimistic are you that small independent Internet labels, like Collecting Dust, will eventually be bought up by The Man?

"I think all the labels will be swallowed up probably one by one, because that's the only way they can survive. As Jan has seen, it is in fact very hard to sell records on the Internet, still, although maybe it's getting easier. Maybe people believe that labels have to have big companies behind them, unfortunately, to make it real. So that people will trust them. I think there's still a lot of suspicion about using credit cards on the Internet, for instance, and for better or worse, it's the big companies that tend to inspire confidence."

The success of bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth and to a lesser extent other 'alternative' bands last decade seemed to hold out the promise that good music could be accepted by the mainstream. In an era of manufactured boy bands and teen pop, do you think people's tastes can be educated, or are we doomed to crap forever?

"At the moment, probably, it's no different than it ever was. There's always been a clique of people listening to different music... by which I mean the stuff that wasn't on the shelf and easily found. But that was always the treat about liking bands like that; namely, that you couldn't buy the record in Woolworth's, and you'd have to go to specialist record shops. The problem comes when the specialist record shops disappear through lack of artists, although I guess we all hope there'll always be little indie labels who're completely independent; there'll always be a new Touch & Go, a new Sub Pop, I hope."

But it seems like a more conservative time than even when Bush began...

"It will definitely change again, though, no matter what cycle you are in. I don't know what's happening in American colleges at the moment, but you know, if the American Top 30 is anything to go by, I have to say looks pretty grim actually. But when someone says, 'Rock is dead', you just have to say '... again'. It's happened again. The nine lives of rock. And it's all on the move again and something will happen that's good."

Do you think performers generally find themselves fascinated by the Internet, like David Bowie has and Morrissey denies he has, simply because of the prospect of eavesdropping on what people say about them?

"Yeah, yeah. I've done that, and been interested since I first got a computer. But the fascination wanes, though. It's interesting at first. It's a bit like reading your press. But here's a limit to it; it gets boring after a while."

Were people's comments pretty much what you expected?

"Fan stuff it tends to be pretty standard: 'My favourite band's better than yours'; 'No it isn't'; 'Your band sucks'. At a certain age it's all about loyalty, and those comments are a way of expressing their loyalty. Mind you, it can also be very bitchy, too. It's interesting to have a look and see what's going on, but ultimately it's about vanity, and I certainly don't think it enlightens you enough to tell you how to sell records or anything."

If you were a music fan, would you have a website?

"Yeah, I'd probably want one but I wouldn't have the access to it if I were growing up here. But if I was in America, definitely. I'd probably have one for whatever band I was into. The only problem is that it devalues itself when there are too many other people doing the same. There are loads of Bush sites out there; lots of young kids doing their own amazingly complex websites about us, with huge collections of audio files and lots of up-to-the-minute news; in fact, I sometimes find myself checking them out to find out what's going on. On the other hand, there were also some completely nasty death fantasies going on out there, too. People fantasizing about killing the band... The Internet is definitely shrinking the size of the world. I think you still feel miles away when you're in New York talking to Alaska, but it brings you closer to everyone. It's like having pen pals... yeah, maybe that's all it is. A twenty-first century pen pal system And after all, you realise that people are very similar wherever they are."

Even when you're back on the road and it's winter and you're in Germany. Doesn't your heart sink at the prospect?

"Not at all! It fills my heart with blood and blood pumps around my veins at the thought of all the people in... Dortmund [laughs]. Or Birmingham. Sure, it's still fun. And when it comes right down to it, it's not a bad thing to be doing for a living. It could be a lot worse. It depends on which gig it is and which night it is and if it's a good one or bad one or a mediocre one, but when it's a great gig it's really good, and when it's a not a great gig it's ok. And, yes, when it's a bad gig it's horrible. But I can't say I mind being in Dortmund ... as long as we end up being somewhere hot and sunny eventually."