Q: So what was up with the small club gigs?

A: We were just sticking our head out of the water to say hi again. They were really warm up shows for the European festivals and Woodstock. It was all leading up to Woodstock, really, the big one in the end. We had a couple of weeks to brush the dust off, since we hadn't played around in a bit. But when we played San Diego and Pomona, we felt like we hadn't been away at all.

Q: Was this all part of a master plan, then, to do the small club gigs and then the festivals? It seemed like your appearance at Woodstock was announced later than the other shows…

A: It was all top secret at first. I know that when we were asked to do Woodstock, it was quite a while ago, and we were trying to keep things fairly quiet so they could make this big announcement. Often times, for stuff like that, they announce bands that haven't agreed to do it anyway, they're still trying to come to an agreement. But they wanted this big announcement, so there was this secrecy. It's the '60s paranoia creeping in.

Q: How were you guys preparing for the shows?

A: Well, other than rehearsing, we grabbed holidays where we could. Most of us went to Spain, different parts of Spain, and Gavin went to America. I just went to Spain for a week, I get bored after a week, there's nothing to do. But if you're planning a massive American tour, as we are, your plans have a habit of changing by the day, once you get into it, so you need to rest up, wait for the album. And for Woodstock, I started reading stories about the original, how drunk people were on stage, how some of the bands redid material in the studio for the live album. Jimi Hendrix, it was sad watching him in the film, because everyone's going, even though he's playing, and what he was playing was amazing. But they were too burnt out. But Woodstock was important, because everyone's heard of it, from my mum on down. They talk about the original one, how it was horrible, how they hated it, because every time, if you tripped in the mud, you were literally tripping, because there was acid in the mud. There was acid everywhere. A lot of people said that if you remembered it, you weren't there, because it was such a wild thing. I would think Woodstock was the original inspiration for Glastonbury, because that started as hippies in a field, too. In Europe, the summer is festival season, there are festivals everywhere for three or four months, it's just a way of life. But it's very different playing open spaces than a sweaty club, so you have to prepare for both.

Q: Do you work on different versions of the songs, then, for different spaces?

A: Well, we play more of the songs in the clubs, really. When you've got new songs, they need to characterize themselves, so you just try lots of things. You want people to get off on it without wondering what it was.

Q: What about your solo material? You have a new album, available only the Internet, called Heavenly Toast on Paradise Road. Are you going to have a chance to play any of that live?

A: Unfortunately not. I would have to get some singing practice in if I were to do that.

Q: That's rather self-deprecating, isn't it?

A: Well, I actually don't mind my voice anymore. My initial thoughts about my voice were about how horrible it is. But it's not as excruciating as I thought it was once. It's just a bit of humor now, I guess. My sister [Jan] is the one who encouraged me to do the album, I did it at her studio. David Yow from the Jesus Lizard did the artwork.

Q: Did you have any difficulty, what with your situation with Trauma, releasing a solo album?

A: We've had a few fallouts with our record company, and they withheld permission to release it, yes. I got permission when we were in LA in May, I got the letter, but it had been ready for a year at that point. So I recorded a new track, because in that year, I had already become detached from it. So in one sense, that worked out quite well, because I was able to go back and revisit it. Even though the waiting was really annoying, it worked out for the best. And the irony is that the record label releasing it, my sister's label, is called Collecting Dust, which is what it was doing for the past year.

Q: What's it like?

A: It's just under 40 minutes long, because I hate long albums. It's only since CDs have come out that everyone seems to think they need to make albums that are an hour plus. I don't know about you, but I find it very hard to listen to a whole CD these days. I get to track 17 and have to pick myself up off the floor. I like short, 40-minute albums, and the Bush album is a short album as well, not as short as that, but I just think it doesn't give you time to get bored. That's why I like old vinyl, because you have to get up and change the side.

Q: What was it like working with your sister? She's your older sister, correct?

A: "Slightly older sister," he said delicately. Never reveal a lady's age. She's been living in the States for ten years now. She's worked with the Thompson Twins, Cyndi Lauper, wrote songs with her for her last two albums. She's full on, she's nice, very talented, and she works really hard. She hates the business side of things, which is pretty scummy at the best of times, and a lot worse usually. All the bands on her label are independent from anyone, apart from here. They're independent even of retail – you have to buy it off the Internet.

Q: Are you going to have time to promote it, what with your Bush duties?

A: If no one knows it's available, no one's going to buy it. That's the tricky thing. I suppose I'll back it up with touring and publicity, but that's an awkward situation. I'm a little bit lucky, being in Bush, because it gives the record a slightly elevated status. There's some sort of publicity inherent in that, I guess. I'll do as much as I can. But I don't think I will play shows. I'll do as much as I can otherwise, like chat on the net. It's coming out on the net, so in one sense, I should concentrate on that, probably.

Q: So what do you think of the direction music is taking, with digital downloads and such?

A: Things are changing pretty rapidly. I'm sure when record companies spot the buck there, they'll be there very, very quickly. I think it's almost like a natural progression, isn't it, for the music industry to go that way, where you download the artwork or the whole package. I can't see that it'd quite be as satisfying as actually having a record in your hands, if you have to sort of cut the package up yourself and put it together like a breakfast cereal packet. The Internet is so vast it's hard to put your head around it. I just find it very slow. Five years ago, in '94, it was very quick, but now there so many people on, there is so much demand, so much traffic, it's hard to get set up, and it's a pain to download. But if you're up at three in the morning, it's really quick. The change is that people have computers available to them at work. And cable modems. In Nashville, where my sister's studio is, they're testing new technology with cable modems, so the speed goes down when people watch TV. There are always hiccups in everything.

Q: Some of the new Bush songs seem to be commenting on technology…

A: Yeah, "Jesus Online," [singer] Gavin [Rossdale]'s been taking a look at it. From what I gather about it, it's more of a love song, but yeah, it's also a reference to that, to the online culture, which is what everything seems to be about now, or is getting about. We tried to nod to, to embrace technology more on this record, to incorporate it. We used computers, synth programming, recording bits into computers and messing around with them. So we did some of that. We tried new sounds, to shake it up a bit. It's not just another straight rock album, which would be a bit easier, a bit boring, a bit lazy, not forward thinking. We're still Bush, though, that's the thing. In the back of it, we're still the same band. There's elements of electronica, but it's not as radical as that. It's just sounds you wouldn't normally find. Stuff that I could have done with a guitar, but it's nice to drop it into the computer and fiddle around with it. We sampled ourselves. And just strange noises, like Gavin's dog Winston, who is always on the records, shoved in there. We stick in a sample, manipulate it, and make it sound like anything other than what it is. Winston is buried in the song "Altered States" somewhere. There's no escaping that damn mutt. Maybe I should put my dog Kaya on the next album. Her name, which I got from an old Bob Marley album, coincidentally means Bush in Jamaican. It was meant to be, I guess.