UPFRONT: In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the U.S., you changed the title of your new album's first single from "Speed Kills," to "People That We Love"—a lyric from the song's chorus. You also changed the cover art. The original featured a plane flying, and now it's totally different. How did you come to those decisions?

ROSSDALE: On the day of the attacks, I was talking with Dennis Morris, who's a friend of the band and a photographer. He said to me, "What about the plane?" And I was like, "You're so right. We've got to change the plane." Music is there to heal and therefore I just didn't want to do anything [insensitive]. I felt so much for those people who suffered and those people who lost people . . . . I don't know if you've seen the cover but it was a great cover.

UPFRONT: I saw it because I was in some of the ads.

ROSSDALE: Yeah. The ads had gone out earlier. It was a really cool cover. Unfortunately, a plane—what used to be an instrument of change, progress, travel—has now become an instrument of death. So now it doesn't mean the same thing it meant before.

UPFRONT: I was listening to the song "Out of This World" on the new album, and the opening line seemed really striking to me in light of September 11.

ROSSDALE: "We go into the arms of those that remember us."

UPFRONT: Right. That, obviously, for a listener now has a different meaning just due to recent events. Does it feel that way to you, too?

ROSSDALE: Well, the thing is, let's not forget that death is still the same thing. My point was that we know nothing about the afterlife. Certain people believe in it. Certain people don't. I don't disbelieve anything, by the way. I'm very open to everything. But the one thing you can be certain of is that you will be remembered and treasured and cherished by people that are left behind. That doesn't change because of September 11, it just makes it more poignant.

UPFRONT: Golden State is your fourth album with Bush. How has your image of yourself changed over the years?

ROSSDALE: I really don't mean to be pretentious, but I realize now that I am an artist. Recently, I did music for a short film for this painter who went to the Philippines to be crucified. Sebastian Horsley is his name. He wanted to paint crucifixions, and he felt that to be crucified would purge him and help him reinvent himself, because he had been going through his own drug hell. And he would be able to paint crucifixions because he felt it. So, I did the music for him. The film [of his experience in the Philippines] was going to be in an art gallery when his paintings were ready. So he called me an artist and he was telling me off. He was saying, "No, you are an artist." And I'm like, "I'm a musician, I don't paint." But he's like, "No, you're an artist." So, I just think it's essential that you're always reaching out and you're not constrained by people. In the music business they're obsessed by numbers and auditions and where you are and how much is being played. For me and for my band it should be about being as brilliant as we can and being as human as we can and really just trying to be as good as we can.

UPFRONT: So you don't worry about how well you're doing on he charts?

ROSSDALE: All you've got to do about the charts is, just when you think that being No. 8 is amazing, look at the top seven. Realize maybe it's a pile of [dung] or maybe it's really good, you know what I mean? How can you judge it? It's just a number. And so, on the album before this one I just tried to reach out. Now, on this one, Golden State, the band really wanted to make it very much a band record, no one else involved, no programmers. I was like, OK. So, that made it a very direct record, which is different from the third album.

UPFRONT: What did the fans think of the third record? I know that the critics didn't like it as much as the other two, but what did the fans think?

ROSSDALE: In England, in Europe, it was our most successful record.

UPFRONT: Very different from the reaction in the U.S. Why do you think that is?

ROSSDALE: In America it was hard because it didn't fit into the radio formats, I guess. It didn't connect. There are number of reasons. I was very central to that, you know. It was my fault because I'm the writer. I think the record sold like 2 million copies, so apparently it's a 2 million stinker.

UPFRONT: And you're a bust at 2 million. Like Alanis Morrissette, a bust at 5 million.

ROSSDALE: Yeah. And I think that's a little strange. What can you do? We had some amazing shows, everything was going really good, and they're saying in Europe it was better than it's ever been. We just got to the point in America where there was a lot of confusion and tension with our record label and with our management. No one thought we should come on tour at the end. We were planning to finish off that last record by doing a massive American tour, and then it was like, "Oh my God, no one's going to the shows!" There was all this panic and fear, and so everyone thought we should stop and do another record. So I said, "OK, let's stop and do another record." But that left a bit of a hole for us on touring and reaching as many fans as we used to reach in America. But I the reaction was still as passionate wherever we played, and we had great people and great fan mail and great connections with the fans—just maybe there weren't as many.

UPFRONT: When The Science of Things came out it was the height of Backstreet Boy-mania. So, that may have affected you.

ROSSDALE: Yeah, we were slightly caught in the middleground because it was either kind of frat-boy Limp Bizkit or it was the pop thing. It seemed that everything between was not as commercially valid. That's just the way it goes. I just feel really lucky and I really enjoy making music. It's an amazing life to be able to just indulge life with pleasurable things like writing songs and being in the studio and having a legacy of record making. That's just brilliant. So, I'm lucky to still be doing it.

UPFRONT: Well, now you're definitely going to launch a tour. When you go back and listen to the old songs, how do they change for you as the writer?

ROSSDALE: Well they all are still pretty poignant to sing and to play. There are certain elements of certain moments where I'm like, "Wow, poor guy, is that what you really felt when you wrote that?" And there are other times when I think some of it sounds greatly naïve. On the first record, I say "and fame is a whore." Now, I'm thinking, "What do you know about fame, you've never been famous." It's a justifiably pretentious line. I had to be pretentious because there were things I had to pretend about because I didn't know.

UPFRONT: You've just started a multi-album deal with Atlantic—a big record label. What advantages do you think they can offer you that Trauma, a smaller label, couldn't?

ROSSDALE: At Trauma, because we were the biggest band on the label, if we'd go on a radio show, we'd have to plug all the other acts on Trauma. The idea for us here [at Atlantic], is that we don't have that pressure. They've got plenty of other big acts, so we're not quite having to pull along a whole lot of other CDs. The hope is that we're not quite as, uh, not exploited. Well, exploited, really, because exploited is really the right word. I was trying to think of something more temperate because I don't want to be disrespectful to those guys at Trauma.

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