Episode 18 – From Camden to Stardom: A Chat With Bush’s Gavin Rossdale

[Derek Oswald] (0:05 – 0:30)
Hello, and welcome to the AltWire podcast, where we explore the stories and perspectives behind the music that moves us. I’m your host, Derek Oswald, and a few weeks ago, I spoke to an artist that has been on my bucket list of interviews for a long time. I grew up listening to this band, and I am thrilled to welcome none other than the legendary Gavin Rossdale of Bush.

Thank you for tuning in, and I hope you enjoy this next episode of the AltWire podcast. Well, hey, thank you so much for joining me today, Gavin. How are you doing today?

[Gavin Rossdale] (0:30 – 0:31)
I’m doing pretty good, thanks.

[Derek Oswald] (0:32 – 0:44)
After 30 years, you guys have amassed a timeless catalogue of music. How does it feel as an artist to look back at the fact that you’ve been doing this now for basically three decades?

[Gavin Rossdale] (0:45 – 1:39)
Obviously, it’s amazing. It’s funny, when people put time on things like that, you make sure you go, oh man, I can physically now have perspective on how long that time is there for, like 30 years left. So you go, oh no, you don’t have the finite side of it.

30 years ago, I barely thought about anything within the next two days of time. So I appreciate it all, and it’s a great journey. And the best part is that we’re still on it, and better than ever.

I know that can’t go on forever, but I feel that the band’s better than ever. So it makes me excited, because it’s not like, here’s all we made earlier. There’s always new stuff, and there’s always new things going on, and there’s actually a new record, and there’s new staging, and we’re playing these great venues, and we’re excited to be going out on tour.
It feels like we’ve been out for a minute, but we’ve only had maybe a month and a half, we’re not on the road.

[Derek Oswald] (1:40 – 1:46)
Sixteen Stone had, it seemed like everything that you guys released from that album turned to gold.

[Gavin Rossdale] (1:46 – 1:47)
Wow, actually.

[Derek Oswald] (1:47 – 2:03)
I like that pun.

Turned to platinum every time you release something. And to you, looking back at Younger You, what was the one moment as an artist seeing how much this album was blowing up where you kind of realized things were never going to be the same?

[Gavin Rossdale] (2:03 – 6:11)
I knew something was up when the first show we did in 1995, and I think it was January or February, I’m not sure. At CBGB, it was the first night of the tour, of our first ever tour, where we’d had a song on the radio, it had been out since November. So we were having, in the middle of a hit record, our first hit record, with a brand new band, and we did the soundcheck at CBGB, and it was hilarious, like one toilet, some bathroom you share with everyone, stank of like, stay on beer and pissy bathrooms and stuff like that.

Graffiti everywhere, but it really felt like, wow, something is fucking happening here. But it’s only when we left to go get something to eat before the show, when we came back, we couldn’t get in. We couldn’t get backstage, it was so packed.
I mean, we could get in, but it was hard to push through, it was like all the best shows I’d ever been to, club shows, I never went to big shows, I didn’t grow up going to arenas or anything like that. It’s always like clubs, pubs, that’s where we saw all our music growing up. And there’s sometimes the Electric Ballroom, or the National on Kilburn Highway, but they’re all like theaters, very small theaters, right?

So just trying to get through, and all the girls were super hot and cool downtown, it was Lower East Side, fucking cooler than Shakes, just cool dudes. Everything was like, wow, I’d come from Camden in London, and this seemed really far out, it was like CBG, it was like Patti Smith, that’s like MC5, that’s television, so there’s so many iconic bands there. And all the bands at the time, whether it was the Pumpkins, whether it was Nirvana, whether it was Soundgarden, they all played.

On the tour we were going on, when I looked at the clubs, all those bands, Mudhoney, The Jesus Lizard, they’d all played those places. So that was the moment where I was like, I didn’t know the scale of it, so I mean, I’m not talking scale, I’m just talking shock, like fuck, like shock, like wow, this is really like, we never experienced that, this is legitimately… I’d had a record out before when I was in a band, my first band in London, and I remember when that record was out, I’d walk around the streets going, anyone that wants to hear it could hear it, you know, I wonder how many people are listening to it, like no one, it’s like no one’s, but no one’s listening to it.

So then to do a few years of getting pushed together, a band in between, it really got nowhere, but I learned what I wanted to do in that band, so it was a very useful lesson, but yeah, so that moment was a really great one. Another one is, then big ones are like, you know, Roskilde, where it’s like 60,000 people, you’re like, well, like the first radio shows I did, I played, you know, like that HFS festival, it’s a stadium, and I was like, how are we playing a stadium? Well, the truth is, you’re not.

The radio station has a show, they have enough listeners to fill the stadium, and yours is one of the acts, but you couldn’t help but like, ignorantly be like, people aren’t going to come see you, correct, but they are going to come see all the hits on the radio, and it was an amazing time, so stuff like that blew me away, and then, you know, I’m grateful every day, you know, just to have the freedom to live and create and live my life exactly how I want it on my terms, you know, it’s mad luxury, you know, it’s all relative, you know, like, and I love that comparison is a thief of joy, you know, like, there are a million people who live far more, you know, lavishly, or well, or pursue their dreams to a bigger extent, or are more successful, of course, but I know that I’ve got, we’re in a zone that’s kind of cool, I had this like, built-in H2O, you know.

[Derek Oswald] (6:12 – 6:20)
You know, I love the way you talk about some of these venues you’ve gone to. What was one of the most unconventional or weirdest venues that you’ve ever played at?

[Gavin Rossdale] (6:21 – 7:06)
Well, I was a real hustler, you know, I always wanted to really fucking my band to work, and so when I was not signed, when I was in my first band, Midnight, we used to go around, and we were all like best friends, and we had loads of, we’d print out all these invites, and we’d go around to clubs, just hand out flyers, just go out all night, literally a thousand, you know, each for the night, and, you know, you’d go around clubs, and you’d be like, you know, you kept the bass player chatting at the bar too long, you’re like, listen, we’ve got, like, stuff to do, you know, let’s go, and I got us a gig, at the, what do you call it, it’s not Madden Tree Swords, but it’s the one about, it’s one in East London, and it’s a torture chamber museum.

[Derek Oswald] (7:07 – 7:07)
Yeah.

[Gavin Rossdale] (7:07 – 7:09)
It’s really like Hammer House of Horrors.

[Derek Oswald] (7:11 – 7:11)
Interesting.

[Gavin Rossdale] (7:12 – 9:16)
Right, and I didn’t have a record deal, didn’t have money, just was young, and we were like 18, I don’t know how we did it, but we went in there, and we got a gig.

Anyhow, so going to that soundcheck, so you go in the exhibit, now normally it’s like, you know, the people working there, and this and that, but it was a history of torture, a history of torture stuff, and everyone was dead, and had all these ghoulish things that normally go around the group, but, so that was really scary to go to that. And then we did a gig where we didn’t even get a sign from it, you know, we’re trying to get signed, you know, I was trying to get signed. Someone should have signed with me as an entrepreneur, just the fact that I could get that gig, because I went in and got it.

I have no idea how I did it, but I just remembered it now, I can say that. So that wasn’t even a bush, but that was the funniest thing I ever did. I got, so, you know, in a torture museum.

That’s the first time I’ve told that story. Sometimes I get worried, you know, I’ll ask a question, if I go, I can’t help it, people ask a direct question, there are times where I repeat myself, because it’s the same question, so you answer it 15 different ways, but if you’re going to do 35 interviews, and that’s the question. So I enjoy being, getting set, you know, very different answers.

That is just something that I hadn’t even thought of myself. So it was scary going in, you know, like the chopping blocks, things like that. They were mean, they’d hang drawing and quartering people, that’s what they did.

They cut out their incisors, let their intestines hang. They were in the middle ages, brutal, medieval times, burning of witches and stuff like that, or people they thought were witches, obviously. Burn her!

He said witch, burn her! I mean, like, and they could have burned them alive, you know, they were alive. So I don’t know how long it takes to die from burning, but, oh my God, I mean, they were terrible.

And people are still are terrible, but most of us have regressed into sort of, you know, semi-athletic couch potatoes that wouldn’t hang, draw and quarter people, luckily.

[Derek Oswald] (9:16 – 9:40)
You know, it’s kind of funny hearing you say there’s a witch, burn her, I just straight Monty Python vibes there. I’m loving how you’re telling me like all these fun, offbeat stories. So here, I’ll throw another one at you.

You’ve definitely engaged with quite a few fans over the past couple of years. What is your most memorable experience in meeting a fan?

[Gavin Rossdale] (9:40 – 12:25)
The tragic stories are obviously the most poignant, you know, when you meet people who, you know, to meet a girl who’s known to me through her uncle or her dad or mom, my mom loved it and they passed away. And so I have a link to something that was important to their parent, you know, that sort of, that’s super intense. So I’ve met all types.

We have some extremely loyal, incredible fans. I know everyone says that it’s such a cliche, literally every single person that has a fan thinks that their fan is the best fan. It’s just, it’s a natural order of things.

Like, you know, you think your team is the best or your star side is the best or something. People can’t help divorce that, you know, that experience. But we have this thing called the Bush Army and there’s this girl, Christine, the commander, we call her, who runs it.

And really, not only they galvanize a lot of support around the world, the Bush Army in different areas. These girls, I mean, I think we obviously don’t let them pain, but they still get themselves to so many shows, like a hundred shows, so many times that I’m always thinking to myself, are you going to get over the gag soon? And you’re going to be like, this is bullshit.

I’ve seen through it. No, but I, so my weirdest experience with Christina of many is she was hobbling. So I, she was out of the backside of the venue and, and I saw her and she looked, didn’t, she’s hobbling on one leg.

So I was like, what’s going on? She goes, yeah, I hurt my ankle. I did something, I twisted it, it fell off this way.

So I went inside, I got a bandage. So I wrapped her up. I’m, I’m an odd jock, you know, so I’m really good at wrapping because I have wrapped enough of my own ankles.

I’ve got two, but a number of times I’ve wrapped them. Right. So I wrap her ankle.

She goes, Oh my God, that’s so much better. Thank you so much. Did the show where I saw her again.

Next time I saw her, I told her she had actually broken her leg. And so she’d seen the show with a broken leg. Now that’s dedication.

Now I’m not saying she has not smoked weed, but you need a lot of weed to dull that pain. So the, the story, the greatest accolade of the greatest fan kind of display manifestation of someone’s love or display of love was someone who’s was like, I’ll get that cast tomorrow. So she broke her leg.

I was watching the show. Crazy.

[Derek Oswald] (12:25 – 12:41)
As you’re looking at how you are as an artist, how do you feel you personally, as well as Bush has evolved over these last couple of decades? Like what is your most proudest thing about your evolution as a band and as an artist?

[Gavin Rossdale] (12:42 – 15:53)
Well, I think as a songwriter, I just keep getting closer to the bone, you know, and I’ve just written another record as close to the bone than the last one. And I keep getting more proud of the records because I think that, I think that the only thing that happens as you mature is you go, fuck, I better edit myself better because you don’t have a worse abundance of time. You know, I saw a look at it realistically and I go, fuck, you know, five more records, six more records.
I, you know, I don’t want to be doing this forever. And I don’t want to be sort of one of those people that refuses to stop when it starts to tail off with the law of diminishing returns, you know, that’d be terrible. But each record gets more lethal because it’s, it’s such a big job.

I could write a record, you know, really easily, but there’s not to say that record would infiltrate the set. So when I write a song, unless I can really come up with something pretty cool, it’s literally no point. No point.

What’s the point? You know, I wrote this really mediocre mid-tempo ballad. What do you guys think of it?

What, what do you want to, what do you want to take out of the set for that? So there’s a degree of no function to it unless, so it just ups my ante. And I think that’s the, the main thing I’ve, my biggest growth is to be aware of my, my, not limitations because I have lots of weapons in my arsenal of being a musician.

I’m not that, I’m not like falsely modest. I think I’ve, sort of, learned my craft. I have a way of doing it.
I’m incredibly unconfident at one point of the day, then I’m incredibly confident at another. And then I’m like, oh my God, I never, this is awful. This is the last time I’ve ever done it right.

You know, so I torture myself horrifically through the entire process. But when I get to the end of it and I’ve been fist fighting myself, I sort of like dust myself off and I go, you know what, these are all right. Just don’t need to go through that process.

But it’s part of my process. So I just think that as we get older, if you’re a creative person and you care and you have that fire burning, and I have a real fire, it’s all about editing yourself to get better. Like I just, what I’m seeing here in this room, writing songs that I’ve just done last week, you know, the last few weeks, I just, I used to be, I used to be a bit like, oh, this feels good.

That feels good. That bit. No, no, no, no.

Chris will do something really good on that. You know, he’ll play something super, I’ll play something really wild on that, you know, because, but I still, I try not to have any of those gaps. I try to have no weak points.

So it goes from me to the studio and Chris, and to be going through the sort of funnel of the producer and Chris, who’s incredibly opinionated about everything. So it’s just the editing thing that I think is really powerful to be at the, at the sort of pray to the feet of the editor in you. You know, that’s, that’s what I find is the most interesting and important thing, you know?

So I hope I’m getting better. Obviously there’ll be a point where I won’t, but for now we’re on a rise.

[Derek Oswald] (15:54 – 16:10)
You’re absolutely right. Writing lyrics sometimes, especially if you’re getting personal can really cut to the bone. How do you tune your emotional state before performing or writing in order to be able to express yourself so openly?

Like, what do you do to get yourself in that frame of mind?

[Gavin Rossdale] (16:11 – 20:06)
Just be as honest as possible. There were times I was sitting here and I don’t know what to, you know, I’m hearing something, but I haven’t got any particular words yet. And then I just go, I’m obsessed with this concept that, or when we look for answers, if we can’t find things, physical things, or not spiritual, I’m not that spiritual, but like things, questions, you have the answers and the solutions are always close at hand.

But it’s so easy to overlook this very limited sports field, wherever all the answers are, and look out there and look everywhere else. And so I’ve become quite disciplined in, um, you have to be obviously in the focus of it. I do believe in that thing of, I don’t wait for like things like inspiration.

I just don’t believe in that stuff. Um, wait till an idea comes. I just think that if you’re a professional, you just sit in a studio, like Tin Pan Alley and you choose the hours you’re going to work and you, you, you, you say, I got to produce something for my button chair and I’m going to do it.

I can’t do it. I can’t think of any songs while I’m going for a walk to get a coffee. Well, you know, then you’re not in the right space.

So I find myself putting myself in a really controlled environment, taking away all extra sort of, uh, you know, things to defy your focus and be as honest as possible. Well, why am I thinking like, why am I pissed off today? What’s, what’s bothering me?

What’s making me happy? What’s making me annoyed? What is that quality someone’s doing?

And that just gives me a, just a way into the headset, the mindset, something like that. And then I just sit and wait. You’re off.

Often it can be like the, you know, a whole bunch of words that are bullshit just to get me to where I start to get the interesting and I get rid of those words. And they’re the ones that start and they, they, then, you know, and Bob Dylan said the hardest thing about for a songwriter is that no line in a song is as good as the best line of a song. And no stanza, no verse of a song is as good as the best verse of a song.

And it’s such a brilliant simple concept, but he was the master and Bowie did it. Bowie was the only one I could think of where every line is a fucking feast. I’m a songwriter and every line is a feast.

He, you know, Johnny’s in the basement. Johnny wants to suck on my coke. How the fuck did that come from?
You know, it’s just so out there. It’s so fucking esoteric and creative. And if you’re an honest artist, all I mean, I mean, I’m an honest artist and so is he.

In that nothing matters where you get things from, where you cut things from, with your brain, whether it’s something you’ve read, whether it’s a, you know, Chris Martin looking at the yellow pages where I was writing and he looked over and he goes, it was all yellow in honor of Chris Martin. I wore this shirt to that. I do love him and Coldplay.

So, but the happenstance of it all, the kind of man ray qualities of it, mistakes, and it’s nothing matters. All that matters is you’re a slave, a muse to get a great song, getting a great song that just elevates everything, you know, and that’s what it’s all about for me. And I’m never happier than when I write a song.

Even, I mean, I do love performing, obviously, I fucking feel great afterwards and I love tequila on the rocks, you know, like hanging out with the band backstage and being like, fuck, that was a great experience. But something hits different when I write a song. Maybe it’s that it fuels all the rest of it.

It’s like the furnace. It’s like the fuel to the, it’s like the coals on the barbecue.

[Derek Oswald] (20:08 – 20:18)
Well, hey, I mean, this has been such an incredible chat. You know, you’re absolutely such an insightful person. I’ve really enjoyed you joining me today.

[Gavin Rossdale] (20:18 – 20:19)
Thanks for having me.

[Derek Oswald] (20:20 – 20:37)
Thank you for joining me for today’s episode. You like what you heard, please be sure to follow us, subscribe to our channel on YouTube and share this episode with your friends and family. Your support means the world to us and helps us continue to produce more great episodes.

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