"I LOVE DIFFERENT MOODS," SAYS

BUSH'S

GAVIN ROSSDALE

BY ADAM ST. JAMES (January 1997 Circus Magazine Article)

Breathe in, breathe out, Gavin Rossdale: it's time to tour the colonies again.

As if Bush didn't spend enough time on the road between December 1994 and May 1996, repeatedly criss-crossing the United States and Canada in support of their debut album sixteen stone. Gavin and his bandmates: guitarist Nigel Pulsford, bassist Dave Parsons and drummer Robin Goodridge are now ready to hit the highway again, this time with a Razorblade Suitcase in their hands.

That's the title of the hard-working British quartet's sophomore effort. It's the long-awaited follow-up to sixteen stone, the debut album that spawned five singles and sold more than six millioni copies. This popularity was due to their heavy exposure and popularity in North America. Bush toured for 18 months, playing over 230 shows. Their music quickly became a staple at alternative and rock radio stations. Heavy MTV rotation of videos for "Everything Zen", "Machinehead" and especially the yearning, moody "Glycerine" helped make Bush a household name among the Generation-X and teen crowd.

So last summer when Bush strolled into England's Sarm West Studios, (and later teh historic Abbey Road Studios) they had planned to record tracks for a January 1997 release. However, the group; producer Stever Albini; and the band's label, Traums/Interscope Records, were so excited with the outcome of the sessions, that they decided to push the release date up two months to November 19.

The 13 songs on Razorblade Suitcase are far from carbon copies of the originals. As early as last winter Rossdale and Pulsford had both warned they had no intention of resting on their laurels and putting out sixteen stone volume two.

"I want to be more experimental," said Rossdale, whose parted auburn, kinky locks and tall, lanky frame has made him one of the sexiest symbols of the 1990's.

Goodridge told Circus,"This next record is what we've learned after doing 230 shows. It's the leap we've made from a good record to a better live band. We're better live than we were on the record. But the record is what we were at the time. The natural progression is that if we sound better live now, then the next record should be great."

Rossdale seems to have lived up to his promise too. If you consider the influences that move the 29-year-old musician - everything from Nirvana to the Pixies, Siouxie and the Banshees, Brian Eno, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, reggae, dub, classical guitar and a healthy dose of jazz giants Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk - you know to expect the unexpected.

"I love to have all different moods," Rossdale explained. "It's a really interesting journey for me because my whole existence is based upon the meeting of my musical instinct with my musical knowledge. The more I play and the more I listen, the more I hear."

He hears just fine too. Not one to et a good idea pass him by, Rossdale wrote most of Razorblade Suitcase while on the road over teh course of the last two years. Performing at increasingly large venues, and playing night after night to ecstatic throngs of new-found fans, the singer/guitar player found plenty of ideas for new material.

And after the four members of Bush had worked their 90-minute concert set to near flawless execution, they began to use the pre-show soundchecks to test new ideas, occasionally throwing one or two newly-minted songs into the evening's concert to see how they went over.

A live audience is the perfect judge of a band's efforts, and all four Bushmen shared the highs and lows of the crowd's reactions. In the long-run, though, songwriting is still largely Gavin's domain. Robin, Dave and Nigel are free to join in as they see fit, but everything truly hinges on Rossdale's initial vision.

"I'll bring the song in," he said. "Whatever I'm playing: a basic riff to the track and all the chord prgressions and stuff. I'm usually quite thorough. Usually what Nigel ends up playing is what he ends up playing. It just settles its way in. It's not a situation where anyone is forced to play anything they didn't write. Obviously everyone's got to be happy and they've got to feel part of it and be creative. It's a weird term, the term 'songwriter.' It's not as non-specific as most musicians would make out. It really is the lyrics, the chords, the basic riff. That's what constitutes a song to me."

With five hit singles under his belt, Rossdale obviously knows what he's talking about.

Rossdale's dominance within the band and his outspokenness has made his childhood upbringing almost an irony. He was so timid as a tyke that he let his older sister speak for him until he was four years old. When his parents divorced, Rossdale diverted his aggression by becoming a punker and tried to fit in with the tough gangs in his North London neighborhood. He also reportedly used to shoplift from supermarkets. It wasn't until later that creating music bcame more important to him.

Despite Bush's rather accelerated climb from obscure to obscenely successful - just two years from house painters and part-time musicians to worldwide stardom - Rossdale has had plenty of experience with the whole musical process.

Though he admits to "basically loafing" until the age of 18 or 19, once the urge to follow a musical path hit him, he never looked back. Rossdale started singing and put together bands called Midnight and Head that played around his native London. Midnight, his fist band, actually scored a record deal and released a few singles. Unfortunately the group didn't rack up any measurable success. Frustrated, Rossdale resigned and picked p a guitar. Now 29, he's been playing guitar only six years.

"I didn't want to be reliant on anyone else to write songs and get moving," he said, explaining his motivation to pick up the instrument. "I generally started by just playing my own material. I sort of did that really horrible singer thing, where you play acoustic guitar. That was real scary."

Not afraid of a challenge, Rossdale even tried his hand in the States, living in Los Angeles for six months. But it was upon his return to England that he met Pulsford, late one night in a London nightclub. Discovering they shared many of the same muscial interests, (both favoring Pixies and Breeders) the pair hit it off and began to work together under the name Future Primitive.

They soon added the rhythm section of Goodridge and Parsons, and changed their name to Bush (named after the Shephard's Bush area of London where they were based). They began gigging around London and in nearby counties. Unfortunately, the British music scene was just being swept up in the lighter pop music that has made bands like Oasis and Blur so successful. Bush's heavy-handed yet melodic sonic assault scared away the U.K. record compuany executives and was ignored by the British music press.

Determined, the four musicians pooled their resources, working as house painters by day (but not as often, as they claimed in last year's press bio), rehearsing and playing any clubs that would have them by night. To pay for the studio time in order to record their first demo tapes, the scheming painters watered down the paint and pocketed some of the money from each job. They used painting compan trucks to move band equipment to their shows at night.

Not exactly a huge success in their hometown, bu deeply moved by the sounds emanating from America, and especially Seattle, Bush stuck to their game plan. With Rossdale serving as the band's main creative force, the musicians continued writing, rehearsing, recording and gigging until the right opportunity came along. That happened in late 1993, when Rob Kahane, president of American indie label Acme Records (later changed to Trauma) came to see the band on the advice of a friend.

Kahane liked what he saw and heard; Bush and Trauma decided to give each other a try. Shortyly thereafter, provided with a modest budget, Rossdale and his crew went into a serious recording studio with producers Clive Langer and ALan WinStanley and recorded sixteen stone.

Looking back on it now, Rossdale admits there is one thing he would change about that course of events, and that involves touring. It's hard to get the opportunity to tour in England, he explained.

"Generally you'd play every three weeks. It's so difficult to imporve [at that rate], but that's really how you learn. We recorded sixteen stone without doing a tour. It had been that sort of hard, typical un-signed band nightmare of 'Who's gonna pay for you to go on tour?' It was hard enough to pay our rent, let alone everything else."

Rossdale tried to convince Trauma that even a short tour of England was necessary before recording the album to make the band, and the resulting album, better. Kahane and company didn't think that was necessary. It's possible that with more music industry experience, the record company execs had more confidence in Rossdale than he had in himself.

"When we signed the record deal I begged 'Please send us on tour for a month," Rossdale recalled, "and they said, 'Yeah, yeah.' But when it came down to it, it didn't really work out like that."

Of course everything turned out just fine - better than fine, really. sixteen stone sold more copies than either teh band or record label ever dared to dream. All of which gives Rossdale the artistic liscense to really explore his creative impulses on Razorblade Suitcase.

Much of the confidence shown on the new release stems from Rossdale's on-stage guitar interplay with Pulsford, and his own increases six-string abililties. These days he's really got those Fender Jazzmaster's screaming.

"My playing is catching up with my instinct," he said, "though that was there from as soon as I began. Even in the bands that were no good. I always felt like I knew what I wanted in a situation musically. Of course in theory you can say 'I sold six million records' and...I just don't know. I want the songs to be good and I feel like I have an instinct about songs, when they're good in my opinion."

He's also got an instinct about working with Pulsford, as he did with the guitarists in his previous bands. With Bush's guitar-drenched sound, Rossdale realizes that that relationship is especially important.

"I've always worked really closely with the guitarists in the other bands that I was in. I would sing them stuff, how I wanted it to be. My interaction with Nigel is great! The vibe is to give each other plenty of space. I hate crowded music. I've always felt that you should each get one great sound instead of three clumped together sounds. I like really spacious music. Music obviously being as much the space as the sound. We just try to streamline it.

"Nigel is a brilliant guitar player and it's brilliant to work with him. Two guitars are excellent when you really want to beef it up, and then sometimes you try to thin it out. Somtimes I'll play in a verse or he'll play in a verse. We really try to share it, and then come in with his kind of finesse and solos. I do a couple of solos, one or two things, just fooling around. He's the finesse really and I'm just catching up."

Not that Nigel is ever really going to let Gavin catch up:

"Learn from him? No, he doesn't show me anything," Rossdale admitted. "He knows I'm nicking enough off him over his shoulder. It's not in his interest."

Ever the die-hard road warrior, Rossdale's interest is to get back onstage ASAP. Bush plans to begin a major North American tour in early March. With a second album - and now twice as much material to perform live - Bush fans can expect the "Razorblade Suitcase" tour to be nothing short of spectacular.

CAPTIONS

PICTURE OF NIGEL AND GAVIN SITTING ON THE FLOOR:

Rossdale (r) attributes his interaction with fellow guitarist Pulsford (l) in helping create their fireworks. "NIgel is a brilliant guitar player. Two guitars are excellent when you really want to beef it up, and then sometimes you try to thin it out...The vibe is to give each other plenty of space."

PICTURE OF GAVIN PLAYING GUITAR:

Rossdale was so timid as a tyke that he let his older sister speak for him until he was four years old.

PICTURE OF DAVE AND ROBIN SITTING ON THE FLOOR:

Bassist Dave Parsons (l) and drummer Robin Goodridge (r), along with the other band members, are in for the long stretch beginning next year. After returning home from Japan and performing on a Saturday Night Live episode, they will tour the States in March, with 110 shows planned.

BIG PICTURE OF GAVIN AND DAVE PLAYING ON STAGE:

Just prior to visiting the studio to record Razorblade Suitcase, Gavin Rossdale said that compromising their sound on the new tunes was the last thing on their minds. "Our backs are up against the wall as far as writing and completing it, as far as feeling that it's a record that's going to make us happy. Working with producer Stever Albini is brilliant becasue he'l been a seminal figure for me since my first band."