Vox Article

Living on the hedge

by Roger Morton

VOX - April 1997

"So how much would it cost for something like a mansion?" In a crowded dressing room backstage at the Manchester Academy, the most successful English slacker on the planet is attempting to sort himself out on the summer rentals market. His eyes are slightly red. His jeans are pock-marked with holes and, for a couple of seconds, it seems possible that Gavin Rossdale is making a droll remark.

A mansion! Aha ha, yes! As if that kind of thing happened these days. Except no one seems to be laughing and the grey-haired gentleman in front of him is taking Mr Rossdale and is scuffed pair of brothel creepers very, very seriously indeed.

"You mean you're looking for something you can rattle around in a bit?"

The estate agent gives the palms-up 'anything's possible' gesture and Gavin considers his requirements.

"Well, yeah, like something with a big room to rehearse in and plenty of space for the dog. What about something white? Like a big sort of John Lennon-type mansion?"

The nearby photographer and journalist nod in dumbstruck agreement. Yes, white would be good. Black dog. White mansion. And a pint of Guinness at the grand piano with the French windows opening onto the Wicklow Hills. Gavin, see, is about to do what a Brit rock'n'roller's got to do when you've sold ten million albums worldwide. He's doing a Def Leppard - fixing himself up with a tax-exile abode in Ireland. Moreover, since he has to leave behind his newly purchased North London house, and spend almost all of 1997 promoting the global smash second LP, 'Razorblade Suitcase', he figures he might as well have some residential fun.

"I always thought that whole mad lifestyle thing was dead," he says, holding a lager in one hand and his perspective with the other. "There seemed to be like a ceiling on the level of success Englash bands could have. But once you get into America, it's like funny money. I stand in my front room now and look around me and I just laugh."

Five years ago, Gavin was distinctly unencumbered by the need to crack up at the absurdity of his nouveau 'Hello' potential. The distortion pedal of mega-unit sales had yet to be pressed. With one failed pop career behind him, he was living in a dark basement flat in London's Montague Square dealing with humdrum day jobs and AWOL record deals. Gavin was just strugglin' Gavin, sitting in his kitchen with ex-King Blank guitarist Nigel Pulsford, getting drunk, stoned and droopingly singing Neil Young and Bob Dylan songs.

The insane success of the plaid-howler LP that Rossdale went on to record with Pulsford, ex-Tranvision Vamp bassist Dave Parsons and drummer Robin Goodridge - 'Sixteen Stone' - has, however, spin-doctored all perspectives on the singer and Bush. You can't now get near them without ploughing through the mega-facts.

Over a hundred weeks of 'Sixteen Stone' on the US albums charts! Two hundred-and-thirty shows played on the last (mostly) US tour! The new album outselling REM's album in it's first US chart-topping week! Yesterday Red Rocks, tomorrow Madison Square Garden!

Even those who know nothing about Bush, even the Indian classical music fan cabby on the way to meet up with them, knows that 'Bush done massive in America'.

"It's kind of weird when Alice Cooper knows your name before he's met you," says Gavin, having just returned from playing at the American Music Industry Awards in LA. "He came up and said: 'Hi Gavin.' That's weird."

For the band's British detractors - the defenders of Ye Olde Grunge Proper and the Indie-Lite Chauvinists - it would be a fine thing if Gavin and his dirty guitar mates remained forever in the weird shadows of that BIG IN AMERICA fact. But it ain't going to happen. 'Razorblade Suitcase' presented Bush with a pleasantly surprising Number Four UK chart placing, the week before their February tour. An extra London date had to be added to the 1,500-a-night sellout Brit dates. Both at home and internationally, the progress of the Steve Albini-produced second album is indicating genuine staying power, and this time round they have politics on their side.

When 'Sixteen Stone' came out, their label Trauma was part of the Interscope stable, also home to notorious gangsta-rap enclave Death Row Records. For most of 'Sixteen Stone's reign, Bush were therefore part of a label that parent company Warners were anxious to get rid of due to pressure from the American religious right. The band reckon that didn't help them 'globally'. But with Warners having dispensed with Interscope, they're now under the wings of the politically unentangled, 'enthusiastic' MCA.

'Razorblade Suitcase' has subsequently taken off everywhere, and this time they're touring beyond the confines of the States. By early '97, they'd already played Japan and Hong Kong. Canada's 'gone mad' for them. If they stick around here long enough in Britain, there's even a chance that the critical blinkers will peel back and accept them as older sonic siblings to your Ash and Symposiums.

Rossdale, see, has a foot in the cool club's door, and a way of dealing with elitist bouncers.

"Oh alright, then, I'll make the fuckin' tea," says Rossdale as the band's tour bus heads up to Manchester. For a quartet of slightly rich and significantly aggrieved Ameripunk superstars, they are deeply, strangely 'nice'.

None of them have 'relocated to LA. When the endless US tour finished last year, all of them bought houses or flats in London. Nigel got married. Robin and his girlfriend had a baby. Nobody managed a tabloid splash.

"The nice thing about the fact that we haven't been that successful in Britain is that you can just go home and get on with it," says Nigel. "I think if that changes, life will change even more. But it's been really good, it's like dreams come true, from recording at Abbey Road to playing a gig at Madison Square Garden, silly little things like that. Hopefully it hasn't screwed us up too much."

"Heading for their thirties or already pitched down there, Bush are low on bravado and high on humility. Pulsford might refer to the recent glitz-blitz award ceremony in the US as "just a lot of schlock showbiz bollocks, really, a music biz nightmare, with Motley fuckin' Crue and Rod Stewart," but they admit their American success involved an awful lot of jumping thorugh hoops.

"We got sucked right into the industry," says Dave. "We did all the kiss ass thing, because we kept on thinking that we owed people things."

Having gone the full distance in the US, however, they're probably one ot the few Brit bands equipped to comment on American matters.

"What I don't like about Britain is that whole attitude of 'we're better than everyone else'," says Nigel. "People do it when they right about us. Like Damon came into K Roc and they're asking him: 'Why is this band Bush doing so well here when no one in England knows who they are?' And he basically said 'Because you Americans are really stupid'. And that summed up a lot of the whole attitude. And the whole Noel thing of having Union Jacks on his guitar."

"I mean, the idea is to try and unify the world rather than keep that jingoistic crap going. I hate that flag-waving sort of thing, which we're not guilty of."

The recent conversation of Blur to American guitar-influenced 'English slackerdom' is supremely ironic to Bush. Having spent two years being dissed by Britpoppers for their Americanisms, with Damon among the most vociferous of their 'sub-Pearl Jam' accusers, the news that Blur are now proudly 'sub-Pavement' leaves Bush with glazed expressions.

"I never thought we were a grunge band anyway," says Gavin. "I thought that was 'Bleach' and Mudhoney and, I dunno, L7."

Dave raises a diplomatic eyebrow. "It's interesting that someone can come along and say we're going to make a record that sounds like Pavement, and everyone accepts that."

Nigel is less polite: "It sounds like a bad Pavement record. It's a shame because I was quite prepared to like Blur, but I think it's a terrible record. It's funny how some bands are allowed to get away with sounding like someone else and others aren't. Like if Oasis sound like The Beatles, it's not thrown at them as an insult."

"We suffered a lot from all the comparisons, but maybe we'll be fashionable now. Everything seems to be coming back the other way."

However much they might be irritated by the vagaries of the UK popscene, Bush have seen and done too much to get into a lather about it. Today on the tour bus, Pulsford lets slip that he wrote three novels prior to giving his full attention to bands.

"I was trying to be Thomas Pynchon, so that was completely out of my reach," he smiles.

Down the front of the bus, Gavin's reading a Michael Ondaatje novel and raving about the Ondaatje film adaptation, 'The English Patient'. Admittedly, it's only the second day of the British tour, but a Hammer Of The Gods-like ambience is very much absent from the Bush payload, and no one's even remotely in a Generation X-ish sulk.

The discrepancy between the violently agonised stadium-filling brute rock and the seemingly adjusted off-stage people is mostly responsible for the scepticism aimed at Bush. The feeling persists that Gavin's tortured tonsils got that way through aping Kurt, rather than screaming at his own self-loathing reflection. But there's more to Rossdale than a cursory glance at his LA days and Westminster public school background suggests.

According to Gavin, his public school experience was loathsome to the point of making a 'militant rebel' of him. At Westminster, he was the only kid to play truant. His mother left home when he was 12, and though he had the class cachet of a doctor father, most of his friends were from the Irish and black communities of Kilburn.

The Translacklantic (sic) curlylocks slumped on the bus is as complex as you'd expect from a long-serving dreamer who nearly made it first as a soccer pro, then as a INXS-ish '80s popper, trawled London's club land, ground to a messy halt, legged it to America, saw Mudhoney, formed Bush, and arrived at dizzying payback stardom.

For 20 minutes he joins in with some lighthearted psychoanalysis. Prompted by random words, he reveals the following: he has three accountants and one pair of shoes; his last haircut was at 3 am after a lock-in at his local pub; he's currently in a relationship with No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani; he hated Thatcher, believes in synchronicity, is suspicious of 'trustafarian'-type interest in Buddhism, and thinks the ten commandments are cool, except for the one about 'not coveting your neighbour's wife'; he recently bought a white Afghan coat which was dirty and, therefore, "perfect for an 'English slacker'".

Fun, however, is not something that looms large in your Bush lyric. Recorded in a high-pressure six weeks with Nirvana/POD/Pixies producer Steve Albini, the raw but latently poppy 'Razorblade Suitcase' is ablaze with alienation, self-doubt, anger and grief. Flip open the lyric booklet and the first written words are "Greedy fly/Do you feel the way you hate/Do you hate the way you feel/Always closest to the flame/Ever closer to the blade".

Certainly, it's an album that proves the long-term potency of the band's tar-soaked rifferama, but the sentiments remain mostly glum. The nearest thing to levity is Gavin's dog Winston panting at the beginning.

So how come millions of dollars, recording with your producer hero, turning the tide in the UK, and dating the Madonna of ska pop don't add up to a bit more celebration?

"When that record ('Razorblade Suitcase') came out in America, it was a serious low point," begins Gavin. "I was exhausted. I wasn't sleeping. We were on tour in Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, and yet it was probably the lowest point.

"I didn't realise that it was such a big deal that our record was coming out in America... you know, good or bad, it was a big deal. If people didn't like it, they fuckin hated it. In fact it wasn't so hated. 'Rolling Stone' gave us a terrible review, 'Spin' gave us a good review. But then I found out the copy of 'Rolling Stone' I was on the cover of sold the most copies, and we were number one in their readers' poll.

"But at that time I was under - I've got over it now - but there were a couple of articles that just destroyed me. I was so depressed by certain articles and felt so attacked and like... dead. It was terrible. And I had to be like talked down from a really scary position."

"I was taking pills all the time to sleep, just sleeping tablets, getting too involved with them, and they became really addictive and I was definitly losing a bit of perspective. Now I feel like a completely different person, but looking back that was quite a scary time."

"That record was a make or break for people's perception of the band in some ways. I mean, some people held steadfast in their hatred of us, but that seemed such a ridiculous agenda. What was it about? We were just a band that went in and made a record. If we had sold 50,000 copies of the first album and just toured around England and then gone and made the next record quickly with Steve, we'd be seen in such a different light."

"But it's because of the confusion of sales, and you get blamed for your popularity, and it's really weird. A band can never be accountable for people's tastes."

What does getting some measure of success in Britain mean?

"Well, I think it's just cool that it gives us a chance. We were treated with such derision because we were successful elsewhere, and what's never been taken into account is, and I'm not being nationalistic here, but everywhere we go we are an English band."

"So it was weird how no one said to us: 'Well done.' But then you realise it's the people who buy the music that say that. Like last night I was getting shouted at 'Welcome home!' and all that kind of stuff, even though I hadn't really left. I've been here quite awhile actually."

Will it make you happy if it eventually goes well in this country?

"Well, I mean happiness is not connected to record sales. It's connected to how you are and what's going on in your personal, real life, as much as what's going on in what you do. Just at the end of that culmination of selling all those records, while everyone else had bought houses and bought cars, getting married and having babies, I split up with my girlfriend. Which was really horrible. Right at the end of that tour. and it was terrible, terrible, terrible terrible terrible."

"She was moving out of the home that we'd shared. You know, fuck being in a band! Fuck music and success or failure and all that! What was happening for me was that it was over. It happens every single day all over the country, people's lives being torn apart, so having sold all those records didn't make any difference, and in fact it had been a source of the break-up, just the fact of being away."

"So that was another thing. I didn't want to sit down and write a bum record, and I kept away from it a lot, but a lot of those songs are written around that time."

But the lyrics do suggest someone who's quite emotionally fragmented.

Gavin: "But I've always been like that. And for some unknown reason you're not allowed to be like that. Or you're not meant to be like that."

"I mean, I'm perfectly capable of being happy as well, and I just like a healthy dynamic range, like most people. Everyone that I know's like that, you know, you phone them up and they're having a really shit day, or this isn't right or someone's fucking them over in some way. It's not really an easy thing, just getting by. And I don't feel any different from that.

"I think that's why people identify with us, because there is that celebration of a bit of confusion in the songs, and there's truth in that confusion. It's alright to be confused. The truth is that no one knows and there are no answers and people stumble by and you try and do the best you can and sometimes you hit a good wave."

"I'm sitting on the bus yesterday with my best mate and he's really quiet at the moment because his life's really shit. He's got no money... you know, we lived together for four years, and we'd have no money, we'd spend off the dole, always buy from the same Kings Cross deli because you could get cheap pasta. I lived that whole life with him."

"Now our lives are completely different, because I don't think about money. Well, I think about money, I help him. But I can see that he was really sad and he never used to be depressed when we lived together, living in this basement flat, me writing all these songs, going nowhere. It's so funny when I think of it now, It was like 'The Young Ones' or 'The Not So Young Ones'."

"I can't believe that people would be so naive to think that money provides the answers. I mean money answers a lot, I can't be a cunt. It's ridiculous, I'm really lucky, and, believe me, I give a fuckin' ton of it away."

On the Bush bus, the Gallon Drunk CD spins around for the second time, and Gavin stares out at the drizzle-coated 'burbs, revolving in frustration as he finds himself justifying success once again. The cover of Dinosaur Jr's 'Bug' album lies on the table. If Rossdale had been American and a midrange success story, he'd have been unquestioned. But being British and a big-league winner he's caught in a unique double-bind.

Not only has he transgressed Brit underdog cool (how dare you succeed!), he's also gone against the stiff upper lip code and scribbled his hurt all over '...Suitcase'. A hurt that Gavin reckons he has a right to.

"There are emotional problems to contend with," he says. Then he unravels the story of the aunt he used to spend much of his time with when his mother left. She was the crazy one who used to get wasted, lived in a pub called The Pepperpot and introduced Gavin to 'Ziggy Stardust'. Clearly, she was a guiding light in his adolescence. Now she's in the hospital with a permanent brain injury from a car accident.

"She'd have been better off if she'd never survived, so I find those things really sad. Sometimes when I look around and I see all of this, it kind of pales. It's not like I'm on Oprah Winfrey sobbing, but it just means that I'm not so disqualified from writing about real stuff, really."

The real stuff has had a good go at Gavin over the last couple of years. All the clichÈs of mega-stardom have got at him, from media set-ups, personality assaults, drifting homelessness and seperation from friends, right down to the indelibly scripted break-up with his girlfriend of five years. The fat figures have top-spinned his world to the extent that even his belief in destiny can now look kind of smug.

"Yeah. Totally. So you know, I'm a wanker." he says. "No, no, no. I actually completely agree, But of course that's why I was always depressed. I was always prone to depression, and for many years it did seem like my life was going really badly, and I believed in destiny then, too."

"But I know what you mean. The problem is, as soon as you're successful, it's funny how many avenues of being hit you're open to. It's like: 'Oh, right, I just decided to make music because I believed in it and suddenly I'm a wanker.'"

Would you ever move to America permanently?

"Only if I married an American girl. I love England, I love London. That's the most annoying part, that again, forgetting everything, I'm English. It's such a strange thing that people think I live in America. No, I'm not Rod Stewart. I'm not Rod Stewart! I've got my dog and I've just bought a place here. Totally settled here."

"I think that you lose something of yourself if you live somewhere else. When I lived in America, I wanted to lose myself. I felt way too safe, I was totally plugged into London, I knew what to do, where to go out, who could lend me money, everything. And I thought that that didn't make a good band, it didn't make a good writer. I needed to shake it up, I needed to add some kind of element of danger, which is why I went there and it's what I got."

"I went to LA and did cash jobs and all the crazy stuff happened. It was like Hunter S Thompson. I lived in New York in an empty white room, with a fridge and a sofa bed... and I was in a whole different frame of mind. But it was necessary for me to feel un-English, unwelcome, un-everything. And then, of course, I saw Mudhoney and saw Nirvana and I felt my place in slacker music... I feel like I've had a mad voyage. I feel like I've lived about three times!"

The next Bush album will, according to Gavin, be ten very short, very fast songs. Following the Tricky-produced version of Joy Division's 'In A Lonely Place' on the 'Swallowed' single (Goldie remixed the lead track), Rossdale's anxious to collaborate more with the Trickster, who he's known from Bush's early days. But first, there's Madison Square Garden and the rest of the planet to deal with. It shouldn't be much of a problem.

At the soundcheck, Rossdale juggles a football on his toe, dribbles round a chair and whacks the ball past the inept journalist-cum-goalkeeper with the same finger-breaking power and confidence that guitar shreds and the crowdsurfing Academy kids that night.

"It's the best reaction I've seen at the Academy in years," says a hardened gig-goer. Maybe it's time to give some overdue respect.

At the very start of 1997, Gavin Rossdale decided to spend New Year's Eve at the Cafe De Paris; an old mate used to run it. After a long wait in the queue, the bouncer took one look at his senile brothel creepers and holey jeans, decided he was improperly dressed, and told the millionaire to piss off home.

"After a lot of arguing I persuaded them to get someone else to come to the door and they recognised me me and let me in. This camp Essex bouncer was just stood there, and he kept saying: 'E' never said nuffin'! 'E never said who 'e was!'"

By the end of this year, the introductions won't be necessary.