Bush’s Gavin Rossdale on greatest hits album, ‘Glycerine’ and new music


A career retrospective album didn’t sound that appealing to Gavin Rossdale, the singer and rhythm guitarist for venerable British rockers Bush.

“I really didn’t want to have that, because the greatest hits can be seen — it used to be seen for me — as a ‘See you later, I’m moving to the Bahamas’ or something more like ‘Hey, I’m in Cleveland forever now. Bye.’ So I don’t want that,” Rossdale said in a recent interview from North Carolina. “But it just came up as now seemed a good time, actually right in the middle of working on a new record, and so it just keeps it really vital for us.”

Using it as a chance to tell the ever-evolving story of Bush instead of, say, a tombstone for the band’s career, Rossdale moved ahead with “Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023,” which came out Nov. 10. The double album includes radio hits like “Everything Zen” and “Glycerine,” with songs from each of their nine studio albums all the way through 2022’s “The Art of Survival” record.

Bush will be playing many of those hits Sunday when their Nowhere to Go But Everywhere tour visits Stage AE in Pittsburgh. They’ll be joined by Bad Wolves and Eva Under Fire. After a few weeks off from their summer tour, Bush got back on the road, where playing more of their hits has elicited strong audience response.

“Now we were playing many hits when we played, but I love playing new songs, keeping it fresh and keeping it vibrant, keeping people surprised. And this is like, no surprises, or all the surprises, because it’s everything that people I think maybe want,” he said. “I was doing these shows, kind of going, ‘Oh, was I supposed to do more of these songs more regularly?’ because everybody’s freaking out when I play them. It’s always that balance, right? I don’t play obscure tracks … but I just like playing new songs and keeping it fresh.”

According to Rossdale, “Loaded” accurately displays the band’s evolution over almost 30 years and offers an opportunity to celebrate the group’s legacy and its place in people’s lives.

“If we’ve been a soundtrack to anyone’s life, which I feel that I keep being told we have, it’s such an honor and a privilege, and how amazing to kind of set someone’s soundtrack?” he said. “You wanna take a look through your journey, your last decades of your phone and decades of your photos? Well, here’s decades of the music you like, and all in one evening, and so it kind of has a transcendental side as well. … There’s something about it that is bigger than we are.”

Bush’s hit “Glycerine” helped catapulted the post-grunge band to stardom, including a headlining slot at Woodstock ‘99. Rossdale said he thinks the song still resonates today because the song hits close to home for a lot of people.

“It’s like that old adage about where acting is putting on something or taking something off, you know, revealing. And so when you write songs, words, how close are they to the bone? It doesn’t matter what bone or whose bone, but if a lyric is close to a bone, the chances are it resonates for everyone else,” he said. “So I think I just kind of lucked out on hooking into a lyric, that just sort of appeared for me as I sang, that just seemed people relate to a lot. … I think it’s genuine in its emotion and execution and intention and just everything that whatever that song is, connected with people and I think it comes from a genuine place.”

In his opinion, once he creates a song, it belongs to everyone as he’s just the conduit.

“As soon as I made it, thought about it, it goes out into the universe, and then every single song in history has a singular meaning to the listener. No one listens to any song and has the same opinion of it as you,” he said. “They just have their own opinion, their own person, their own eyes, their own struggles. So that’s the best thing about music. It’s so personal, it’s so easily put between your ears, just put on your phone. It’s incredible. No one has a Picasso, I don’t know anyone who has a Picasso. There’s high art, those kind of things that are out of reach for people, but music is for everyone, it’s beautiful.”

With next year marking the 30th anniversary of their debut “Sixteen Stone,” there might be a few special shows where Bush plays the entire album. But Rossdale sounds even more enthusiastic about the new music in the pipeline, as well as a new remix of “Little Things” that he’s awaiting.

“What’s exciting for me is I know I’m like seven songs into a new record that’s writing, seven songs that I’m madly excited about. … I heard that about Bruce Springsteen because I always heard he has five or six songs ready to go. When you release a record, you kind of empty the bank of probably your best songs at the time. So it’s wild, it’s a really good feeling. It’s like a huge adventure of your life and your tank is pretty full, you know? It’s actually charged. That sort of feels good. If I was doing this and I had no new songs, I wouldn’t feel comfortable. I’d feel like I had a bad stomach or something.”


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In recent years, Rossdale has become more involved in social issues, joining musicians like Billie Eilish and Peter Gabriel in Artist for Action to Prevent Gun Violence. With more than 500 mass shootings this year in the United States — “It’s hard to get your head around it,” he said — the coalition is looking to prevent further tragedies.

”For me, it’s less about the guns you’re never going to get rid of. It’s America, that’s fine. It seems a waste of time to try,” he said. “The focus should be on the well-being of young kids so that there aren’t ostracized kids, so that teachers are well taken care of so they can focus on the students’ classes and not too big so that they can see what’s going on. And for anyone struggling, there should be a support system within the community, between their friends and their friends’ parents. You know what I mean? It takes a village, right?”

Mike Palm is a Tribune-Review digital producer. You can contact Mike at 412-380-5674 or [email protected].


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