It's Thursday night and Gavin Rossdale and I are walking through the underground halls of the Hard Rock Live, eyeing the memorabilia on the walls as we go. Gavin points to a photo of the Pixies, refers to Black Francis as a deity, and asks if I'm into them. I sheepishly admit that I was a little too young to be into the Pixies back when they were still together and that checking out their music has remained on my to-do list for some fifteen years. I make a mental note to grab ahold of the first Pixies album I can find when I get home. I notice that Gavin's trademark longish hair has been replaced by a fairly standard cut, and I ask him what happened to his hair. He takes a look at my shoulder-length hair and says "I gave it to you."
Half an hour earlier, Gavin and I are sitting on adjacent couches in his dressing room, discussing everything from his upcoming album to what the accompanying launch of his solo career means for the prospects of his former band, Bush, which dominated the late-nineties grunge rock scene before dissolving six years ago. This isn't the first time Gavin has ventured back into music-making since the breakup, but unlike his Institute project in 2005, his latest endeavor seems like it actually has a chance to succeed. When I tell him that I think his newly released ballad of a single, Love Remains The Same, doesn't sound like it's tied to the nineties in the way Bush's ballads generally were, he smiles and replies "Thank the Lord."
Just two days earlier, neither one of us had any idea we'd be sitting here together. On Tuesday had been browsing iTunes and came across the new single which had been released that morning. Within hours I was composing an email to his publicist requesting an interview, and with Gavin in town this week for a gig at the Hard Rock, a series of last-minute emails put things in place and had me arriving at the Hard Rock slightly ahead of the band and musing as venue employees tried to figure out whether I was really supposed to be there. Finally I was summoned to the artist dressing room to begin the interview. In what would become a theme of accommodation, Gavin apologizes for being a couple minutes late and offers me something to drink. For a guy who's been consistently beaten up on by the press over the years even as they've glamorized him, I was somehow expecting more, I don’t know, hostility.
"There was a certain way of doing those records before and now it just feels right to be doing this. The record is way more mellow," he says in a surprisingly soft-spoken manner in reference to WanderLust, his first solo album due out in June. It's a complete one-eighty from his previous post-Bush venture, in which the knobs were turned all the way up.
"In that Institute record I did, it was super heavy in comparison to what I've ever done and that kind of flew by everyone. So I was like, fuck that! It's a shame cause it's such a good record, but I think the timing of it, like if that had been a Bush record, or if that had been a solo record, may have had a more successful run. It's a shame, but it's my Tin Machine."
If that last reference sends you scrambling for wikipedia, it's proof that even a legend like David Bowie can front a band that no one pays any attention to. But while some rock stars might be tempted to try to erase such a project from the public consciousness for the sake of moving on, Gavin brings up Institute a few different times during our conversation.
"It's really difficult to be this side of the fence, you know, as in making the records, that's hard enough. So I think the only thing to concern yourself with, if you're a musician, is try and be good and play good shows, and the rest either comes to or doesn't. And I've had both. There was no difference, weirdly enough." Of the recent resurgence of so-called "nineties artists" with which Bush is inexorably identified, he says "it's kind of awkward, really."
WanderLust may be a mellower, modernized incarnation of Gavin Rossdale, but it's far from a series of ballads. In fact Gavin is surprised that of the three songs positioned as potential singles, Love Remains The Same is the one chosen by the label. Then again, he's got a fondness for the tune. "It's a drinking song, it's a commiseration. I always wanted to have a song that was played in London pubs. You know, make enough music to be played in pubs. So this somehow might be the one."
Another new song entitled Futureworld has given him the opportunity for sonic experimentation. "It has all the dubby stuff that I like, all the dubby bass line. And before, like in Bush and also in Institute, it was the same kind of bass lines but we covered them up a lot with guitars, and this is slightly less covered in guitars. I'm trying to keep guitars really effects-y and sort of atmospheric as opposed to driving distortion. It was fun to do the Institute record, but it then emancipated me to kind of go out and do something else."
Can't Stop The World sounds a little more like mid-period Bush, but despite a U2-inspired guitar line, still doesn't sound trapped in the nineties. The song originally appeared to be the clear frontrunner to be the first song out the door, and in fact technically was, as about thirty seconds of it were used at the beginning and end of each episode of last April's short-lived Fox television series Drive. The song was written specifically for the show after a Fox employee stopped him in the grocery store and offered him the opportunity to craft a theme song. Gavin tells me it's a different approach than when you're just writing songs for your own album, in which case "you kind of have a blank sheet of paper. Now when you write for something, it's kind of fun, it's like an assignment. You know, you have to do it truthfully and honestly and in your own style, but it's an interesting challenge."
Of the rumor that this song is a duet with his wife Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, Gavin makes it clear that she merely provided backing vocals. "She liked a song of mine and so she wanted to sing on it, and she doesn't normally do that, you know? She came into the studio and was like, can I sing on that? I was like, sure, go for it. She's a good singer."
Even so, I'm surprised that the label didn't position it as the first single just for the publicity angle of having Gavin's and Gwen's voices on the same song. But as Gavin puts it, her vocals are quiet enough that "I don't think they knew that she was on it." And what of those fans still waiting for a true duet between the two? He laughs and says that "they may be waiting some time."
As hinted at by the fact that Can't Stop The World appeared in a television show a full year ago, Gavin himself has been waiting some time for this album to see the light of day. "The ability just to get a record out over there, he makes it really hard," he says of Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine. "So if you choose to be with him, you have to kind of go through a tortuous process called Jimmy Jail where you're just in there recording songs and it's not as prolific as I would like to be, because they just have a way they do things. And it's pretty frustrating, really, but it's how they do it."
So why did he take this path to launch his solo career when he presumably had the choice and the means to do it in just about any manner he wanted? "I think that in trying to establish what's effectively a new career, I mean if I was doing Bush, it might be different, you know? And I think that would be somewhat easier. But I don't know, I mean the thing is that if you ever come across Jimmy Iovine and the people at my label, there's something quite seductive about being involved with them because they kind of, they hit things out of the park, you know? They take your record and make it work. So I'm just in it, and probably not looking enough at the big picture. But I think that what I've done now is, you know, I made a good record and they have a lot of faith and they've put a lot of energy into it, so I think my decision to be with them may yet pay off."
Does this mean the jury's still out? "If this record was to tank," as he puts it, "I'd be like, you know, what was I waiting around for? I could have had five records out now." But in an early sign that things may indeed by paying off, Love Remains The Same cracked the iTunes Top 100 rock chart on the day it was released, and has since climbed all the way to the top ten – all of this before the song has been sent to radio stations.
Still, historically there's been a stigma attached to the solo projects of frontmen from established bands. I ask if he's been able to learn anything by having a front row seat as his wife made the rare successful transition from bandleader to solo artist. The look on his face says he doesn't have an answer, and makes me wonder if I've asked one too many questions about Gwen. Just then, the cue coincidentally comes in from outside the room that we've got five minutes remaining out of our thirty. Here's Gavin's chance to change the subject or bail altogether, but instead he tells them to give us ten more minutes instead of five, and seems to be trying really hard to come up with a good answer to a question he can seemingly tell I had thought was a clever one, before finally giving up: "No, not really."
I would have been willing to leave it at that, but he tries to elaborate for me. "I think it's, life has, it's split into two areas, you know. One is the grey difficult area of unforeseen events, occurrences, people, and the other things that are not in your control, and then other things are in your control. So it's really, it sounds overly simple, but you know, if you can find a way to bring the best out of yourself and the best out of people around you, you have the best shot at it. So that's maybe something I could be fair and say that I saw Gwen does, but I would like to think I do the same thing, which is, you know, be good and try and inspire people around you and have people around you that inspire you back, and that's the best shot you got. And even then, nothing guaranteed."
One more question involving Gwen has to be asked. She's reportedly pregnant with their second child, so how's he going to deal with all the promotion and touring for WanderLust with a newborn on the way? He's got a plan. "I'm gonna take a couple of months out when the baby comes in August. And I can take a couple of months out so I can be at home but I've got my studio, and I'll write, two months of writing. So that way, if by the grace of the planets, I have some success with this and get nicely back on the road and do all that life again, I won't be delayed in bringing my next record out. So I kind of mentally was like wow, it's beautiful, but it's not convenient, you know what I mean? It's like right when my record comes out. But at the same time, chaos is great."
The day before the interview I asked iProng readers on Twitter if they had any questions they had always wanted to ask Gavin. One of the more interesting, if left-field, questions posed was about his middle name McGregor. So I ask him about it and, in an occurrence that doesn't too often happen when someone's been getting asked the same interview questions for fifteen years, he says no one's ever asked him about it before. His mother is one of the original Bowies of Scotland, from the clan McGregor. Gavin was the last male in the family to carry the name until he named his first son Kingston James McGregor. I ask if he had to deal with "Mr. McGregor" jokes from Peter Rabbit while growing up, but he "never suffered that one."
The other question fans wanted answered, and one I would have asked anyway, was whether Gavin's solo career means that any hope of a Bush reunion is dead. "I don't think Bush is ever dead, because as long as I'm alive, it'll be alive. I mean this originally was going to be a Bush record."
Oh really?
"Yeah, and then the guitar player just, he said yes and we were all going for it, and then he said no, he just didn't want to tour. And it just made me kind of fed up with the process and having to wait for three other people to decide," he says of trying to reunite the band. "It takes so much passion and so much energy to do this, and I'm really lucky to have found a great selection of guys that I'm playing with now, that you have to go in with guns blazing, I mean, all your guns have to be blazing and you have to be prepared to be shot at as well. And to have a situation where people are ambivalent about touring it's just, you might as well like, you know, shoot both feet and hang out at home." But this failed reunion attempt aside, "Bush is not dead. God bless it."
So will we hear any Bush songs at Gavin's solo concerts? At least five or six of Bush's hits a night, especially while the album is still awaiting release. He doesn't want to "tax people too much to come and see a whole show of stuff they don't know. That's kind of borderline obnoxious, really."
Gavin has my business card, which he must have gotten from the tour manager, and he's been clutching it, staring at it, or tapping it against the table for the entire interview (at one point he stops to tell me that he likes the name iProng). This leads me to spot the yellow bandage on his wrist, and I ask if there's a good "rock star" story behind the injury. It turns out his wrist started feeling weird after too much practicing and carrying his son around, and he had it bandaged as a precaution.
Come on Gavin, that's the best you can do, you injured yourself while carrying your son around? Couldn't you at least fabricate a cool-sounding story about getting into a fight at 3 am after being out drinking all night? If those days ever existed, apparently they don't now. "I try to stay upright. Especially at 3 am."
As we're walking out of the dressing room through the underground labyrinth that is the backstage area of the Hard Rock and discussing the Pixies, Gavin wants to make sure I've got tickets for that night's show, wants to make sure a promo copy of WanderLust is headed my way, wishes me good luck with iProng. Three hours later he walks out on stage to the opening riff of the Bush classic Machinehead. Suddenly I wish I'd been doing this a decade ago and interviewed Gavin during Bush's heyday so I could have seen first-hand whether he's always been as soft-spoken and accommodating as he was during our interview, or whether he has simply, like his music, mellowed as he's entered his forties.
But while Bush ended up lasting just about as long as critics predicted it would, I get the feeling that Gavin Rossdale the solo artist just might be with us for some time to come.
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