With grunge music was on its way out by the mid 90’s, a new subgenre of rock called post-grunge sprouted up in its ashes. One of those early bands was British group Bush.
Lambasted by critics as being derivative of bands from Seattle, their home country of England never really embraced the band early on. Those circumstances did little to hurt record sales for the group. By the end of the 90’s, Bush sold over 14M albums worldwide, headlined arenas and became one of the most successful groups of that decade.
Bush leader Gavin Rossdale grew up in Northwestern London where he had a middle class upbringing. By the age of 17, he left school and started his first band called Midnight.
“I left home at 17… and decided to become a singer — a very purposeful decision to be the singer, because I wanted to be rich and famous.” – Gavin Rossdale
Rossdale would tell the Chicago Tribune, “I left home at 17, was this wandering soul at 19, and decided to become a singer — a very purposeful decision to be the singer, because I wanted to be rich and famous. It was then I decided I wanted to be on stage, craving the attention of thousands of people.”
Rossdale supported himself with odd jobs, while playing in a variety of bands including a mid-80s pop act named Midnight. Much to their surprise, the band got signed, put out a few singles and opened for the likes of Big Country and Cyndi Lauper but that’s about as far as they got.
“We got signed way too young in the mid-80’s when everyone was throwing all this money around.” – Gavin Rossdale
Rossdale would tell Rolling Stone, “We got signed way too young in the mid-80’s when everyone was throwing all this money around. We weren’t developed and we didn’t deliver. So as far as the A&R community in London was concerned, I was soiled.”
“I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to my life: an irrelevant band, no one I was with personally. No family ties.” – Gavin Rossdale
Rossdale would leave Midnight and play in several other bands, but he ultimately decided to change up his life, telling Rolling Stone, “My life was too safe in London. So I thought going to America would help my career. When I got there, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to my life: an irrelevant band, no one I was with personally. No family ties.”
By 1991, Rossdale moved to California. Friends back home helped him set up accommodations and he made money working on music videos as a production assistant. He recalled to Rolling Stone, the highs and lows of his new home in America, saying the high would be seeing Nirvana perform at the Roxy in LA, while the low point would be crashing at the place of an ex-girlfriend of five years.
Gavin Rossdale Bonds Over Musical Tastes with Nigel Pulsford
The early days of Bush date back to November 1991 when Bryan Adams played Wembley Stadium. At that show, Rossdale met a fellow musician, guitarist Nigel Pulsford and they soon bonded over their musical tastes.
Pulsford and Rossdale’s first project together was named Future Primitive, which was a little different from the type of music Bush would play.
Bush’s success wouldn’t really have happened without a man named David Dorrell. He was a British man whose career began in the 70’s. He’d established a fanzine which saw him befriend the members of The Sex Pistols, and the following decade he became a writer for New Musical Express magazine (or NME). Following his writing gig for NME, Dorrell became a DJ and was hired by MTV Europe to work on sound collages.
Dorrell and Rossdale knew each other from the London club scene in the mid-80’s. While they were friends, the idea of collaborating didn’t happen until they crossed paths in California. Dorrell was in LA to remix “Nutbush City Limits”, a song that Rossdale was working as a video assistant on.
“We seemed destined to work together.” – David Dorrell
Dorrell told Rolling Stone, “We seemed destined to work together. When I next saw Gavin, he had the basis of “Comedown” – it seemed to fuse elements that excited me because of my musical history.
Dorrell soon became Bush’s manager. Rossdale and Pulsford add bassist Dave Parsons and drummer Robin Goodridge. Goodridge became familiar with Bush through Dorrell, who he worked with.The quartet would call themselves Bush, a name which was inspired by Shepherd’s Bush, a district of west London.
Bush recorded a demo and shopped it around England but they didn’t have many takers. Their fortunes changed when a British radio producer tipped off an American record executive named Rob Kahane.
Bush Signs with Trauma Records
Kahane signed the band to his label, Trauma Records in 1993, who had a distribution deal with Disney-owned Hollywood Records.
As the band’s debut album, Sixteen Stone was finished in early 1994, life threw a curveball at the group. Disney Executive, Frank G Wells, who was a big backer of Kahane, tragically died in a helicopter crash. Following his death, the executives at Hollywood had no interest in releasing Bush’s debut record and the band soon lost their distribution deal with Hollywood Records. Interscope would come to their rescue and agreed to distribute the album.
By the fall of 1994, Kahane sent an advanced copy of Bush’s debut record to an LA radio station who immediately took a liking to the song, “Everything Zen”.
“…I guess I’d written enough shitty songs by that point, I was inevitably going to start writing some better ones!” – Gavin Rossdale
Due to the success of “Everything Zen”, the label moved up the release of Sixteen Stone from January of 1995 to just before Christmas 1994. Rossdale revealed to Kerrang, “Writing ‘Everything Zen’ felt like a seismic moment for me. I guess I’d written enough shitty songs by that point, I was inevitably going to start writing some better ones!”
MTV helped bolster album sales. The network soon started playing the video for “Everything Zen” in December of ‘94 on Alternative Nation. The video soon found itself on the network’s “Buzz Bin”, which was a group of music videos by up and coming artists that the network deemed “buzz worthy”, “cutting edge”, or “the next big thing”.
Bush’s debut album would sell over 6M copies in America and produce several massive singles including, “Machinehead”, “Everything Zen”, “Comedown”, “Glycerine”, and “Little Things”.
Sixteen Stone is Finally Released in Britain
Sixteen Stone wouldn’t come out in Britain until three months after they debuted in America. The band seemed to struggle in their home country. Not only did the band struggle to gain a foothold in their home country, but they were lambasted in the press.
Following the success of Sixteen Stone, the band received a lot of backlash and comparisons to bands from Seattle.
The band brushed these criticisms aside, but there were a lot of similarities between the bands from Seattle and Bush. Rossdale dated or was at least friends with Courtney Love, he dealt with chronic stomach pain like Kurt Cobain and Bush would work with producer Steve Albini who worked on Nirvana’s In Utero album. Even Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl saw the similarities and it would escalate with a short lived feud between the pair.
“The Seattle comparison is really such a lazy one.” – Gavin Rossdale
Rossdale would answer these comparisons telling Spin magazine, “I didn’t teach myself to sing in a certain way. You can’t manufacture that, you know. The Seattle comparison is really such a lazy one. If you’ve got loud guitars, and the singing isn’t screechy-high, it’s almost inevitable that you will be connected with bands like Nirvana–who have done so much for music, after all.”
“Every time I turn around, there’s a carving knife stuck in my back.” – Gavin Rossdale
The press also focused on Rossdale’s good looks. Something which only further hurt the band’s credibility. Rossdale would tell the Chicago Tribune about his weird relationship with the press, “I’m seen by the press as this dilute little wanker. I should just send a cardboard cut-out to sit through the interviews, preferably shot in good light to accent the cheekbones that everybody likes to write about so much. No one in three years has said to my face, `You effing suck.’ But every time I turn around, there’s a carving knife stuck in my back.”
In just one year since their debut album came out, Bush would go from being an opening act to actually headlining arenas.
With Bush’s second album, the group hoped to stray further from those comparisons to Seattle with Rossdale telling the LA Times, “You know, after the Smashing Pumpkins put out their first album, Gish, everyone said, ‘Hmmm, that’s interesting–isn’t that Jane’s Addiction?’ Then their breakthrough album, Siamese Dream came out, and suddenly they had their own musical island, and they became the purveyors of good taste in music, the authority on how it should be. Maybe that will happen to us with our second album–there will be no more comparisons to other bands.”
“What I didn’t want to do is have all that work we’d put into those two years on the road, disintegrate.” – Gavin Rossdale
The band took no time in between the promotion cycle for Sixteen Stone and Razorblade Suitcase. Rossdale focused on keeping the group’s live energy going, telling Billboard, “What I didn’t want to do is have all that work we’d put into those two years on the road, disintegrate.”
“I didn’t want to make a moaning record about how awful my life is but I’m naturally drawn to sad songs because I like drama presented musically.” – Gavin Rossdale
Bush’s second album was written against a backdrop of turmoil in Rossdale’s personal life. He recalled to the Chicago Tribune in 1996, “I didn’t want to make a moaning record about how awful my life is but I’m naturally drawn to sad songs because I like drama presented musically.”
Rossdale split from his girlfriend of five years during the making of the record recalling, “Being in this band has destroyed my personal life. I haven’t had one for two years. I’m no longer with the woman I told last fall that I would be with for the rest of my life. I came home after our last tour and watched my home dismantled before my eyes. She’s packing to leave in one room, and I’m trying to create songs in the other.”
“Swallowed”, the first single off Razorblade Suitcase took only 3 weeks to top the rock charts in America and it would go on to sell over 3M copies. “Swallowed” would also prove to be Bush’s only big hit single in England.
“These kinds of projects don’t come along very often.” – Program Director for KDGE in Dallas
Despite the death of grunge by 1996, radio programmers laughed off questions about whether the public in America was growing tired of Bush. The program director for Dallas station KDGE told billboard, “They’re smoking right now. They’re one of the hottest acts. I’d like to be their manager. These kinds of projects don’t come along very often.”
Sued for Breach of Contract
By the time Bush was working on their third album, they ran into trouble with their label, Trauma Records. Bush wanted to renegotiate their deal, it was something the label balked at and so Bush refused to hand in their third album and a lawsuit ensued. The band was sued for $40M by their label for breach of contract.
Rossdale told Spin magazine, the larger principle that the band was defending, “When you sign, you get a certain kind of deal. When you sell 14M albums, you think the deal should change.”
A deal would eventually be worked out between both parties but it resulted in the group’s third album, 1999’s The Science of Things, being delayed. The single, “The Chemicals Between Us” would see more electronic sounds and it would end up going Platinum in America.
Following the release of their third record, Bush signed to Atlantic Records and in late 2001 they released their fourth record Golden State. While a lot of the album was written before 9/11 the album’s themes seemed fitting for the times with the lyrics dealing with doubt, fear and understanding the world.
The album was a commercial disappointment, only moving about 380K copies in the states. The band was unhappy with the lack of label support and shortly after the release of Goldenstate, Nigel Pulsford left the group to work on his second solo record and witness the birth of his son.
The Band Calls it Quits
The band opted to tour without him and by 2002, Bush finally called it quits. In the years that followed, the members all pursued solo music ventures and Rossdale started a band named Institute, who opened for U2, but didn’t find much success otherwise.
By 2010, Bush reformed with Rossdale telling Face Culture, “I missed playing the shows with Bush. I missed being in the power of a band. I felt like a boxer with one arm tied behind my back.”
The reunion only saw original members Gavin Rossdale and Robin Goodridge return. Rossdale claimed to MTV that the pair gave their blessing, “I really thought that Dave Parsons would do it, so I was a little surprised by that and I knew that Nigel would play on records but not go out on the road. We’re all on perfectly good terms, it’s just not where they’re at.”
The band released their first album in 10 years with 2011’s The Sea of Memories. The album debuted in the Top 20, but sales quickly sputtered, and it remained on the chart for only a few weeks.
Three years later, Bush put out Man on the Run, and most recently, put out their latest two records; 2017’s Black and White Rainbows, and 2020’s The Kingdom, both of which would not chart.
Goodridge ended up leaving the band in 2019, leaving Rossdale as the only original member of the group.
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