Bush’s Gavin Rossdale on Reinvention, Resurgence and Returning to Australia
Bush’s iconic frontman Gavin Rossdale discusses the band’s upcoming Australian tour with Shinedown, their unique setlists and why he thinks certain bands are having a resurgence.
Words Thomas Jackson // Image Chapman Baehler
This September, British alternative legends Bush return to Australia for the first time in four years for a co-headline tour with American rockers Shinedown. The iconic Bush vocalist, Gavin Rossdale, speaks with The Note after he’s had “one of those great normal days” with his son getting Nutella croissants and pizza.
He’s now speaking in his office at home while his son does his homework. It’s an ordinary day for a man who just spent the weekend in the Napa Valley performing in front of thousands of people at BottleRock alongside Foo Fighters, Backstreet Boys, Lorde and LCD Soundsystem. Rossdale is still riding this high as he reflects on where the band are at almost 35-years into their career.
“The band's never been better, the catalogue's never been wider, the energy has never been greater,” Rossdale states proudly. “I watched Chris [Traynor, lead guitar] when we were playing. We did Stagecoach… And the wind was so crazy. It was like the best sort of ‘80s hair metal wind machine you've ever had in your life, Mother Nature. The trees were like bending over sideways.
“Two of my kids were there. And my youngest, sweetest boy was like, because after our show ended at like eight or something, they had storm warnings and everything shut down. So he's got such a flex. ‘You shut down Stagecoach, such a flex.’”
Rossdale is thrilled to return to Australia after four years away, after insistently asking the powers that be to tour again.
“You have to realise that I ask a lot to come to interesting places, and Australia, we're always asking, same with Japan. You just tend to ask, you know. I never feel like it's enough. We came a couple of years ago and I don't like leaving it too long. So, coming down and having a smashing good tour, a really good time.”
“Darren Cahill [Tennis player], my old mate, he's from Adelaide. I always have a special place in my heart for Cahill, killer.”
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Bush returns to Australia with their 2025 album I Beat Loneliness, however, it’s unknown what kind of setlist we will get. Rossdale loves to mix it up and on their recent American tour, they didn’t play one identical set. He reveals the Australian tour will have a variety of sets as well, with the band choosing from about 40 songs to play live.
“I don't have to play all the songs all the time. I generally have to play ‘Glycerine’, and then there's literally no other song that's been off. When we played in Europe, we played a completely different set. We played with Volbeat's audience and we were like, ‘Fuck it. They don't know us whatsoever. So let's just be a great band’. So it was just brilliant. It was so liberating.”
Bush are one of the ‘90s bands who are riding the resurgence of ‘90s/’00s and seem to be more popular than ever. This is in part due to a new, younger audience discovering Bush’s whole discography for the first time.
“I think that they're doing it in reverse. They hear ‘More Than Machines’. They hear ‘Flowers On A Grave’ and the new material [from] I Beat Loneliness, and then they discover that there's a whole history of the band. Then other people want to come and see us and probably don't know the newer songs so much because they just played those [older] songs to death… It's beautiful and I love that - but I'm greedy. So I'm lucky enough to have different sections. Now, because of streaming, people can go as deep or as wide as they want about you.”
Rossdale lived within the best of late ‘90s/’00s music and saw bands like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains soar to success. Now, like Bush, they’re having a second wind and attracting younger audiences. This can’t be said for all of their contemporaries, so what’s the secret?
“It's just being curious about the future,” Rossdale explains. “I'd imagine that a lot of bands have their catalogue and they play it and that's a nostalgic band, because they just play it to a certain period and that's what it is. If you're an idiot and trying to keep coming up with things and writing new songs and maintaining that, you have a different life. I just chose a different life.
“I mean, Chris [Martin] from Coldplay, he sort of chose the craziest life and played stadiums. He manifested something extraordinary. For me, I seem to have manifested a life where the music keeps changing and evolving literally as I'm learning it. Maybe my lack of knowledge has always worked in my favour, finally. Everything is a journey, everything is a voyage to understand a little better about music. I only have to reflect on The Beatles or Fauré [Gabriel] or Mozart or Radiohead and think, there's a lot of headroom. I've got a lot of places to go.”
Catch Bush with Shinedown performing at Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre on Sunday 27 September. Tickets on sale at premier.ticketek.com.au
