Bush’s Gavin Rossdale on making modern moves ahead of Friday’s Azura show

Bush. // image courtesy the artist

Bush plays Azura Amphitheater Friday, May 8, with Mammoth and James and the Cold Gun. Details on that show here.

British alt rock icons Bush have been making music for over 30 years at this point, with mid-’90s gems such as “Glycerine,”  ”Everything Zen,” “Little Things,” “Swallowed,” “Comedown,” and more than we could possibly list here still finding their way onto radio to this day.

Following the release of 2001’s Golden State, Bush took a pause for the better part of the ’00s. Coming on the heels of the string of platinum records that were Sixteen Stone, Razorblade Suitcase, and The Science of Things, Golden State didn’t quite capture the attention of fans and radio.

The band reunited in 2010 for a string of shows, released the aptly titled comeback record The Sea of Memories in 2011, and have been going strong ever since. Last year’s I Beat Loneliness saw Bush adding electronic elements to their venerable grunge-adjacent tones, and they’re bringing their tour in support of it to Azura Amphitheater this Friday, May 8.

We hopped on the phone with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale to discuss all things old and new about Bush.

The Pitch: Nice to talk to you.

Gavin Rossdale: I don’t plan on talking to anyone else and resting my voice. So, you’re the only one who gets me talking, so it’s fun. It’s 20 minutes, and then it’s silent.

Oh, is this tour taking a bit more out of you than you thought or is this just the way you–?

No, two nights ago, there was pollen in the air. Then I sang last night, went for it, and woke up this morning a little beaten, but I got a day off, so I’ll be fine tomorrow.

Is that one of the challenges of playing outdoor venues, like the one you’re playing when you come to Kansas City–the weather isn’t just what comes from the sky sometimes? It’s what comes up from the ground.

Yeah, I’ve never experienced this, so no, it’s never been a problem ever. I prefer outdoor shows, so it just was some crazy high pollen canvas and shit. It’s not great for singing. You wanna shut your mouth, not keep opening it. I’m sure there are some people who wish I would. I wish some people would.

You’re 30 years into your career and 10 albums down and playing outdoor arenas all summer. Do you think of yourself and Bush as legacy artists at this point?

I don’t know what that means. I know that we have a really fat catalog. I think what’s exciting for me is that we continue to add to it. Some people don’t need to do that and can just play those records. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s just to never compare yourself or think about other people. You’re so much cleaner if your life is so much better.

The way that I see it is that it’s an integral part of what I do is to evolve. I feel a connection with the people who love the band, and there’s not one that doesn’t say, Please keep writing, please keep doing it.” Because if you love a band, it’s wonderful.

I was thinking about this. On one hand, you do really love one record. A lot of people have a band, they love one record, but then you have a lot of people that are just so into the band that they wear the record out and it’s really nice to have fresh things. Bands I love, if they make a new record, I’m really excited about it. I’m not like, “Oh, please not.”

‘Cause people get hung up on names, is “legacy” allowed the new stuff as well? Legacy strikes me as borderline next to nostalgia, right? It’s just next to me. I’m adjacent.

Bush has put out more albums since the band got back together than they did in the original go-round. I would say that’s a success right there.

Yeah, it’s weird. It’s funny how it just comes down to, really, life is you just gotta live it, and the rocks go down the mountain and fall where they may, yeah. There are no set rules for anything and I–whatever rules there were for music–I’ve definitely defied all of them.

It feels like you’re embracing the sound of the times. There are a lot of electronic elements on I Beat Loneliness, which makes it feel fresh. Is that the band and yourself wanting to try new things?

Yeah. That’s me just having fun. For me, writing songs–there are journeys in making something fun.

It can be brutally hard to get there sometimes, and sometimes I’m like, “God, I can’t find it.” Basically, everything that I make I like to get lost in a really cool production. I never wanted to just be a straight guitar band. Some of the guys in the original [lineup] wanted to do that and weren’t sure about the electronic stuff, and I probably could have been a bigger band if we had just stuck to guitars, bass, and drums.

But I loved Apex Twin. I loved reggae dub music. I love remixes, like long bass sections of songs. I like Public Image. I just wanted to make things as interesting as possible all the time, and it hasn’t stopped. Now I’m just afforded more tools. Now I have a studio so I can find all those keyboard things. I can find all those tricked-out things and experiment with them.

“Love Me Till the Pain Fades”–that sort of EDM middle part, we’ve been playing it live in these outdoor theaters where it’s it’s like it could be a rave in London. This is so good. It’s like a total garage, and I love it for that.

I just think, for me, it’s just about having interesting sounds. I go through the sounds and the ones that I choose, the keyboard things I just come across, I think that’s interesting. It inspires me, accelerates me to write something on top of it.

Do you find that, having worked with producer Erik Ron on the last few albums–who has such a wide palette in terms of bands he works with–helped you be able to explore the new things you want to?

No. He’s brilliant and I love working with him, but unless I write with him–which I do, and I really enjoy writing and he’s really brilliant. We have a good time doing that, and we are super efficient, and otherwise I just bring stuff into him–he just produces around it, basically takes what’s best, takes what he thinks is good, and then we redo everything else.

It’s stripped. And everyone else plays with it, so my bass goes, Corey [Britz]’s bass comes on. Then Nik [Hughes, drums]. Or Eric, in that process, Erik takes my drums, just tightens up a bit. Just gets every section really good and he’s phenomenal at that. He’s just really fucking good. I’m always like, “Wow, what about the drum? Is it you? Us? Do that then,” and it inspires me.

This time around, the last record, I got my shit together way more when I first did it, and have one drum beat for the whole song, just to put the song down. It’s cool, but it gave me a bit of a headache, so it was like, “Oh shit, but okay, I get it. Gotta just work on drums a bit more.”

So it made me get better at producing drums myself. But I’ve written with Tyler [Bates] as well. I’m so lucky. They’re all fricking brilliant. Chris might send me some brilliant music. For a writer like myself, it’s just really good. I do some songs on my own because I just can’t get to the point where they’re pretty good and done. I don’t really need to overly think about them, and they’re there together, and then it’s really fun to write on someone else’s music.

They have high standards, but I love it because it’s like being caught by the police or something. You just want to keep an ankle bite away, before you’re told something so you just go, “I’m gonna get that chorus here. Have you thought of this?”

You just gotta deliver. They’ve delivered. And with Erik, sometimes we play together. He might jam on guitars, but generally he likes to just ask “What are you feeling? What do you want?” and I’ll say the feel, he gets someone a bit like this, and they do a bit. I say “Yeah, that’s cool. Like that,” and I start writing and singing it.

He’s meanwhile building it up. Then he might say, “And I would go ‘da’ here for the next bit,’ or he may say, “How’s this feel?” And then I start singing something. I say, “Cool, I got something,” and then do it on another section and all the way, he’s building everything around the track and I’m going to sing it and sing the first idea five times and sing the chorus idea five times and sing the late five times and then we kind comp it together and we go, “Okay, have a good day.”

That’s definitely not a legacy move: “Let’s finish it.” No, that’s a modern move.

Bush plays Azura Amphitheater Friday, May 8, with Mammoth and James and the Cold Gun. Details on that show here.