Interview: Gavin Rossdale on Bush, Gwen & Being Young and Dumb

October 20, 2014 10:56 AM

By Shannon Carlin

If you’ve ever wondered how Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani manage to keep their musical lives separate from their personal one, the Bush frontman says it’s very simple.

“I really respect her and make sure that I sort of only offer if I’m asked. And, she doesn’t like rock music,” he tells Radio.com with a smile. “It’s perfect!”

Jokes aside, the two decided to team up for something other than procreating after Stefani got a gig on The Voice. At his wife’s urging, Rossdale was asked to share some of his musical expertise with Team Gwen which he found “flattering.” But it was also something he was initially hesitant about, concerned he would “infringe on Gwen being Gwen.”

In the end, he decided to act as mentor, giving the advice he had wished someone would have given him when he was first starting out. Rossdale was also mindful of the worst advice he had been given. It was right before he took the stage at a small club in London with his very first band. The drummer just turned to Rossdale and said, “Watch the high notes.”

Rossdale laughs about it now, but says it was probably the worst possible thing this drummer could have said to him at the time. “I would not have been on The Voice, I was still searching for where my voice was,” he says, noting, “That’s how to cut someone’s confidence before they get onstage.”

While Rossdale had a good time on The Voice, he is still a little nervous to see the final results.

“They’re all accomplished singers…they’ve all been practicing for a long time so I was just a little paranoid, thinking, ‘Well, what if they turn around and say, “Yeah, but you don’t sing as good. I don’t agree with what you say.” It’s subjective,” he says. “I have yet to see when they get interviewed while I’m not in the room, they could be like, ‘I wish he would just shut up. What does he know? He just sings in a rock band.'”

Rossdale is selling himself a little short. He fronts a rock band that has put out six albums in the last 20 years, and his latest, Man on the Run, is out Oct. 21. Yes, the band’s 1994 debut, Sixteen Stone turns the big 2-0 this December, though Rossdale would like to forget it. Not because he’s not proud of the release, he just doesn’t want to admit that he’s aged two decades.

Looking through photographs from that time, Rossdale says he can’t help but feel nostalgic, and perhaps, a little old.

“I look at my face there and realize that I didn’t realize it sort of had a timer on it and that time runs out. That’s the only thing that kind of made me feel sad about it,” he says. “Like, ‘Oh, man, it’s so much better to be like young and dumb and not thinking that it’s ever going to end. But, what a privilege to be talking about a new record and I think it’s pretty good. That’s what I’m thinking about now, all these other things about anniversaries I just go, ‘Shhh!'”

Looking back on his past achievements, Rossdale can’t help but paraphrase a Buddhist philosophy which states everyone suffers from the concept of time. Time, and what one chooses to do with it, is something that Rossdale was contemplating while writing the latest Bush album. Questions like, how do I make a rock record that matters, or even one that anyone cares about? How do I be the father or the husband I want to be?

“For me personally,” Rossdale says of the album’s title, “it’s about how to get things done and how to achieve the most possible, because there’s so many pressures and deadlines. That’s what [Man on the Run] means to me, you know? And I’m not sure I have the solution, so if anyone has it, please write in.”

Watch our interview with Rossdale above to see him talk about recording at Dave Grohl’s studio, why he’s a “Man on the Run” and why he loved electronic music way before it was called EDM.

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