BUSH's GAVIN ROSSDALE: 'I Keep Getting More Proud Of The Records'

In a recent interview with AltWire, BUSH frontman Gavin Rossdale was asked to name his proudest thing about his evolution as a band and as an artist. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I think as a songwriter, I just keep getting closer to the bone. And I've just written another record that is closer to the bone than the last one. And I keep getting more proud of the records because I think that the only thing that happens as you mature is you go, 'Fuck, I better edit myself better,' because you don't have all this abundance of time.' I sort of look at it realistically and I go, 'Fuck' — five more records, six more records. I don't wanna be doing this forever and I don't wanna be sort of one of those people that refuses to stop when it starts to tail off with law of diminishing returns. That'd be terrible. But each record gets more lethal because it's such a big job."

He continued: "I could write a record really easily, but it's not to say that record would infiltrate the set. So when I write a song, unless I can really come up with something pretty cool, there's literally no point — no point. What's the point? 'I wrote this really mediocre, midtempo ballad. What do you guys think of it?' 'What do you wanna take out of the set for that?' So there's a degree of malfunction to it. It just ups my ante.

"My biggest growth is to be aware of my — not limitations, 'cause I have lots of weapons in my arsenal of being a musician. I'm not falsely modest. I think I've sort of learned my craft. I have a way of doing it. I'm incredibly unconfident at one point of the day, then I'm incredibly confident at another, and then I'm, like, 'Oh my God. This is awful. It's the last time I'm ever gonna write.' So I torture myself horrifically through the entire process. When I get to the end of it and I've been fistfighting myself, I sort of dust myself off and I go, 'You know what? These are all right. I just don't need to go through that process.' But it's part of my process."

Rossdale added: "I just think that as we get older, if you're a creative person and you care and you have that fire burning, and I have a real fire, it's all about editing yourself to get better.

"When I'm seeing here in this room writing songs like I've just done last week, the last few weeks, I used to be a bit, like, 'Oh, this feels good. That feels good. That bit. No, no, no, no, no. Chris [Traynor, BUSH guitarist] will sound really good on that.' … But I try not to have any of those gaps. I try to have no weak points. So it goes from me to the studio and Chris and to be going through the sort of funnel of the producer and Chris, who's incredibly opinionated about everything. So it's just the editing thing that I think is really powerful, to sort of pray to the feet of the editor in you. That's what I find is the most interesting and important thing. So I hope I'm getting better. Obviously there'll be a point where I won't, but for now we're on a rise."

Last month, Rossdale told Billboard that he was already hard work on material for the follow-up to BUSH's 2022's "The Art Of Survival" album.

"I am gonna leave here today and go to the studio to work on more for the next record," he said. "I just keep thinking forward… there's a painful, tortuous process like, 'Oh my God, what am I doing? I can't do it, this last song I did was the best song I wrote, now what am I gonna do?' And then you just sort of forge forward and you find it… so this week I'm reaping the rewards of last week's writing and working in the studio when I leave here. I like to live in the moment."

The 58-year-old musician added that he hopes to finish BUSH's tenth studio album before hitting the road later this month. "I'm definitely going to have a new song this summer," he said.

BUSH will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an extensive North American headline tour. The "Loaded: The Greatest Hits Tour" will kick off on July 26 in Bend, Oregon and include shows at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey (August 21) and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles (September 15). Most of the dates will be produced by Live Nation. Jerry Cantrell and CANDLEBOX will be the special guests on all dates.

With over 24 million records sold, one billion streams and a procession of No. 1 singles, the band — comprising Rossdale, Chris Traynor (guitar),Corey Britz (bass) and Nik Hughes (drums) — stand tall as rock outliers whose imprint only widens as the years pass. "Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023" (Round Hill Records),their first-ever greatest-hits collection, provides an expansive view of their incredible legacy with 21 tracks spanning nearly 30 years — from their breakthrough hit "Everything's Zen" to their latest single, "Nowhere To Go But Everywhere", which is already within the Top 20 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.

BUSH released "Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023" on November 10 via Round Hill Records. The set includes a new song called "Nowhere To Go But Everywhere", which was written by Gavin and produced by Rossdale and Corey Britz.

"Loaded" includes iconic hits from each of BUSH's nine studio albums as well as "Mouth" (The Stingray Mix) from the 1997 remix album "Deconstructed" and a cover of THE BEATLES' "Come Together" that saw a very limited release in 2012.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of BUSH's six-times-platinum debut album, "Sixteen Stone", so it's only fitting that "Loaded" explodes with five tracks from the seminal album: their debut single, "Everything Zen", "Little Things", "Machinehead" and the group's first No. 1 singles — "Comedown" and "Glycerine", which topped Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart in 1995.

Other chart-topping hits included in the collection include the Grammy-nominated "Swallowed" (from 1996's "Razorblade Suitcase"),"The Chemicals Between Us" (from 1999's "The Science Of Things"),"The Sound Of Winter" (from 2011's "The Sea Of Memories") and, from the band's 2022 album "The Art Of Survival", "More Than Machines", BUSH's seventh single to top the Active Rock Radio chart. "Bullet Holes", which figured prominently in the box office smash "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum", is one of three songs pulled from 2020's "The Kingdom".

BUSH broke up in 2002 but reformed in 2010, and has since released five albums: "The Sea of Memories" (2011),"Man On The Run" (2014),"Black And White Rainbows" (2017),"The Kingdom" (2020) and the aforementioned "The Art Of Survival".

"Black And White Rainbows" was crafted after Rossdale went through a divorce with pop star/reality TV judge Gwen Stefani in 2015.