Bush return with fierce tenth studio album.

Gavin Rossdale is the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for Bush, which he founded in 1992 and which went on to become one of the most successful rock bands of the decade, selling over 25 million records. He has won the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement in Songwriting, and is also a successful film and television actor. This month, Bush release their tenth studio album, I Beat Loneliness.

The impetus for writing it came from the compilation of Bush’s greatest hits album, Loaded, in 2023. “I’d said I never really wanted to do a greatest hits because I think it's more fun to write a whole record,” says Rossdale. “I felt a bit bankrupt, so I said, ‘I’m going to record a bunch of songs just before we go and do that.’ I was trying to get to the heart of everything as a writer.”

Rossdale’s song-writing process is experimental, turning his lack of musical training into a strength. “There's a degree of mystery within music for me, like why certain things go together, counterpoint, melody, harmony, all those things. I found that changing the tuning on the guitars gave me a whole new world of experimentation. That’s what keeps it vital.” He describes the songs as taking on a life of their own, especially when the rest of the band – lead guitarist Chris Traynor, bassist Corey Britz and drummer Nik Hughes – come in and introduce changes. However, for album opener “Scars”, Rossdale was adamant that the final version should be faithful to his demo. “It was bare, and I was like, ‘Please don’t play all over it. Please be economical.’ I never had to overly have that conversation because everyone just left it. It's so trippy, it’s just got this vibe, it’s dark and brooding. So we were all in sync, and yeah, it’s exciting.”

But Rossdale also wanted to co-write some songs with producer Erik Ron and the rest of the band, so before they worked on his compositions, they went into the studio and came up with three extra tracks, taking the final count to twelve. “Sometimes people want to write with me because it's more fun for them to produce something we've written. You see Bowie doing that: he'd write alone, and then him and Eno would do a bunch of songs together. I love it when someone gives me music, and I get a different job.” He also finds that his writing style is different in that collaborative context. “I work fast, I'm under duress, it’s like I speed-write. When I write on my own, it’s much more relaxed – I can make something that I like, I'll leave it on a loop, I'll go and get a tea, get a beer, whatever, let it play and let it wash over me, and try and think what I can do with it.”

The most important thing, he says, is to vary his process, to create something new. A case in point is “The Land of Milk and Honey”, the second single taken from I Beat Loneliness. “This is one of the songs I wrote with Erik. I like marching band stuff – I don't think in chords or guitar riffs, I just think in a rhythm. I wanted a tribal, dark, Nine Inch Nails, sweeping keyboard, and the way that Maori New Zealanders do that sort of marching band thing. That's why, when I started singing on it, as opposed to working my way into it, I hit it smack in the face and took a different approach to how I sang.”

“There’s never been a better time to communicate with people – but there’s possibly never been a lonelier time, because people have used it to not show their real selves a lot of the time”

— Rossdale

For much of the recording, Rossdale used his home studio. “It’s really the spare room between two of my kids’ rooms! The closet is where I put the vocal booth – I put a window in the closet. I do my guitars here, all the keyboards, all the effects and weird stuff.” While he usually gets an engineer in to help him with recording, he enjoys the process of putting the song together afterwards. “But Pro Tools hates me; it knows that I'm not that good at it. It's like a mean dog that sees me coming a little bit scared... It's getting better, but it definitely fucks with me.”

The rest was recorded at Erik Ron’s studio near Rossdale’s home. They’ve worked with Ron for the past three albums now. “We don’t really have to say much – it’s a really good dynamic.” The process is very quick, he says, with Ron only needing the band to come in for a few days. “I kind of miss being holed up in a studio for a month or so, and you’re there playing, everyone’s together. You can hear that on the records, they're a little bit more alive-sounding. But no one seems to do records like that, and I miss those days. Nothing beats a record of a band playing together.”

Looking ahead to months of touring, Rossdale reflects on the challenges of a working musician’s life. “Sometimes it feels a bit claustrophobic to know what you're doing until February or March, and it's all dependent on staying healthy, staying focused. I don't say no – I'm not in that position yet. They ask, we do it!” Although he finds his work fulfilling, he’s recently become more conscious of the sacrifices he’s made. “When my mum passed a few months ago, at her funeral they did a whole photo illustration of her life. It was really painful because I noticed that all my pictures with her were when I’d come into town and I’d engineer dinner somewhere, or I’d go to her favourite cafe where she lived in Beaconsfield, or at my house – these three locations. Everyone else was at birthdays, parties, New Year's Eves. I gave that all up. So my intention is to try and carve out those personal memories more.”

I Beat Loneliness is dedicated to his mother’s memory, and he created the album artwork as a tribute to her. “Her favourite flowers were peonies, but I thought if I did a picture of a real traditional peony, it would be soft and a bit confusing.” Instead, he produced a negative image influenced by the photography of Man Ray. “It was the idea of two peonies together, not entwined like lovers but just connected like family, like blood.”

Rossdale began playing in bands in the mid-80s, but his interest in music started in childhood. He was obsessed with the Sex Pistols, and PiL’s “This Is Not a Love Song” was “really powerful to me as a kid, because I’d only ever heard soppy love songs.” Through his older sister, he was introduced to the sound-system culture growing up around London’s Acklam Road: Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and, most influentially for Rossdale, Aswad and their original bassist George Oban. “All my basslines forever have been dub basslines. I was thinking the other day that if I want to get better, I should do more walking basslines because all my basslines are just wannabe dub basslines.” Other artists he admires include Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (“probably the finest lyricist of our generation, after Bowie – the emotion and the choice of words are just dazzling”) and PJ Harvey, whose Rid of Me was an inspiration for Bush’s 1996 album Razorblade Suitcase. Among his favourite songs, Rossdale also names one inspired by Harvey, Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms”, together with Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” and Tom Waits’s “Innocent When You Dream”. “Probably one of the greatest songs ever, and greatest sentence ever. Amazing lyricist.”

L-R: Nik Hughes, Gavin Rossdale, Chris Traynor, Corey Britz. Image: Chapman Baehler.

Since he started out, there have been vast changes in the industry but, for Rossdale, the exploitation of musicians through streaming deals is just the latest version of an age-old story. “I’ve had over a billion streams; I’ve not made that much money off the streaming. I know that the streaming services pay a lot more money than the artists receive. That hasn't really changed, because even if you're selling 20, 30 million albums, you're making someone £300 million. You might get a nice amount of money, but it’s nothing compared to what the label’s got.” He laments the lack of a strong musicians’ union to take the kind of action that was so effective for the Writers Guild of America in 2023. “There's no solidarity amongst musicians to find a way around this problem.”

He can see both the upsides and downsides of technological developments, not only for music but for life more broadly. “There's never been a better time to communicate with people – but there’s possibly never been a lonelier time, because people have used it to not show their real selves a lot of the time. I think the world is fucked: geopolitically it’s a disaster, we have wars going on, we have huge conflicts. But there’s also incredible things going on, you can have fulfilling experiences with your friends, with your lover, you can go places, you can do things, you can see things. Life has never been better.”

Bush are now heading out on tour – first in North America before coming to Europe in the autumn and finishing with six arena shows across the UK. “For us, going on this tour and doing all this stuff, it’s crazy. Our tenth record, and people want to come to shows still. There’s a lot to be so thankful for.” Rossdale is looking forward to sending his new songs out into the world. “I think people always need music and always need the right records. There's too many records in the world, but never enough great records.”

I Beat Loneliness is available 18th July.

Author: Rachel Goodyear