Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

BUSH

Rock quartet from London playing grunge music whose first album sold seven million in the USA while Britain ignored it. Lineup: Gavin Rossdale, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter; Nigel Pulsford, guitar; Dave Parsons, bass and Robin Goodridge on drums. Rossdale's father was a doctor, his mother left when he was eleven; 'I've never sat down and cried about it. I've just made a career out of it.' His father sent him to Westminster, one of the classiest schools in England; he disliked it, left at 17 and formed a band with Sasha Puttnam, son of film producer Sir David; they made flop singles. (His other love was football; he once tried out for Chelsea, played semi-pro until '94.) He went to LA '91, worked on video shoots, had no luck. Back in London a real band came together, important to one another as a football side, but their demos were ignored until Rob Kahane (ex- George Michael manager) heard them in LA. Their lack of success at home was an advantage; they started out on the bottom rung in the USA rather than swanking about like spoiled brats. Sixteen Stone '95 on Trauma had two top 40 singles (five hits on the radio) and was bigger in the USA than all of Britpop put together, indeed sold more copies than any album has ever sold in little Britain, where the album had sold only 30,000 copies in a year (but to Rossdale, 'That's 30,000 people who like our music.') The American rock press disliked them for treading on their memories of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain; in fact critics on either side of the Atlantic can't stand it when anybody makes it without their approval. An American fan said that their appeal was in their songs about 'the women question'; asked which part he replied, 'The losing them part.' Their second album Razorblade Suitcase '97 was stripped-down and moody, as though perhaps they were finding their own identity, and Mojo in the UK castigated them for seeking street-cred. The poor guys can't win; they must be crying all the way to the bank.