AOL Sessions Interview: Gavin Rossdale

Interview with AOL’s Steve Baltin sits down to talk with Gavin Rossdale – check out the interview below…

‘Gavin Rossdale – AOL Music
Gavin Rossdale admits saying “I” as opposed to “we” sounds odd to him when it comes to talking about music. But after spending the ’90s as the frontman of Bush and then for his follow-up project, Institute, the singer is finally stepping out on how own for his debut solo album, ‘Wanderlust.’ Though he is playing with a new band as he does four songs from the new album as well as Bush tunes ‘Come Undone’ and ‘Letting the Cables Sleep,’ Rossdale is clearly out in front, even going acoustic at one point. The new album finds Rossdale exploring his softer side in many places, something that is fitting for his new lot in life as he admits fatherhood has changed his perspective in places. Rossdale spoke to AOL about the unexpected responsibilities of being a dad, maintaining a connection with his Bush songs and the Barack Obama phenomenon.

AOL: How did the performance feel out there?

GR: I think it went pretty good. It’s a new band for me, so this week has been quite an interesting trial by fire. Sometimes you do certain gigs that sound a certain way for you and you get lost into how good it is because you get twisted in your own space, but actually I thought it sounded good for me, so it was fun to do.

AOL: Can you tell us about how you chose the Bush songs you performed?

GR: I did ‘Letting the Cables Sleep,’ which I have actually never done acoustically. It was a song I did on ‘The Science of Things.’ It was really electronic and almost un-band-like, sort of a remix version. I love that song and I was asking myself — not out loud, ’cause I’m not weird — “If I was going to play a mellow song acoustically, what would I do?” So I just started learning it last night, and the first time that we played it was actually on camera, because that’s how we roll.

AOL: Do you have touring plans yet for the record?

GR: We go to New York and a couple of places here in America, and then we go to Europe and play some festivals and some TV just to wake everyone up to the fact I’ve got a record coming out. I’m so used to saying “we,” but it’s “I.” It sounds really wack: “I’ve got a record coming out.” So I’ll say “we,” ’cause it sounds more natural. So club shows and festivals just to announce the record and then coming back in July and doing a bunch of shows here in the U.S. and then, really, the major tour will start in October. I gotta take a little bit of time out, let the record set up with everyone, make everyone fall in love with it and let it become indispensable to everyone, and then go on tour when the demand is rapid. We’re going for rabies.

AOL: When you’re planning the show, do you start to think a little bit about how maybe some of the Bush stuff will fit in with the new material?

GR: Yeah, absolutely. The shows I’ve already done had a ton of Bush stuff in there as well, because I know that when I want the audience to be in a certain state, if I play ‘Machine Head,’ that’s going to do it. And there are lots of quite a few cool rock tracks on the new record along with a kind of atmospheric Peter Gabriel wannabe tracks [laughs]. I did this record ‘Institute’ a couple of years ago, and that was a heavy-riff bass-guitar record and forgetting about the audiences or whether it’s Bush or whatever, just for me, artistically, aesthetically, getting in there, it emancipated me. It allowed me to go in and do a record that took some of the guitars away and allowed the bass — I love the bass, it’s, like, the sexiest instrument — and allowed the bass lines to come through. It’s kind of ironic, because I did a record with [producer] Bob Rock, who really wants to turn up the guitars and turn up the heat, and I was like, “I wanna try different things.” So we sometimes let a lot of atmosphere take the place, but I obviously know in my head that there’s plenty of rock to play because basically live and big shows — rock music is the best. It’s the one that really gets the crowd going.

AOL: What were some of the things that emerged for you in the writing in this record? Was there anything that came up that maybe surprised you a little bit?

We did a song called ‘Drive’ today, and I realized recently I actually went for an audition in New Orleans and I went to visit the 9th Ward. After Hurricane Katrina, that was the most devastated area, and I drove around and had a look seeing the level of the water, you can see it on the freeway there, and you can see the destruction of the houses. And a lot ‘Drive’ has that because obviously it’s terrible people being killed and houses lost, but or it’s also [emotional] to see stranded animals. I love animals and somehow that’s a really forlorn image and something you’ll never forget. And obviously now you have the incredible tragedy of the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China, incredible natural disasters. So that’s strange when those elements pop up into the writing, and it’s not necessarily like I set out to do that, much like ‘Frontline,’ which is a song on the record we didn’t do today, but that is my anti-war song. I think that anyone making records should have certain statements within there, if they want to, and there’s a statement I wanted to put in there.

AOL: What issues are are important to you at this time?

Clearly, America is ripe for a change, and I just hope that the Democrats prevail. And with Barack it’s so very exciting about a man like him getting in and leading the country. I think it’s brilliant. It’s a very positive time and I look forward to November. It really drags on, you become a bit overloaded with politics. I wish they sort of set up records like that now, state to state. If music was like that, it’d be great.

AOL: Obviously, you’ve had big personal changes over the past few years, with becoming a father. How does that connect with the global themes you mentioned in the writing of the record?

If you take an idea of an anti-war song, it does no good for me personally to stand on a soapbox and wave anti-government slogans and put it to music. Plus, I don’t want to be too political; I’m not that smart, that involved. I have a simple view of life, in a way. So the way that I could relate to that is I could write a song, ‘Frontline,’ which is specifically, for me, imagining someone goes away to war, they don’t really know why they’re there, they’re lost there, and they’re in danger of losing their lives, and it’s what they miss when they’re back home with their family. So I wrote it from that perspective because my life has changed with my son. It didn’t matter so much if anything happened to me, but now it’s got this terrible twist to it of being directly responsible for someone. So I just work off the personal angle of that, and I keep everything personal. On my first record with Bush, I wrote a song called ‘Bomb,’ which is about the IRA and the whole Protestant-Catholic divide we had with Northern Ireland and in England with different bombings that I grew up with. I wrote that song about a guy going out shopping and how he maybe doesn’t come home ’cause there was a series of bombs at shopping centers. So that’s how I personalized it.

Steve Baltin