The London Times 
October 26, 1997 

Wearing his unravelling Seattle hat and grungy crimson shirt, Gavin Rossdale wandered out of the security gates of Goldeneye,
Ian Fleming's famous spread in remote, emerald-green Ocho Rios in Jamaica. He loped up the lane to Oracabessa, a town so
small the bank has never heard of American Express, and made contact in a rum shop, where the locals recognised the genre
at a glance. 

"You a musician, man?" 

"Yeah." 

"You like reggae?" 

"Yeah." 

"Cool." 

Having bought drinks all round, he wandered back to Goldeneye. 

"It's Bob Marley everywhere," he says, emerging from the trees with a beach dog at his heels. "They play Marley all the time.
It was like, 'Yes. I have heard of him. And I'm not leaving." 

Autumn 1997, and the sky is the limit for the 29-year-old singer and songwriter with Bush, the British band that is virtually
unknown at home but has sold more than 12m records in the US. Over there they outsell Oasis in ticket sales by $10m per
tour and their last album charted higher than REM's. Gavin already plays stadiums packed with half a million people, has
bodyguards and a masseur called Bone. He tours in planes and buses that have bedrooms and offices and saloons with puffy
real leather armchairs. A score of nervy executives and accountants are watching his every move, holding their breath, for his
next album could easily enter the stratosphere inhabited only by rock names so venerable it would be crass to mention them. 

Gavin is wearing the women's white towelling slippers that British Airways gave him in Düsseldorf, where they lost his luggage:
four bags containing the fashion moments of the last couple of cash-lubricated years. "They are too comfortable to throw
away. It's like walking on a flapjack." Northwards from there are well-worn jeans, a sticky black nylon shirt, a heavy crested
ring picked up in a junk shop, a glint of earrings, and a waifish, pretty face with beady black eyes as brightly watchful and hard
as David Bailey's or Picasso's. His curlylocks hair is negligently streaked and tenderly bobbed. "Got it trimmed on the James
Bond beach for a few dollars," he says. His girlfriend, Gwen Stefani, the glam blonde singer of California's ska-pop band No
Doubt, whom he met when her band supported his, passed on the beach barber while staying at Goldeneye a fortnight ago.
"She called up this guy who was over and asked him to help her with her hairstyle," he says, adding with a mixture of awe and
satisfaction, "he invoiced her for three grand." 

In the US, the couple hesitate before a barrage of fans, not knowing which one should run for their life. The younger the fan,
the more likely it is to be Gwen, a teenybopper idol whose mixed fashion signals bemuse even the savvy Gav. Accompanying
her to New York for the MTV awards, he watched her trip up to the platform to receive the Best Group Video for Don't
Speak in a pink nylon baby-doll negligée and a respectful black armband for Diana. Gavin says he is over clothes. "You just
get the best stylist you can, and nick everything." 

For all his ironic, diffident charm, Gavin is disciplined and very bright. He is quite noticeably employing the lessons of the past
to deal with the future. He is using everything he learnt during his decade in the cold, singing with bands that went nowhere for
the usual reasons, analysing the careers of stars that made it and stayed put. He is enjoying every minute of all this, but, while
he milks each new experience, he keeps pulling himself up short, preserving a tough, almost technical detachment to keep the
circuits from overloading. 

He is determinedly low-key. When Gwen went back on tour, he moved out of Fleming's house, with its polished rooms linked
by flowering walkways, its sunken garden and Balinese decor, picked up his customised Fender and pocket amp and flapped
100 yards down the beach to an empty cottage on the shoreline. 

A Jamaican Jeeves in striped waistcoast follows us there now, bearing guava juice and iced mineral water in crystal jugs, and
trays of sliced mango, watermelon and papaya. The short safari takes us across a lawn positively pulsating in 32 degrees of
heat and to a shady garden table crusted with candle grease. 

"Can I get you anything else, sir?" 

"No, man, no. What'd you want to get me?" 

"I am here to serve you, sir." 

Relentlessly pursued by breakfast, lunch, dinner and all-day snacks, he surreptitiously feeds the beach dog and its family,
yearning for his German shepard dog, Winston, a mat of black curls that his father is minding in London. "He's hard-core,"
says Gavin, pointing to the grinning beach bum. "He's not noncey like Winston. He eats fish, fruit, bones, anything." He gently
shows me a gash on the dog's hind leg. "I'm paying for him to go to the vet tomorrow and have it seen to." 

The staff are acclimatised to the whims of the weird and privileged. Food is served at all times of the day: yams and soused
chicken and curried kingfish and callallou soup, fish and chips, champagne, cranberry juice, chewing gum, burgers. It was
partly to get away from the food - a band with underground credentials must, above all, be skeletal - that Gavin fled the big
house. "Came down here for a bit of peace," he complains. "The moment you popped out of the bedroom, they sprang in and
changed the sheets. You kept having to move so they could wash the floor. It was completely, like, anal." 

The estates of Goldeneye and Noel Coward's old house, Firefly, have been bought by Chris Blackwell, founder of Island
Records, as part of a high- security paradise for a select group of the rich, hip and famous. "Nice, no?" Gavin gestures to
where the glittering turquoise and cerulean waters of the Caribbean glitter through bushes of ixora and allamanda. "There's a
dinghy down there with a 10cc engine and a pirate flag. Where the reef ends, dinner begins." 

Blackwell is developing the gardens in an appropriate and discreet manner, with a touch of childish whimsy. All tree houses
and thatched huts at Goldeneye boast sofas as big as double beds, beds the size of rooms, large- screen televisions and
sophisticated sound systems. At this very moment, in a pixie house somewhere among the manchineel trees, Kate Moss and
Johnny Depp lie wrapped in each others arms. In the velvet thundery night shrilling with tree frogs, only the spark of a distant
roll-up in the darkness betrays the presence of a neighbour, or the occasional cry of "Ouch! Got you, you bastard!" as a
mosquito is slapped onto sunburnt skin. 

"Everyone is supposed to plant a tree before they leave," says Gavin. Foundering on his third day alone in four years, he has
brightened with the company. "Namedrop trees. They put 'em there and the sheer weight of the names pushes 'em up." 

"I'm never alone - I'm alone all the time," he sings in Glycerine, and Nigel Pulsford, guitarist in the band, had already described
to me the endless US tour far from home, where the band would fetch up in a place they had never even heard of, in band
parlance a stadium in "Buck F*** Idaho", and find 20,000 fans waiting for them. Gavin has made the money to buy a London
house and Francis Bacon lithographs to hang in the drawing room, but he has only managed to spend 10 days there so far. "I
bought a house, but I live on a bus. The other guys have girlfriends who drop everything to see them. When there's a break,
things get warm and cosy for them. Because Gwen's on the road as much as I am, most of everything I earn goes to AT&T."
The last break he had, he collected up his sister, Lorraine, and her four-year-old daughter, Jade, his best friend, Zoe Grace,
and her two-year-old son, Marley, who is his godson, plus another couple of friends, and took them all to a villa in France,
where he proved himself as magnetic to small children as he is to animals. 

So far, Bush lyrics imply a hapless urban suffering that derives far from the house-owning, holiday-taking, bankrolled ethos of
a well-adjusted band poised to survive as long as U2. "The songs aren't all gloomy," protests Rob Kahane, head of the
Trauma label, who signed the band in 1993 and pays due tribute to "the hardest-working band in rock' n' roll" He thought for
a moment. "Swallowed's a happy song, a love ballad." 

Well only kind of. Let me quote, here, from Swallowed, their biggest hit single to date: "Piss on self esteem. Forward. Busted
knee. Sick head. Blackened lungs I miss the one I love a lot." From Swim, another love song of sorts: "I wanna fit inside you. I
wanna room inside you. If money talks I wanna buy you..." Gavin explains he wrote the songs just as his last, five- year
relationship was breaking up in the most painful way. "I try to be honest and open and vulnerable, because that's how I think
people are, but I am also trying to claw my way out of doom-laden songs. I want the next album to be 10 short, fast
numbers." 

Gavin hollers out his songs in a hoarse bellow above brute rock guitar and heavy rhythms. The music is unhomogenised and
confrontational, but the words are audible, varied and occasionally nicely ironic. They reveal a sense of isolation and fracture
first characterised in the grim back rooms of Seattle blocks and the dingy graffiti-covered clubs of Los Angeles and New
York, where punk rock was unleashed on an unready world. Of all the underground bands that sourced from those venues,
Nirvana was the most venerated. So when the troubled lead singer, Kurt Cobain, shot himself, it seemed to his myriad fans
that Cobain had sacrificed his sad, wild life to his music. There seemed to them to be a strange symbolism in the fact that
Cobain committed suicide on the very day Bush delivered their first record. 

This played both ways for Bush, whose music belongs to the same genre whose first album sounded a bit like Nirvana. Ergo?
Ergo nothing, says America, where millions have eagerly turned to Bush for music they can similarly invest with the significance
of personal dramas, dreams and despairs. Nirvana were artists and Bush are commercial opportunists, says a certain purist,
not to say priggish, section of the British music press, which has done everything in its power to denigrate this homegrown
flowering of talent. 

Why do they hate Bush so? Because, unlike Oasis, who could only be working- class and from Manchester, Gavin's band
went to good schools and, according to one British critic, "sound so American." To give an example from the licked pencil of
John Perry, published in New Musical Express on May 31 this year: "We've sneered at them, ignored them, called their fans
stupid, repeatedly pointed out their similarity to Nirvana, trashed their Razorblade Suitcase album. 'S***. suitcase,' we said.
Not terribly kind." Seven hundred and fifty words of not very closely reasoned text later, Perry penned his considered
conclusion: "Bush are only successful in America because Americans are stupid." 

Slapping down a mosquito with unnecessary force "look at the bugger, it was all fired up with my blood" - Gavin wearily
explains again. "Nirvana is one of the bands that inspired me, for sure. So are Jesus Lizard, My Bloody Valentine and the
Pixies, 'specially their Surfer Rosa." Finding himself at the same table as Nirvana's drummer, Dave Grohl, at the MTV awards,
Gavin had it out with him for good and all. "I pointed out that there were certain rhythms Nirvana and Bush both lifted from the
Pixies. Listen to the Pixies' song Doolittle, then listen to Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit..." He sings the riffs, scratching a
bite. "I said, 'So? Should we all be arrested and thrown in jail right now?'" He shrugs and unwraps a slice of mango. It has
been useful to Bush that they persuaded the cranky producer Steve Albini to work with them on their second album. Albini
produced some of Gavin's favourite songs, including Surfer Rosa, and is a password to alterna-cred. 

Gavin's close friendship with Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, singer with the band Hole, has baffled and divided the enemy,
who would have preferred her to join-in with the Bush bashing. "We met at a festival where Hole and Bush were playing, and
we knew each other for months before the press found out. For a time we rang each other every day, and she helped me over
a time on tour when I was taking too many pills to get to sleep and getting confused. We're friends for ever." The grunge
queen has done what she can by saying that Bush do not sound like Nirvana to her. 

Gavin shies away from the thought that this friendship could be interpreted as a pretty sharp move. "Horrible, manipulative
thought that anyone would think I would base my social life on how I was going to be perceived media-wise," he says, more in
sorrow than in anger. "Courtney and I share an entire culture; we just talk shop." On the whole I am convinced. He holds on
to his friends in a way that suggests a real affection for them, and the people he spends time with off the road are neither
famous nor influential. 

"Gavin's not like a man," says his platonic friend Zoe Grace. "You can talk to him as you would to a supportive sister. When I
was in labour, he was the first person I rang - if he'd been in London, he would have been there with me. He has an amazing
understanding of women. I've never seen a woman who didn't adore him. He's still friends with all his old girlfriends." 

Even with the British compulsion to denigrate homegrown talent, Bush are already one of the top five bands in the world. They
seem to be winning in Britain - confirmed by the tour earlier this month that included Gavin's old stomping ground of Kilburn, if
not Wembley Arena - but Gavin is so angry that when one British journalist established his credentials the other day by
announcing that he hated their music, Gavin dropped his tape recorder in the swimming pool. 

As the band's drummer, Robin Goodridge, says, "The younger journalists are always the most arrogant, because they think
their own favorite bands deserve success more than you do. It matters, because as a youngster you envisage success as British
success. You imagine people you went to school with saying, 'I know him!'" It is a jarring fact that a British band has made it
everywhere but in Britain. Bush have played nearly 250 venues around the world with huge success, and have never cancelled
a show. <[> "I don't take it to heart any more," says Gavin now, and immediately blows it by adding, "it's just that when
you've a vocation and a craft and a job and you work away for years, then when it comes to fruition it's deemed not to fit
certain criteria, that has an effect. For instance, it took me a long time to get to play Reading, and when I did it felt like the Cup
Final. Fifty-eight bands played there last year, but apparently they couldn't find us a slot. I had already won awards in the US,
sold 10m albums - I mean, that's not a reason to get a gig, but it's a pretty, good f***ing start!" 

The irony is that while their problem in Britain was that they made it in the US, their problem in the US was that they came
from Britain. "When I signed Bush, there had been a lot of English bands like the Stone Roses who had left a sour taste behind
them in the US," says Rob Kahane. "Bands who had a lot of money spent on them, a lot of hype, and came over here in the
belief that a tour meant a night in New York and a night in Los Angeles." 

"We've been doing 5 1/2 shows a week, with 19 songs and 50 verses," says Gavin. "I play 1 hour and 45 minutes, plus if you
get TV in there you have to do four extra run-throughs, with three to camera." He was so dizzy one night in Buffalo that he ran
offstage in a panic, having forgotten his own lyrics, and had to be line-fed by the support band, Veruca Salt. 

Gavin wasn't born responsible; he became that way. Belligerent, unafraid, constantly slouching off to Soho, he was a thorn in
the side of his old public school, Westminster, and only his father's efforts saved him from being expelled. "I got enough exams
to stay, and went off on a camping holiday with my local youth club. That woke me up. I realised I didn't want to be a
postman or an electrician. Overnight I became really quiet and studious. I smoked red Marlboros and wore a dirty mac and
carried a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Passed my exams, finished at 17. Done and out!" 

Recently he paid his doctor father back for wasted school fees. "I thought I wanted to be an actor, but basically I was trying to
find something, anything, where I wouldn't have to get out of bed and go to an office. I got a building job, left my auntie's,
where I stayed after my mother died, and tried to be in bands." 

It was the mid-1980s, the era of the Taboo and Café de Paris. "It was all about debauchery and fun and escape. We were all
indestructible." Covered in make-up and with ringlets to his elbows, he hung out with a core group that would flounce into the
clubs every night, led by Boy George. In his autobiography, Boy George let drop that Gavin was the "ex" of Marilyn, a
pretty-boy member of the posse and himself a one-hit wonder. "I ran into Boy George in New York," says Gavin wryly. "I
said, 'Thanks for all the f***ing s*** questions I've been getting for the last year.' I never was gay. But everyone picked up on
that quote. Because there's nobody else in the book anyone f***ing knows!" 

He has to laugh. "Boy George turned to Gwen and the first thing he says to her is, 'I can't believe you're 37! And you look
brilliant!' She was thrown, and I said, 'Shut up, you fool, she's 27!' So nothing's changed." 

He gets up and puts on some music - Sparklehorse, PJ Harvey, Adrian Sherwood, Tricky - and cools himself off by standing
fully clothed under the shower, where he is joined by a friendly land crab. The shower head is supported by the giant arms of a
banyan tree, and waters its roots within the open-air stockade that might have been built as a bathroom by Tarzan for Jane.
He emerges, dripping, and picks up the phone. "Where's room service? Let's see if I can still order cocktails." 

He's well adjusted, fighting the craziness he sings about, although there have been moments: there was the time he woke up in
Hong Kong, when the day began very badly indeed. Corporate entertainment took him to a market where he was supposed
to choose live animals, watch them being butchered, and name the restaurant where he wanted to eat them for dinner. After an
explosion whose reverberations can still be heard in China on a quiet night, he refused to eat anything for three days. Bombed
out of his mind, he drifted into a hostess bar and spent several thousand dollars on drinks for the house. 

Success began on a day when just a few of those dollars might have made all the difference. Homeless in LA, he was sleeping
on floors, trying never to stay longer than two nights so he didn't outstay his welcome and could return later. On the scrounge,
he dropped into a low-key barbecue for the free snacks and found himself studying a solitary figure in shirt and sunglasses
floating on a Lilo in the pool. This enigmatic figure turned out to be the English DJ Dave Dorrell. For both it was a turning
point. Dorrell married Claudia, whose floor was home to Gavin, and became Bush's manager. 

"I had actually met Gavin in a few previous incarnations," Dave Dorrell told me on mobile phone from a motorway in
Provence. He was carrying a very angry baby, and his communications were peppered with "Hey! Okay! Just tell me -
whaddya want?" He remembers the singer as diffident, soft-spoken and good- looking. When Gavin heard Dorrell was going
to New York, he entrusted him with a precious portfolio of photographs of his current band, the Little Dukes - all curls and
rouge - to show to a record executive. Dorrell, who suspected the guy in New York didn't want to see them at all, promptly
lost them. But to his surprise he hadn't been in his Manhattan hotel room for 10 minutes when the phone rang. The record
company wanted to pick up the photographs. 

"My position ever since has been one of anxiously trying to make up," shouted Dorrell above the screams. The Little Dukes
fizzled but, soon after, Gavin formed a new band called Future Primitive. They played in a dingy pub in Tufnell Park in north
London, and made the first tape he had ever been proud of. Dorrell listened to that tape in the bath and was impressed enough
to get them a break on Gary Crowley's television show. Meanwhile, Rob Kahane, a known Anglophile, was trying to find a
hot new band for his new label, Trauma. "We connected through the old school network - old comprehensive- school
network," Dorrell told me. Kahane was interested enough to get on a plane from LA and pitch up in Harlesden in person. "It
was most unfortunate. Rob's limo got done over outside the pub while he was inside listening to the band." Kahane says it was
the best unsigned band he had heard in 20 years. "They had an image we could put straight out on MTV. They weren't
druggy. Within an hour we had a deal." 

They hadn't made it yet. Distribution politics blocked them for over a year in Britain, and it was an uphill struggle in the US.
That first tour, the band slept and ate with seven technicians on a broken-down coach. There was no catering, they carried
their own bags and equipment, and if they got a day off they did their laundry. Sometimes they got to share a dirty motel room.
They were all missing their girlfriends and family back home. Dorrell still suffering from guilt, wheeled and dealed and worked
for the breaks. As success grew, he got the band better seats on planes, better buses. After a few months, they were
promoted to budget inns. "It would be called La Mexicana, and it would be right on the highway," says Nigel Pulsford. "You
needed a bouncer, because anyone could get to you any time." 

In a symbolic gesture, the first thing Gavin did after Bush got the record deal was to blow $900 on a guitar. "The guy in the
shop told me it had been made for Joe Walsh," he says. The Eagles guitarist had been an early icon. But when Gavin plugged
it into a second-rate amp and strummed it for the band, they laughed him out of the room. 

"They killed themselves. They said, 'Yeah, yeah, everyone and his brother's got a guitar of Joe Walsh's.'" Then, somewhere in
Milwaukee, the king himself dropped into their dressing room to say he liked their music. Gavin sidelined Walsh and showed
him the guitar. "I said, 'Look, the band have been taking the piss out of me for years for believing the salesman. Is it yours?'
And Joe Walsh said, very cool, 'Yes, yes, this is my old guitar. On this I wrote Hotel California.' "Yeeeeees!"