MY CAREER IN FIVE SONGS

Joe Walsh's Jazzmaster, Billy Cobham's bass line... As Bush head out on tour, Gavin Rossdale reveals the history behind a handful of their best tunes

- JOE MATERA

AS FRONT MAN FOR the British rock group Bush these past 32 years, Gavin Rossdale has grown accustomed to hearing plaudits for his vocals. But the 58-year-old is also the band’s rhythm guitarist, a role for which he’s less likely to earn praise. So he says he was genuinely surprised when Billy Gibbons, one of rock’s legendary tonehounds, singled him out.

“Billy came to our show once and was so floored that he came backstage after to ask me about my tone,” Rossdale says. “Our guitarist, Chris Traynor, who is a way better guitar player than I am, was ignored, yet my searing tone got Billy Gibbons’ attention! It was a great moment in my guitar life.”

Rossdale’s guitar tone has propelled Bush’s alt-rock anthems since Sixteen Stone, their multi-Platinum debut album, landed on the post-grunge landscape in 1994. The seeds of what became Bush were first sown when Rossdale met original Bush lead guitarist Nigel Pulsford at a Bryan Adams Wembley Stadium concert in London in 1991 and they bonded over their shared musical tastes, in particular the Pixies.

“We jammed together in my kitchen after that show and throughout the night,” Rossdale recalls. “I asked him if he would start a band with me, and he replied that he was too busy, but that if I had songs he would develop them for me. So I got my songs together and took them to him. I asked him, ‘Are you interested now?’ And he said, ‘No, not at all, but if you can write more songs, I’ll do them for you.’

“And that’s how we began working together. I would write the songs and program the drum beats with a rhythm machine, and he would realize the songs and demo them up. That’s how I wrote all my songs.”