Ep. 256: Gavin Rossdale (Bush) | "Glycerine" & Surviving the '90s

welcome to and the writer is i am your host ross golin today's rock star is a defining voice of alternative music as from man of bush he helped shape an era of music with songs that are raw emotional heavy vulnerable and somehow still massive massive radio anthems all at once his songwriting became the soundtrack to a generation including my own but beyond the success today's conversation gets into longevity reinvention surviving the chaos of fame and what it actually means to keep creating decades into a career and the writer is gavin rossdale there you go love the intro so i saw you the first time i saw you this is great it's a 1995 q101 jamboree in chicago and the headliners were duran duran and stone roses and you know i just remember not caring about you know i just wanted to see i just want to see bush man thank you so so sick to be like to you know years later to be sitting here so welcome thank you thanks for having me do you remember shows uh some shows yeah for sure and then so many kind of i needed sometimes a clue but but um those shows at that time 95 they were so wild because we just sort of effectively began and i didn't know what was in store for us or what was possible so when i when these radio shows were played in these like the stadiums or arenas i'd be like how i just wanted to know what was in store for us or what was in store for us or what was in store for us or what was in i don't know if i you know often play glycerine wherever the hit was i'd play that and um that would just be shocking because it was just so extreme from where i'd come from and what i had the expectations i mean i was so dumb i didn't know what the future held for me you know for me i just wanted to make a record that was the big deal i i was not smart enough to know the potential and i just thought that every time i'd go out in london see some someone from a record company or someone who was signed and that seemed to be everything that seemed to be there i just how do you get signed how do you go over to someone and be like listen i could really add your company you know add value and none of that ever happened so i just was really excited to make a record um when i made that 16 stone record um and i thought that was kind of that was it when i'd made it really felt successful to have made it it's weird i feel like when you're a musician you know when you're a kid you can kind of judge your years by what grade you're in you know you kind of remember what grades you were in but once you graduate things like high school or college and you or you're putting in you're putting out albums i feel like the only way you can define your life is through releases or shows you know do you have a recollection of you know because you're you know the from from starting to get albums really hurt in 1994 till now do you define your life by releases or do you like how do you figure out what years you lived it is confusing you know i think of it when i'm looking down at the set list you know on a recent tour we've been on just finished up in north america and we were playing like an hour 45 hour 50 which is a lot for us but we just wanted to make sure that we hit the hit many albums and many um sort of styles or and i and i looked down the set list and it just it just it's such a fun journey of evolution but you know evolution of writing evolution of ability to communicate uh always a similar human condition human frailty challenges how to get over that for some reason i i i love that and um i once tried to be a um storyteller i wrote the song called johnny and mary and it was a terrible and it just wasn't johnny and mary eight days a week ain't got no problem life is it just was terrible i was just like this is not your uh this is not your your way and it was only when i kind of discovered um ginsburg and that whole city lights the whole um that that movement greggy corso all those poets i just fell in love with that the the beat poets you know and that's what i sort of found that i could inhabit inherit that style sort of broken glass shards of ideas and and concepts and jarring things and putting weird things together mental furniture or strange phrases that i liked that just turn me on for no reason and when you're young you're like fuck it i just like it yeah right well when you sing those songs now are you are you singing covers of the gavis you know 20 something year old version of gavin or are you are you singing these songs with the wisdom of somebody who's your who who's where you're at yeah i mean uh well it's a bit like um it's very much like i suppose acting you know if you're doing a theater play you do the words and every night the same words are different because you bring something different to every performance you know and um so i can't possibly you know do something different to every performance you know you know do something different to every performance you know and um so i can't possibly you know do something different to every performance you know and um so i can't possibly you know do something somersaults backwards to kind of think of the genesis of any song but i can just let uh the moment wash over me with whatever's going on and so whatever i sing about is very is very current you know the sort of the the the the kind of impetus is yeah it's always about being in the moment i mean i i'm obsessed with the moment you know and you know we all know that regret or fear you know the future the past which is this is the future which is the future which is the future are scary places and actually when you sit in the moment life is generally okay and so i do that with a singing you know uh i sing come down i don't want to come back down from this cloud but i i have no idea what i wrote that about back in the day so i just think that um you can't you don't put yourself what what's the day you wrote come down what's that day like that day was i was i had i i i was my been in two bands the second band i was in um i kind of was figuring out what band i didn't think i wanted to be in i was the guitar was guys really good guitar player um but really bluesy really rock really blues more traditional and i kept on finding myself trying to sing onto bits that felt a bit like bit too what just wasn't didn't what music didn't really speak to me and so i was looking around and and i was like i'm gonna sing a bit of a song and i was like i'm gonna sing a bit of a song everyone basically left i've always been the one standing in my first band and the second band and um he said i don't think it's working anymore and so he kind of broke up with me and and that was the end of that band and when i was looking for other guitar players i was like this is a little weak that you're you can't write a song unless someone else plays four chords for you you know it can't be that difficult look at buskers you know now you know i granted the certain people that write with spread chords and interesting stuff like that and i was like like that but generally classic songs seem to be really airing on the simple you know which i think is really about the connectivity of it you know because it keeps simple so uh come down which i have said before so i apologize to repeat myself on your great podcast but yeah that was the first song i wrote on my own um and then i was like okay that's infuriating because well it's funny you have a bachelor's in music and and and uh everything and then in the side of the business not just sitting here thinking like i'm a doofus i'm like feral i don't know how i don't know how i write songs i just sort of don't have a choice because i said i'm a songwriter so i sort of fiddled my way through it i have too much um modulation because i really disrespect any keys i'm in you know people are like whoa where did that chord come from and i used to find this when i'd be in the studio this is so weird i can't get the first note i'd have to guess the first note and then i'd have to guess the first note and then i'd have to guess the first note between two chords and then then i'd find it so uh i'm always trying to get better at it so when i heard you thinking that i just imagined you just having like a toolbox of like we can be here we can go there we can do this and do that do that and it makes me feel dumb well uh you shouldn't feel dumb i think one of the things about being proficient at an instrument is learning how to be an instrumentalist i just know how to communicate you know what i'm playing and i can hear other people who are much better than i am and be able to say oh that's a cool chord that they went to right but i my actual uh i am a a subpar instrumentalist who's who's which is probably why i'm a decent songwriter that's great you know but when you were saying you living in the that expression of living what is it living in the future is where you have anxiety about that's concern that's anxiety and living in the past is regret not letting go of where do you tend to live do you live in the future or the past i'm all over the shop you know i'm a basket case you know and so i just try to keep myself on an even keel and i it's funny because um when i went to write i beat loneliness this record you know i was just thinking wow 10 records um what can i bring what's my point what is the point or like what am i going to say and i thought oh well you've lived you lost you've lived loved all that sort of stuff so i kind of just took a deep dive inwards and just uh went for that style and and and i think that i spent a lot of time with a lot of anxiety and i always can trace it to something that may happen you know and it's sort of like writing the wrong story to a situation i'm in or i may eulogize the past when i forget what someone did wrong to me but i'll sort of eulogize the good bits i'll be like oh that was so great then so i but i just try and drag myself into the present as much as i can because it's a good place to be i mean that's it's definitely a good place to be but it's to dive deep on an album and then release it is pretty vulnerable is that hard to be vulnerable at this point i've always done you know i've like i think that there's no point my career has been a series of of evolution to just my body and mind go and be free and you know i'm english so we're naturally born like a bit like a tree you know we're a bit stiff you know as people so it's like i've just i love the idea of just being so loose on stage so loose lyrically that it's just like um i mean i've got i'm in trouble i need help on my this last record i think one other song so i'm really i i think that if you're not i'm not prepared to be vulnerable then you're not interesting so i'm much more concerned with being interesting than people like oh my god what a basket case is it hard for your family to listen to their father as being a vulnerable basket case well painting a picture that's maybe a bit extreme i'm not like a basket case the whole time i don't think they listen to my music i don't i don't for them i'm just like you know pretty much the cook and the driver and the confident everything about their lives and i've i've seen so many people who have kids who lean on their kids for like almost for parental advice on them you know like they stress the kids out with that you see that a lot um where the kids get have to be too sophisticated too early on in their lives and so i've made a point about that and i've made a point of never um never uh kind of sharing my concerns about anything with them you know i i that'd be terrible i i know my role with them and it's not to play me there not me to play them my new songs or anything like that i was gonna say when uh because you know we were talking about touring and you were doing 140 minutes what was it an hour and 40 minutes set yeah so it is to do 100 minutes set is is really intense but one thing that is really amazing about your catalog is that the songs have aged really well and i think that you could look at some of your peers who have to sing songs that sound like they were written by an 18 year old their whole life but songs like i don't want to come down and come back down from this cloud and like that kind of lyric is something that you would write now yeah what do you think that younger you had that was so innate to be able to write such sophisticated lyrics i just uh i don't really know i think that that sometimes ignorance is bliss and you just sort of forge forward you know with mine i have a really bizarre connection with songwriting where when it's difficult or when i'm not finding it i i you know it's i have to beat myself up to do it like i beat myself up and you know i'm very self-deprecating i have a punitive superego i was told by a shrink once for head of ucla psychiatry what is it what is what is a punitive superego what is it someone's really hard on themselves really hard on themselves for like if you make a mistake you know you're gonna slaughter yourself self-flagellation you know like regret concern you know over just too much on that and um then when i string it together because to me songwriting is my primary job you know i'm just so thrilled when i get a song and it fits together and you come out that chorus and you go back into the verse it's all happening it makes me the happiest i can ever imagine and it's just because i think it's i've done it for so long but but i i revere it and i think that it's so magical and it's all about the alchemy It's never just the chord structure, the words or the melody or the counter melodies or whatever. It's the way that it all sits together and it takes on a life of its own. I can listen to songs I've written and I've written so many songs and I'd be so confused to try and write them again. And how did I get to that point? And why did I decide to play that? And that's why I love the magic of studios because you can play something, be inspired, play something. And I love it when I'm tracking the band or anything like that. And I'd be like, oh, that's so cool because that's now, that's going to live forever. That way, that recorder, you record it, you got it, you don't have to do it again. Vocal, you just push yourself and it just opened your voice throat in a certain way. And you're like, damn. So sometimes I think, oh, I'm so glad I don't have to undo the songs and recreate. And that's sometimes where I get a bit paranoid about my own kind of feral musicality that I sometimes wish I knew more. Could be like, you should. You should always write in the harmonic minor. You know, I've got songs or this, my guitar teacher say to me, ah, you did that because the harmonic minor is doing that. I'm like, all I want to know is how can I do that again? Yeah. How can I do it again? Because I really liked that feeling. So it's interesting. Like I still study and I still find it really fascinating. What do you study? I study. Hey guys, have you ever wanted to get further in the world of And The Writer Is? Have you ever wanted to sit in that seat? Or cross from me? Well, guess what? You can now join the conversation. That's right. Because we just launched our Patreon. You'll get access to our monthly Zoom hangs where we'll listen to demos, get feedback. You can hang with us directly and we can hang with you too. Look, occasionally we'll bring on some guests that will chat with our community. And maybe most importantly to me, you are going to have access to our 200 archived audio episodes. That's episodes with Charlie XCX and Sabrina Carpenter. And Lin-Manuel Miranda and Shania Twain and Babyface so much. So many great interviews that you can get amazing insight and knowledge from. So come and check it out in the description below. There's a link for you to join us on Patreon. What do you study? I study just all the chord potentials and all sort of relative major minors and writing scales out. Writing chords out. Stuff that I'd never used to do and to see what I used to do all by ear. You know, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. And so now I've been really trying to turn over a new leaf and to get really looking at all that and pulling it together in a way that I sort of never have. And realizing what all the modes mean and why they mean that. I knew all the modes, but I didn't really string it together. As soon as I try and be intellectual in the studio. And then I'd be like, oh, fuck. You know, just smoke a joint and write a tune on something. You're fine, you know. And that's what I would do. But now it's fun. So when you said that to me, it makes me like, oh, I've got to go back and work on those flat sixes. That's really what it's like. Flat six for those of you out there is really good for blues. And I never play the blues. So forget to see I'm wrong already. Already wrong. Just saying. Just saying. If you want to know what the. Flat sixes is really. Anyway, let's do it, guys. Who wants a music theory class right now? Are you a studio nerd now? Yeah, to an extent. I really love it. You know, I think my studio hates me and it knows. It's like an angry dog. It just knows that I'm going to screw it up. And like, you know, there have been times with the Pro Tools where I got off the grid, you know, up in the top left corner. And I. And I suddenly I couldn't record. I was like losing my mind for like a week going, I can't record in time. And someone's like, oh, you've got to do it. Yeah, it's one. So I'm getting better at it. I do love. It used to be I was always being an over the shoulder keyboard player. You know, you have someone come into the program, you'd be over the shoulder going, yeah, try it. So it's really nice to sit there and go through the sounds yourself and just not have to be asking requests of things. All the time. And so I find that exploration really amazing. And then when I. So I am to an extent. Um, I had a, um, you know, I have a really nice setup in, in a spare bedroom in my house. I actually, you know, I, I even cut a hole in the closet door so that you've got a vocal booth. You can actually see in the walls, you can see the booth in there. It's quite a nice little effect. And, uh, I've written loads of songs there. Sometimes I write with other people, which I really like. I like just doing the top line. So that's sometimes such a holiday doing just the top line coming in. So just singing on music, that's like, it feels like a holiday. Did you ever want to write for other people? Yeah, I did. I did. Um, when I was signed to rock nation for a little bit, I wrote for Rihanna. I wrote some dancehall songs for her. I got some dancehall singers in. Um, I wrote for this girl that I met on The Voice who was a really great singer and I wrote for her. I had this whole dream of being a writer, but she sort of tailed off. She didn't care so much about it. I never heard about, uh, Rihanna. The show doesn't help, doesn't help the thing. Yeah. You just, you know, so it didn't really work out, but I had great dreams of it. And I think it's a really fun thing to do. Um, I, I do, I, I, I enjoyed that. You have to be so confident to do that. I mean, it's a confidence, I think. Says the front man? Well, just the idea that you come into the studio, you say, Hey, I'm going to, you know, write your songs today. Come on, let's do this. Damn. We're going to start with a nice beat. What are you thinking? It's just sort of what I think of doing it. Um. I, I, you know, writing for different people, it's just fun to try and hear what they may do and having, having to get girls to do the demos, because it's stupid having me, my voice on there. Well, now, now there's AI for some of that. Yeah. My bass player is telling me he's, he's got a program where you just write it in and it does, it'll just do the melody. You just put the words, you say the voice and you're, I'm terrified of that. Yeah. There, there are a million ways for AI to ruin your life. Or. Or to whatever you want to say about it. But, um, one thing that is interesting is the idea of, you know, uh, amongst the casualties that AI will bring, it will be for demo singers because you can have it demo your songs now and it sounds pretty good. And it's like, that's a complicated thing. It's good for songwriters, not good for studio musicians. Yeah. I found it really good for, it's really good for music theory, though it can get it wrong a lot of the time. Yeah. Um, but I can ask questions because I'm so, uh, I don't have a bachelor's I can be like, I have these, I have these six chords, is that bad? I'm impressed. I'm impressed. I always tell, I appreciate that. I tell people that I, I, you know, I graduated with, uh, I, I graduated early. I tell people that all the time. I just don't tell people what my GPA was. It was an unimpressive, I just skirted by and got a degree. Yeah, but you were there. You were there. You were there. up so that was that's worth something i think um speaking of of you know when i said front men uh like for for you to say that you have to have confidence to be a songwriter and i think you have the confidence to be a front man what happened to front men like when we were when uh i remember seeing you and i saw scott wyland and i saw all these guys where it was like their job you know uh anthony ketis i've seen front men that um the showmanship and the full body inhabiting the song and believing in the music it seems like you know the tom yorks these this that part of music making uh or music performance has is seems like is it's a lost art is it a lost art am i youngblood's doing quite well yeah i think he's fantastic so um i hear what you're saying i think that it's different different culture it goes in a different culture and we're sort of sometimes you know you do feel a bit of an anomaly to to be so enthusiastic at shows but um i have this thing about i mean i do love to go and see shows i'm going to see a hum a band i used to tour with they're playing in la tonight so i'm going to go watch them but yeah i i know what you mean and there's nothing better than a galvanizes everything and you know conversely there's nothing worse than if there's if the man in the front isn't being the front man and there's no one there's no no no one to guide you you know you need you need that sort of shamanic figure i feel to um to be interesting i mean for me being on stage it's just about it's like being thrilling and being exciting and you know people have such a history with our songs we're so lucky and they're always always always i meet people all the time and it's always about how the music's lifted them up it's it's always you know no one's ever asked me where i got my shoes from there's not you know it's nothing like that it's always your song saved me when i was lost you went through a really hard time uh you the soundtrack to my life and so it gives you me that confidence that when i'm doing it like i just want to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be a part of it and i'm not going to be thrilling like it's a thrilling thing that they some people have been dying to see we've got these tickets to come and see so i love that responsibility plus i hate being away so much and i've been away my whole life so the only way i can justify it is to be as as good as i can be when i play because if i was to kind of phone in a performance um i'd be so ashamed and i just wouldn't not want to it just you go if you're going to be away at least make it worth it you hate being away why do you go away oh because i love uh because i have don't have a choice um well i do like playing shows you know maybe the days the days are long and slow uh waiting to go play but it's the nature of what i do and i've done it for so long that now my kids they they've grown up and they're like they're used to it so much so it's fine like i just left them today and i go away tomorrow and i go to europe to do festivals and so i just like being in that uh but i i also probably overplayed a bit last couple of years you know it just feels like some time to to be home would be really really good how many shows do you play a year i mean lots of people do more maybe 150 100 how do you take care of your voice you know it's a real dilemma um i'm just really boring like uh i just shut up i just don't say much and i shut it like a clown all day long and i just shut it like a clown all day long and i just shut it like a clown all day long i'm pretty sloth like do my thing i feel guilty if my girlfriend's with me if my kids are with me you know because they want to go do things they want to you know but i have to just be really careful with my voice um and just i've been okay i've never lost i've you know maybe once or i never in bush have i cancelled from uh but but you know there's also certain nights we don't sound as good as other days uh i'm i was recording just down the road the other day and i was doing a song we wrote and uh i was just thinking i can't keep doing this first verse over and over i've definitely got the first few lines we're only trying to get lines four and eight can we just do lines four and eight because it just just want you know it's like finite you know what i mean it's running usain bolt is only fast for so long and then he's not so so i'm just really diligent i warm up madly i warm up like four hours before then three hours before then last two hours i'm warming up scales my body then i'm singing songs as a whole because i like coming out and being clear having a clear voice on that first song i used to not of course never do that i'd be like i'd be on point by about song three of course my voice be asleep for the first two but it doesn't matter the sound's crap anyway so let's try to figure the sound so the first two songs like aborted for like any quality at least they're loud guitars or there's an audience who can make up for some of the noise for the first two songs yeah you know but the thing is is that with the sound guy we have an amazing sound guy he's got a carom and the blessing and the curse of an amazing sound guy so i'll also show you how good you're well because he likes really singing on the mic oh nice so you know it's nothing worse than singers doing that and then the mic goes here and suddenly like what so i have to be really diligent he's worked with some great people so i love um you know checking with him after the show and what it's like like for me it's like a bit weird i just love to try and outdo the previous show it's anything that makes sense of it you look at you know change the set what could i do because then it's that you're involved it's intriguing and you have a intention like just doing this the sets you know like i have this thing i don't really i'm always full of intent i don't you know certain people walk across the stage with no intent and i just i just i'm just thinking to myself whenever i watch that show i'm like don't that's that's you're in the exalted space yeah you're like floating on a magic carpet did someone ever teach you and were there people along the way they were like hey this is how you command the space of being on stage now i wish i had done you know no no it doesn't well you know you obviously read reviews that could be skewed or not but you kind of get a sense no no no that you know i get sometimes my manager sends me some if they're really good but i just don't um just think it's better to not you know it's better to just like do it separate from that and just do it based off of applause when you say that touring is is you know it's hard to be away what has fame and touring given you what has fame and touring taken away from you um it's fame and touring or the touring let's say uh has given me everything that i have because obviously people don't buy records anymore so um it's given me the ability to travel literally travel the world i sound like miss universe now travel the world meet interesting people uh help animals um feed i mean it's given me everything it's given me my life uh music has it's just extraordinary to have been done it for so long and still have people that want to come to the shows and now because we've had all these um successful songs at radio you know as of recently you know as of this last record um the audience is so brilliantly mixed and there's a really whole young contingent throughout the audience and then there's the people who are the ogs who heard it from the beginning and the brilliance of streaming or the one brilliance of streaming is that people can just go through your catalog back in the day you know when i was growing up you know i mean you kind of had to just get a couple of records and that was that was good of each band uh so so it's hard to keep a whole thing going so yeah the discography is hard to keep up with uh in in any previous era it's impossible to explain that um but so let's go to that your childhood uh you were born tell me about your childhood um well it was a pretty pretty regular childhood i think that um i just grew up with my dad when i was 12 so that was provided interesting sort of very jarring troubled you know come from a broken home what happened oh my mom went to live away she met someone and moved out of the country so she left uh so that was very reconnected and i was really close with her um and later in life but the first that's you know that's sort of quite intense so you just have a different um view of the world you know you heightened emotions but nothing that you can explain it was there's no therapy there's no sort of help so it was a very tumultuous time and full of like a lot of yeah just just i mean that to me is the is the breeding that's that's what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to do is i'm trying to figure out what made the fertile ground to write it's a really terrible cliche but you know the worse it's it's unfortunate because in a way the worse the background the more interesting things you have to say the more interesting your perspective because you for me it was like all i saw was the frailty of people you know i took that as like everyone's frail everyone's frail my mom's just looking for something you know it doesn't that's the main thing i live with my aunt and um she was incredible but you know my dad it's just an interesting checkered childhood like so many people and i think that's why people can relate to the words i you know i have this firm belief right you write songs and then people inherit them people hear them and it just makes them feel seen they don't that's what it is and they they take those songs on and i've been so lucky to have so many songs that have just like been magnets for people they just what were the songs when you were a kid who's living with your aunt and your dad and your you know what are the songs that were that for you what were the songs that yeah bowie you know i grew up through punk music which was of course it was so great because it was like a revolution so that was like pretty nihilist you know against authority against uh adults you know just against society and that i thought was really liberating i thought it was the most exciting thing and your high school era in the uk yeah is like the epicenter of the clash yeah and i mean what's that life well i lived you know very malcolm gladwell-esque i lived down the road from a record store it was like the closest shop store was a record store so i could go in every weekend and get um take my pocket money and i would go to the record store and i would go to the record store and get money and get single and get up you know get a you know and then they would be they'd say you know the roof the villas are kind of cool but you know do you want to try here's the doors here's uh here's you know um here's the stones here's you know so that was an interesting time and where i grew up was like my neighborhood was pretty rough so all those lot that i grew up with were like into decorating their ford cortina cars like doing uh you know paint jobs and all that sort of stuff and listening to sort of what basically jazz funk and it was all like that so i had this kind of clandestine secret relationship with like bowie ziggy stardust lou reed all those things because you'd get like you know if anyone saw you listening to that music you they didn't like it so i was always like and we had a youth club we used to go to the jewish youth club uh i think it's called maccabi's and uh you know it'd be like you just wait out for the punk songs and you'd have to sit out all the kind of top 40 songs and the pop songs you couldn't like that and then i fell in love with reggae fell in love with reggae um reggae music dub music um some roots but really like the dancehall stuff and so in london there'd be lots of sound system uh parties you know with like you know huge speakers and and and so that's why i had that born that whole love of rhythm all my rhythms are wannabe dancehall bass lines that's really funny they still are come down i mean they all are uh you know singing when you grow up in a in an area that is uh that is rough is like the antithesis of a place that's rough like when did you start realizing you could sing um i you know i really it was really about trying to avoid life you know i just like suddenly i was coming to the end of my high school uh there's you know did i want to go to college or do i want to get on with my life and i just i had a thirst for life you know and my dad was a amazing man but he's a sort of workaholic so he was work is working what did he do he was a doctor he was really amazing and um helped a lot of people and um i was like what can i do to avoid work so i just thought if i could just be in a band that's got to be the answer and so i just i again that confidence thing like it's brilliant i would like take cassettes and i would just sing for my first band i would sing melodies into a cassette i don't know what i was doing i kind of had more than three note melodies or variant i don't know what i was doing but for some reason i just was like this is what i'm going to do and uh set out to do that and it was really unusual because there's no one in my family who's you know it's like there's no lovely story of you know someone playing piano with me force me do those lessons harry it's going to pay off in the end you know there's none of that it was like you're just sort of quite feral just left alone to do your own thing and um my sister's my sister had a boyfriend who's in a punk band called the nobody's so i used to help their uh you know load their gear you know in the transit van stand outside the kind of shitty pubs they're playing i was too young to go in and i was like the token punk kid with everyone's like three four years older than me all the squats around my area um full of punks and sniffing do and and uh butane uh sniffing butane and just just a wild wild life larry clark but in london it's pretty funny i mean when did you start thinking i kind of want to write poetry or actually i'm gonna like the weirdest thing is that um is that you know began as sort of a way of avoiding life was to write and try and be in a band whatever that meant i don't know what it meant but i did find that when i began to write it was actually really cathartic it was really nice to put the darkness on people's lives and i think that's what i did and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's why i've written forever about effectively the human condition and i think that's And not just about love, just about living and life. I think that's why it's always been like, they say that songwriters have one song to write their whole lives, right? You've had that. So you write one song in different forms and different tempos, but it's always the same thing. You know, going back to No Good at Stories, I once met Tom Waits and couldn't believe it. I was just like, how do you do that? You're just writing all the time? It must be aggravating. Writing down the road, I'd headed down Laurel in my Chevy, and I got to turn around the corner, I'm at Cahuenga. It's like, what happened? It's so detailed. You have to keep the details coming all day long. Yeah. And he was funny about it. He does it with his wife, so Kathleen Brennan. But yeah, so that's what I basically effectively dedicated my life to, I suppose, has been my style. The human condition from the perspective of a kid who's loading in a punk band's gear to, you know, being somebody who has adult children or borderline adult children, depending on how you judge an adult. But, you know, that's a different thing. What do you think the struggles are that you didn't see then, you know, that you would, what would you write about now if you were, if you were in their shoes? If I was in their shoes. If you were in your own shoes, like you're, when you were first starting to write, you were your kid's age now. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's the, what's the song that you would write if you were your kid's age right now? Well, you know, I think that life is so exciting for them. I mean, I do look. Whilst it's pretty scary, it must be pretty daunting, kind of all avenues, so many avenues closing and so many things being overtaken by technology. But it's just exciting just to get away from being told what to do and being told everything about your day and the complete freedom. You know, one boy has left school and he decided not to go to college. He's recording songs. And it's just really fun. All I've said to him is that he doesn't want to hear anything from me, by the way. It's just, don't, don't, no advice. It's like, I can't, I can't give him advice about anything. He just does not want, yeah. It's so weird. Yeah, what do you know? Yeah, what do I know? So, no, the main thing is I just tell him that this one thing that ruined me at the beginning was my friend's dad talking about Tim Pan Alley and about how, if you're going to, dedicate your life to this, you just can continually work on your craft. So I say, you know, you want to be a musician, you want to be a singer. It's so hard and I don't know how you're going to do it and good luck. But by the way, sing a lot and play a lot of guitar and take lessons because might as well be knowledgeable about what you want to do. Yeah. So that's it. So I think about the freedom, freedom of life. It's exciting. You know, like when you're just not tied down to your parents, like reliving their lives through you. Score that goal, Johnny. Just like I didn't. Just like I didn't. NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again. What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do with songwriters anyway? Well, unlike artists who can be unsigned artists, there is no such thing as an unsigned writer. You can be a self-published, a co-published or a published writer. Publishers only make money if songwriters make money. So NMPA goes and fights for you. They go to. They go to Congress. They go and support the community. They fight DSPs to get you paid more. That's what they do. They fight for you and they fight for this podcast. So thank you for fighting for songwriters, NMPA. Thank you for fighting for us, too. You were saying how that we're, you know, that when you grow up with whatever the expression is or the harder your life is growing up, the more you have to say whatever the version is. We had David Foster on the podcast. And afterwards. We were talking. He was like, you know, time to me and Joe. And he's like, the one thing that we'll never be able to do is give our kids nothing. Like they just won't have the experience of having nothing. And if they want to do music, they they can't not have some connections. Right. How do you. How do you parent in this era when you clearly have. You know, especially for kids who want to be musicians. How do you parent that? How do you stay out of the way? Well, you know. That's been obviously discussions being around a lot. And people talk a lot about NEPO babies and stuff like that. This whole NEPO baby thing. You know, no one gave a shit about Jeff Buckley being a NEPO baby. Just was so good. So I think that being good at stuff is the great equalizer. And as a. Great thrust into whatever you're doing. It's just about the quality. Like if the quality is lacking, then yeah, that's an easy job and some of that. But you know, if someone's undeniable, such as Jeff Buckley, um, none of us care where he came from, where he's going. Just give us another record, you know? And so I think that quality wins, technique wins, knowledge wins, and then you just gotta be really, really, really lucky and then really work hard. So. I don't like it to be too much about the hard work, but the truth is it is a graft and a grind, and it's a perpetual, um, UFC octagon. I don't believe it ever goes away. You know, I, I'm, I feel like I'm always proving myself working, you know, doing these shows. I just played, uh, you know, bottle rock. I played a stage coach, you know, I'm not closing those shows, so therefore I'm kind of additional to. The main thing. So is that, is that strange? It's normal. It just is like no free rides. You just got to like, get out there and fight. That's what it is. And I, so I've accepted that. No, I'd be, you know, obviously there's many things that we do many times. We do headline, but there's a lot of festivals we've been playing recently or I'm going to where we're not. And so you just got to go out and you, you so good to see your friends. There are other bands you love. That's my favorite thing. About festivals, but you still want to slay and be the greatest band. You just want to, it's just human. If you don't want to be, it's a bit odd, a bit weird. What's the difference between Woodstock 99 and bottle rock and stagecoach in 2026? Wow. Um, the years, um, I mean, that seemed to be that Woodstock kind of descended into the sort of like, uh, the beginning of toxic masculinity. Right. That was the first toxic, first toxic event that we know of, you know, outside of gladiators. Um, so I, I, I just a lot of people willing to hear some great music. So they're pretty consistent. Um, I think they, they obviously learned some hard lessons from, from, from Woodstock and that deteriorated so heavily. It's unfortunate because I had a great show. I had a great time. The brain video is incredible, man. So it's epic. So I, I, you know, it kind of was ruined by, well, anyone committing those heinous crimes would ruin the night for anyone. I just remember in, uh, I couldn't afford, it was on pay-per-view and I couldn't afford it. So, but you could still get like this, that image, you know, of Lizzie to it and then getting the DVD version of box set version of, of Woodstock. But at the time you could like, if you had a crack, like, uh. Uh, cable box, you get a fucked up image of, of what that performance was, but I definitely saw it. Um, let's talk about Bush. I mean, you, you, you have this, obviously, you know, it, it starts with you going through this whole childhood of, of figuring out who you are. And then, you know, what's the, what's going from being, okay, I like this poetry. I like this. I like the catharsis of writing. What's the journey from that? To starting Bush? Slow, very slow and incremental and just endless rejection and endless nose. Um, that's just how it is in the arts. So I think whatever you want to do, you know, if you're a painter, an actor, photographer, it's just tough. And it separates those that really have it as a vocation. Um, and those that fall or fall away from it, you know? So I just, I didn't know how to give up. I'm half Scottish. So it's like, you kind of got to kill me in a bar. If you want to kick some, yeah, you got to kill the Scott as he's always going to try and get up and continue the fight. So I dunno, just being tenacious. I'm always struck by that kind of brilliant dichotomy in your life of like being really confident or really insecure, being really sure about something or being really. I'm sure about something, uh, taking rejection and being wounded by it, but stitching the wound and making and getting on with it and not letting that finish you. Um, and it's just, it's just a life lesson, you know, I mean, to what David Foster was saying about no, no kids won't know his kids or my kids won't understand what nothing is, but I think it's quite hard for people to. Bounce back from no, and you know, too many nos in a row and people are going to change tack. Whereas back then it just, no one cared. Like one of the lessons I said to my son when he's, you know, going into this effectively adult life, I was like, the most important thing for you to understand is that people just generally don't care, you know? Cause we, when our kids grow up, they're like, you know, you, every need is met everything. They, you know, oh my God, are you thirsty? I'm so sorry. you have to wait 48 seconds while I i'm gonna get you that juice and then when they go out in the world it's like everyone's slow because they're worried about themselves and they just don't care and that transition i suppose from from childhood into adulthood must be quite hard for people to for them to realize you know for my son to be you know seeking answers from you know distribution company or labels and just one week two weeks and then three weeks i got the i got the songs i can't wait to listen what and then another you know it's just very hard um but i love that that duality is what makes it interesting or makes us people you know yeah i mean you you can only gain that with a little bit of perspective and it's just impossible that you can tell people all day but they're never going to get it um you get a record deal for bush how does that happen by the skin of our teeth my whole history has always been um i've never had a whatever incarnation of bush the tv shows for it's never had the bidding war thing i've never had that exalted space so um having been i used to i was in a point in um in london with bush where i could get i knew everyone at emi london warners i know all those people and i could go in and get demo time and so i'd make songs but generally never hear back just never hear back and it's really really hard because not even being criticized is literally yeah it's just nothing done you just don't exist yeah and you know what happens is you do these mixes and you're trying to cram three songs into two days of demo time and then the evening nine o'clock sounded really good by two a.m everyone's agreeing and you play get up in the morning you play you've been up all night getting at five and you play it and you're so excited and it sounds like shit you're like what happened it's all over it you're like what went on so nothing ever turned i did this um cool thing um there's a tv show in england called the word on channel four they had a midweek show and they had a battle of the bands so you send your tape in and we won the battle of the bands that what that meant was you go to the studio and you sit down and you're like oh my god you're singing your song you play the song live on tv and it's really fun and that served as like a video for us and there's a dj in england called gary crowley there's always one person one thing one opportunity and he knew of this one guy who'd managed uh george michael and he was starting a label in the valley like i didn't know what the valley was i now live in the valley but i didn't know at the time what that was and so i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this so he offered me a record deal and the best part about it was that there was no other offer so whilst we maybe spruced up a bit of the deal we just there was no option it's like if you want to continue on so we signed that deal with him and um that was the label responsible for 16 stone and they did such an incredible job with that you know that's why i'm here but yeah so it was uh again by the skin of our teeth this guy would rob is a real character uh he's a wonderful man very crazy but very great and we were recording in halston which at the time was the biggest ghetto in europe it was like this drug dealing mecca places and this guy had a studio in there and we were going to record there and so along comes this guy in a sort of chauffeur driven mercedes do you know it's like that so it's like a guy richie movie that like there's no wheels the wheels are taken off the car you know like that and um in came this la guy and um he was managing morrissey at the time i think and uh he he apparently he was managing morrissey um and then he came over to see us and you know all those demos were 16 stone you know this is there's all those songs and he's like this is fantastic and um so we signed this deal we did we did actually lose the distribution deal like um there's a famous story of hollywood records being a distributor when 16 stone was delivered apparently they threw the cd at rob and said no there's only no singles there's no album tracks on this this is bullshit and so we got dropped and um the guy frank wells had died in a helicopter action so for four months i went back to work so after 16 son i was back painting dentists offices i've told this story so i apologize to people i've heard before but yeah i was back painting uh had a day job you know but i felt really good like i'd made the record i was like i felt good about that i was like i never expected my aunt maggie knew this one guy colin scott who had a record and i just thought it was the coolest thing he actually made a record she'd be like look this is his oh how brilliant and so i made that i had very sort of minimal ideas of where i could go with music i just thought making a record was just seems so elusive for so long that just to finish making a record with artwork and stuff like that i was like well this is great and so i go back so i went back to work and it was only like a few months four months later that the record got on k-rock which again is in here in the valley and that's where it all began yeah i think the first goal for a lot of writers is i want a record deal or i want to record an album you know and when you achieve that you it's amazing then you're like what do i do next like what is what's the thing you don't realize the amount of work it takes to you know that's getting drafted to the pros you still have to like play your career out if you want to have a shot and and you still will have not every game you're not an all-star in every game you're not you know you don't make the all-star team every year you know but you might come out and be rookie of the year and then you go through like this whole process oh good now i gotta repeat this now i gotta evolve and do all the things as you know as a professional but you had to kind of learn on the job we come down was a was the first song that k-rock really played right everything's in oh everything's done that feels like that lyric feels like it's about 30 years ahead of people talking about zen this and it's even in la right where did that idea on that subject i'm i am proud we've been playing testosterone on this tour we haven't done that for a while and it's complete toxic masculinity that whole record that song yeah it's all about it's those dudes those maxes yeah the maxim yeah um glycerine's one of those songs that you had the opportunity to probably record that in 30 different ways when i wrote that song um and i wrote it there's one of those really you know there's ones where you'd write in two goes like it's just it's the first half second half and i couldn't believe it and it came out um and i was convinced it was someone else's song because it felt more sophisticated than anything i'd done um when i played to my band they kind of they all ignored it they were like talking amongst themselves it's like i think you know it's in a terrible rehearsal room in in uh west london harleston in um paul speller road and um cancel rise and uh but what was interesting about it is i only had one guitar one amp one pedal and so when i recorded it you know some people would probably put it on the record and i would put it on the record and i would put it on the record and a clean guitar on it at least if not an acoustic but i just played it with my sort of quite heavy sound and we were going to put drums on it and then we decided not to and that was it me and clive langer i suppose you know i can't remember what that conversation was it just was well i never was going to have drums on it but i remember actually recording the vocal at west side studios and it was so weird because i didn't have any drums to play just at the click i've never been in you know it's really pretty inexperienced you know i'd be i'd recorded a lot for like five six years of songs but it was so weird not having drums in there as a sort of a guide but um yeah that song you know that song has given me life it's crazy uh gwen's been on this podcast you guys have have obviously had a very public relationship you meet you know the bands are at their height when you guys meet did you find that was there ever creative competition of well we as a band want to you know we're gonna work on doing the best album we can do you guys are working on your album doing the best you can do was there creative competition is that because both you guys end up having these like epic runs all the same time i'm sure there still is sure there still is you know subcutaneously you know a little a little look at what you guys are doing amazingly um she's incredible i mean come on she's first woman to headline the sphere it's phenomenal it's very incredible she's she's a force of nature um there's competition with everyone you know with yourself with everyone you know be the best part of yourself you know be friends with everyone but then write the hook that that changes the world you know like so there's an artistic competition just wanting to kind of um solve the riddle like it's like where do i see songs and where they see music it's like do you know those things you used metal things and you put your face in it and you pull it out you see the shape of your face do you know i mean you see yeah sure of course to me um music and songs are like you have all the notes at your availability of all the words and you just got to push out the right bits pull the right bits out and you could go wrong you could go right the good songs go right the bad songs go wrong and that's what it's all about it's like it's right there in front of you like i know notice it when i hear sort of other bands i like and i hear a song i'm like oh my god it's brilliant you know was it bring me the horizon that song can you feel my heart it's like hold on why it was right there all along it's just staring at me on the keyboard so i think the biggest competition is with yourself and getting the best out of that impression pushing out the right things to make a song razor blade suitcase obviously you know when everyone talks about sophomore slumps that's not a sophomore slump did you feel like it was easy well i to be honest i felt a bit unprepared because we'd been touring so much there's no languishing now go write a record take some time it just felt it was really like now you got to go and you know doing it with steve um which i'm so proud of now steve albini you know he passed away and i'm like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god a little while ago um so it's for me that record is just like is steve and um all my memories of him so he's just not the kind of person the only thing i never understood about steve um is that he thought it was really strange to experiment in the studio and like the idea of the beach boys from him was just like in that way he's been here a year because he's so he loved the blue collar thing of like you record by the hour and he's like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god i'm so proud of him and i'm like oh my god you go back to your day job record the jesus lizard or fugazi everyone's got day jobs and like it's it's sort of like uh it's like a badge of honor to like yes and so i always remember like um you could only do overdubs if it was compositionally intended yeah i'm like steve just let's make a fucking record what's going on but how you guys were able to have a band that filled up so much sonic in a space is incredible you know it's insane like because now i feel like we're every little space we're trying to fill in with some sort of sound or some bubble gum thing here some not so bubble gum thing here whatever it is but there's a wall of sound all over the place but you guys managed to do it with you know just the band yeah the overdubs thing wasn't really something that you guys got too far into he wasn't he i mean we did with other everyone else but um that's not how he saw it and you know there's something about it that i i thought we'd been on the road for so long a couple of years straight two three years straight that i thought no one's better to capture us yeah and when i remember going to the control room and hearing the drums and i was guys i loved the pixies so much you know the pixies surfer rosa was such a big record for me that i was just so happy to hear steve's drums which was just brilliant because they're just flat out the same thing and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this his trick was he didn't really eq anything so you'd get everyone else's eq in the frequency trying to get his sound by eqing when in fact it's like it's flat eq and mic placement and i thought that he'd be running around the studio you know that he's so blue collar that we like all gotta get back to work so be running but he was he i loved him because he was abrasive and cutting and dangerous some of the time and other times he was really kind and warm and open and patient and you know that's not what was seen of him because he's his acerbic writing his you know destruction through his writings of so many bands and so many people as a tastemaker but he was just fantastic and then just a wonderful person and i deeply regret i wanted to do some kind of stripped record with him almost revisit i you know the greatest hits things was cool but i avoided it forever but i was like it's just lazy you know can't we just re-record all the hits in a in a stripped way and have a dual cd so that people can have those songs but we just let's put some effort into that and thought steve would be the perfect person to do that and i know what he expected him to to pass at whatever it was you know whatever it'd be he had done in utero you know that came out the same year and that year it's just like i mean look i the way you think of punk music in your high school and and that that that sound like i'm a a sophomore in high school during these albums like this is like prime like i'm in a cover band i know all these songs i know all of it you know did you this world of alternative music you know when you'd see the movies the singles the reality bites you know we've talked to billy before some of the you know so have you what is the competition like between bands and what is the relationship with the other bands in that circuit well i think we were a bit annoying because we sort of appeared out of nowhere and got a lot of attention so people were to some extent um wary of us when i did billy's podcast the apollo to me for that exact thing and he traced my history you know through the sort of um 4ad record label throwing muses and and then falling in love with the pixies and he on the podcast he's made up his mind he's like that's it i knew it you're one of us i mean i'm good friends with him now so it's fine but i think we were probably a lot to take because you know the terrible tragedy of kurt shooting himself and that void and then nobody having that void being quite a precious place it's like nobody wanted to build on on on the sort of the gaping wound in the scene but then they've got to play something on the radio and they've got to show something on mtv they can't just sort of have a a shutdown and i think that was probably a bit a lot for the traditional whether it's you know that sort of whole pearl jam sound garden pumpkins alice and change i mean since then you know i've become i'm really friendly with billy uh you know it's this it's reversed i've you know was respectfully friendly with chris um from sound garden and you know all turned around but i think at first it just was like we did take a lot of attention and a lot of airspace and airtime and shows and so we were probably a lot to swallow and you mentioned alice in chains sound garden nirvana later even you know your bands like lincoln park come in towards the end of the 90s and a lot of these front men are not with us you know obviously even blind melon go through like there's a long list did you feel the pressure drugs or suicide or any of the depression that went along with being a front man during that era i you know where i grew up in london's super druggy you know growing up was was pretty crazy um we used to have this thing where i lived in my palm with like five five other people four other people so it was always what would jim do what would jim morrison do it's always like you know do the acid you know go out take the mushrooms don't come home for the weekend but there was always a distinct two sides to it and i think that's what i've been doing for a long time um the kind of recreational fun you know you you were always you're obviously always soothing the pain but the soothing the pain having fun and the soothing the pain with the darkness with the sort of heroin and the crack that stuff that stuff to me was just i was too interested i am too interested in life and the sunshine and having a good time as well as sort of being mortal and you know i like that sort of both sides of life so i never wanted to do anything that would be um you know that that would that would take me away from my love of life and i've always loved life you know and even in my sort of darkest times like all my songs have degrees of hope in them there's nothing sort of nihilist and just like that's it we're all doomed full stop kill me i don't i don't have that i worked with chester during the last lincoln park album and we had to have a song that we wrote together and i just remember him sending me the lyrics and i think foolishly i was like well i'm just here to help make melodies out of these lyrics but when you look at the lyrics now it's it's so heartbreaking what song was it uh we'll have to cut this out while i try to figure it out but it was um because i i sang um um let me for him um uh the hollywood bowl and i sang what was a effectively a um i sang this song this felt like a suicide note he had a very very hard life yeah he went through an awful lot of abuse and um it's just so sad you know i i'm not obsessed about suicide but i'm so intrigued about it and i just love the idea of making music that has been not the reason why people have because people talk to me about it all the time but just some form of comfort in people's darkest times yeah and the difference is that i see that in a lot of metal you know i love metal i don't always like the vocals and the scream but i love the music i love the power of the music it's infectious to me but there's often no way out of those this is sort of like you're in a cul-de-sac of pain and suffering and torture and everyone's maimed and we're all doomed i'd sort of i like the realistic thing of like this is tough we're gonna find our way this is where we're going try and worry less you know it's gonna be all right so you acknowledge the darkness but you don't dwell in it i mean everything's then you know it'd be hard hard to write that song and uh and not internalize who that is you you toured through you you know just non-stop off these albums you know and somehow you found time to do you know an album and you know the new album in 99 but from you know releasing that uh razor blade suitcase you have like three years of non-stop touring and it's during the height of in a way the height of mtv or it's like the the last height of mtv and it's also a time of no internet what is touring like for a rock star in the 90s which feels like the last time rock stars were rock stars it was brilliant you know what a life just um just so liberating and wild and you know you play these massive places and they sell out in a minute and you're just like you're on fire you know you're like justin bieber or something like that you know what i mean but with guitars and uh it was just brilliant i mean you asked me earlier about that i brought you not about what it's been like the good side of it the flip side is that it does cost you you don't participate in life as much because you're always away so you just you know i figured that out that i just missed so much stuff that the cost is really high you know because you don't think about it when you're just in it and living it but when you reflect and you look on it you know you go to someone's um you know you you go to someone's funeral and you think when was the last time i was with them what was i doing and you you you miss you've missed the so you miss so much i'm not complaining about it it's just a consequence of it and i think that um i've never been i haven't been that good at finding the balance because even when it's not right i'm still trying to work through it you know i just wish i'd sort of taken some time off more time off through my career i was when i was thinking of the rain videos the mtv spring break video that's the one not the no um that that's like a legendary image you um no what happens is that if i see it on my feed if someone posts it i will look but i don't actively look into it i can when that happened i remember i remember thinking am i gonna die am i gonna die uh and but nowadays if someone sneezes uh they shut it all down the winds are coming we're not gonna happen they're very cautious now but back then it's like i'll be all right yeah so i do remember playing and i just remember the rain on the guitar neck because i remember thinking i'll play the shapes but i cannot believe this is still computing as a guitar tone because it just it's just literally holding a you know underwater this is the weirdest thing but yeah you know we just played stagecoach and that was or they shut it down when we finished and those winds the the palm trees were like literally at 90 degrees we were there i was really like well yeah it's amazing it was so fun i love extreme weather i like i like storm chaser that that's so i can't believe people do that it's super fun it's super fun those are really fun shows to watch it is a weird thing when you're like how close can i get to this microphone before i hear like feel like a right well it was with stagecoach particularly i just as per my my salmon anyway i thought if i come off the mic too much they'll be like whistling the wind would be going through it so i really stayed so close on it like this i didn't want him to say to me afterwards stay on the mic so uh i think that really helped to make it clear because apparently our sound our stage was had a good sound i couldn't believe that as well you know because often with a wind it really can mess it up you know you throughout without going through everything even in 2011 you have you know uh the sound of winter big song you know you you keep releasing big songs and even you know a few years ago you have you have flowers on a grave you've like these you keep you keep charting on songs what keeps you relevant whereas some of your peers i think aren't able to continue to release songs that audiences move to yeah i mean i don't know i mean i i love it i think it's i like i say you know like the comparison stuff is this is no good because it just does you in like a thief of joy so i don't think about that i just think about i'm really inquisitive you know i i love learning about new music i love being inspired by what's happening and then putting my own twist on things um it's fun to after the kingdom the record which was about three four records ago i realized that every time i played any big festival they didn't know me i'd be feeling insecure so i'd play all my detuned songs so that they'd be tougher and then i was just like i did a side project called institute um i did one record which all detuned with um page hamilton produced it and i decided then in 2020 i brought out a record um called black and white rainbows that was really bruised it was after a terrible time i got divorced this is horrible and every song was more depressing than the other and i vowed after that to just write heavy records i was like so much more fun to write heavy records i'm still on this voyage of discovery so i think my being inquisitive about things curious about things accepting my limitations and just trying to push myself forward um has served me well you know like i'm definitely never treading water because i'm always learning how to be interesting you know with the detuned stuff whether all the drop things but then finding interesting chords because it's all quite difficult and then you've got really hard records and then you've got riffs and you're trying to put melodies on riffs because i love melody like i'm melodies are the greatest thing i love of all the heavy bands i like i never like the screamo bits of all my favorite bands i mean i love the deftones but i like the tunes the best you know how cool is that like you know it's a it's an instrument that we all have and you're still sitting there being like inspired to sit there what song from i beat loneliness should people listen to first oh i'd be loneliness the title track yeah that really sort of set that up and it's just one of those tracks like you must feel it as well you know you write songs you don't really know how well you know how because you went to school we've been through that i didn't go to school so i don't know how so i just see that song i'm just it's so funny i'm just doing it in the spare bedroom of my house that's got um i have a steven slate um actually um playback so i've got it looks really fancy it's just it's just a two input two output whatever input uh apollo so it's very very with a laptop but i've got it looks like super cool because it's on the two big screens um and it just it thrills me to have these ideas you know it's who's it um what's his face talking about um about you write for yourself you don't write for audiences um yeah and i love rick he's what he's incredible man i haven't seen him for some time but he's incredible but i just don't i it's not how i feel without it's not how i feel like i really picture the people that i know that i see at all my shows i think of them when i'm writing the song i'm so thrilled if i've gotten it right so when i did i'd be loneliness i'm like it's undeniable if you like this band that's an undeniable track and it's magical i don't know where it really came from and i'm fascinated by this idea that um every idea is just one idea it's just the idea you had there and then like any other day any other hour i may not have played that riff i may not have played the chorus part i may not have chosen those chords but i did in that moment and i remember walking out the room being like this i got this riff is so cool and i walk through the doorway of that then going downstairs to get a drink or something and i was like i'd be loneliness and i was like oh my god and i was like i never would have thought of it ever since either side of that it just was that's what i thought of and that's the that's the i think that's the magic of the magic of writing and goes back to the whole thing of tin pan alley you know you want to be a songwriter you do your craft you just write a song and you're like oh my god i'm so excited to be a singer i'm so excited to be a singer you know you want to be a songwriter you do your craft you just write a song and you're like oh my god you know it's no good saying i'm waiting for inspiration it's you just sit in that room and a lot of the time nothing's happening but you just work those few hours and then you have the moment like i often write words they're kind of pretty terrible but i just let them come and i know that by 10 lines in i'm gonna start like everything inside starting to work starting to and here you have your magic and i and i and i and i love that i have some moments of inspiration where i write things down but i think the hardest part about being a writer and you said it earlier is that professionalism of just whether you write songs books poems paint pictures whatever you do you just have to be in your place of work trying to do it and often failing but just not being deterred by that you know just saying this is part of it like if i can't think of something i'll intentionally write something terrible i'll be like we'll just write something terrible what's the worst thing you can write and so i'll do that of course i have my own right if you're gonna write something bad write it write something bad really well yeah we'll just start to like you know like as i say you know 10 lines in start to pull your shit together and you like have some self-respect and you want to like you know build it up then you get rid of what's weak and i find like dylan said this thing is kind of cool um there's no which is hard there's no line as good as the best line of a song and there's no verse as good as the best verse of a song and so i love that whole thing of trying to just like be responsible for every line that could could be isolated could be held up this is represents you you know and you just have to make it i think about i talk about fireworks you know i like lyrics that sometimes i write that and i like oh god it's just words that's just not words there's nothing interesting those four lines they're literally just words so you need something electric something colorful technicolor word to elevate that that line and uh that's what i was trying to do i've definitely got better at editing i used to rely on that jet karat thing of first thought best thought god i'm dined off that forever but this it's not good yeah yeah yeah i i i you know it's so cool to just like change things and get in there and be like and really honest like say what is this about is this about enough am i saying enough to myself and i don't believe that it has to always be meaning things always be based in i know ed sheer and i read that he said he's never written a line that isn't he hasn't done it isn't true right but i don't know if that's it sounds exhausting sometimes you need your imagination you just write certain things you can't write black and white rainbow if you you know if it has to be something you've done you know that's yeah that wouldn't work you know that he hasn't been there but but i i think one thing that people don't realize and when i've worked with uh uh enrique's of the world or pitbull's or celine's that these people have 10 albums you know have that kind of thing it's interesting when you're sitting down starting from okay what haven't you said before like you know and how do you or or what what's a reference to something that you said in album two you know what what is the way to tell a journey and to keep the journey going and it's an injury i think people don't realize how complicated it is to keep releasing music that ups the ante you have to use your brain a lot and keep being aware of like the amount of i would imagine you have a lot of songs that are on the cutting room floor and some that are probably pretty good what happens they have some bits that are good and then you're sort of uh it was some bits that are good but it goes back to the editing thing like i really try and stay in a song until i think it's worthy um like i had that recently i was writing some a bunch of new music and i had the engineer coming in i basically i get it all together and i can i can work pro tools and i can put everything together i don't don't do my own vocals i sit with my you know voice recorder when i've got the music there um and i get my engineer and i have a great engineer who comes in and just sort of but when he comes in the six tracks i've been suddenly become 36 tracks i'm like what happened where's the simplicity where did it go and um just working stuff through is is is really exciting to sort of edit yourself i've just definitely gotten better at editing because i don't believe that the first thought is the best thought anymore i think the first thought is a wonderful stepping stone to where you're going and i do think that um you know because band members get it easy they they um appropriate what you've already thought the hardest thing is a blank screen it's really easy to come in with something that's formed working or not working but formed oh try this try that try that the hardest thing is nothing because you know you've done that we'd like sitting there it's just like the the the the page is like okay and weird things when you walk up to a blank screen with an ego you're like today i'm gonna write something sick then you're gonna sit down and you're gonna be like nothing it's just like nothing good it's like or i've heard this before this is it's like it can be a really humbling experience once you you know you go in the opposite way and you might be like i don't know what i'm doing but you oh that's actually pretty good and it might inspire you to finish the song the other way is yeah i wait for it i don't know how you do it i just wait for inspiration so any part i have to start with drums because i used to always um ended up i see everything like 16 stone was written with a drum machine because i used to have this problem of like having my chorus and verse in different tempos you know because you don't play with that you just you don't play with that you don't play with that you just sort of if you sit in your kitchen you play on acoustic you're like what sounds really good for the chorus is really slow for the verse you know i know so i had to get into using the drums and now i just love to to you know i'm not that i try you know i'd love to program and but find things you know i might find loops i might find there's lots of things that you can use and just something that just is exciting enough to play a bass and that's fun that's suddenly so i just build it up and i just love to play a bass and that's fun that's suddenly so i just build it up and i until i'm just and that i the luxury of doing that on my own is that when i write with um tyler bates or written with eric ron i go in the studio then i'm writing a song in to an hour and a half and it's just it's like a race well that's the joy of a co-write that's different than struggling through your by yourself right yeah i like that and i think that the records benefit um to have two different approaches like you know more than machines i write on with eric and chris they do the music and i go that's that's that's amazing so i took take the music and i put it in my studio and i just write a song on it and uh that's just a fun that's so much easier yeah but i don't want to do every song like that because i think something comes from you know i would be so sad to not have i beat loneliness or any of the you know whatever number of songs on that record that i wrote on my own that's my friend's stuff and says writing day tracks is like writing a screenplay to special effects and so i mean you know when you're trying to write and that's it's like well i now i have to figure out how to make this work in these parameters and you know that can be tiresome if that's the only way you write so yeah i think it makes sense to go and try a thousand different ways to write and whatever inspires you that day is good enough for that day let's go through some rapid fire name three bands right now that you think are great sleep token uh poppy echo vandal are 90s crowds better than modern crowds well it's a really interesting one because to some extent there was like a wild abandon that i miss but then you see turnstile shows and you go you know what i just maybe maybe on the wrong tour um and then you have incredible crowds like we've had these you know recently this last tour so yeah maybe it's slightly less wild but then you go to south america and it is the 90s so they don't care i mean like go to chile and play it's just insanity the enthusiasm the reckless abandon of the audiences but yeah so there's a bit of that but you know then that comes down to us to get it right you know if you build people up into a fever um good things happen If Bush started today, would that band break through? I hope so, but I don't think it would be able to be so well known because it's more of a genre-specific music now than the zeitgeist, than what's going on. And we were lucky enough that when we came up between Radio MTV and touring, plus it was the culture. That music was the culture. Now, if you reference what the culture is, you're probably more likely to think of Kendrick Lamar, you know, more so than like, you know, I think Bad Omens are a fantastic band. But it's hard for rock. I mean, everything that I came from was counterculture. So it was just weird that we went through this spell of where it became the mainstream. And now, to an extent, it's sort of back. But the show is, I mean, you play to 60,000 people at these festivals, so it's not like it doesn't have an audience, but it's just. No, and I would bet money this is where music's going. It's going to be analog, analog, analog, and, you know, it's going to be cool if you can actually play instruments, and it's going to be cool if you can actually record without using AI, and it'll be cool if you can do that kind of thing. But it goes back to what you were saying about front men or front women, you know. What I can't do is live the life that you've lived and have the perspective that people have. And that's why I think that performance and people in bands will always have a place because it's a shared human experience. And, you know, whilst the machines are phenomenal and technology is incredible in so many ways, it's quite astounding, right? I think we all agree. But it cannot replicate or identify with the struggles that people have lived through. And so that's why there'll always be a place for people to connect with people that are leading bands, which again goes to your point why it's really good to have front people because it's like a ship. You know, you need that person to galvanize an audience, galvanize the band, and that's infectious. You know, people want that. People want leaders. People want that figure, Nick Cave, you know. What's the least rock star thing you've ever done? The least rock star? You know, work on building sites. Into a dentist's office. You know, painting. No offense, that can actually be a pretty rock star thing. You know. You know, give in, acquiesce, agree to do too much, you know. It's kind of, I don't know. What's the most rock star thing you've ever done? Oh, the most rock star thing, I suppose, is just flying on jets to massive shows. It's the, you know, I'm always like, can we keep touring until the jet's not even a question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enough bus already. You said your kids don't listen to your music, but what's one song of yours that you want your kids to remember you by? Well, I've got just one quick caveat. I was in my room doing one, so we were doing, so they did, we did do some remixes of the songs when we were doing the greatest hits loaded. And my son, who's an amazing guitar player, really, really good. I was, I decided, I said, I said to my management, I was like, we're getting all these people, can I try a remix? If it doesn't work, we just won't use it. But like, I've got the studio. I've got enough things, I think. Let me, let me have a go at it. And so I had a go at doing the song. So I did a remix of Machine Head. I actually felt really proud of myself. I said to my son, he came in from school, his bedroom's opposite that room. He came in and I played this in. And I was, I was proud of myself. Which is already a dangerous position to be in, for the ego was, was, was already pumped, you know? And he goes, you're not going to release it, are you? I was like, what, you don't like it? He goes, that's Machine Head. That song's legendary. Don't, don't, don't release that. So it was this weird compliment. Cause I was like, he really thinks that one of my songs is legendary. I was like really fucking it up by doing this remix. So it was kind of a reverse compliment about. The other song, the remix, the remix didn't get much love, but, um, the original song did. And I was so sweetly, and sometimes I'll hear him playing it, I'll hear him playing it, which is a wonderful feeling. Uh, the other one is way too Kingston. My oldest one. He's like too, it's too cool to let me know. He might be playing like he loves the pumpkins. They play every other band. They don't touch any Bush. Yeah. You know, they keep away from it. There's sort of a, there's a, there's a, there's a. A mark around as a, you know, sort of a border around the band, but so yeah, that's really funny. Um, what's advice you'd give a guy who's in a band right now, who's in London, who's got, you know, who has like a dream to be in a band. What's advice you give that kid? I think. I think that with people starting out and with music, I mean, it's so simple. I think it's really important to just, um, make the music you want to hear, make the music that's missing from your collection. You know, put all your favorite bands together and make the hybrid of them because other people don't know those four bands, put them together, you know, and just make the music that you want to hear. And that's definitely going to be the best. You can be, yeah. Yeah. Right. You know what I mean? And then, then, then, then you're giving it the best shot possible. Conversely, if you try and sound only like someone else, there's always a sort of, um, it's just a bit empty. There's an emptiness to it. You do your own thing always about you, what you feel. There's a consistency. And that's what I would, I would suggest to anyone making music. I think that lyric thing. You know, when you're talking about somebody saying that they, they write about their own life or every, every lyric has to be something they've experienced and you're trying to find a word or a phrase that you've never heard before or something that gives it fireworks. You know, that. I was at Sharon saying that. Yeah. But it's such a, it's such a simple thought for you to have without it. It's what you hear as fireworks. Right. Yeah. And, and so then. And people on the other side, you know, the reason why people remember a lyric like glycerine off the top is because I don't know how many songs have that title and with, you know, song in that way. And it's like, because you naturally just heard it. Yeah. For me, us, glycerine is, is, is like semtex. It's like, it's a blowing plastic explosive, you know? And then I came here and it was like soap. I was like, oh, there you go. There you have it. Yeah. I just think, you know, it's really about. Everyone here thinks it's about something totally different. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter. Was that weird? Was it, is it weird? Is it weird to travel around the word world and have people consume a song like that with a totally different meaning? Cause the word means something different. Well, like I said before, you know, it's so incredible when people, um, inherit and, and cover the songs. You know, if you have a favorite song, I have different songs. I like it. People, you know, I, I, I, I, I put my arms around that song. And it, it, it's something that, that I connect to. And so that's, what it's all about is just finding, and that when you write things that satisfy yourself, the chances are they, you know, like I've said it before, like, um, in going as far down inside yourself as possible to find your own truth of what you think, you know, you come across more universal truths than if you try to stay outside of the mind of yourself. And to say, what can I say that's universal? Like that'll never work. Yeah. Right. Say, what, where, what's, what am I really, why am I, why am I pissed off? Why am I frustrated? Why am I scared? What is it I'm scared of? And when you can write that and you can extract that from the, the, the, the potentials in front of you, that's when you start to kind of find something that's for me, you know, that's my feral way. Well, thank you for doing this podcast. Uh, you know, when I don't know, right now it's, it's hard for me to listen. I hear so much music and it's as part of the job and, and the Grammys and all the different things that I'm involved in where you just have this, just a ton of music. And I listened to it with respect to like, this is, this is quality composition. I like that. That's really cool that they chose to do that. But the magic is. It's hard to find in. new music for me because I know how the sausage is made. But when I listened to songs from my childhood, when I listened to songs from before I moved out here, before I got a degree in it, before I had a record deal, all that stuff, it just feels like, how was this written? How did this happen? What was in the magic of that moment? Like you were saying, when you record that one thing and you capture that moment, that audio recording, you're like, oh man, I got it. That's special. And so many of your songs are part of this soundtrack for me, as cliche as that is, but fit in this place that I can't help but smile. My wife knows that if we're on a road trip and she's going to put on for some element of time, she's going to put nothing. 90s, all rock music. And I'm going to play every single part on the wheel. I'll know every single part. It just feels like, it still feels like magic to me. That's great. Thank you. Be a fun part of that. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for being magical. Thank you so much. There you go.