By the time success came to Bush, frontman Gavin Rossdale was ready for it. It’s 30 years ago this month since the British grunge-rockers released their mega-selling debut Sixteen Stone, a record that would go on to become six times Platinum in the US. Looking back to its success, Rossdale told this writer a few years ago that it had been a long time coming.
“It was fantastic, and the weirdest one was that it just happened so fast,” said the singer and guitarist. “It had been so slow for so long. I couldn’t get arrested. I could get demo time really easy, I knew everyone at all the labels, I still know the names of all the A&R men I’d see out - Tracy Bennett, Malcolm Dunbar, Clive Black - I’d see them out and be like, ‘cool, there’s the bloke who could change my life’. We’re really good! A&R men to young kids trying to get signed is like the messiah. He’s not the messiah, he’s a terrible A&R man! What’s funny is that anyone who doesn’t get signed for a long time and believes in themselves feels an endless shovel of disrespect being thrown in your face. If you’re stupid enough, you just keep going. When the opportunity came to get that deal in America at Trauma, I couldn’t think of anything else but the Pixies signing to 4AD and I thought, ‘well, they had to come to England, so fuck it, let’s go there’.”
The experience, reflected Rossdale, taught him to follow his gut. “It reinforced believing in something even if you don’t have any cause to, it’s an instinct,” he explained. “It allowed me to lean on my instincts. It was magic, to be accepted and to have a big audience and to reach a lot of people. When I’d be looking at those A&R men, thinking, ‘Come on’, I found a bunch of people at my small independent label Trauma and Interscope and it was big and healthy and fun and fast.”
That instinct, he continued, was behind the reason why he wanted the late, great Steve Albini to produce Sixteen Stone’s more caustic follow-up Razorblade Suitcase. “If I had been more commercially minded, and probably smarter, I would have continued with a more polished producer to continue in that zone,” Rossdale said. “Instead, listen to Surfer Rosa, listen to Rid Of Me, I thought, ‘He’s gonna capture the band live’. It’s a pretty funny record because it’s just void of any editing. I listen to it now and I’m like, ‘Get rid of that fucking bit, for fuck’s sake’. Steve, obsessed about not being a producer, would never say, ‘Do you want to cut that bit?’.
It hardly did Bush’s second album any harm – Razorblade Suitcase entered the US Billboard Charts at number one. Their best hits, though, are on their debut. Revisit out one of their finest below:
