The Chemistry Continues

The Bush campaign is about to begin. No, not that Bush. We’re talking the English rock band whose first three albums have sold more than 10 million copies collectively in the U.S. A new album, “The Science of Things,” comes out Oct. 26, and it figures to boost that total, even at a time when hard rock is no longer a sure thing.

The first single, “The Chemicals Between Us,” is high on the rock airplay charts, and frontman Gavin Rossdale is one of the media’s high-profile rock celebrities (especially when he’s out with his girlfriend, No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani). But will the album, which expands the trademark Bush sound with some electronic programming, finally convert the critics, who have been fairly unimpressed with the band to date? (See review, Page 76.)

In an interview, Rossdale, 32, explained why that doesn’t concern him, and discussed the “cruel irony” of Bush’s careerist image.

Question: Does it frustrate you that Bush hasn’t gotten quite the critical acceptance of the bands that you admire?

Answer: Take out the word “quite”--it makes it sound wishy-washy. I just think if we’d sold one-fifteenth of the albums we have, we would have got an easier ride on that level, but I cannot complain. . . . I stopped reading my press--I only weigh it now. It’s just not worth it. You’re either seduced by it or upset by it. Either way it doesn’t help the work.

Q: What did you find yourself writing about on this album?

A: I wrote the record in Ireland, shut myself away for four months and wrote about 24 songs. . . . By being away and being isolated, I felt reflective and I felt for the first time I could take stock of what’s going on. . . . The whole crazed madness of success is so overwhelming and so dominating in your life that you to some degree can’t even appreciate where you’re at. You can’t appreciate what you’ve achieved because there’s the punk guilt that goes with it all.

Q: You suffer from success guilt? That’s funny, because Bush has an image as a very success-driven group.

A: It’s so ironic. If we’d been commercially minded, I would have been doing Eurodisco stuff over here eight years ago. . . . We weren’t loaded up on smart drugs by being a rock band at that point in England. It was a very, very noncommercial move. That’s always been a twisted, cruel irony of the whole thing, that it has been portrayed as though we were somehow commercially manipulative. My intention starting the band seven years ago was just steeped in the tradition of the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine, the Fall. Untouchable bands. . . . But we sold a lot of records.

Q: The new album adds some electronic elements to the Bush sound. What was the thinking behind that?

A: I was fearful of doing another four-piece rock band record. . . . At the same time, I wasn’t trying to be Depeche Mode, so it was a kind of a bastard mixture of styles. We’ve always paid a lot of attention to texture and layers and sonics and soundscape things, but really relied on guitars to create that. . . . Somehow it just seemed appropriate to bring in a couple of outside programmers and work with them and bleed stuff into it and create further textures.

I was persuaded by the band to keep a lot more of the rock element in there. . . . I presented a number of songs that definitely wouldn’t have fit into people’s image of Bush. But being a band, we work together, and we had to do stuff that everyone was comfortable with.

Q: Let’s turn to your personal life. You and Gwen Stefani have been dating for nearly four years now--how hard is it to sustain a relationship in those circumstances?

A: Equal parts impossible and relief. Because you understand and identify with each other’s lives in terms of the pressure and the commitments that you have. There’s a sort of solace and understanding that would be difficult to engender with someone else. But of course this whole world, unless you have someone that travels with you, it seems to destroy most people’s lives.

I do feel that I forfeit a lot by doing what I do. The time you’re away, the travel, the weirdness, the isolation from people you know and people you love and people you normally have been around. So I think it’s difficult for anyone in this position. . . . Anyone in a band is the worst person to hang out with, because you’re never around.