Gavin: Rossdale returns to the music scene

CANOE — JAM! Music – Artists – Rossdale, Gavin: Rossdale returns to the music scene
There are many obvious perks that come with being married to ska-pop superstar Gwen Stefani.

Being called Mr. Stefani isn’t one of them.

But British singer-songwriter Gavin Rossdale — the Great Gwen’s husband and father of their two sons Kingston, 2, and eight-month-old Zuma — doesn’t blame anyone but himself when the tabloids refer to him as “Gwen’s rocker hubby,” “arm candy,” or anything but his actual name.

“It’s my own fault for not having the records out,” the former Bush frontman says over the line from Seattle, hours before the official start of his tour in support of solo debut WANDERlust.

The 13-track pop-rock CD that dropped last June is, after all, Rossdale’s first release since his successful post-grunge band split in 2002.

He walked down the aisle with Stefani that same year, and aside from a poorly received disc Distort Yourself with a short-lived band called Institute (which he said “scared all the chicks away”) in 2005, the ’90s heartthrob hasn’t been seen doing much other than raising his children and accompanying Stefani on red carpets in the past seven years — according to the paparazzi, anyway.

“(Being called ‘Gwen’s husband’) would be annoying to anyone after a bit,” Rossdale, 43, says.

“But at the same time it’s pretty weak to even be annoyed about anything. It’s not something I’m going to sit and wallow in. I don’t cry and drink five beers. It’s more, ‘How’s your record doing?’ You know, get it out there. You try to be good at what you do.”

And so far, so good. Interscope-released WANDERlust — recorded at Winnipeg-born producer Bob Rock’s Maui beach house — peaked at 33 on the Billboard Top 200, and its first single Love Remains the Same has appeared on multiple film and TV soundtracks, including Nights in Rodanthe and Ghost Whisperer.

“I’ve definitely been blown away by the success of the first single — it’s been a shock,” Rossdale says. “Most solo albums from singers from successful bands fall into a deep pit of nowhere; into a deep black void. So the fact that my first one sold over a million (copies) in America was really intense, and was unexpected.

“I come from a place of having no expectations with anything I do because the world is wide and people are busy. I don’t see how people put such onus and such pressure on things that you make. Who’s to say what you make is what someone else wants?”

Rossdale also won’t be bringing great expectations on WANDERlust’s road trip, which will take him from Western to Eastern Canada this month before dipping back down into the U.S. for the summer.

Even though he’s travelling with a band and 14-person crew, his intimate-venue solo act is bound to carry a much different vibe than the one during Bush’s mid-’90s heyday — when the band’s breakthrough CD Sixteen Stone, practically overnight, took Rossdale from an unknown London pub strummer to a hunky arena bandleader whose face teenage girls used for wallpaper.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Rossdale says of his audience. “I wish it was the exact same (Bush) fans grown up, because then there’d be, like, millions of them.”

If not, at least the tour will serve as a vacation from the pesky paps that camp out near Rossdale’s family homes in L.A. and London.

And while his boys will visit him on several stops, might this dad finally get some relief from, say, a screaming toddler?

“We don’t have screamers,” Rossdale insists. “We don’t allow them to scream. If they scream, we turn the music up.”

And that actually works?

“No, it doesn’t.”

Enquiring minds (Rossdale’s mom) want to know

Who else can Gavin Rossdale rely on not to believe what the tabloids say about him, if not his own mother?

Apparently the Brit-rocker’s mom Lucy keeps tabs on her son, his wife Gwen Stefani and their two sons Kingston, 2, and Zuma, eight months, from across the pond by checking out paparazzi pictures.

“She goes, ‘I saw a great picture of you guys,’ ” Rossdale says of a recent mother-son phone chat.

“I played a show in L.A. and there’s a picture of Kingston at the sound mixer — he’s wearing a Rasta hat, he’s got sunglasses on and he’s got a microphone that’s switched off — but he’s singing. My mom’s like, ‘Did you see that picture? That was the best picture!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it was a paparazzi picture.’ And she says, ‘Yeah, but if we didn’t have that we wouldn’t see what you’re doing.’ ”

Living in the public eye is something the Rossdale clan is all-too-used to.

“We don’t modify our lives to avoid (photographers),” he says. “If I want to take them to the park, I’m going to take them to the park. But you have to make this conscious thing of well, ‘I’m going to go to the park where there’ll be seven grown men with cameras following.’ It’s kind of creepy … but there’s nothing you could do. We could build a fake park at our house and have extras or something as people — or just get on with it.

“The combination of me and Gwen and the kids makes such good airport reading. I like it best when you go see a psychiatrist and they have those gossip magazines in there — so I’ve heard.”