http://www.buzzbishop.com/blog/2009/04/17/gavin-rossdale-interview-on-virgin-radio-vancouver/

http://www.x929.ca/shows/beharrell/?p=2591

Rossdale released his solo debut, “Wanderlust,” in June of last year. Since then, it has been a slow climb for him, which is something he said he prefers. The first single, “Love Remains the Same,” entered The Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 76, rising to No. 27 in October 2008, giving Rossdale his first Top 40 hit since the days when he led Bush.

Calling from the Los Angeles home he shares with wife Gwen Stefani and sons Zuma and Kingston, Rossdale spoke to LiveDaily about the tour, the success of “Love Remains the Same” and his penchant for tennis and reading.

LiveDaily: Is this tour your first full one in support of “Wanderlust’?

Gavin Rossdale: Yeah, I’ve done lots of shows. They’ve been one-off, two or three shows here and there. But nothing as constant as I’m born to do. I think this is the first leg and just kind of testing the water, getting out there and getting back in front of people. That’s it.

After being in Bush and Institute, why was now the time for a solo album?

I wanted it to be a Bush record. Then it wasn’t gonna be a Bush record. I wanted to keep working. I didn’t think that Institute was the right move. It seemed too difficult to set up a whole new band. If I’m going to start [a new thing], at least my name has some recognition. So, I did that. But, really, it was just out of just survivalism.

Were you surprised at the success of “Love Remains the Same”?

Yeah. Blown away, really. It’s been a huge song for me. What is really amazing is the next one ["Forever May You Run"] is setting up in the same way. It’s a slow road but it’s pretty incredible. I think it’s the way that it can go now. You go at a certain speed. If you don’t have the big record or the first-week stuff, you go this other route, which is this thing of people discovering the music and having an organic feel to it–in a way that allows people to own it themselves and not have it forced on them by the huge marketing and all that kind of stuff. The music is being played and being picked up on and every day people are coming up to me and kind of telling me how they’re being affected by the record and what it’s doing to them. It’s on a really interesting modern journey.

It’s a beautiful song and the video is great for it. It seems like it would have been a lot of fun to do.

Yeah, it was great. I did it with Sophie Mueller and she is actually staying at our house right now. I’ve known her for such a long time, never worked with her and I always wanted to, so we were lucky to get the chance. I asked her to do it and she goes, “Yeah. Let’s shoot it at your house.” We shot a lot of it at my house and a couple of other little locations. But just a day’s shoot, you know. Yeah, it was good fun.
How did you choose the name “Wanderlust” for your album?

[I chose it] because I really missed touring. That’s what it’s really about. I felt that the “wanderlust” for me was just about this desire to get back out and play and be in front of audiences. I love the studio a lot, but I also liked being on the road and taking that on. It’s like a different beast. I’m looking forward to it. I get to play a selection of stuff from Bush, from Institute, my solo stuff, some covers. Whenever I want to change it, I can change it up pretty regularly. So there’s, like, three or four sets we play. Keep it interesting for the fans. Different times and different periods in my musical madness journey.

It sounds like it’s going to be a great show.

Thank you. I hope so. I want to keep it super dynamic. It’s such a hard time [economically right now] that it’s forcing everyone on every level to re-evaluate what they do and take nothing for granted. So when people pay their good money to see me, I better give them a great show, a good dynamic.

Are you looking forward to playing clubs again?

Well, yeah, of course. There’s theaters, there’s some clubs, some big gigs, sort of festival-style things. It’s interesting to get the range of it. I did a lot of clubs with Institute. Being a rock musician, it’s obviously where we come from. There’s some excitement to it. There’s excitement that you get in a club. It’s crammed, it’s steaming, people going crazy. It’s pretty infectious. I’m looking forward to those shows when people get lost in them.

Are you going to be on tour the same time as your wife?

I think so, yeah.

That must be kind of tough.

Well, I think so. Tough or really convenient. I think it could work out really well. But she’s doing what she’s got to do, and me as well.

What was it like to work on “Wanderlust” with producer Bob Rock?

It was amazing. I love the guy. He was totally supportive and really inspiring. I got to work with him where he lived in Hawaii. It was just brilliant. I mean, everything you’d want out of making a record is what I got with him. He was just really good fun. A great engineer out there. I ate at the same restaurant every night for, like, a month. It was cool. I really liked it. I really had a good time. I’ve already [told] him I want to do another record with him. I 100% want to work with him again.

Have you started writing new material yet?

Yeah. I have a few new songs that I’m digging. I’m thinking about them in respect to what I’ve done with the last record. It’s kind of cool. It all kind of goes together. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want to do. I’m kind of in the middle of that. When I’m on the road and living that crazy existence, I can kind of work on it myself–and try to use the time really productively.

What aspects of Bush and Institute do you feel you were able to carry over into your solo career?

I’m always hoping that you keep the excitement and the emotional aspects. There’s so much power in … vulnerability and putting it all out there–leaving it on the line and sort of just taking high dives into whatever you do and having the passion to really create something extraordinary. Be the best you can be. I’m trying to do that.

I read you’re a very avid tennis player.

I play tennis in the mornings. I think it’s really good to go and do something, have a passion, to keep you grounded and not sort of self-obsessed about what you’re doing. I get lost in reading. I read a lot of books. I get out there and I do physical exercise and mental exercise.

What was the last good book you read?

I just finished a book called “Crank,” which is about growing up on methamphetamines, which is a phenomenal memoir. Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers [The Story of Success]“–that was a phenomenal read. There’s a great book I just read, Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects.” Have you heard of it? It’s fantastic. That was last week and that was a great, crazy thriller. Something I never read. I didn’t want to put it down. Stuff like that. I get into all different things. Some non-fiction, fiction, just move it all around. I fall in love with books. I read them all the time.

[via livedaily.com]

Video of Gavin’s performance in Seattle at the Showbox. Clips include Machinehead, Forever May You Run, and Glycerine. [via BEACON-STREET.NET]

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.”

[via CANOE.ca]