Fronted by lead singer and '90s heartthrob Gavin Rossdale, Bush has sold millions of
albums over the years, and churned out some of the decade's biggest rock hits.
But there's a lot more to this band than meets the eye.
This is the untold truth of Bush.
After graduating from high school in the mid-1980s, Gavin Rossdale became a regular in London's
burgeoning dance club scene, and soon formed a pop group of his own, called Midnight.
The two singles Midnight put out didn't get any radio or sales traction, however, and
Rossdale didn't make any headway with any of his subsequent groups, either.
Finally, after meeting guitarist and fellow superfan of influential alternative rock group
Pixies, Nigel Pulsford, he formed a pop-rock group called Future Primitive.
Before long, they had added drummer Robin Goodridge and bassist Dave Parsons, who had
played in the controversial English glam rock band Transvision Vamp.
Now all the group needed was a name, or a better name than Future Primitive, at least.
So the band went with Bush, which is short for Shepherd's Bush, the name of a London
suburb where some of the band's members had once resided.
Even after Future Primitive became Bush and the group found their sound, it took a long
time for the band to release its debut album, owing to some corporate snags that the group
actually had nothing to do with.
Veteran talent manager Rob Kahane became acquainted with Bush in 1993, shortly after he'd stopped
managing the pop superstar George Michael.
He heard the band play a few songs and signed them to Trauma, his small, upstart record
label, which had a distribution arrangement with Hollywood Records, a division of Disney.
So Bush headed into the studio, and by early 1994, the group had fully completed recording
their debut album, Sixteen Stone.
And then tragedy struck, when Disney executive Frank G. Wells died in a helicopter accident.
As he was Kahane's closest advocate in the Disney corporate world, the manager and his
bands found themselves all but expelled from Hollywood Records.
Since these executives decided that Sixteen Stone wasn't a good enough album for commercial
release, the members of Bush had to start working low-paying, part-time jobs to pay
the bills, hoping the album would one day see the light of day.
Fortunately, Kahane found a home for both the band and album at Interscope Records.
Sixteen Stone went on to sell 6 million copies, and the members of Bush were finally able
to quit their day jobs.
Alt rock enthusiasts of a certain age will remember Bush as one of the dominant bands
of the genre from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s.
Well, alt rock fans from everywhere but Canada, that is.
Because up in the Great White North, the group was known by a different name.
See, a band's name is its brand, and as such, most groups file for a trademark.
That's why you don't see hundreds of bands out there calling themselves the Beatles.
Unfortunately for Rossdale and company, a Canadian musician named Domenic Troiano had
formed a band called Bush in the 1970s.
As such, Troiano owned the Canadian territorial rights to use "Bush" as a band name.
At the urging of his lawyer, Gavin Rossdale's grunge band had no choice but to pick a name
just different enough from Bush to be legally compliant but also close enough to Bush so
Canadians would know it was the same band.
The solution?
For some of its earliest releases, Bush was known in Canada as BushX.
Troiano and Bush eventually came to an agreement, however, and the latter, more famous Bush
is now known by that name worldwide.
The Nirvana sound was highly influential to countless bands of the 1990s, and Bush is
no exception.
In fact, the band's similarities to Cobain's power trio were a little too much for some
people, and the group was frequently and unfavorably compared to Nirvana.
So how did the members of Bush respond?
Rossdale once told Rolling Stone:
"A lot of people want to guard Kurt Cobain's estate, and I appreciate that, but what we're
doing isn't a crime.
I hope there's something of Nirvana in Bush, in the same way that there was a massive element
of the Pixies in Nirvana."
In an interview with Guitar World in 1997, Bush guitarist Nigel Pulsford dismissed the
criticism entirely.
He said:
"There are a million Nirvana sound-alike bands.
If we really wanted to sound like Nirvana, we could get a lot closer."
When it came time to record the band's second album, Razorblade Suitcase, Bush didn't seem
to care about the "Nirvana knockoff" label anymore.
The group almost invited the criticism, hiring as its producer Steve Albini, a studio wizard
known for his work with indie bands, punk acts...and Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero.
"If you're in a band, the important thing is you make the music you wanna make, and
you do it how you wanna do it."
In January 2002, founding Bush guitarist Nigel Pulsford announced on Bush's website that
he was temporarily quitting the band, forgoing touring to stay at home with his wife, who
was at the time pregnant with their son.
A few months later, however, Pulsford claimed to Undercover that he had wanted to leave
much earlier, and that he was ultimately fired anyway.
Pulsford said:
"The decision was taken out of my hands when I was sacked six days after the birth of my
son.
I'd tried to quit in September when there were complications during my wife's pregnancy,
and I didn't see how I could continue, but I'd been persuaded to carry on by getting
a temporary replacement for the U.S. tour."
In other words, it wasn't a happy split.
Pulsford's temporary substitute, former Helmet guitarist Chris Traynor, became his permanent
replacement.
But that didn't last long, either.
Finally, Rossdale disbanded Bush in 2002.
Three years later, Rossdale re-emerged with a new band called Institute.
This new group produced Distort Yourself, a commercial flop that would turn out to be
the band's only album.
Rossdale's sole solo effort, Wanderlust, sold fairly well, and the single "Love Remains
the Same" hit the top 30, but the singer couldn't escape his past.
In 2010, he reformed Bush, albeit without Pulsford or bassist Dave Parsons.
"You're working on a new record?"
"Yes."
"So tell me-"
"I just came from the studio now, and sang 11 songs in."
Bush's new album, The Kingdom, releases July 17, 2020.
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