'IN ENGLAND YOU DIDN'T WANT ME TO WIN'

Gavin Rossdale is huge in America, with a hit TV show and his band Bush selling out stadiums, while over here he is often just known as Gwen Stefani's ex or Daisy Lowe's dad. He tells Lisa Wright he remains grateful

- Lisa Wright

When Gavin Rossdale was writing what would become Bush's just-released 10th studio album, I Beat Loneliness, the 59-year-old would potter around the kitchen of his house in Los Angeles, making a snack as the gnarly, metal-adjacent riffs of his band blasted out of the spare room-turned-studio speakers at full volume.

"There's no one there, so I’d just leave the track on loop with these ideas dominating the whole house," he recalls. “Go get something to eat and see what it triggers.”

It’s an unusually domestic picture of a rock star, but one that suits Rossdale’s somewhat unique situation well. A heavy-riffing icon in certain circles, with more than 20 million album sales, a Billboard Number One in 1996's second record, Razorblade Suitcase, and a career that’s spanned more than 30 years — plus a 13-year marriage to Gwen Stefani, with whom he has three children (they divorced in 2015) — Rossdale still flies comparatively under the radar to the wider world.

A couple of days before we speak, Bush headlined New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden but most of the people on his street, he says, are clueless about his activities. “I can be on tour for six months, killing myself on stage, slaying it every night, and then I'll put the rubbish out and my neighbour will say, ‘Hey man, good to see you, what have you been up to?’” he laughs with mock outrage. “F***! It’s humbling!”

Since breaking through with 1994 debut Sixteen Stone, it’s a duality that the Marylebone-born frontman has become very familiar with. Riding the crest of the MTV generation wave, Bush became massive in the States in a way that never quite translated to home shores. Each album of theirs without fail has charted higher across the pond. “I’ve had 28 hits in America, but I’m a one-hit wonder in England,” he notes, alluding to second album single, Swallowed.