Gay4Grunge: Bush

Bush is the Bon Jovi of Grunge and there are multiple reasons for this. Like Bon Jovi, Bush came at the height of their genre (Heavy Metal for Bon Jovi and Grunge for Bush) and they benefited immensely from the acts who had paved the way for them, but they also made a more slickly produced version of that genre's music that was able to crossover to pop radio. Both bands also had frontman who were basically sex symbols and as a result they were able to attract a lot of female fans, which of course upsets lots of sexist male rock fans who distrust anything that too many women like. Like Bon Jovi, Bush were attacked for being bandwagon jumpers who ripped off a subgenre of rock music that lacked the authenticity of the bands who came before them. Critics loathed them, many Grunge purists disliked them and even their home country of England had no time for Bush in the era of Britpop and yet despite all that, Bush became one of the biggest bands of the 90s in America. In fact, Bush was more popular than Soundgarden or Alice in Chains in terms of record sales and radio play, which is crazy to think about. Plus, despite what all the naysayers said about Bush being a fad, their biggest hits have remained rock radio staples for over 25 years. Bush's closest peers in Post-Grunge's first wave was probably Silverchair and you hardly heard them on rock radio after the 90s ended. 

My history with Bush starts in 1997, which is when I became a pop music fan thanks to The Spice Girls. I remember watching the 1997 MTV Movie awards in June of 97 and Bush won the award for best song to a film, which was Machinehead and the movie it was in was Fear. I had never heard of Bush before that point, but I would see their next music on MTV quite a bit over the summer of 1997, which was when I started watching MTV non-stop every day. The music video was for the remix of Mouth and it was featured in the movie An American Werewolf in Paris, which despite being a huge horror fan I've never seen since I have heard nothing but bad things about it. The music video though was both dark and sexy, which is something Bush excelled at. Bush tapped into the inherent darkness of Grunge, but due to Gavin's rockstar looks, it always gave Bush's music videos a sexy flair missing from most of their Grunge peers. 

Focusing on Gavin's good looks can feel superficial, but it's honestly a very important part of Bush's success and legacy. When Grunge and Gangsta Rap changed the face of MTV and radio in the early 90s, teen idols and heartthrobs were banished from the music scene for about 5 years. The closest thing you had to boy bands between 92-96 were the RnB vocal groups like Boyz II Men and All 4 One, but those acts appealed even more to adults who were listening to Adult Contemporary radio stations back in the 90s than the teens of that time. So, when Bush started taking off it had been a few years since there had been teen idols and heartthrobs. Gavin became a sex symbol in an era that was devoid of male sex symbols, at least within pop music at that time. We still had sex symbols in TV and film during the 90s, but it was a wasteland when it came to pop music, and this is an important thing to remember when looking back on Bush's meteoric rise in the mid-90s. 

Back to my history with Bush, my next encounter with them was when I bought this compilation in 1999 called Jock Rock. Back in the 90s Jock Jam compilations were plentiful and everywhere. These CDs would feature the dance music that was played constantly at sporting events. Jock Rock was a similar setup except it focused more on rock music. That comp had Bush's Machinehead on it so that was the first Bush song I ever owned. I also remember my dad really liked Machinehead when he would hear me playing that Jock Rock CD, because he was all about that riff. That comp was also the first time I ever heard Local H, a Post-Grunge band I will definitely be covering in the future on Gay4Grunge. Machinehead and Mouth would be the only two Bush songs I would know for years since Bush's presence decreased drastically after 1997, thanks in large part to the rise of Teen Pop and TRL. 

So, let's fast forward to the year 2002, the year I became a full-blown Grunge fanatic. I had already gotten into most of the major Grunge bands by the fall of 2002 so I started looking at the second tier Grunge bands like Bush and Silverchair. A friend of mine was more into Bush by that point than I was and one of his favorite songs was Comedown. I remember one night in my bedroom in high school I was pacing back and forth when I heard Comedown, which I had heard just a few times beforehand, but this time it clicked. I really connected with that song and I especially loved the intro of it, which has since become one of my favorite intros in all of 90s Alternative. Before Bush and to a lesser extent Silverchair, I thought I was just going to stick with the big guns of Grunge and leave it at that since everything I read about bands like Bush or Silverchair from music critics had been extremely negative. Yet, after connecting with Comedown I realized that just doing the Big 4 Seattle bands along with a few others such as Stone Temple Pilots and Garbage, wasn't going to cut it for me. I wanted to learn and listen to all I could when it came to Grunge and 90s Alternative. Honestly my passion for this era and sub-genre of music would be an ongoing journey for years and it only slowed down after the arrival of Queer Pop music in the late 2010s, but even then I still made some minor discoveries. 

Getting into Bush was the moment I realized that I couldn't care less about what rock critics thought about this era, because I knew I loved it and got a lot of it. In fact, I would discover other bands like Sponge, Candlebox and The Lemonheads when they were negatively grouped in with bands like Bush in articles I would read from Entertainment Weekly or Spin magazine. Despite these critics bashing these acts, I knew that I would probably like those bands because I also liked Bush. So basically, when I saw rock critics trying to tear down bands they hated from the 90s, they were actually introducing me to these bands that I had never heard of before and I would then go off to discover those bands on my own. So really their bashing had the opposite effect on me. I probably wouldn't have discovered those bands until much later if at all, so thank you angry rock critics for turning me on to all the bands you hate! 

Anyway, it didn't take long before I picked up a used copy of Bush's debut album Sixteen Stone from Newbury Comics for $4.99. That's something else I want to bring up too. Before I got into Grunge I bought mostly new CDs, the exceptions were some of the pop divas like Madonna and Whitney Houston, since I got some of their albums used in the late 90s. Yet, now that I was becoming more and more enamored with Grunge as well as classic rock and oldies, I started buying CDs that were used instead of new. What was nice about that was CDs by the early 2000s could be as high as $18.00, but now I could buy CDs that were always under 10 dollars and sometimes as low as just 2 or 3 dollars. Combine those low prices with the fact that I got my first part time job in 2002 as a busboy at the Newport Marriott and all of a sudden, I had disposable income in a way I never had before. Plus, by the end of my Junior year I could drive meaning I could now go to any of the music stores I wanted to whenever I felt like it and I didn't have to ask my parents to drive me there. As a result, my CD buying habits increased by tenfold in 2002 and it's why I could start diving deeper and deeper into Grunge and 90s Alternative at that time. 

Listening to Sixteen Stone I realized just how many hits it had, because I had been hearing these songs on rock radio a lot at that time. Everything Zen, The Little Things, Comedown, Glycerine and Machinehead were not only huge hits in their day, but they still blanketed rock radio in the 00s so I was hearing these songs a lot by 2002. I also listened to all of Sixteen Stone as an album frequently and it was one of the CDs, I always brought with me to track meets back when I used to run the 400-meter dash. In fact, Machinehead became my pump-up song for running especially since it had the lyrics "Breathe in Breathe Out," which was really just good advice for a short distance runner such as myself at that time. I even remember going to one meet that had a DJ who would play songs during every race and I requested Machinehead for my sprint, which he did play for me when I ran the 400-meter dash. 

I thought Sixteen Stone would be the only Bush album I would get, but then I heard The Chemicals Between Us on one of the local rock stations one night and I recognized it. So, when I went online to look up Bush's other albums, I discovered that The Chemicals Between Us was on their third album from 1999 called The Science of Things. I also looked up the group's second album Razorblade Suitcase, which I learned was produced by Steve Albini who had handled the production on Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero. I also then remembered seeing clips of the music video to Greedy Fly on MTV in the late 90s, which was Razorblade Suitcase's second single after Swallowed, another single I actually recognized once I listened to a 30 second clip of it on CD Now's website. So, before the year was up. I picked up used copies of Razorblade Suitcase and The Science of Things, with Razorblade Suitcase only being $3.99. 

It took me a minute to really get into Razorblade Suitcase because it was much rawer and less polished than Sixteen Stone, but once I did come around to it, Razorblade Suitcase became my second favorite Bush album. It's also the Bush album I find the most fascinating. Now back in the 90s whenever one of the major Grunge bands experienced success, such as Nirvana with Nevermind or Pearl Jam with Ten, they would follow it up with a less commercial album that challenged their audience and for a few years that became the template for most Grunge bands including Candlebox's follow-up Lucy and Bush with Razorblade Suitcase. I find this absolutely fascinating, because only in the 90s would a band that had experienced great commercial success immediately follow it up with a much more difficult album that purposefully alienates part of your audience. That's how you showed off your Alt Rock cred back then and only in the 90s was something as intangible as that seen as a logical career move. 

Of course, Gavin Rossdale did it because he had been a big fan of Albini's and the production work he had done for other bands such as The Jesus Lizard, The Pixies, Nirvana and Albini's own band Big Black. Gavin genuinely loved those albums and those albums were a big inspiration for him so he wanted to make an album in that style. When Gavin met with Albini initially he told Albini how much those albums meant to him and Albini found Gavin to be a very genuine person who shared a lot of the same passions and taste in music as him. Albini is kind of infamous in the underground rock scene, because he's never afraid to share his opinions and sling mud at others. Albini has even talked trash about the Pixies and Nirvana after working with them and yet he has had nothing but good things to say about Bush and Gavin Rossdale in general. I'm sure Albini's kind words towards Bush surprised a lot of people, especially rock critics who hated Bush. Some say Albini says nothing but good things about Bush just to rile other people up, but I honestly think he enjoyed working with them. Albini said Bush were great collaborators and Gavin was open and honest about needing to make sure that there were at least a few songs that could be singles on rock radio and MTV. Albini says most bands he worked with were secretly careerists who told half truths about the success they were seeking. Not Bush though, they loved being successful but they also had a genuine love and appreciation for the bands that paved the way for them and I think that really endeared the band to Albini. 

When Bush put out a 20th Anniversary edition of Razorblade Suitcase, Steve Albini wrote a very nice essay where he discussed how much Bush really worked for their success and how they built up their audience by touring constantly for almost 18 months during the life cycle of Sixteen Stone. That's the thing about Bush, they put in the work in a way that most British bands during the 90s didn't. Bands like Blur and Suede would tour America early on in their careers and found it to be absolutely dispiriting. Those Britpop bands would then go back to Britain, and they would shit talk America to the British press, put down Grunge every chance they got, make extremely British sounding songs that had little appeal to those outside the U.K. and then they would bemoan their lack of success in America. Bush on the other hand put in the work in order to win over a big American audience in a way few other British acts did during the 90s, until The Spice Girls who also put in the work to break through in America. Bush also not only toured relentlessly, they also appeared on MTV a lot and would pop into any rock radio station that would ask them for an interview. Bush made themselves available to American rock audiences every chance they got, and not only did they not shit talk America and American music, but they also sounded like an American Grunge band, which helped them appeal to an American audience in a way that Blur couldn't with albums like Parklife or The Great Escape. 

So, by the time 2003 I was now solidly a Bush fan and that's when I came across a DVD that had Bush's music videos along with their performance at the 1999 Lollapalooza. This was how I was finally able to see a lot of Bush's music videos including the full cinematic version of Greedy Fly, which played as a horror movie that was equal parts Seven and the Fly. Around this time my family took in a foreign exchange student from Russia by the name of Irina. She wasn't too familiar or interested in Grunge or 90s Alternative at first, but she heard a lot of it because of me. One day I was watching the Bush DVD and she caught sight of Gavin Rossdale and she became very taken with him. Soon thereafter she became a Bush fan and her favorite song was the Mouth Remix. 

 Over the years I would discover that most girls I knew who had any interest in 90s music usually liked Bush and the people who liked 90s music but didn't like Bush were usually men. Now as I've mentioned in previous articles, college is really where I came into my own as I came out of the closet and started making real lifelong friends again. First there was Jen, who I became friends with thanks to a writing class we had together. She saw me reading reviews of Madonna albums on the computer before class one day and struck up a conversation with me. Next semester she asked me to hang out one Saturday night which was right before my first radio show for Alternagold so I remember bringing all my CDs in these huge booklets. She ended up ripping a lot of my CDs to her computer before the show and I know Bush was one of the bands she ended up really liking. She liked Bush enough to buy their 2005 CD/DVD collection of their songs done acoustically and their music videos. 

Jen had a roommate named Liz who I ended up meeting in a very cute way that's related to Grunge, but I'm going to save that story for when I get to The Toadies on Gay4Grunge. What you need to know is that Liz's passion for Grunge and 90s Alternative ran deeply, to the point that she co-hosted Alternagold with my friend Josh while I studied abroad. I remember Liz also liked Bush but her brothers did not, which reaffirmed my feelings once again that more women tended to like Bush more than men did. I do want to say that I do know male rock fans who do like Bush, but whenever I hear negative things about Bush it's always from men and not women. 

Another girl I met in college was Laura. She was a journalism major like me so we had a lot of the same classes together as a result. I remember Senior year all us seniors in the journalism department had to take the class Digital Journalism and we all agreed that it was the most stressful class we had ever taken in the journalism program. So, when we finished the class, we all had a party together at one of our classmates’ houses and honestly it might have been Laura's place she was renting, but I'm not 100% sure on that. What I do know is that VH1 was doing a countdown of the top 100 songs of the 90s so that was playing on the TV, which led to talk about 90s music. Laura said when she was younger Gavin Rossdale was her first celebrity crush. Laura then said when her family first got the internet in their home the first things she did was look up an a clip of Gavin Rossdale in an interview. Laura said her reaction to this "Oh my god the internet is so great. I can look at Gavin Rossdale anytime I want." I ended up making her mix CD of Bush's Greatest Hits, since she didn't have their albums anymore. 

In recent years I've been following a Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast called Buffering the Vampire Slayer. It's hosted by two queer women and Bush and Gavin Rossdale have been brought up on more than one occasion. The first reason being Bush's connection to the series where in a season 6 episode called Dead Things Bush's Out of this World is featured at the end of the episode. In a season 2 episode entitled The Dark Ages Buffy and her best friend Willow discuss their fantasies and Buffy says her fantasy is lying on a beach with Gavin Rossdale giving her a foot massage. Buffy isn't a show known for Grunge, but Bush is an obvious exception since it's a female driven show and Bush has a strong female following. One of the hosts of the podcast also brings up Gavin Rossdale every now and then because he was her first major crush growing up as well. She says she was still figuring out her sexuality, but there was this soft feminine look to Gavin's face and hair that she found very attractive as a teen. 

In the last few years on social media, I've been able to be part of a great community of queer artists and fans and one of the biggest queer music fans I know on social media is Tina. She truly champions this scene as much as I do in a lot of ways, but like me she grew up in the 90s and is a few years older than me so she got into Alternative Rock a few years before I did. So, on top of queer music, we also share a passion for 90s Alternative and one of her favorite bands from that era was Bush. She had Bush's first 2 albums on CD and listened to them constantly. Other people in the queer music community who like 90s Alternative also have said they were Bush fans back in the day such as J GRGRY and Kenney of the Q Review. 

Now Bush officially broke up in 2002 after their original guitarist Nigel Pulsford left the band and their 4th album Golden State underperformed on the charts. Throughout the rest of the 2000s, Gavin Rossdale started a new band called Institute who were a very heavy band, but their songs were not as melodic as Bush's. Then Gavin put out a solo album that seemed a little too generic for my taste and for most Bush fans as well. Eventually Gavin Rossdale brought back the Bush moniker in 2010, but the only other original member to come back was the band's drummer Robin Goodridge. The group's bassist Dave Parsons and their guitarist Nigel Pulsford did not return to the band and probably never will at this point. The group's 2011 album, The Sea of Memories, spawned the #1 Alternative Rock Hit with The Sound of Winter and my Dad dug that song but I honestly didn't. I found the song to be very bland due to the over compressed production neutering all the distortion and edge Bush is typically known for. Unfortunately, The Sound of Winter signaled where Bush Mach 2 would sound like going forward. 

Bush ended up releasing 4 albums in the 2010s & early 2020s and I have tried to listen to each of them on multiple occasions and no matter how hard I try I just can't get into them. It's funny because when Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots both announced new singers I was very resistant to that change, but in the end both bands ended up winning me over and I enjoy listening to Alice in Chains Mach 2 and Stone Temple Pilots Mach 3 (STP Mach 2 is when Chester Bennington was STP's lead singer for a hot minute.) Bush on the other hand was the opposite where I had no issues at first with them getting back together minus two of their original members and yet I just found Bush's music from the last eleven years to be pretty boring and uninteresting. The conclusion I've come to is that Bush's original guitarist Nigel Pulsford is the main reason I like 90s Bush as much as I do. Bush will never win any awards for originality, but at their peak their music definitely had an edge to it, which is why it was labelled Grunge and the reason for that edge was Nigel Pulsford. The number of riffs he can spin out in a song like Everything Zen is pretty damn impressive and on songs like Greedy Fly and Personal Holloway the guitars sound like they could cut you if you get too close. Nigel's guitar playing elevated all of Bush's best songs since his guitar work is always the most interesting thing happening in Bush's music. You remove Nigel from the group, you remove all the edge the band ever had. What you're then left with is some pretty generic sounding songs that would never be labelled as Grunge, because it feels like there's no distortion in sight. Gavin isn't the best lyricist either, but that never bothers me when I'm listening to 90s Bush, but when I'm listening to 2010's Bush it becomes obvious how much Gavin Rossdale' lyrics benefitted from Nigel's guitar playing because the songwriting is pretty uninspiring on Bush's last four albums. 

Still, I'm not here to bury Bush like most critics do, because I do love 90s era Bush and I probably always will. While I'll probably never come around to Bush Mach 2 I'll probably keep trying anyway because of how much I like Bush overall. I've yet to see them live, but they are on my bucket list. While Bush will never be considered one of the giants of Grunge or 90s Alternative, they still had just as many great singles as anyone else in the 90s and those hits have endured for over 25 years and those hits will continue to endure as long as people still like Grunge and 90s Alternative. I'll be discussing my favorite singles from Bush next week when I countdown my top 10 Bush songs. Spoiler alert: every song on my list is from their first 3 albums in the 90s.