1992-2002, 2010-Gavin RossdaleVocals, guitar1992-2002, 2010-
Chris TraynorGuitar2002, 2010-
Robin GoodridgeDrums1992-2002, 2010-2019
Corey BritzBass2010-
Nik HughesDrums2019-
Bush's lead singer/guitarist Gavin Rossdale was born in Kilburn, London in 1967. He attended a private school alongside Shane MacGowan of The Pogues.
The band was founded in London in 1992 when Rossdale met guitarist Nigel Pulsford in a London nightclub and the two discovered common musical ground: The Pixies, Jane's Addiction and Nirvana among them.
The band used to live in Shepherd's Bush in west London; hence the name Bush.
Rossdale was a formidable soccer player. A center midfielder, he tried out for Chelsea before resetting his career goal to rock star. In 2005 Rossdale portrayed England 1950s World Cup center forward Stanley Mortensen in the movie The Game of Their Lives.
In 1993 the band was signed by Rob Kahane's Trauma Records, which had distribution by Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records. Following the death of supportive Disney executive Frank G. Wells, Hollywood Records decided not to release Bush's first album after all. The members of Bush took day jobs until 1994, when Trauma Records got distribution through Interscope Records.
In 1994 Bush released their first album, Sixteen Stone, which has sold over 6 million copies and is certified 6x multi-platinum by the RIAA.
Rossdale is an avid reader who often draws inspiration for his lyrics from whatever he's reading. He cites Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes and Christopher Hitchens as some of his favorite authors, and
names Moon Palace by Paul Auster as the most important book in his life.
Bush's second album, Razorblade Suitcase, reached #1 in the US and #4 on the UK albums chart following its 1996 release. The album was noticeably moodier, as the exhaustive touring and sudden success of Sixteen Stone had swept the band along in what Rossdale explained to Rolling Stone as a "Non-stop bubble where everything's done for you, you don't get a chance to stop and think, you have no idea if something's good or bad and you can't phone in sick."
Bush's lead singer Gavin Rossdale was mentioned in Boy George's autobiography,
Take it Like a Man. Boy George asserted that Rossdale had been the boyfriend of British pop singer and drag star Marilyn (Peter Robinson) in the 1980s. Rossdale denied it, but when a
photo of the pair emerged, he copped to having an affair with Marilyn when he was 17.
Some Canadians may know the band as Bushx because of a naming conflict with a 1970s Canadian band. In 1997, the newer Bush earned rights to their proper name under a deal that involved donating $40,000 to charity.
Prior to the release of the band's third album, The Science of Things, Trauma Records sued Bush for allegedly breaking contract by shopping their new album to other record labels. The band ultimately signed a new long-term contract with Trauma, which dropped its lawsuit. The Science of Things went platinum and reached #11 on Billboard.
By 2001 the band was signed with Atlantic Records. With their album Golden State selling under 400,000 copies, and Atlantic showing low support, Bush disbanded in 2002. In 2010 they began to play live dates again, and in September 2011 released a new album called The Sea of Memories, which reached #18 on the Billboard 200.
Lead singer Gavin Rossdale formed a new band in 2004 called Institute. Rossdale has also taken to acting, appearing in the films Zoolander and Constantine, among others.
Gavin Rossdale suffered from a number of medical problems when he was a kid. They included a burst appendix at the age of nine as well as spending a year in hospital with ear problems. He told US Weekly: "I lived in a room the size of a prison cell even though it wasn't a prison cell."
Rossdale made his move on Gwen Stefani, the frontwoman of No Doubt, when her band was opening for Bush on their 1996 tour (Bush and No Doubt first shared a bill at a KROQ Christmas show in Los Angeles on December 17, 1995, but Stefani and Rossdale didn't meet). Do Doubt joined the tour on February 12, 1996, and on February 16, Rossdale threw a party after their New Orleans show in an effort to get to know Gwen. His ploy worked; they enjoyed a drunken night in the city and shared their first kiss. When they met sober the next day, they still liked each other. The pair married on September 14, 2002 and had three children together. On August 3, 2015, Stefani filed for divorce from Rossdale, citing irreconcilable differences.
Gavin Rossdale had a beloved Hungarian sheepdog called Winston, who lived to almost 17. Winston appears on the back of the CD booklet of Sixteen Stone and also accompanied Gwen Stefani down the aisle upon their marriage in 2002.
Rossdale is the only band member credited as a writer on Bush's songs. He talked about the process in a
Songfacts interview: "I don't really write songs with other people. Ever. I was always confused as to who does what. I'm used to having pretty good sketches and pretty good ideas of all of the sections, and then being pretty open to everybody putting on parts and taking it wherever the song goes. I have a great band, so after I've done what my job is, I don't dictate much. We just put it through the funnel, and it comes out the other side, sounding like it does. So, nothing is dogmatic and, 'This has to be that. You're just playing that.' It's sort of like, 'This is what I've done,' and you can approve it, leave it, or do whatever. We just have our certain ways."
Gavin Rossdale loves to cook, and in 2025 he launched a series called
Dinner With Gavin Rossdale on Vizio's streaming service. In each episode, a celebrity guest comes to his Los Angeles home and he makes them dinner. His first guest was Serena Williams, who sang "Comedown" with Rossdale when he pulled out his guitar. Other guests the first season include Brooke Shields, Common and Tom Jones.
Before
Sixteen Stone catapulted Bush to international fame, Gavin Rossdale was making ends meet by painting houses and dentist offices in London. What most people don't know is that even after finishing the album, Rossdale went back to that day job for another four months, holding it down until "
Comedown" took off. At the time, Britpop was dominating the UK scene and Rossdale thought his music didn't have much commercial appeal.
"I kind of had a sense of relief," he told KROQ, "that if I could just make a record of this music I believed in, I could go back to my day job and not feel like such a jerk."
