"Everything Zen" was the first single from Bush. The lyrics, which are suitably zen (meaning you have to have a very open mind to understand them, are about youth culture. Like all Bush originals, it was written by their lead singer, Gavin Rossdale.
In the line, "Rain Dogs howl for the century," Gavin Rossdale makes reference to two of his favorite cultural icons: Tom Waits and Allen Ginsberg.
Rain Dogs is the name of a Tom Waits album (also a "
song) released in 1985;
Howl is a
Ginsberg poem from 1955.
In a
Songfacts interview with Gavin Rossdale, he explained the meaning behind the line, "There's no sex in your violence." It comes from a line in the Jane's Addiction song "
Ted, Just Admit It..."
Said Rossdale: "I thought about that line, and it always struck me as a powerful lyric. I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about where I was living and where I had grown up, and some of the more violent aspects of that life and of those kids. I really hated that violence growing up. I was a little bit lost and didn't know where I was going, what I was doing, and I was committed to music, with no chance of having any success. I had been struggling for years. And that line, 'sex and violence,' that is a common thread through art. I just decided to put it in the context of, 'There's no sex in your violence.' It's sort of a personal belief, a personal mantra."
The line "Minnie Mouse has grown up a cow, Dave's on sale again" refers to David Bowie, whose song "
Life On Mars" contains the line: "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow, Lennon's on sale again."
Bush is a British band, but they had by far their most success in America, where this song led the charge. In December 1994, a copy of "Everything Zen" made its way to KROQ, an influential radio station in Los Angeles. Their DJ Jed The Fish made it his "Catch Of The Day," and the song got a huge response, sending it into hot rotation. Other radio stations followed suit, MTV put the video in their Buzz Bin, and the song gradually found a foothold across the country.
Bush took advantage of the opportunity by touring America and playing the song on TV appearances (including Late Night with David Letterman) and radio showcases (including the KROQ Acoustic Christmas concert) along the way. By the end of the tour in April 1995, they were playing arenas.
This was the first song Bush made a video for. It was directed by Matt Mahurin, who had done videos for U2, Peter Gabriel, and Alice in Chains. And yeah, a lot of rock videos were grungy in 1994, with blurry, distorted images.
This song helped bring the word "asshole" into the mainstream. The first verse contains the line "Should I fly Los Angeles, find my asshole brother," which most radio stations left as is. This type of profanity would have been removed just a few years earlier, but standards of acceptable profanity were being lowered. The TV show NYPD Blue was using it on primetime US TV, something that had never been done before.
Around this time, Britpop acts like Oasis and Blur were huge in their homeland but struggling to break through in America. It was the opposite for Bush, who got hardly a listen in their native England (
Sixteen Stone peaked at #42 on the UK Albums chart), but was embraced in the US. Much of this has to do with "Everything Zen." Despite Gavin Rossdale's accent, the song is very American, with a heavy grunge sound and lyrics about being young and disaffected. A quick comparison:
"Everything Zen":
We're so bored, you're to blame"
Live Forever" by Oasis (also released in 1994):
Maybe I don't really wanna know how your garden growsRossdale spent much of 1991 in America, as the grunge sound was emerging.
In an interview with
Guitar World, guitarist Nigel Pulsford said that the solo in the song was "Probably recorded after a few drinks."
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Suggestion credit:
Corey - Boston, MA
In America, the song wasn't released as a single, which kept it off the Hot 100 (per Billboard rules) but sent sales of the Sixteen Stone album skyward. By the end of 1997, it had sold over 6 million copies. The song reached its peak position of #40 on the Billboard Airplay chart in March 1995.
In 1996, No Doubt was Bush's opening act for about three months on an American tour. During this tour, Rossdale took up with No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani, leading Rossdale's bandmates to refer to this song as "Everything Gwen." Stefani and Rossdale later married.
Gavin Rossdale was dirt poor when he wrote this song, which gave him the perspective for these lines:
A million dollars at stake
As you search for your demigod
And you fake with a saint
He told Fuse: "That's to do with people that espouse spiritual values and lean certain ways and then they behave like douchebags in another area of their lives. So, it was that sort of hypocrisy of people that are obsessed about self-help books or self-improvement.
Bush included two versions of this song on their 1997 album
Deconstructed: The Lhasa Fever Mix and the Derek DeLarge Mix. In the DeLarge Mix, you can hear Gavin Rossdale's ex-girlfriend Jasmine Lewis (subject of "
Glycerine"), singing "no sex in your violence."
