liveDaily Interview: Gavin Rossdale of Institute

September 8, 2005 03:01 PM
By Don Zulaica
LiveDaily Contributor
After a lengthy hiatus from the music spotlight, ex-Bush [ tickets ] frontman Gavin Rossdale [ tickets ] is back in the game with his new band, Institute.
The group's Interscope debut, "Distort Yourself," out Sept. 13, features the heavy hand of Helmet [ tickets ] guitarist Page Hamilton in the producer's chair, and a quartet back band comprised of guitarist Chris Traynor (Helmet, Orange 9mm, Bush), bassist Cache Tolman (Rival Schools, CIV), and Brooklyn-based drummer Charlie Walker. Rossdale's wife, Gwen Stefani, even lends some background vocals to on the cut "Ambulances."

Rossdale's last album with Bush was 2001's "Golden State," but in the interim he has found time to record with Blue Man Group ("The Current") and write a solo track, "Adrenaline," for the movie "XXX." He's even worked his way into film as an actor, making appearances in "The Game of Their Lives," "Constantine" and "Little Black Book."

After a "classic case of oversleeping," a good-natured Rossdale spoke with liveDaily while preparing for the album's release and tour.

liveDaily: What on earth do you and Gwen Stefani play on the home stereo?

Gavin Rossdale: We were talking about this the other day. The music that we are totally together on is dub and reggae. I play that a lot around the house. Gwen was saying, "That's so weird that we like that kind of music." If I play Tool in the house, she's like, "Ugh, what is that?" And I'm like, "This is the greatest music! What are you talking about?" I play it and study her face, and she's going "Ugh," and I'll laugh, "Come on! What's up with that? How can you not like it? It's f---ing genius!"

What's been going on since Bush's last album?"

Basically, I've been publicly inactive for the best part of two-and-a-half years, but the irony is, I've been working to get this [band] together the whole time. Through all those different processes, the movies, I was always working in my studio. This is the fruition of that. I've got this record, and I feel like I have another record that's pretty good, sitting there in the background.

Where are the studios?

I have a home studio in London, and I have a studio room--thing to record in--in L.A. I travel with my drum machine and my tape recorder, so I'm always fluid like that. I'm looking into moving everything over here, because it would just be easier.

You were always writing, but what was the real itch to get a band together?

I always knew that I was working towards a band. I think it has to do with the fact that I love playing live. I love seeing the fans of the music that I make. I don't know, I was a bit lost in terms of doing anything other than a band. After Bush, the obvious thing would have been to do something more mellow.

And, of course, you go out and get Page Hamilton to produce.

Yeah. [laughs] I just took it on as a flip, you know? Let's take it right at them and make it stronger, make it more detuned, but still I wanted to make it sing.

How do you know Page?

I know Page through the label. Chris Traynor, who plays guitar in the band, played in Helmet. But the main thing was, it was Jimmy Iovine's idea. When I played him some of the music I was making, he was like, "Page makes the greatest guitar sounds," and suggested him. Neither Page nor myself really had, I think, much confidence in the idea, the possibility, or the potential. But at the same time, when you strip it away, we're musicians. For me, I'm paranoid, "Here's the king of the underground." He was the purveyor of the new metal, without the bling and rapping, and without the success of following Limp Bizkit's kind of sound. And we got along really well. He has a very, very wide taste in music. He didn't throw up at my songs, and was really into it--although he wanted to make sure everything was in C-sharp. [laughs] I think we collaborated really well. He was very good at working out arrangements with me.

Were most of these songs written already, or did you flesh a lot out with the band and Page in pre-production?

It was a combination. Nothing was [around] longer than a couple of years. I didn't have any of this stuff when I was in Bush; they weren't leftover songs. What happened, when I first began to write, I was writing on bass, because I was thinking, "Well, how am I going to change this up?" Because I was thinking more Public Image, more dub, so I wrote a lot of songs on bass, and the guitar was much more sparingly used. Then, when I knew I was going to do the rest of the record with Page, I began to write again on guitar, because I felt liberated, almost. It cleared up my aesthetic. So that led to writing some heavier, riff-style songs, like "Boom Box," "Seventh Wave," "Come on Over."

"Come on Over" feels very Helmet-esque. Sometimes the heaviest things don't have all the notes. It's the respect of space. Of rests.

That's very true. Space is everything to me. I was writing that in my studio in London. I write songs, some ideas, and then I have someone come in and flesh them out, and the process goes from there. What was weird about that song, I had a guy come to my studio one day when I really wasn't ready, and I didn't really like what was going down. So I sent him home and said, "This is totally my fault, come back tomorrow." And I said to myself, "Come on, think simple," and "Come on Over" came out really quickly.

And it's simple, but not so.

I was always trying to write similarly with Bush. We'd have 48 tracks of information recorded, and I'd sit there in the mix just pulling stuff out, out, out. With Institute it's been really cool, because we found this way to make this very stripped down, and try to keep it as effective as possible, which I suppose is one of the key elements of Helmet. It's simple, but it's clever in the right places, so it elevates it from being too simplistic.

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