Bush's frontman Gavin Rossdale has revealed the advice offered to him by David Bowie on how to deal with music critics rubbishing his band.
Interviewed in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, Rossdale admits that, while Bush were riding high in the mid '90s, due to the huge success they enjoyed with their 1994 debut album Sixteen Stone, the vitriol poured upon his band by music critics started to depress him. One night he turned to David Bowie, no stranger himself to poor reviews in the 1990s, and asked, "How do you deal with this shit?"
Bowie, Rossdale recalls, responded with just three words:"Outlive your critics."
“Even to recount it doesn’t make sense. It feels like a different age, a different time," Rossdale admits. “It had its moments, but if you didn’t sell any records and you had no attention, no one gave you a shitty review. I learned to live with it. It was a reaction to the success.”
“We were all caught up in the romanticism of it that it really did matter. Anyone who’s in a band is a needy person that needs validation. Singers especially.”
The new Bush album, The Art Of Survival, receives a 4 star review in Classic Rock, with writer John Aizlewood noting, "Some people still won’t take Bush seriously. It’s their loss. It always was."
“I want to be one of the bands in rock music that makes interesting music,” Rossdale says, “where rock is seen as something exciting and modern. Creatively, in the rock world, we need as many brilliant records as possible. It’s not a competition. The competition is with yourself.”
For the full interview with Gavin Rossdale, pick up the new issue of Classic Rock.
