GAVIN ROSSDALE - GUITAR
AND VOCALS
DAVE PARSONS - BASS
NIGEL PULSFORD - GUITAR
ROBIN GOODRIDGE - DRUMS
"I WOULD be skeptical of us, too, if I had been a musician in Seattle, England, or anywhere, seeing
this band from nowhere rise to all this success," said Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale.
After two albums, seven hit singles - "Everything Zen", "Little Things", "Comedown", "Glycerine", "Machinehead", "Swallowed" and "Greedy Fly", over 250 concerts, seven million copies of their debut album Sixteen Stone sold, and all done in a short period of time, Bush are the biggest English rock act to break in America in more than a decade. The band formed in 1992 with Gavin Rossdale (guitar, vocals), Nigel Pulsford (guitar), Robin Goodridge (drums) and Dave Parsons (bass). Before they formed, Gavin had released a few singles with a band of pop-rockers called Midnight, Nigel had King's Blank (which had a couple of albums before "it drank itself to death"), Dave was a member of Transvision Vamp and Robin was with The Beautiful People (after a stint with his brothers band 'The Gonads').
When they first met, Gavin and Nigel discussed bands like The Breeders, Pixies and Bob Marley. Their shared musical interests quickly evolved into the sound that has become Bush's trademark. With the addition of Robin and Dave, the band began to record and tour with money earned at various day jobs in the hope of securing a record deal. They came up with enough demos to fill an album. The sound was more in keeping with America's alternative rock scene than the Brit Pop movement in England. By late 1993, the band signed with an unknown label called Trauma Records. With a shoe-string budget, Bush were given the chance to record the album 'Sixteen Stone'. All the tracks were written by Gavin.
Within a year, the debut album was in the shops and its explosive first single "Everything Zen" was creating a major buzz at radio. By early 1995, major support from MTV for the "Everything Zen" video drove the track to number 1 on the alternative radio charts. It was the shape of things to come.
Bush began a tour of America in January 1995 which lasted 18 months, and learned "it's not a good idea to play arenas when you only have one album". They performed more than 230 U.S. concerts in support of Sixteen Stone, performing a 90-minute show almost every night. With each new single, video and concert, their fan base grew and Sixteen Stone inched further up the album charts, holding steady in the lower half of the american Top 20 until December 1995.
In that month, with their fourth single, "Glycerine" headed for number 1, the band appeared on "Saturday Night Live" among other shows, and the album went into the top 10, where it stayed for the next few months. After cover stories in Rolling Stone and Details, Bush had become mega-stars.
When the Sixteen Stone Tour ended in May 1996, Bush almost immediately began to work on their second album, Razorblade Suitcase, produced by Steve Albini who "mastered the difficult task of recording spontaneously, so we still had that certain live feeling". The songs were recorded mostly in one or two takes with a few overdubs.
Bush returned to the U.S. in early September when they appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards performing "Machinehead" and walking away with 'The Viewer's Choice' award, the ultimate honor.