Bush are gearing up to hit the road in support of their Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023 collection celebrating the band’s three-decade career. But five weeks out from that tour’s kick-off, singer and founder Gavin Rossdale tells Billboard that he’s already looking ahead before he looks back.
“I am gonna leave here today and go to the studio to work on more for the next record,” he says. “I just keep thinking forward… there’s a painful, tortuous process like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing? I can’t do it, this last song I did was the best song I wrote, now what am I gonna do?’ And then you just sort of forge forward and you find it… so this week I’m reaping the rewards of last week’s writing and working in the studio when I leave here. I like to live in the moment.”
The 58-year-old frontman and only remaining original member of the “Glycerine” band explains that it’s a very “English” thing to keep moving and carry on rather than dwelling or hyping past achievements. That said, Rossdale says picking the 21 songs for Loaded was not that much of a heavy lift because they are essentially a chronological roster of his group’s biggest hits.
He’s such a planner, though, that Rossdale says he hopes to finish the group’s 10th studio album — the follow-up to 2022’s The Art of Survival — before hitting the road next month. “I’m definitely going to have a new song this summer,” he says of the joy of having a fresh track to play on tour to show fans that things are still “percolating… all bubbling the whole time.”
The 32-date North American Loaded tour will kick off on July 26 at the Hayden Homes Amphitheater in Bend, OR and feature special guests Alice in Chains guitarist and solo artist Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox. And don’t worry, Rossdale says he’s more than happy to play the hits people want to hear so that his fans have to scrap over who is going to go get the drinks. “I’m always thinking about the audience experience,” he says.
Watch Billboard‘s interview with Rossdale about new music, the tour and the greatest hits collection above.