Q&A Link Copied 06.06.24

Gavin Rossdale Is Big Into Self-Love

The Bush frontman talks about loneliness on tour, communicating his feelings, and how he approaches parenting. ByShannon Barbour

Photo Credit: Dove Shore

Thirty years after Bush’s debut, the band’s frontman Gavin Rossdale is feeling better than ever and is gearing up to release even more music centered on mental health and connection with a new album. “My proudest quality of the work we've done in Bush is to have songs that give people literal refuges, like life rafts in a storm,” he tells Wondermind before kicking off Bush’s summer tour on June 1. 

Rossdale is an open book, previously sharing how he overcame substance misuse, remorse around his divorce from Gwen Stefani, and how his childhood sticks with him today. Here, he continues to destigmatize mental health and talks about communicating his feelings, the loneliness and guilt that comes with touring, how he checks in with his children, and more. 

WM: How are you doing lately? 

Gavin Rossdale: My mental health is always fluid, and having just more or less completed the writing of our next record, I feel really good because there's a great sigh of relief when it's a big mountain. It's a big mountain, making a record. … You're like, God damn, I pulled it out again. I may not do another one. Maybe I forget how to write songs, but I got this far. So, I feel good. 

And my kids have been here for the last 10 days. We had a great dinner with 'em last night, and they all leave for school in the morning. … My eldest drives them, and that just fills my heart with love and appreciation. So when I shut the door this morning, I had a pep in my step.

WM: You also have a tour coming up. How are you feeling as you're getting ready for those first shows?

GR: I'm super excited to begin a big tour this summer, and we've worked really hard at that. … I just feel proud of what we've achieved. This is basically a celebration. I never wanted to do a greatest hits. I always thought that was like a swan song. I was like, “But I don't want to leave the party.” And I don’t know why I was thinking that because it's nonsense. You can have a greatest hits and just keep going. … [It’s] moving to see the effect the music we've made has had on people for so long. … I believe in humility, but it has been powerful to recognize the power that music has had on people. It’s OK to do that. 

WM: What does your mental health and self-care routine look like these days when you go on tour?

GR: I practice a huge degree of self-love at the moment. I am a maniac. I play a lot of tennis, four times a week, and it's quite competitive, quite strong. Then I come back and I sit in my infrared, and I sit in the ice bath because I'm a sucker for what's going on at the zeitgeist. … It's so harsh, but it's the most extreme form of self-love because I know that that's really doing me a world of good and stops me walking around like I'm 70 years old. 

If you go to the gym, if you go sit in the steam room, if you go sit in an ice bath, if you walk around a park, if you run around a park—I didn't used to think of it like this, but I came to realize that these are forms of self-love because what you're doing is you're giving yourself what you need to feel good. 

On tour, the self-love will be just taking that time to connect with my friends. I can get lonely during the day. Daytime you spend going, What am I doing? I feel super guilty being away from my kids. I will be away from them for like five weeks. So it's very painful for me to think of them and think, Oh, I'm not there. And what are they going through? How do they feel? How's their day? What's troubling them? It's hard if you're not physically with 'em. So some days I walk around feeling a little bit melancholic, thinking, I don’t know. Can I do this? This is not right. 

And then at night, I get the crowd, and the crowd's great, and I go, I love this. This is why I'm here! And I'm up till four going, This is a great life! The next day I'm like, Oh my God, what am I going to do? I've got to get back. It's a bit of a roller coaster. Mental health is a roller coaster, isn't it? Some days you feel good, some days you feel challenged, and I think that life is really challenging.

I think that mental health is just the cornerstone of everything because, God, we've just toiled through. I'm from England, sort of stiff upper lip. Everybody's not meant to say how you feel, not meant to talk about your emotions and stuff. And yet we have the highest suicide rates ever. It's just terrible. 

My whole working life is about how to write songs that are really vulnerable, but not in an annoying, self-pitying way like, Oh, well woe is me. What's going to happen? I try and be as honest and as vulnerable as I can, but through a position of strength. I'm a patriarch. I've got dependents. I can't be wandering around like a sad cloud. But at the same time, my mental health is really important. So that's been my life's work really is to write songs that people can relate to. 

It's funny because when you first start out, you don't necessarily have a goal about that stuff. You just sort of write what comes to you. And I was like, Oh, I emotionally complain a lot in my songs. You know, This and that is bothering me. “Everything Zen” was the very first single. That is a complete mental health song. I've always been attuned to that because I care. I care about my friends, I care about my family, and I care about myself. 

Communicating your troubles has worked for me. “Oh, this is really bothering me!” I always feel much better about that. … It's so much about communication, isn't it? And about being honest with yourself and saying what's bothering you and why. People, we're so complex. It's funny. We're annoying. We're very complex animals.

WM: Talking to people can be such a beneficial thing, but it's also so hard. And when we don’t share, we can feel so lonely, and we’re in a loneliness epidemic now.  

GR: As a society, this discussion of mental health has been incredible. I mean, suicide rates are just insane. It makes no sense the number of daily suicides. It's a tragedy. But when you think about it, it's like it began from the Industrial Age. Not to go too far into it, but just the whole thing about how we've prioritized money and status over happiness. … The world is never going to change. It's a capitalist, go-get society. But I think the more that people discuss mental health, [the more it helps]. 

The pandemic shone a light on that because it really ramped up the loneliness factor. … I'm a lone wolf, so I was fine, but I have friends who were losing their minds by being alone. They were really weepy and tearful. I couldn't relate to that, but that’s because my journey was different. My friend's journey was like, “I just need to talk to someone.” And they just need to connect. 

In a way, that’s what's happening now. People are just so worried… because everything's so expensive. It's so hard. People have to work a number of jobs to make end’s meet. And then it's like, “Care about your mental health.” But I've got my rent, and I've got student loans. What am I supposed to do? There's stress.

WM: And then when you're done with work and everything, sometimes the last thing you want to do is be social and connect with people. 

GR: It's really, really difficult. The weird thing is that with Instagram and the more people share their lives, the less they need to have actual interaction. It's antisocial media, really. It's like, “Oh, hey, look, I'm doing A, B and C. I've got a great…” So if either people have FOMO or go, “I don't get that. How come I don't go out for dinners like that? How come I don't live that life?” It's really confusing for people. Then you add in the bullying. It's treacherous terrain for mental health at all times.

WM: As a father, how do you feel about raising kids and teenagers today, and how do you talk to them about mental health?

GR: The power of language. The power of communication. It really comes down to understanding who your kids are. … I get the opportunity, with three young kids in my house, to experience three way different characters. I get to learn how to best communicate with each one in separate ways. … Some of my kids more outwardly wear their emotions on their sleeve. You see when they come in, what they may or may not be upset or happy about [or if they feel] elevated or reduced. And then maybe I have another kid who you can't tell what's going on, and you have to scratch the surface and just dig and ask and dig and ask.

I ask all the time, “Do you feel safe? Do you feel loved?” … It's such a good thing to check in. “Do you feel cared for? Do you feel loved? Do you feel it?” That's much better than “I love you” because I don't know if they can hear that. But they have to tell you if they feel loved. Then you know that you are being heard. 

Especially with kids, love is the time you spend with them. Love is how present you are. Not, “Hey, I won't be home for a few days, but there's a baby Escalade in the driveway. It's all charged up. You can drive it around.”... That's my only weapon to fend off all these things [and] my kids experiencing all these terrible things, which they will experience. You cannot go through life without being melancholic or lost or lonely. [It’s] ridiculous to think. You'd have to have a lobotomy to not feel those things. It’s part of being alive. But if they can feel love, they can feel my support, they can feel my presence, that's a strong kind of scaffolding behind them.

WM: What message would you like to leave with readers?

GR: It's important to know that part of life is struggling, and you can't expect a life that does not have struggle. But everything is fixable, and it's only through truthful communication. It starts with yourself, by the way, that you can get to a better place. The more truthful you are about how you feel, the more vulnerable you are in terms of your needs, people can understand what they're not doing for you and how you're not being helped. It's really about advocating for yourself, communicating. 

Bad things happen to us all, and it really is a case of: Do you get wounded by that or do you get wise? If you can get wisdom and you can learn to not take things personally and to communicate, you put yourself in the best position to be as mentally healthy as possible.

WM: That is such an important reminder that the struggles are inevitable, but we can work through them. 

GR: The biggest irony is it's often when people are at their public most successful, they quite often can be at their personal most challenged. I don't want people to think that because they see other people living their best lives that they're not struggling too. There's just no chance. Unless you are just literally a moron, you just will be challenged. … The challenges are just part of the fabric of life, and they're OK, and you can learn from them.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.