Bush at the Best Buy Theater

Gavin Rossdale

Born in London, England, Gavin Rossdale learned to play bass guitar after hanging out with his sister's boyfriend, who was in a band called the Nobodyz. Rossdale switched to rhythm guitar, and at age 17, he formed a band called Midnight. In 1991, Rossdale moved to Los Angeles for six months, lived where he could and took whatever part-time jobs were available, including production assistant on video shoots. After a brief time in New York City, he returned to England and formed Future Primitive in 1992. The band changed its name to Bush in 1994, naming themselves after Shepherd's Bush, London, where the band members used to reside. Bush's debut album, Sixteen Stone, was certified six times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Bush became one of the most commercially successful rock bands of the 1990s, selling over 10 million records in the United States, but achieving little success in its native country. The band split in 2002 and reformed in 2010. Bush presently consists of two original members, Rossdale on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Robin Goodridge on drums, plus Chris Traynor on lead guitar and Corey Britz on bass. The band's sixth and most recent album, Man on the Run, was released on October 21, 2014.

Bush's early albums were strongly influenced by grunge, but for a time the band experimented with electronic dance music influences. On the large and brightly lit stage at the Best Buy Theater tonight, Bush returned to its rock roots, with coarse vocals clearly up front, and fuzzy, grungy guitars backing the melody and crunching the choruses. The set consisted of five songs from the first album, eight songs from the between period and six songs from the most recent album, plus a surprising cover of Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime." The accent was on the rockers, but they were cleaned up for a more commercial and accessible sound. Towards the end of the show the band seemed to loosen the song arrangements a bit, first with a gritty-sounding "Insect Kin," followed by a nearly seven-minute, Nirvana-sounding "Little Things." During "Little Things," Rossdale walked, sang and pogoed through the tightly-packed audience all the way to the back of the theater and back to the stage and bid farewell. The encores of "Machinehead", "Once in a Lifetime", Rossdale's fuzz-laden solo rendition of "Glycerine" and "Comedown" all inspired sing-alongs and the mass lifting of camera-phones. The fans left happy that Bush was once again a hard rocking band.

Visit Bush at www.bushofficial.com.