Gavin Rossdale: Bush may not get 'crazy slots,' but it does have 'great shows' for RAGBRAI

When Bush singer and guitarist Gavin Rossdale is in Iowa, he’s looking around and thinking, “This is what made Slipknot, Slipknot.”

Rossdale’s experiences with Iowa span back nearly three decades, including performing a nearly sold-out show to more than 12,000 people in Ames in 1996 and playing the now defunct Lazerfest in Boone in 2013, according to Des Moines Register archives.

He spoke about what he recalled of the corn state in a phone call with the Register from Los Angeles on Monday ahead of Bush’s upcoming performance in Coralville as part of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

“I always think of like solid people,” he said. “Here they’ll be bougie and flaky and somehow you get a sense of solid and Midwest has a strength to it. It’s  literally the backbone of America.”

Riders trekking across the state, in incredible numbers amid high temperatures, will get to see the band that emerged out of the grunge scene in the 1990s with hits like “Glycerine” and “Comedown” Friday evening.

Rossdale spoke about his latest album, “The Art of Survival,” and the balance of performing Bush’s hits and newer work.

Note: Answers edited for clarity and length.

Des Moines Register: “The Art of Survival” has been praised for its heavier sound and its timely messages. In an interview with Louder earlier this year, you called this record a very “honest” one. Have you had any experience with fans in the months since the album's release that have shown you just how much it's connected with listeners?

Gavin Rossdale: Every time we play a show and every time I go into public places, there's always somebody that comes up. That's the magic of making music is that you make it in some kind of ignorance as to who's going to listen to it. If you make a painting, you sell it to one person or if you're lucky enough, to a museum, and when you make music (it) goes everywhere. When people wear headphones, you're literally in people's brains. It's wild. And so it's always inspiring and enthralling to meet people who have been affected by it because being English, you can't take yourself seriously and everything is like, “Whatever.” Everything is a bit of “whatever.” You go with these do your best, you try and make good music and good words and try and do the best I can. That’s it. But then you get on with it. So it's only when you hear other people's interpretations or consequences having heard it… that’s when you really realize that you may have done something good because that’s what it's all about. It's about reaching people and changing emotions. It's weird, isn't it when you feel the most sensitive? Sometimes you can hear music, doesn’t mean anything to you, but if you just feel sensitive or under attack or under pressure, you start to hear words much, more more.

It’s a really vulnerable time. The world's never been better. Never really. Incredible time to be alive, but there are great problems with mental health, suicide rates and alienation, loneliness, and social media — which is anti-social media — and people feeling their lives are really incomplete and FOMO and it's just a lot of pressure for people to have a great life because everyone sees all that stuff and just believes that everyone has a great life when most lives are full of all the usual human intrigue and disappointments and fears as everyone else. So it's been amazing to find a way to somehow talk about that in the music, or suggesting that so it starts a conversation and that's what people have talked to me so much about.

Des Moines Register: Your performance in Iowa on Friday is unique in that you're going to be performing for thousands of bicyclists who have been journeying across the state for the past week. What have been some interesting performances over the years for Bush — one that comes to my mind is Woodstock ’99.

Gavin Rossdale: I remember playing at the base of the world ski jump championships in Innsbruck, Austria. I've never seen a real ski jump in real life and they’re terrifying and we performed at the bottom of that but it was at night. I just remember being quite challenged by the solid, blood-ice fingers, minus 2 (degrees) and be like, “Oh, my God.” But those kind of things are great. To play at the end of such a huge achievement for these people and they put all the work in… and we get in on the party. We’re like the cake.

Des Moines Register: How do you approach curating a setlist that balances both Bush's mega-hits to performing newer work that you’ve been releasing in recent years?

Gavin Rossdale: I never expect people to know the entire 10 records or whatever we’ve had, nine, 10 records. So, you start off accepting you're going to disappoint some people. I just want to play a lot of the new songs because you can either go one or two ways for bands that have been around as long as us. You can either just not make new music and stay brilliant and the most successful of us, of our generation, if you take System of a Down or if you take Guns N’ Roses, or if you take Rage Against the Machine, three, pretty much, stadium bands. Rage hadn’t quite done the stadium thing yet but they’re a sell-out arena band, enormous festival band. They're incredible. But they’ve been so smart like, “F*** it, we're not doing any new music. This is what we are and who we are.” And nobody wants anything different and it's perfect for the hour and a half, those bands are genius. Then you can be in the camp or the more bands like us, that are for some reason, so desperately connected to now that it feels disappointing to not be able to put that into new songs and feel this different feeling. Now those bands I just mentioned are way more successful than me. So maybe I should f****** learn something from them… I feel like I'm in the UFC. I'm in the octagon. Always fighting. Always trying to be good on the bill. No one gives me anything. I don’t get crazy slots. I just (get) in there and make it happen and we have great shows.

Paris Barraza covers entertainment, lifestyle and arts at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at pbarraza@registermedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Gavin Rossdale of Bush will perform for RAGBRAI 50 in Coralville