Gavin Rossdale Quotations

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

The more I talk about things, the more I understand myself.

I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his.

The only people who benefit from lawsuits are lawyers. I think we made a couple of them rich.

I love what I'm doing most of the time, but it's hard work. People only see your albums in the charts. They see us at award shows and after-show parties. They don't know about your doubts, the hard work that goes in.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

If you just keep your head down and just try and do your thing, sometimes magic happens.

For some critics we might be uncool on account of our popularity.

I quite like Low, the band from Minnesota. They're absolutely mesmerizing. I get much the same feeling from anything that Will Oldham does.

Playing live, you can't survive, certainly not in England. We used to work daytime jobs and play gigs at night. It was very exhausting.

I love seeing the fans of the music that I make.

I was pretty taken with Patti Smith, she was my heroine.

I'm not a workaholic, but I was a bit manic, I have to confess.

For the sound we produce, everybody is equally important. Each of us has a very different personality and that is what keeps Bush alive.

I think people are too hard on the Pistols. The Pistols started the whole punk thing and never saw much money.

When I first began to write, I was writing on bass, because I was thinking more Public Image, more dub.

I love playing live, I don't like studios all that much. I need the reaction of the audience.

I think it's pretty normal that there are a lot of people out there who don't like us.

Dub and reggae... I play that a lot around the house.

I don't know any musician who got to the top without hard work. Take whoever you want. They all work bloody hard, harder than you think.

We recorded our first CD, Sixteen Stone, with a small budget and never dreamed that we would enjoy such a high success. It was simply fantastic.

Bob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!

The point about it is that if you're pointed toward some kind of goodness, some kind of light, something positive, you find your way through these trials and tribulations, ... I've basically dedicated my whole lyrical life to people's ability to cope with the struggle because I do believe there is a struggle. And I don't mean it in a negative sense. I just mean it in a realistic sense. Nothing is greater than staying right on the positive, but sometimes life can have a way of just pulling you back and dragging you a bit.

She's really focused and knows what's in her mind and her vision. It's shocking, stunning. She looks the best to me when she takes seven minutes to get together and we go out low-key. She looks great by the pool.

My life's changed a lot in the last couple of years, ... and hopefully this reflects it. I wanted to do something a little bit harder than Bush. It's got a paranoid edge to it.

Only the guys who never made it and will never make it in the U.S. need to put up the front that they don't care about America.

I always figured that, you know, everyone had a bush. It wasn't specifically female. Anyway, we all come from bush.

he says. ''But I like to create challenges for myself. There are loads of producers less edgy than Page, but he's been great in many ways, doing guitar parts and arrangements and also knowing when to leave me alone.

He hasn't been allowed to come to the showroom because I wanted it to be a surprise.

I think that in order to survive, there's this concept of having bulletproof skin,

It felt, at first, slightly adulterous, and now it feels completely right.

The premise of that song is finding ways to deal with whatever's thrown at you. Wherever you are, whatever you do there are always tremendous pressures thrown at you, and one of the only ways to survive is to have this ability to roll with what life throws.

Cool to disappear, but I missed you most days.

Everything is fine now, ... We resolved it and the war of attrition is over. We're concentrating on all working hard together to make this record well known. We're down with them. It's just really good to be having a record out.

There's nothing worse than someone coming up to me and going ''Oh God, I really love your hair.''

I've been going through some pretty crazy stuff. And I've had to deal with a few people that I thought were pretty close to me turning around and just trying to destroy me, I think.

I wanted to do something a little bit harder than Bush, ... It's got a paranoid edge to it. It's a pretty difficult transition to go from my band Bush to this new terrain, this whole other world.

As much as we all love playing live, it's not normal to be on the road all the time, to have no home.

It is weird, sort of the Hollywood turnaround,

It's such a legacy, it's insane... even outside of America, CBGB is synonymous with New York, with music.

The Beatles, the Small Faces and the Kinks were great bands, but that was in the '60s.

I never heard from anyone in the band.

I f you didn't throw up when you heard Bush, you definitely won't throw up when you hear Institute.

I love the hard music but I'm a sucker for melody.

I play rock music but grew up with Massive Attack and Tricky. I am not just some rock musician; I want to cover the whole lot.

If I want to get a certain color and use a female voice, ... who better than her?

Most people who are on the road are pretty damaged. It's an escapist's life. It's not a life that forces you to look in the mirror at where you're at and what you're doing. It's one where you leave the mirror behind. I think that appeals to something in all of us. On the open road, all of your regrets are out the window.

Those times when I play on stage in front of lots of people, it's such an unusual and borderline unhealthy process, even though I love it and I really do it with humility. I don't have serfs getting me grapes after, or things like that.

But it is really, really fun to just change it up some and to absolutely be a very small spoke on a big wheel, and to just be a part of that and contribute to something that people can enjoy.

The day before I left to fly in New York, I went in the ocean and was just lying on my black looking up at the sky, which was that Hawaii blue. Just that moment was worth the entire thing. The ocean is everything. It can heal you.

I was in rock music in London when it was the height of Brit pop, with The Kinks revival and Suede and Blur and Oasis, and all of those really great bands that were of a certain style. If I'd really been smart and commercially minded, I would have just got myself a blazer and some Stay Press and some Fred Perry tops, and just gone out and tried to do it like everyone else. Instead, I did this ridiculous thing of trying to do this music.

I've always thought that you just make everything as best as you can, and then, one day, people will look objectively at what you do, from a distance, and see its quality. All you try to do is keep the standard up so that, one day, when I sit back and I look at it all, I can feel really good about it.

Somehow, something is always suffering. Someone is always losing out somehow. If you pick one kid up, you're not picking the other one up. You just try to minimize those small let-downs because, in a way, life is a series of let-downs from everyone, all the time. We don't mean it, but it happens. So, I just try to minimize that and spread them wide.

Any reaction is better than none.

There's nothing worse than someone coming up to me and going Oh God, I really love your hair.

A happy wife is a happy life.

It's like a relay race of being ignored. It is really challenging, but whenever I get asked that stuff, I feel really self-conscious about it. I feel really lucky because we have a lot of help. When I first began to be a dad with Gwen [Stefani], I was amazed at what she went through.

In a band that works out well, everybody has a certain role to fulfill.

Women are part of the reason for washing and keeping clean, aren't they?

It goes without saying that what a girl goes through, boys could not even comprehend. If we get the flu, we need a week. We're idiots. But what was the most powerful realization to me was, how do single mothers with a low income cope? I can't complain about my dumb life. That's what was most revelatory to me.

Who doesn't love Game of Thrones? Sons of Anarchy is funny and thug-ish. I love Shameless. I just sit with my hat tipped, waiting for something to happen, more than going out after the shows.

I have always been fascinated by dark and mysterious stuff. I guess I have a pretty dark and gloomy side. Writing songs saves me from going completely gonzo.

Being real is what is important.

I always wrote about things that were important to me. I think our past success showed that it was also important for a lot of others.

I can make no apologies for following my heart.

It's so natural you just fall into it and you find your way. It's terrifying and exciting, and brilliant.

By just passing through things, I continue to slightly limit myself. I want the jobs that don't say that much. I'm often the stepping stone or the conduit from one thing to another. I love the idea of existing in a film and growing and having bigger arcs, and being in scenes where you're just being, as opposed to talking. That' one of my ambitions, lying ahead.

The person I love would never wear fur. Fur just makes me think of shallow women who have no conscience. The fur industry belongs to a time when people were selfish beyond belief. If you were some ancient tribal cheiftain, and there was not a department store nearby 350 years ago, I'd understand. But now, we have synthetic fibers,and it's not necessary. The elitism of fur makes me wanna puke.

I'd love a drug that was good for you, I was thinking about ecstacy with Vitamin B.

It's a very selfish time. When I'm here at home, my responsibilities are far greater. I'm forced to be way more selfless. My priorities are so far down the list that it's hard to see them. And yet, when I'm on tour, I basically have to get the show right, every night, but the days are really constructed around selfish activities for self-improvement, or not. That's where I feel guilty because I know that life is going on full-speed when I'm not around.

I am really addicted to music.

Well, I'm English, so it's intimidating to step anywhere. I used to be painfully shy. I wouldn't say that I'm painfully shy anymore. But if I have the option of sitting on the edge of a circle, I will.

As an artist, you're pretty sheltered backstage. You often don't know what's going on out there.

It's pretty hard to make out what's going to be a commercial success and what's not.

I always work hard to have a very close connection to the fans.

When I was lucky enough to be successful, I distanced myself completely from the whole thing of units and selling copies. I just wanted to keep everyone who comes to see me happy. I spend so much time after my shows talking to people who come from all over the world to see me. I'll go out and sign a picture and have a chat.

I'm just thrilled and kind of honored that I still get the chance to do what I love, because that really is the definition of success.

Every time I try to disown that concept for myself, which is a really healthy perspective, they bring it back all the time. It's so serious and so real and so tangible that you don't want to taint it with anything other than the thing itself. I was tickled pink with my very zen self, walking around saying that I made a record because I wanted to make a record. That's so beautiful. It's like a haiku poem. That takes away all the tension and the expectation. I just want to try to do something interesting.