The Babble Interview: Gavin Rossdale
The chart-topping dad on life with Gwen, Kingston and Zuma.
by Tammy La Gorce
December 10, 2008
Gavin Rossdale, gravel-voiced dad to two-year-old Kingston James McGregor Rossdale and three-month-old Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, is not only husband to a rock star but also something of a badass musician himself: "Love Remains the Same," the first single from this summer's WANDERlust (Interscope), has re-elevated the forty-three-year-old former Bush frontman. The song provides mood music for everything from The Biggest Loser to a handful of sitcoms and teen flicks. The high-cheekboned heartthrob called Babble from the home he shares with Gwen Stefani in Los Angeles, and discussed everything from home-schooling to haggis to kung-fu. — Tammy La Gorce
The new album is awesome — so far it's reached No. 27 on The Billboard 200. Are you happy?
Yeah, it's been pretty shocking. I'm still in a state of shock about it. The last record I made [Distort Yourself] had some terrible marketing behind it, so my expectations were pretty low for this one. It's good to just get a record out in a world where people won't buy a record anymore. Now I'm looking forward to going out and playing.
Your tour starts next year. How will that work out for the family? Your kids are so little. It must be hard leaving them.
Yeah, but I'm enjoying the time I get to spend with them now, here and in London [Rossdale and Stefani split their time between London and L.A.]. Wherever Gwen and I go, we try to take them with us so we don't have to be away from them too long.
"I'd like to complain to Mr. Wikipedia. How do you do that?"
I've read some reviews that say the record is a return to the Bush sound. Is that true?
No. It's a weird, strange position to be in — if I do too much guitar work, they say it sounds like Bush, but there's a lot of the album that's not heavy guitar. But I've been reading some of the reviews too. For a while I was on Google alert, and I'd read everything, and I'd just want to go and murder some people. Everyone's a published critic now. I got to to the point where I'd had enough of getting slammed in everything from college newspapers to local rags, even though it was great to read the good stuff. I had to just turn it off.
Because you can't trust what you read on the Internet, I want to confirm some things about your family . . .
Yeah, good. The stuff you read on Wikipedia especially is such rubbish. They have some stranger as my mother and the family names are all wrong. I'd like to complain to Mr. Wikipedia. How do you do that?
So the boys' names are Kingston James McGregor and Zuma Nesta Rock, right? One name sounds kind of traditional, and the other, Zuma, sounds very rock star. Why is that?
Well Kingston is named for Kingston, Jamaica, not Kingston Ferry. So it's really not that traditional. At least I don't think there are a lot of kids named for Kingston, Jamaica. But those were just the names that sort of came up and I thought to agree with them.
©2008 Tammy La Gorce and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Tammy La Gorce is a freelance entertainment writer living in New Jersey with her son and daughter. Her work regularly appears in The New York Times, GRAMMY and other magazines. |
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