Gavin Rossdale

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

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

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.

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

Any reaction is better than none.

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

A happy wife is a happy life.

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

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

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

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.

Being real is what is important.

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

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

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

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.

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

I am really addicted to music.

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!

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

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 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.

Lyrics are really important for me.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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