Gavin McGregor Rossdale (born 30 October 1965) is a British musician most famous as the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Bush. He later was the lead singer and guitarist for Institute, and is now pursuing a solo career.

Early life

Rossdale was born in Swiss Cottage, London, to parents Lucy Stephan (b. Scotland) and Douglas Rossdale. His father was a doctor of Russian Jewish descent whose surname was originally Rosenthal. His parents divorced when he was eleven years old, and he was raised primarily by his father and aunt. His mother remarried and moved to Tampa, Florida. Rossdale has a younger sister, Soraya, and an elder one, Lorraine. Rossdale's half brother, David, is the Bishop of Great Grimsby in the United Kingdom.

Rossdale learned to play bass guitar after hanging out with his sister Lorraine's boyfriend, who was in a band called The Nobodyz, but he switched to rhythm guitar. At 17, he left the Westminster School, played semi-professional football until side-lined by an injury, and formed a band called Midnight (formerly Little Dukes), which produced a couple of singles and many publicity photos. Gavin also plays USTA Tennis at a 4.5 mens level. In 1991, Gavin moved to Los Angeles for 6 months, lived where he could, and took whatever part-time jobs were available, including production assistant on video shoots. He spent some time in NYC before returning to England where he hooked up with future manager Dave Dorrell (MARRS), whom he had met in LA. In 1992, Gavin formed Future Primitive, whose original line-up (under the name The Diceheads) included screenwriter Sacha Gervasi, who left to pursue a film-making career. The band changed its name to Bush in the summer of 1994 and released the promo Sixteen Stone.

Bush

main: Bush (band) Gavin was the lead singer/songwriter for the British post-grunge rock band Bush. Their first album, Sixteen Stone (1994), was a huge commercial success. Almost overnight, Bush went from playing small pubs in London to headlining arenas in the US, the result of extensive, non-stop touring. However, some critics labelled them as an inferior derivative of bands such as Nirvana and Pixies, and this criticism followed them throughout their career as a band. In particular, Rossdale's forced, raspy singing voice and random, stream of consciousness-style lyrics were dismissed by some as an imitation of Nirvana's lead singer, Kurt Cobain. Although the band reached superstar status in the U.S., they failed to have much impact in the UK, which at the time was rather preoccupied with Britpop. The sole exception to this was their single "Swallowed", which reached #7 in the UK charts. A change in record labels, management and an extended hiatus did not bode well for the band, who unofficially split in 2002.

Bush's albums include Razorblade Suitcase (recorded by Steve Albini), Deconstructed, The Science of Things, and Golden State, all albums had much success in terms of albums sales, which led Bush to be one of the best selling rock groups to come out the nineties.