Bush rocker Gavin Rossdale sat down with 107.7 The Bone and revealed that The Doors’ Jim Morrison affected his musical choices a lot.
Rossdale was asked about his 1996 MTV Spring Break Rocks performance. During the performance, it was raining heavily and Rossdale kept singing and playing guitar, taking the risk of getting electrocuted. The singer explained:
“Life often presents options, two doors. Life is always a question of how hungry are you, how much you really want it whatever it is, how much you want it. I was just in a Celestial moment and I could die, but wow, I was like, this is commitment. How committed I used to be prior to that when I was failing and living in my apartment with like five people having a great time staying up every night. I’d write songs all day [I’d sleep in an] apartment with people everywhere.”
He then talked about his obsession with Jim Morrison and how he decided to take his career to the next level by making Morrison the focus of his life.
“I was obsessed for a bit with Jim Morrison from The Doors and went to Père Lachaise in Paris, where he was tombstone is where he’s buried. I visit, I read his poetry, his lyrics. He was nuts, so we used to run everything by the committee of people, my best friends who I still have to this day. We’d say, ‘Well, what would Jim do?’ That was the rule we ran by. So in that moment what just in my DNA was what would Jim do.”
How The Performance Went
In the same interview, the singer also mentioned how he thought the guitar and the rest of the gear wouldn’t be ‘corresponding’ because of the rain. However, the performance turned out to be what fans call one of Bush’s best performances:
“So I just sang on and it was weird because when I was playing it felt like it was a toy guitar because it just was drenched. I was thinking that first of what I get electric I was thinking, ‘This can’t even be actually corresponding to notes because it just feels like fishing wire.’ But it did, and that was it. So I went through the correct door. I’ve been through loads of the wrong doors but that was a good one.”
During the performance, the rest of the band members refused to play because of the rain but Rossdale himself played the entire song. He also reportedly said:
“If the fans are getting rained on, we will too.”
You can see the interview down below.