In the Flames with Gavin Rossdale: Fire, Fame & the Frontman

Los Angeles is on fire, and we have two hours to find a place to shoot Gavin Rossdale. The clock is ticking, and the sky has just turned an ominous shade of gray when I call an old friend in a panic.

“Dovvvv!” I cry into the phone. “We were supposed to shoot in Laurel Canyon today, but we had to evacuate, and I need a place to shoot this really big rockstar for LADYGUNN.”

“KOKO! How are you? Calm down! What is it now?”

I go on to explain the situation. Los Angeles is literally on fire. People are losing their homes and their things, the air smells, ashes are falling everywhere, and it’s super windy, but Gavin Rossdale is still down to shoot, so we have to find a place ASAP. A few questions, calls, and catering cancellations later, the team is on their way to the Los Angeles Apparel Factory in South Central LA. 

The directions are simple: Meet us in the alleyway by the food trucks and graffiti-covered utility doors. A “guy” will walk you into the hustle and bustle happenings of a factory, through a maze of buzzing industrial sewing machines and aisles of boxed-up fabric, down the hall, up the stairs to the right, past the office of a Hasidic Jew, and down a flight of wobbly steps into a basketball court turned photo studio.

In-person, Gavin has a part God, part Hollywood dad stature. He is taller than you’d imagine and takes up space in a good way like he would be the first to act in an emergency and definitely could hold his own in a bar fight. I met him once, backstage after a Bush concert in Washington, D.C. There is a commemorative photo on my Instagram feed of Gavin holding my baby, with comments underneath like, “GIRL, WHAT?” and “Is that Gavin Fucking Rossdale?!!”

For many of us, Bush was part of the soundtrack to our lives. The band, founded by Rossdale as a burgeoning musician in the UK, went on to become one of the highest-grossing and icon-cementing cultural artifacts of the 1990s into the 2000s. Bush’s dystopian rock lullabies sonically etched themselves into the ebb and flow of a chaotic, post-modern world, spinning us all on our heads. 

Gavin looks back at that time fondly. “I remember the electricity of it. It was like living with your finger in a plug socket. It was just such an exhilarating time. I was nuts…”

A generation of kids watched the Bush frontman grow from a “grunge” expat to a stadium-sized rocker who made music history and tabloid fandom. It’s hard to envision the sensationalism Rossdale might have experienced at the height of fame. It was an era of relentless, boundary-crossing paparazzi that made millions off salacious celebrity gossip and parasocial ideals. It seemed to be a well-oiled machine that saw the artist’s double-tiered, high-profile relationships become a part of the pop cultural lexicon. He’s seen his share of being villainized, idolized, and objectified in the news cycle.

“I never paid it too much attention,” he says of tabloid covers. “Sometimes I was attacked for looking a certain way—as if that disqualified me from having emotions…which is quite absurd when you think about it and is much more a reflection of the journalist…” Gavin ponders for a moment, leaning gracefully over the edge of a folding chair before he continues. “When your life implodes, if you’re an artist, you create your way out of it. You make a different world. It’s a wild subject. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we self-sabotage?”

Few have managed to navigate the rocky terrain of celebrity, time, and personal life as eloquently as Gavin McArthur Rossdale, especially as a person who describes himself as a “blush until the age of 18 if someone asked me a question” kind of guy. He’s a reluctant heartthrob and finds the idea of celebrity semi-crass. He doesn’t expect everyone to know anything about him, and he certainly doesn’t seem interested in gossip or rumors. Trying to bait him into talking about famous exes or flings is met with English pleasantries and carefully guarded glances. The Japanese philosophy of Kaizen resonates with him.

“My dedication is to trying to be a musician, trying to understand it, and growing all the time. I study, but I need to study more and understand it more. It’s getting closer to my craft—it’s a vocation. I like to think that I gave my whole life to music. So every day, I take a responsibility to myself to try and be a little better.”

Denim set, Camper. Silk scarf, Loewe. Sunglasses, Le Spec.

Rossdale’s approach to his craft feels noble, especially considering he initially turned to music as a means of escape—from life or possibly jail. “I just thought I can’t get a job now,” he smirks, recalling his early ambition. “I had this idea that it’d be fun to sing, and I had a friend who played an instrument. We started a band, and I just forced my way through it.”

What began as defiance has unfolded into a genre-crossing legacy: ten studio albums, a slate of film roles—including his deliciously dark turn as Balthazar in Constantine—and now, a cooking show where he recently served black cod and monkfish soup to longtime friend Serena Williams. In the episode, the duo closed the night with an intimate rendition of “Comedown.”

Rossdale likes the mystery of music. He’s a modern-day troubadour, collecting fragments of time, emotion, and memory as he carries his songs from stage to stage, city to city. Bush’s catalog has become a kind of communal archive—his lyrics and melodies are embedded in the emotional timelines of fans across generations.

“The songs, when you bring them out, other people are involved. As soon as you hear a song, it’s not just yours anymore,” he reflects. “When I get to sing them live, I’ve got all these memories, but the audience has their interpretations. At each venue, people connect to them differently. It’s beautiful to hear all these stories. Not that you need other people’s validation, but at the same time, it does give your life meaning in some ways…My goal is to be good, to be honest, to be open, and to create something people can connect to.”

He’s also connecting with himself through his lyrical musings. Rossdale’s let-it-bleed-like delivery is both primal and poetic—a slow burn of truth wrapped in distortion. Vulnerability isn’t just part of the process—it is the process.

“When you create something, there’s a vulnerability about it because how could you not be,” Gavin says. “There are deep injuries inside. Writing is such a beautiful way to extract all these things and cleanse yourself. I find a lot of prophecies—it’s weird. Certain words subtly ring more true after a song is complete.”

If songwriting is alchemy, Rossdale’s been deep in the spellwork—casting emotions, pain, and pleasure onto the page and watching them manifest in real life.

“You could have a bunch of thoughts. They’re jumbled, they’re disconnected, but you write ’em down, and you look at the paper afterward, and I don’t pretend to know the future, but I write things, and then they come to pass. The record before the worst period of my life was “Man On The Run.”

His forthcoming album, I Beat Loneliness, signals a kind of rebirth—an exploration of loss, resistance, and renewal, wrapped in razor-sharp guitars, Gavin’s reflective lyricism, and his seductive croon. It’s not just a record—it’s a reckoning. On one standout track, “We’re All The Same On The Inside,” he warns, “Don’t stand on my blind side.” That single line cuts to the heart of how carefully we must tread when we try to reach for our best selves along such a precarious path.

Between the lines of these songs, there’s a quiet invitation—a call for a younger generation to come to the table to nourish one another through music, honesty, and soul. 

I ask if he’s spiritual—if there might be some divine Patron Saint of Hot Rock stars watching over him—he answers thoughtfully. His spirituality is grounded but electric:

“It’s just trying to make the songs live. To make the performance feel exotic and involved. You want people to lose themselves at the shows. I used to think I wanted a more complicated life. It’s really simple. That’s just really wild.”

There’s a subtle carpe diem energy to the artist that’s both disarming and magnetic. He’s still wildly curious about life; you can see it behind his eyes. He’s hard to read—like ancient hieroglyphs, the kind you decode long after the moment has passed. He’s a Scorpio; “Deep is good.”

Does he believe in reincarnation? “No,” he replies without hesitation. He’s here for the now. And right now, things are good: his kids are thriving, he’s given himself license to be happy again, his knife collection is growing, his car is fast and fun, his girlfriend is hot, and he hosts a cooking show. Why think of anything but the present?

Gavin’s guitar is slung over his shoulder as he exits the warehouse, his publicists and manager in tow. The sun is setting, and tomorrow looks even more uncertain. 

Any last words? I want to know.

Parting gifts for a wild, wild world?

“The truth is in the music; he says, “The rest is just noise.”

Sweatpants, Los Angeles Apparel. Necklaces + Bracelets, Cartography by Mark Armstrong Peddigrew.  Leopard Coat, Vintage.  Sunglasses, Future Mood.

Shirt, COMME des GARÇONS.

Sweater, Marni. Shorts,Los Angeles Apparel.

Story/  Koko Ntuen @kokontuen

Photos / Jason Rodgers @jasonrodgersphoto

Styling /  Matthew Simonelli @mjsimonelli

Groomer /  Crystal Lozada @crystallozada

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