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V:News: Gavin Rossdale on changing Bush’s ‘Golden State’ artwork after 9/11

Photo Credit: Felicia Pinckney for Vanyaland

Editor’s Note: Welcome to V:News, a new series where we highlight anecdotes and passages from recent Vanyaland interviews to reflect the current day’s headlines and discussions. All the information contained within is from past published work, and can only be reprinted and repurposed with full credit and a link back to the original article.

A few weeks back we caught up with Gavin Rossdale of Bush, ahead of the enduring British rock band’s appearance at Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston’s Seaport. The 617 Q&A conducted by Michael Christopher was, as usual, expansive and wide-ranging, and hit on a few relevant topics, like Bush’s new greatest hits compilation Loaded.

Rossdale was also asked about the frantic and paranoid time after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and how the band was forced to change the artwork for their October 2001 album Golden State — released exactly six weeks after 9/11. The original artwork, seen below (and it’s a crappy version via Wikipedia, as its not readily available on the internet), depicted a black silhouette of a passenger airplane, not unlike the ones used in the attacks, racing overhead against a gold background.

In the wake of the attacks in New York City, D.C., and Pennsylvania, of which the 23rd anniversary arrives tomorrow, the art was deemed too controversial, as was the title of the record’s lead single “Speed Kills.” The art was changed to a simple text-based look against the same color palette, and “Speed Kills” was renamed “The People That We Love” after Clear Channel listed it as inappropriate.

Here’s what Rossdale has to say about that whole situation 23 years ago…

— Michael O’Connor Marotta

Via Wikipedia

617 Q&A: Gavin Rossdale talks ice baths, Keanu Reeves, and Bush getting ‘Loaded’, August 22, 2024 — by Michael Christopher

Michael Christopher: Something I’ve always wanted to ask you about is the issues that were surrounding the cover art of the 2001 album Golden State, which was changed after September 11. Was that something the record company had come and asked you to do? Or after 9/11, you were like, “That cover’s not going to work anymore, we’re going to have to adjust that.”

Gavin Rossdale: Well, it was a fantastic cover. I was on Atlantic Records for like five minutes. It was the worst situation I was ever in – terrible label. I didn’t have an artwork guy, [the label] wouldn’t go outside. I worked with this nice guy, in the art department there, Martin [Ogolter], and we worked on the cover. It was beautiful because it was “Golden State,” and I was traveling all the time. It was when I was in a first bit of a serious relationship with my then, whatever… my long-term relationship before I got married. And so, I thought Golden State was a really beautiful title.

And then we did the beautiful [cover] of the plane because I was always on planes either working or trying to keep a relationship going from London. So, it was a great cover. And then as soon as [9/11] happened, it was the most obvious thing that it was the worst cover in the world to have. Who knew that a plane from one day to the next [could] become a weapon of destruction? Before September 11, it was generally thought of as getting from A to B in a plane. There’s nothing sinister about a plane. Suddenly a plane took on the sinister edge.

“Speed Kills” was the single. That was in England. “Speed kills” is a sign you see on the road. So, it’s a warning, literally a warning. And they were like, “You can’t have anything with the word ‘kills’ on the radio. We can’t.” We understood, but it’s like, “But this is a warning about speed. This is not…” And then we had a lyric in “Head Full of Ghosts” that we had to change. So, it was a bit messy.

It was a bit unfortunate, and it is sad because that record actually was probably our quietest record, our worst label, and quietest record. And yet it’s actually got a lot of cool stuff on there.

You mentioned “Speed Kills,” which was changed to “The People That We Love.” It was still put on that so-called “banned list of songs from Clear Channel” where there were certain songs that were pulled from the radio, some of them the most bizarre choices. When did you first hear about that?

Yeah, “Speed Kills.” This warning song was banned, which is a bit ridiculous. It was “Make Love, Not War.” “They said it! They said ‘war!’ We can’t have it.” Hang on, have a listen to what it said.

I’d never been in a situation where I didn’t have a label that I could count on, a label that kind of worked with the times and were flexible. I was just with sort of a dumb monolith of the label – they didn’t adapt. There’s this song “Out of This World” on that record, which we’d been playing in these acoustic sets, and it’s so beautiful and it’s so soothing. That would’ve been a great song to play to calm everyone. But it was, like, all rock music.