Gavin Rossdale celebrates 3 decades of Bush songs with a greatest hits album, ‘Loaded’

NEW YORK — Putting together a collection of Bush’s greatest hits was relatively easy. Convincing frontman Gavin Rossdale to do it was a bit harder.

“I never really wanted to do one because I always thought it was like a bit of a farewell, like a sayonara, a swan song,” the lead singer and songwriter says. “And I couldn’t be more swimming against that tide. I’m enjoying the music and the band so much that it feels like we never stopped.”

Rossdale relented and that’s why we have “Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023,” a 21-song set that includes such Bush classics as “Glycerine,” “Machinehead,” “Comedown” and “Everything Zen.”

“Every book, when you read it for a second time or a third time, you start seeing more details and start hearing it or reading in different ways. And so I hope it’s a bit like that,” says Rossdale.

The collection includes hits from each of the band’s nine studio albums, as well as a cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together” that the band often plays live and had a very limited release in 2012. “They have a real big future ahead if they stick at it,” Rossdale jokes about the Fab Four.

It’s an album that shows an evolution of sound from a band that was born during the heat of grunge but found its own musical way, from radio-friendly pop to heavy guitars to detuned, weirder stuff.

“It’s a really easily accessible thing for people who are getting into Bush. There’s kind of the blueprint, so to speak,” says Rossdale, who will hit the road with Bush on headlining dates this November.

“It just made me feel nostalgic to look at those song lists and think of all…