Bush: For the love of Gavin

Bush singer/guitarist Gavin Rossdale could do no wrong last Saturday night at the FleetCenter. "Squeaky clean and handsome" was how my girlfriend pegged it ("Very packaged," she scowled) from up in the balcony, where she was chaperoning her niece and two barely teenage pals to their first big rock show. They weren't the only first-timers. The sellout crowd was overwhelmingly young and female, peppered with "I [[section]] Gavin" ringer T's, and gathered in jittery clumps at the buzzing pre-show primping across the street at McDonald's. "I think Nicole is nervous," says one of Nicole's friends while munching fries. "She thinks Gavin's gonna see her or something."

There were still a few renegades. The baggy-jeans/eyebrow-ring boy in the alley with a laminated card tucked into the strap of his messenger's sack: "I KILLED GAVIN. THERE IS NO SHOW. THANKS." The girl with an index card stapled to her GI overcoat -- "We DON'T worship Gavin" -- later spotted bopping heartily on the floor while openers Veruca Salt cranked out thick thrash chords that cracked and bled perfumed harmonies. Sure, the Salt looked like the cast of Friends, with the gals dolled up in matching regal purple (Nina) and gold (Louise) lamé jumpsuits. But they talked a mean "you go girl" game. Their stinging, metallic "Straight" summed up the Saturday-night arena-rock mish-mash spectacle in a couplet ("Is this the weekend?/Is that your girlfriend?"), and they talked up "Awesome" as "our team fight song -- it's about how excited we are to be rocking you people!"

Which was not nearly as excited as the kids were to see Gavin. I watched three pre-teenish girls in front of me who stroked at their hair constantly and gibbered about the six-year-old a couple of seats down who had Gavin's autograph and he had actually kissed her: they were glued. They scrutinized his every move. They screamed at every pause and silence. They screamed when he shook his unruly mop. They screamed when he pogo'd, and they screamed when he ascended to the red-carpeted riser directly in front of us. Gavin strides to the front of the stage: the boys in front point at him: you, you, you! Gavin puts his hand on his heart and glances out of the corner of his eye in our direction: the girls jump up and down and wave: me, me, me! The band leave and Gavin sings "Bone Driven" and "Glycerine" by himself, his face radiating acid streaks in triplicate on the giant screen behind him: the girls lose it, crying and hugging each other: us, us, us!

It was the "us" that made the scene touching, a sense of camaraderie that at times seemed all but lost in the larger "us," the hysterical mob beast that asserted itself in an ear-popping roar even before Bush appeared, the "us" that sustained itself until well after Gavin and pals retreated into the backstage tunnel. The larger "us" loved Gavin in straight rows and pogo'd obediently in its seat. Ironically, Gavin, with his relatively no-frills, play-the-hits-like-they-hear-'em-on-the-radio execution, couldn't give back anywhere near as much as he got, or come close to giving the audience members what they so desperately arched and shimmied for -- which was, for each of them, if they couldn't have a literal piece of him, then a glance, a gesture, an individual acknowledgment of their undying, unyielding fervor.

But you can be the one to tell the kids that Bush weren't God's gift to rock and roll last Saturday -- and while you're at it, go ahead and break the news about the Easter Bunny. Because though my own rock-and-roll fantasies have oceans of kids breaking loose at an Atari Teenage Riot show and swooning over posters of the Oblivians and Teengenerate, the kids never do what you want 'em to (never have, which is what being a kid is all about), and you have to find room in your heart to love 'em for that.

-- Carly Carioli