Letting The Cables Sleep The Chemicals Between Us Little Things Bush

Letting The Cables Sleep Album: The Science of Things (1999)
The Chemicals Between Us Album: The Science of Things (1999)
Little Things Album: Sixteen Stone (1994)
by Bush

Letting The Cables Sleep is about a close friend of Bush frontman lead singer Gavin Rossdale who had the HIV illness, but didn't tell anyone for six months because was ashamed. When Gavin found out, he felt real bad that his friend didn't feel comfortable talking about it, and wrote this about breaking the silence.

The "cables" refer to power cables. "Letting the cables sleep" means turning off the electricity and taking a rest.

The video was directed by Joel Schumacher, who is responsible for the films The Lost Boys (1987), Flatliners (1990), Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). The band had to make it on short notice and has a limited opportunity to work with Schumacher. They had to postpone their UK tour to accommodate.

Gavin Rossdale spends much of the video getting intimate with Michele Hicks, who appeared in the films Mulholland Drive and Twin Falls Idaho.

In the video, if you look closely, you'll see Gavin Rossdale is wearing a ring on his left hand. This could be him being married and visiting a girl he used to (and supposedly now doesn't) have feelings for. They end up having sex, and realize they still want to be together, but are too afraid to tell each other. The girl just leaves before she says something she will regret. Overall, it's a retrospective view of a relationship.

If you analyze the video, you see that when they touch there is color. As their hands touch, his world is tinted with her color. And when he smears paint on the walls, the colors are similar to the colors she wears, displaying a sense of longing. "Whatever you say is alright..." but she can't speak, adding some depth to the lyrics, and as she leaves she is signing to him that she's sorry. On the street you see that the bassist for Bush is playing on a corner, which is peculiar because a bass isn't really a solo instrument. The effects of color and their integration with the lyrics gives a great deal of meaning.

According to Gavin Rossdale, The Chemicals Between Us's oblique lyrics are about lying in bed with a lover with a major rift of understanding in the relationship... or, more generally, the song is about "differences between people."

The Chemicals Between Us marked the band's final #1 single on the Alternative Songs chart before their 2002 breakup (they regrouped in 2010).

Lead guitarist Nigel Pulsford used a vintage digital effect called a Maestro Filter Sample and Hold on the choruses of The Chemicals Between Us.

A track from the debut Bush album, "Little Things" reminds us not to sweat the small stuff. Gavin Rossdale said: "I was always feeling encumbered by life and overtaken by life and dwarfed by life, and my feelings and my paranoias and my worries were larger than anything else. So, there was always that pain to try to keep all of those worries at bay.

That's just a song about paranoia for the future and paranoia of life. I think it has something to do with trying to be strong in the face of adversity."
In America, Bush didn't make any singles from Sixteen Stone available for sale, but they released promo singles to radio stations, starting with "Everything Zen," their breakthrough hit. "Little Things" was issued next and did well on alternative radio, reaching #46 on the Billboard Airplay chart. Since you couldn't buy the single, it was ineligible for the Hot 100, but it did make #4 on the Modern Rock chart, the second of seven consecutive Top 10 entries on that tally.

Matt Mahurin, also did "Everything Zen," directed the video, which like many of the genre, was filled with earth tones, outdoor shots and white flashes.