Is Gavin Rossdale Trying to Kill Me?
Exhibit A: the promotional photo for the Bush singer's new cooking show, ‘Rockstar Kitchen Chronicles’
It is well known that Gavin Rossdale, lead singer and brooding godhead of the legacy British grunge band Bush, has spent several decades perfecting the art of stormy emotions and throaty vocals of great tragedy. But I’d wager the general public was, until now, unaware that he also, apparently, possesses excellent knife skills.
The musician and actor follows in the footsteps of Selena Gomez with a new cooking show called Rockstar Kitchen Chronicles, in which he appears to make dinner and conversation with with his famous friends, musician and non, and exhibits the erudition one might expect from an armchair sommelier who grew up in the London neighborhood of Marylebone (posh). Serena Williams appears in the trailer, wondering if he took a cooking course. “Just messed around,” he says, baritonally, placing some kind of herb on a dish with tweezers as though he’s seen most if not all episodes of The Bear.
Since The Bear has helped replace the cultural lust-object of the emotionally distant yet deeply feeling rockstar on an arena stage with the cultural lust-object of the emotionally distant yet deeply feeling chef in an industrial kitchen—an idea that has been percolating for years but reached a feverish new apex with the hit FX show—it stands to reason that rockstars of yore would pivot to this genre of highly capable yet profoundly unattainable guy. And there is no better rockstar to be doing this exact pivot than Gavin Rossdale (barring, perhaps, the proto-Gavin Rossdale Eddie Vedder, shout out to Eddie Vedder).
Yet there may be something mildly unnerving about this show that goes beyond the Dexter-esque vibrations of the press photograph, above, depicting Rossdale in a leather-strapped butcher’s apron and wielding a gigantic knife. One moment in the trailer shows Rossdale smoking cigars with Tom Jones, the smoke swirling about their heads as they commiserate and chuckle over how men should not be judged by the size of their cigars; though it is but one four-second clip, it projects the sinister camaraderie of a gender-exclusive billiards hall. I am absolutely going to crash it.
Even the food-porn aspects of the trailer invoke the foreboding of a horror film: the way a peeler savages the skin off a carrot, the way a blanket of dough is draped to suffocate a yet-baked roast, the way a quartet of prawns just lies there, deceased, on a plate. A tragic piano plinks behind the guests’ chatter; Selma Blair discusses her struggle with multiple sclerosis, Serena Williams jokes that she’s becoming her dad, Common discusses his desire to write a film, and everyone’s backlit by candlelight, which gives the effect of sticking a flashlight beneath your face to freak out your friends at a Halloween slumber party. (Did Rian Johnson direct this?) And then there’s Tom Jones again, eyes wide and having an acoustic singalong to “It’s Not Unusual” with Gavin on accompaniment. If Jeremy Allen White doesn’t get an episode, I’m smashing a guitar!
