The Second Testament of the True and Only Gospel (Part One)

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU]

I apologizes about the mixup with the
Hammersmith track listings, and appreciates
the correction.

Apologies also about Swales -- his first name
is Peter, not Patrick.

There's good news and bad news: first,
it now looks as though "The Whole Story" video
will NOT be released in the U.S., after all.
The confusion arose out of a full-page ad
in "Optic Music" which announced the release
in January 1987 on MGM/UA Home Video. The ad was placed
by EMI-America in New York, probably under
John Mrvos's direction. (He's about as much
of a Kate fan as EMI-America is ever likely to
give executive clout to, which isn't saying much.)
Anyway, the upshot is that MGM/UA had no idea
about the announced release, and have no plans
to release it in 1987. Pretty lousy.

The good news is that MTV has FINALLY
listed "Experiment IV" on their Billboard
playlist in the January 3 issue. It might even
be on the New Video Hour tonight (Monday).
However, it's scheduled for "light rotation",
so if you're interested, better start monitoring
immediately, as it probably won't be shown for
more than a few days.

The single's new placement in the Singles Charts
is somewhat discouraging: No. 115, up only four
places from last issue (two weeks ago). At this
rate, it seems unlikely that it will crack the
top 100, although stranger things have happened.

Regarding Bob and Bill's remarks about vocal range:
Yes, Kate has, technically speaking, a pretty wide
range, but only if you include her falsetto range
as part of her "normal" range. The range of an opera
singer, by contrast, certainly does not include
falsetto notes -- if it did, a soprano's range, for example,
could extend as much as an octave higher than any music that
has yet been written for a soprano voice.

Also, Kate's lowest recorded notes were attained
by artificial means. Probably her two lowest sung
passages are on "Houdini" and "Running Up That Hill".
(In the latter, her bottom harmony of the "C'mon,
c'mon baby" section is very low indeed, and is
especially audible in the twelve-inch mix.)
But for "Houdini", anyway, Kate has explained
that she recorded parts of the vocals at a higher
pitch and at a faster speed, and then slowed down
the tape during playback. And she's also said that
she consumed a ton of milk and chocolate before singing
the low notes, in order to build up the mucus in her
throat, thereby temporarily enlarging her vocal range.

Now, as promised, here is the first part of Peter Swales's
interview with Kate, Paddy and Del.

The following interview was done by Peter Swales for MUSICIAN
magazine. This version includes what was printed in MUSICIAN
as well as that which was edited out. Peter Swales, for those
who are interested, is a friend of the Bush family, and he
is the author of several papers on aspects of psycho-analysis.
In particular, he has recently contributed to the ongoing
controversy surrounding the publication of some unedited correspondence
of Sigmund Freud, which appeared a few years ago in a book
by Masson, and which was the catalyst for extensive argument
within the psycho-analytic community.

SWALES: It fascinates me that, despite the basic rock instrumentation
which you employ, your music doesn't seem to owe very much of its
ancestry to American sources. I would venture to say you're one
of the very few popular artists to have evolved such a uniquely
BRITISH kind of music.

KATE: Yes that's very interesting. I think probably most of the stuff
I have liked, though, has actually been English, and possibly that's
why my roots aren't American. Whereas perhaps with the majority of
other people, well, you know, they were listening to Elvis and people
like that and most of their heroes would have been American. But the
artists I liked, such as Roxy Music and David Bowie, they were all
singing in English accents and, in fact, were among the FEW in
England who were actually doing so at that time. I mean to say, Elton
John, Robert Palmer and Robert Plant sound American when they sing,
although of course they're English.

S: Yes, right, but it must go a lot deeper in terms of musical genetics,
I mean your melodic invention and conceptions of rhythm are really
quite un-American. You were born in 1958. When did you first tune in
to what was happening in music, who were the first artists you began
listening to?

K: Well, I think the first pop thing I ever heard which I really liked
was "Little Red Rooster". I heard it in a car coming back from the
shops and I thought it was fascinating. It was the first song I'd
ever heard where the singer was actually singing out of tune. I don't
mean that derogatorily. What I mean, I suppose, is that the record
sounded so unconventional, and I just hadn't EXPERIENCED anyone
singing like that before.

S: The Stones had that record out around 1964, was this when you
were about six years old?

K: Yes, around that time, I suppose. It was really a fantastic
SOUND, the fact that someone wasn't singing quite in tune and,
because of that, was getting a very different emotion out of it.
But I suppose, really, I first became aware of pop music around the
late 1960s. I was hearing that sort of music through my two brothers
and thinking just how good it was. But for the fact that my brothers
were playing those records, I probably wouldn't have heard them, as my
friends in school wouldn't have been listening to things like that!
I think that was the earliest pop music that I really felt was good.

PADDY BUSH: But you see now, that's an interesting thing, because
we weren't really involved in the pop thing at all at that time.
Jay (John Carder Bush, Kate's eldest brother) and I were very
much involved in the English folk revival, we had an incredibly
staunch approach towards traditional folk music.

S: Paddy, surely you're not going to mind talking about your sister
right in front of her like this. When was it you began to become
aware not simply that Kate was musically gifted, but that she was
also a force to be reckoned with?

P: Right from the word go. She was about ten years old at the time.

S: And did you and perhaps Jay attempt to cultivate this gift in the
hope that she might one day bear fruit?

P: Oh no, no, it cultivated itself. To cultivate music you have to
spend a lot of time BY YOURSELF making a lot of very strange sounds
over and over again. It's not the sort of thing you go hammering into
others. When there's a family all in one house and you're getting your
music together, normally the others in the family close the doors
and try to keep the sound out. And when you've got several people
playing instruments in the same house, well, things can get a bit
complicated! I remember having things thrown at me during the early
days because I was playing the same tune for six months. It would
get people down! And when Kate began working on the piano, she'd go
and lock herself away and wind up spending five or six hours, seven
days a week, just playing the piano.

S: You mean by now she was about thirteen or fourteen?

P: Yeah, and wow! I mean, at the age of thirteen or fourteen she
was spending tons and TONS of time writing, but starting in fact when
she was about ten.

S: And did this begin to assume almost pathological proportions and
start alarming the family?

P: Absolutely!

KATE: Pathological! <Kate, the daughter of a physician and a former
nurse, seems to find this notion rather funny.>

P: Yeah! But NO! Because of the heavy Irish tradition in the family,
I think it was escapism on her part. Our mother is Irish and I think
Kate maybe felt, you know, that there was a slight obligation to appease
the Irish spirit. And somewhere out of my mother's imagination came
the idea that Kate should learn the violin. It seems to be a tradition
that the violin is FORCED upon people. I mean, there are few who
take it up of their own volition! And Kate was certainly one of those
who only took it up under pressure, she didn't really like it very
much. So the piano was a kind of way of exploring music in dimensions
diametrically opposite to what the violin must have REPRESENTED to her.
Escapism, pure escapism! You know, the command would be, 'Go and
practise on that violin, Kate,' but the piano music came out instead!
I think perhaps we Bushes are a bit like that... So yes, her piano
playing was in the first place a direct reaction to straight music
as we knew it, or as SHE knew it, at the time. The sort of style
which she evolved in her piano playing and singing were direct opposites
of all the kinds of straight music which she was being fed right then.
Pure escapism, and very beautiful!

S: But then, Kate, did your family soon come to accept what you were
doing?

KATE: Yes, I used to go to my father and to Jay for opinions on my
songs and their feedback was very important to me. Jay is a writer,
and he's written some really beautiful things, and altogether he's
been a big influence on me. It was through his help that I got my
first contact in the music business, which led to my break, and now
he deals with the business side of my work. And, besides putting lots of
good ideas my way, he's introduced me to a lot of artists who probably
otherwise I would never have heard of, and of course hearing new music
can be a very big influence.

S: Going back to the piano, surely your playing didn't evolve in a
musical vacuum?

K: Well, when I was about twelve, that sort of age, I was such a big
fan of Elton John. I think really he was the first musical hero I had
in that I aspired so much to what he was doing. I was just sort of
starting to muck around writing songs, and then I saw this guy and
he was the only one I'd ever seen who wrote songs AND accompanied
himself on the piano. And his playing was BRILLIANT, and still today
I think his playing is fantastic. It's always so RIGHT for his songs.

S: About your singing, I know you used to listen to Billie Holiday.
Did you make deliberate efforts to imitate her, singing along with
her records and so on?

K: Well, that was when I was about seventeen, and I was listening
to all kinds of music. And no, I think Billie Holiday is one of the
very few artists whose records I would never join in with while she's
singing, she's too good. I just couldn't get near it. I think the
reward you get from her is in actually LISTENING to her voice. That
is what is so beautiful about her, you can almost hear what she's
been doing for the last three weeks. Her singing is extraordinary,
it's just terrifying, the amount of, well, agony, and yet beauty,
which comes out of just that one voice. Terrible suffering, yet so
entertaining for those who listen.

S: You never sing a song straight. Are there singers whom you studied
in developing your own style of phrasing?

K: I would really be missing the point if I didn't mention Bryan
Ferry, because I thought he was the most exciting singer that I'd
heard. His voice had limitations, but what he managed to do with it
was beautiful, I mean, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. For me it covered the whole
emotional spectrum, and I just couldn't get enough of it. You know,
the early Roxy albums, with this beautiful voice and lyrics, and
Eno there in the background -- MAGIC!

S: But Kate, I'm very curious. I know you grew up listening to artists
like Bowie, Bolan, Dave Edmunds, Roxy Music, Elton John, all that sort
of stuff. Yet in my opinion you're so much more musically eloquent than
people like that. Your music has a depth and complexity, also a certain
opulence, which aren't easily attributable to pop music and which suggest
to me that perhaps there are a quite different set of aesthetic values
underlying it that you've assimilated somewhere along the way, perhaps
even deriving from classical music or opera.

K: I think in a way that classical music is, if you like, a sort of
superior form of music because it has so much SPACE for the listener
to move around in. I think as soon as you have words in a song, it's
somewhat restricting for the listener. And I really love listening
to classical music because, actually, I find it quite inspiring for
my work. So maybe because I love those things so much, I suppose they
do tend to rub off on me...

S: I see, so you think they just rub off. It's not as if you are
extrapolating classical formulae into your own music with any
knowing intent?

K: Well, I do think that a lot of classical music is so good that it
challenges you. When I hear something really beautiful, I think,
wouldn't it be great if I could write something even just a little
bit like that! So I'm sure that's what it's all about. It's not
really copying but, rather, wanting to produce that same kind of,
well -- vibe. To try and get the same kind of atmosphere which that
music creates when you listen to it.

S: Did you have much of a formal education in music? Are you capable
of comprehending your own work in terms of music theory?

K: Well, I do know what chords are, basically, but I've not really
had any classical training at all. My knowledge of theory comes from
when I learned the violin when I was little, and that's about it.

PADDY: You see, really our roots are in the oral tradition. I mean,
that's the way music is carried on in our family.

KATE: Yes, I think there are an awful lot of major influences deriving
from traditional music, especially English and Irish folk music.
'Cause when I was very little my brothers were devoted to traditional
music and it's something I've always loved and still love. Especially
Irish music, which I love very much. I think I was always impressed
by the words in folk songs. I mean, even when I was very little I was
aware that the songs had great words. They're always stories, each song
is a story, not like the lyrics of most pop songs.

S: And did you yourself play things like accordians and concertinas?

K: No, Paddy used to have a big collection of them and occasionally I
used to sneak up to his room and have a quick play when he wasn't there.
But really, Pad would always play those sort of things, and I always
stuck to the piano.

S: On different album tracks you've featured not only Irish musicians
but also an array of other ethnic sounds. Does this betray a lot of
your own listening? Are you listening to a lot of pretty far-out stuff,
music for example of aboriginal, oriental, or comparable ethnic origin,
and deliberately seeking to integrate that into your own music?

K: No, I don't think I am really. There was a period when I used to
listen to certain ethnic music. But I don't think I was ever really
an avid listener. Paddy is much more of an avid listener to ethnic
stuff, he listens to it nearly all the time.

P: Yes, I take ethnic music very seriously and collect the
instruments and the music.

S: And is it then you who's responsible when you add one of those
instruments to one of Kate's tracks, is it you who's conceived of
what is possible there?

P: Normally, yes, when it comes to unusual or ethnic instruments.
Because that is what I am interested in. I come in with the suggestion
for such and such an instrument. Kate then listens to it in the context
of the track and if she likes it, it stays; if she doesn't I try
and find something different.

END PART ONE. MORE TO FOLLOW SOON.