No Subject

IED, who is not a real fan, has "ragged on" Gabriel as often as Hoffman,
actually; but maybe with a little less haste and carelessness.

Now, the first part of Tony Myatt's 1985 interview with Kate Bush.
Please be patient with Mr. Myatt; although he asks a few
amazingly lame questions, they somehow manage to elicit some
fascinating answers from Kate. The interview (with intro) was initially
copied from the Homeground transcription, then checked against
an audio-cassette of the convention for accuracy.

                  The Convention Interview, Part One

     The taped interview played at the 1985 Kate Bush Convention
     was specially commissioned by Homeground for the event. It
     was conducted by Tony Myatt, a former DJ and now Producer at
     Capital Radio, London's commercial radio station. It is likely
     that Tony Myatt was in fact the first DJ ever to play Kate's
     music on the air: "Wuthering Heights", way back at the end of
     1977. He has since then remained a champion of Kate's music, and
     his interviews over the years may be said to have charted
     her progress. This interview was conducted in November 1985,
     and we <Homeground> believe it is one of the best Kate has
     given on her new album Hounds of Love.

Myatt: Let's talk about The Hounds of Love first of all. A wonderful
title for an album, but where does it come from?

Kate Bush: The title comes from one of the songs, which is entitled
"Hounds of Love", and this album for me is like two quite different
pieces of work. The A-side is very much five individual songs that are
in some way all linked by love, and this seemed to be a title which
really did sum up that side. We actually gave a title to the B-side
of the album as well, but you can't have two titles for an album,
so we just went for the A-side title to cover it all.

M: But the "Hounds of Love" thing itself, does it come from a book?
Or is it something you made up?

KT: No, the "Hounds of Love" are an image, really: someone who's
afraid of being captured by love; and the imagery is of love
taking the form of hounds that are hunting them, so they run
away because they're afraid of being caught by the hounds and
being ripped to shreds.

M: Are you afraid of being caught by love?

KT: Yes, I think so. I think everyone is. When you are in love with
someone, you do not want to lose that. It's something that affects
you in so many areas. It can be frightening, yes.

M: It's not a feeling of being trapped, though, Kate, is it?

KT: I think it can be for some people, yes. It doesn't mean
that for me, but I think for some people any relationship can
be a form of being trapped, and they're afraid of that.

M: Just on the lighter side, it's a wonderful cover, the two
hounds. Where did they come from? How long did it take to pose
that picture? Because it must have taken a long time.

KT: It's a very popular question. The two dogs are friends of ours,
and John, my brother, who took the photo, had a lot of trouble
keeping them under control. He had a very strong word with them
and got them to behave, and it was really just a matter of patience,
because we'd get the whole scene set up, and the dogs would come
in and they'd be walking over me and everything would be totally
ruined in five minutes, so we'd have to start again.

M: So they behaved themselves in the end, anyway?

KT: Yes, to the point where they just went to sleep.

M: And they got a little mention on the album, as well.

KT: Absolutely, for all that effort.

M: This is your first album for quite a while. A lot of people
would say that being that amount of time away from any kind of
business, let alone the pop business, can be quite tricky. I mean,
why was it necessary, that break, as far as you're concerned?

KT: Whenever I do something, it's really going in at the deep end
of a project, and I do find that things take me longer than I thought.
It's not something I plan, it's just that the work takes over and
in order to make it better you just have to be patient and spend more
time with it. After the last album at the end of 1982, I'd just spent
an intense period in the studio doing an album and I wanted to get
a break. I felt that I hadn't really had any time to take things in
because I'd been working so constantly since 1978 -- and we'd just moved
as well, out of London -- so I wanted to spend some time at home,
see my friends, take in new stimuli, and try to create a new energy
for a new direction that would be different from the album I'd
just written. Also, I wanted to get together our own recording
studio, which was definitely something which was being pointed
at all the way through the other albums -- that it was the thing
to do. And I found that just during that time that I was taking
off to discover things right, get the studio together, I made
some of the most important decisions -- and very beneficial ones
-- that I have ever made. And I think it's all good, and I understand
just what you mean about that time. In a way you do get scared that
you're spending so long away that you won't be able to come back.
But the priority -- and again I really did feel that this was what
I wanted during this time -- was the work, and not necessarily being
successful or famous; the priority was that what I was working on
should be the best it could be, at that time.

M: Was the business itself getting on top of you? Did you feel you
were missing out on things?

KT: I don't think I was missing out on things, but I wanted to get
away from the exposure -- that being...consumed -- that can start to
happen to you if you don't get away. And I think, too, that when I
spend so long on projects, I want to get back to that more and
more when I'm out doing promotion, because I know that everything
takes me such a long time to do.

M: So you built the studio. That was a giant step as well, I
would have thought. Did you actually physically get in there
and help build the place yourself, or was it just...

KT: No, I was really involved in the design, and really the
inspiration behind the whole project was my father, and he
was totally encouraging and really put a lot of it together
himself, and he was in there building it and advising on putting
the studio together; and so really the studio is very much a lot
to do with his efforts and enthusiasm.

M: You're very close to the family -- you're a very close-knit
family?

KT: Yes.

M: Are your family supportive so far as your music is concerned?

KT: I think they're supportive of me in every area possible. I
think I am most definitely a strongly emotionally-based person,
and my family are totally integral, I think, to everything I do.
They affect me because I love them.

M: Do you need that? Is that essential?

KT: I think it is essential. I think it's something that has always
been there, and that if it wasn't there it would probably be
devastating for me, yes.

M: What about when you write your songs, though, do you try them out
on your family? Do they get a chance to hear them?

KT: Yes; yes, they do. There's a small group that is around the family,
obviously including Del and a few friends, and they're really the
people who hear straight after I've written it and I suppose the
reaction is the initial...you see if it's going to work or not,
by just the way they react.

M: For example, the songs on the Hounds of Love album. How many songs in
total would you say you wrote for the album that perhaps didn't make
it in the end...or does it not work that way?

KT: No, it does. Initially, I write a batch of songs and try to pick
the best. So I suppose there would have been a good say four or
five songs -- but then to call them songs is misleading, because
they weren't complete, and I'd normally find that I'd throw lots
of ideas down and then get back to them in a few days and see that
they weren't as good as they could be, so I would just leave them
and not finish off the track. And the second side of the album had
one and a half tracks rewritten, really, because the flow of the
side needed to be changed because the whole nature of it kept
changing as things were being put on top of the basics.

M: Do you ever go back to the songs you rejected? Say, for
The Hounds of Love, would you ever go back to them again, or
leave them totally aside?

KT: It's quite interesting going back to them, and I have done,
and I tend to find little pieces that I think can be re-worked
and the rest of it is probably rubbish, so I'll put out the bits
that seem re-usable. And though if that isn't used itself, it
will then spark off something that can be used again, so
they do get recycled sometimes.

M: Six months you worked on the songs for the album. As far as
you're concerned is six months a long time?

KT: I think it is a long time, yes, but it's just the way the
work takes you. Things can be very fast, and then the next part
of the process will slow down dramatically, and each song has a
different nature -- its own personality in a way -- and it can
be terribly time-consuming to get as many of the right things as you can
for each track, and the lyrics can be ultimately frustrating.

M: Well, I think lyrics are what make your songs, quite honestly.
I love the melodies as well, but I think the lyrics...I mean I
have to sit down and read the lyrics as I'm listening to the song,
and then the song means that much more as far as I'm concerned.
Are the lyrics that important to you? They obviously are.

<Derisive laughter from the convention audience.>

KT: VERY important. I think the music and the lyrics are the two
main priorities in song-writing, and they should be equally good,
hopefully.

<More laughter.>

But for example, when you're writing a song, does the melody come
first, or do you year the lyric line?

KT: Again, it does really alter from song to song, but generally
the music comes first and actually you just get like a riff
musically that would have a line, say, connected to it; and
that would be the chorus of the song. And you can spend, say,
up to ten days or whatever, trying to get the rest of the lyrics
around it.

M: Can you explain the first single off the album, the "Deal with
God"?

KT: It's a bit of a cliche at the moment, with so many songs
called this, but it is very much about the "power" of love, and
the strength that is created between two people when they're very
much in love, but the strength can also be...threatening, violent,
dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it's saying
that if these two people could swap places -- if the man could become
the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand
the feelings of the other person in a truer way, understand them from
that gender's point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle
differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship,
especially when the people really do care about each other a lot.

M: Every album that you've had out to date, since the very first,
has been full of contrast, full of original ideas. Does this create
a problem for you, trying to create something that's totally original?
Does it become a burden to you?

KT: I think the whole process is a form of a burden in that it's
really quite tortuous, and it does pull you through so many different
feelings and problems and worries. I just think the whole thing creates
its own problems and energies that you just have to cope with in
order to get what you want at the end.

M: You see, the thing is, with a lot of stuff on the new album,
would you agree if I said that the first side anyway was probably
the most commercial thing you've done to date? Or don't you like
that word "commercial"?

KT: No, I think especially from your mouth I can accept it...and in
some ways I think you're very right: it is, and not necessarily
so intentionally as perhaps I thought. I think the development
of rhythm in my music is perhaps one of the things that makes
it obviously more available to people, and a constancy of rhythm
perhaps wasn't always there in previous albums.

M: That's exactly what I'm talking about. The rhythm tracks I find
on this album are tremendous. Were you totally responsible for that?

KT: No, I wasn't. I think a very big influence was Del Palmer, who
when I was initially coming up with the songs...I would actually
get Del to manifest in the rhythm box the pattern that I wanted.
As a bass player I think he has a very natural understanding of
rhythms and working with drums, and he could also actually get
the patterns that I could hear in my head and that I wanted, so
it's through him that we started off with the rhythmic base that
was then built upon and was very much what I wanted.

M: Here again with the new album there are some songs that are
fairly simple in their construction, and other songs that are very
complex, as well. <Laughter from audience.> Can you for example
tell me about "The Big Sky"?

KT: Yes, "The Big Sky" gave me terrible trouble, really, just as a
song. You definitely do have relationships with some songs, and
we had a lot of trouble getting on together and it was just one
of those songs that kept changing -- at one point every week --
and it was just a matter of trying to pin it down. Because it's
not often I've written a song like that: when you come up with something
that can literally take you to so many different tangents, so many
different forms of the same song, that you just end up not knowing
where you are with it. and I just had to pin it down eventually,
and that was a very strange beast.

M: You were happy with the final outcome?

KT: Yes, and it was very different from the original song that was
written.

M: In what way?

KT: In nearly every possible way.

M: A complete change of song?

KT: Yes, and that's very rare as well, but it was just one of those
songs. Maybe it's all to do with what the song is about, the
fact that it's changing all the time -- the sky, always changing.

M: Was it your idea to do something that was very complex and
something that was very simple on this album?

KT: There were definite areas of simplicity that I wanted to work
with musically, particularly in the traditional areas, as also
I wanted to move away from certain chord patterns that I'd
definitely become very fond of over the last few albums. And though
I did move away from them a bit, I definitely hung onto my old
favourites.

M: That can't be easy to do, because I think most songwriters
do have a certain way of writing a song. You wanted to get
away from that?

KT: I think it's finding the right avenue for the song, and in a
way I think you just have to pin down as early as you can exactly
what you want to dress the song in -- you know, what colour clothes...
It's just like that, and you have to treat it accordingly -- and
from the word go the song would then take on an attitude that's
maybe completely different from the song next to it on the album.
"The Big Sky" is an example of a real freak on the album, in that it
consistently changed until we got there in the end, and "Waking the
Witch" on side two was totally written through a guitarist. I knew
what I wanted, but it wasn't a song that would sound right if it
was based around a keyboard -- it had to be written through the
electric guitar. So the guitarist came in literally working to just
a Linn pattern, and I just told him what I wanted, and it was
a very different way of writing. I've never done it like that before,
but I think it was very successful.

M: What about the idea behind that song. To me it's weird. Do you
agree, or not?

KT: I'm glad you say that, because I would be disappointed in a way
if you thought it was ordinary. I definitely wanted to create a
weirdness. It's all part of the story of the second side, that
the person's in the water for the night, and they just have to try
and keep going until the morning, and at this point they've just
woken from a dream and have surfaced on the water, trying not to
drown, and it's the horror of then being faced with something that
wants to put you straight under the water again, whether you are
innocent or guilty.

M: From a personal point of view, did you ever feel that was
happening to you in the music business?

KT: No, not at all! No, I think that's very much something that...

M: People have made up?

KT: Well, that it is an outside person's view of construing subject
matter. I think, very much, this whole thing is tied in with water,
and if I was thinking of going under water it wouldn't be to do
with the business at all, it would be to do with myself as a person,
relationships, and that sort of thing. They're what concern me, that's
what would make me go under, I think. No -- I haven't...I don't feel
that that is relevant to things in my life because at the time when I
took that break, and I was writing these songs, it was one of the most
contented, HAPPY periods of my life for quite a while, in that I
actually had time to breathe and work creatively. And I think what's
interesting is that I've always felt, in the past -- and it's almost
a sort of code from certain areas of life -- that in order to write
something that has meaning or whatever, that you have to be unhappy,
that you should be in some kind of torment. And what was surprising
was that for being very happy at this part in my life, I felt I
wrote some songs that were saying very different things from that.

M: Would you say that "Waking the Witch" is one of the most complex
songs on the album, one of the most difficult songs to record?

KT: No, I'd say it was one of the quickest, and it's actually one
of the simplest in that it's almost one chord all the way through
the song, and the whole movement is to do with moods and the people
that you're dealing with, rather than musically. The structure of
the song is so simple...

M: But there's a lot going on in there, that's what I mean.

KT: Yes, there is! But I think it's stuff that travels. The
whole track is traveling, and if that bit comes up, it will
go again, and then maybe come back later.

M: So what was the most difficult song on the album to get done?

KT: I think..."The Big Sky". That's the only one that from a
songwriting point of view actually caused the problems. With
all of the others it was just a matter of patience and finding
the right things; they were all keyed quite instantly.


<That ends the first installment. More to follow.>