"Every word was gospel that she seyde." -- Chaucer

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu]

Well, fellow Love-Hounds, despite the fact that IED -- and he is
certainly not alone in this -- has not received a digest of our
friendly discussion in FIVE days AGAIN, no-one can say that HE
has deserted the group, nor even that his industry has slackened
on behalf of the pack -- as the following 750+-line transcription
shows. Should anyone of you honourable readers once again feel disposed
to thank IED for his continued good work, please consider instead
the option of emulating his diligence, by contributing a transcription
of a Kate Bush interview yourselves! (And if you say you can't find
one around the house, IED will happily send you a photo-copy of
as many as you wish...) One last note before you plunge into this
latest in Love-Hounds' continuing record of The Word of Kate: Please
pardon the odd format of these two interviews. The format accomodates
commands for a hard copy -- part of the now-100+ page-long collection
of KT interviews which have appeared in Love-Hounds during the past
year, and which has been dubbed The Garden. And now, Hounds, IED wishes
you happy reading!

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     The following are two interviews conducted by Kris Needs of
.us ZigZag
Magazine, a British monthly with a stronger emphasis on punk and
punk-related culture than the weekly music publications. Needs's
defensive tone and self-consciously working-class style are
partly explained by the incongruity of an interview with Kate in
such a publication. The first of the interviews was conducted in
1980, concurrent with the release of
.us Never For Ever,
the second in 1982, coinciding with the release of
.us The Dreaming.

.ce The First ZigZag Interview
.us on
.ce Fire in the Bush
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.ce by Kris Needs
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.sk 2
     What's Kate Bush doing in
.us ZigZag?
It's a fair chance that's the thought flitting through your noggin as
you espy our rather tasteful cover. Well, I thought it would be
interesting, a laugh and definitely on for you lot to get a peek
at the lady without all the 'Oo's yer boyfriend, then?' or 'Drop 'em'
techniques so favoured when she's in the media's sights. Also, because
she seems to get roundly slagged, piss-taken or sycophated over every
time she pops up in the Music Weeklies. These sort of injustices and
the prejudices they foster could've kept you from giving Kate Bush a
fair listen.
     Kate's been boxed and packaged in shiny paper with little ribbons
on top, it seems. Safe, but 'odd' enough to let the purchaser feel
outrageous displaying it on the coffee table.
     Well, let's see. If you profess to like Modern music which is
breaking down fences and capturing true emotion, Kate Bush has just
as much right to be there with A Teardrop Explodes, Bowie or whoever
you care to name. A different field, yeah, but she's capable of moments
of heart-stopping passion, breath-taking drama and beauty. She's also
very honest. The characters might be put on, but that's it.
     I'm not gonna trot out Kate's history, just that by her mid-teens
she'd already reached a staggering level of creativity and success.
Number one with "Wuthering Heights", followed by the haunting "Man With
No Arse in His Trousers", "Wow" and the immaculate "Breathing".
[Note: For the record, Kate was already eighteen when "Wuthering
Heights", the earliest of the above records, was released. -- AM]
     There've been three albums:
.us The Kick Inside,
.us Lionheart,
and the new
.us Never For Ever,
which sees Kate starker, stretched out,
and covering a wider range of subjects, including the eerily
anti-nuclear war "Breathing" and mother's-torment of "Army Dreamers".
     Kate had to be persuaded to do this interview. She didn't believe
we wanted to talk to her! Thought we'd come in and stitch her up, I
s'pose. However, once she'd perused a stack of old
.us ZigZags, a
meeting with a still-rather-puzzled Kate took place on a Friday
afternoon at EMI.
     Kate Bush has just done the
.us Daily Express.
Now it's me...But no way does she just press her
nose and gush out the conveyor-belt niceties. We talk for over 90
minutes, touching all manner of subjects in an enthusiastic flow.
Quite deep at times -- "It's like two psychiatrists talking," she
said after. I left impressed with her honesty and sense of awe, which,
in the wrong hands, could be the reasons detractors have a field day.
She don't deserve it, even if you can't stick her music. And I'm warning
you, don't just take my word on Kate Bush, then say I wasted your fiver
-- it is down to taste, but if you've got any feelings, or just like
music, have a go. It's about the only music I like that I can't dance to!
     So, Kate, do you think your audience is restricted by these
prejudices against you?
     "Yeah, I think I'm conscious of people doing that in certain areas,
because of the way they've seen me, and I think that's inevitable. I
don't blame them. It's really good for me to speak to other magazines."
     It'd be good if people could see that you're doing stuff that's
pretty new, too. You could never mistake Kate Bush for anyone else.
     "Oh, great. I'd like to think that, but it's not for me to say.
When you first come out, people say you're the new thing. then when
you've been around for two or three years you become old hat, and they
want to sweep you under the carpet as being MOR, which I don't feel I am
from the artistic point of view. It doesn't
.us feel
like MOR to me at all, although I wouldn't call it Punk! Sometimes it's
not even rock...I don't know, I think it's wrong to put labels on music.
Even Punk, that's really just a label for convenience -- it covers so
many areas. I think sometimes it can actually kill people, being put
under labels. I think it's something that shouldn't be encouraged.
If people could just accept music as music and people as people,
without having to compare them to other things...which is something
we instinctively try to do."
     The way you're presented in the press could alienate some people,
I s'pose.
     "Don't you think any form of publicity alienates the person who is
not involved in it? I think that's part of the whole process. That's why
I feel that the good thing about albums and gigs and even radio is that
you are directly communicating with your audience, but with papers
and appearances on TV you're not really relating directly."
     Does the bad criticism hurt you?
     "No, I don't get hurt. I've read a few reviews of the album, and
some of them really couldn't stand me, probably much more than the
album. In fact, one guy didn't like me so much, he had to write four
columns of 'I can't stand Bush!' That's cool. Sometimes I find it very
funny. I think a bad review is a good omen in some papers."
     At least that's a positive reaction.
     "Yeah, if they really hate you, it's just as good as really liking
you. You're really getting under their skin so much that they've got
to speak about it. That's great!"
     And the album still came in at number one.
     "I can't believe it, still. Every time I tell someone I feel like
I'm lying. I couldn't have asked more for such an important step in
what I'm doing, because I feel that this album is a new step for me.
The other two albums are so far away that they're not true. They really
aren't me anymore. I think this is something the public could try and
open up about. When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain
kind of sound.
     "I'd really like to be able to leave myself open to any form
of music, so if I wanted to, I could do funk tracks on the next album,
I could do classical, I could do bossa novas. I think it's best to
stay as open as you can. As a person I'm changing all the time, and
the first album is very much like a diary of me at that time -- I
was into a very high range. The same with the second album, and I feel
this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It's like the
first album on a new level. It's much more under control."
     You took a long time doing it. [You think
.us that
one took a long time! --AM]
     "Yeah, it did. It took a lot of work, but it was very beautiful
work because it's so involving and it's so like emotions. It's
totally unpredictable and you can fall in love with it or you can
hate it or if you want to you can ignore it: you know, all the
things that you can do with people."
     That's one of the main things I like about the music -- the
emotions running around.
     I think everyone is emotional, and I think a lot of people are
afraid of being so. They feel that it's vulnerable. Myself, I feel
that it's the key to everything, and that the more you can find out
about your emotions the better. Some of the things that come into
your head can be a surprise when you're thinking."
     The next single is "Army Dreamers", which sounds like a wistful
little waltz-time ditty on first hearing, though a bit sombre. Kate
adopts a lilting Irish accent -- all very nice. But listen to the words
and she's mourning her dead son, killed in the army. I thought Kate was
singing about Northern Ireland, but not necessarily...
     "It's not actually directed at Ireland. It's included, but it's
much more embracing the whole European thing. That's why it says
BFPO in the first chorus, to try and broaden it away from Ireland."
     What about the Irish accent?
     "The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song
is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to
tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish
accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an
Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant
to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in
manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it
happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there
are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers,
and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me."
     A track that's been picked up on by slavering pervo-moralists
and them who don't bother to listen is "The Infant Kiss", a gentle
item about a woman disturbed by the feelings a little boy draws out of
her. A taboo subject, but handled in a lullaby refrain with incisive
but tender, non-gross lyrics.
     "The thing that worries me is the way people have started
interpreting that song. They love the long word -- paedophilia. It's
not about that at all. It's not the woman actually fancying the young
kid. It's the woman being attracted by a man inside the child. It just
worries me that there were some people catching on to the idea of there
being paedophilia, rather than just a distortion of a situation where
there's a perfectly normal, innocent boy with the spirit of a man inside,
who's extremely experienced and lusty. The woman can't cope with the
distortion. She can see that there's some energy in the child that is
not normal, but she can't place it. Yet she has a very pure maternal
love for the child, and it's onlyy little things like when she goes
to give him a kiss at night, that she realizes there is a distortion,
and it's really freaking her out. She doesn't fancy little boys, she's
got a normal, straight sexual life, yet this thing is happening to her.
I really like the distortedness of the situation."
     Nice touch having such a gentle, unlusty backing to put this
over in...
     "I like the idea of making the musical and subject matter at odds.
Like in 'Army Dreamers' the obvious thing is to write a slow, heavy song,
but if you do that it always becomes too obvious, less easy for people to
accept. When it is something so heavy, if you disguise it in a light
tune or something happy, it will be accepted, and then when it's
actually realised it will probably hit home a lot harder."
     Lots of possibilities for the stage show on this LP.
     "Yeah, I'm dying to do another tour. The problem is money
and time, and I have to make a decision very soon, what I'm going
to do next: whether it's another album or a tour. I want to do them
both so much."
     Whichever one, it'll be the next year of your life.
     "That's exactly it, and I think people find that hard to see.
It seems the more I do things, the longer they take, especially if
they're going to be done right, and, as you say, that's whole year.
That's one of the reasons I'm not so quick about deciding."
     I asked Kate what she listened to at home: Stevie Wonder,
reggae, Bowie, early Roxy, Steely Dan, rock-jazz...and our old hero
Captain Beefheart.
     "He's so new. I'm really surprised that the English market
at the moment won't let him in, because he's brilliant. He's not mad
at all, it's perfectly real. I'm sure he's in touch with Mars or
something."
     I asked Kate if she was into the occult or astrology or anything,
cos the words and bat-demon visuals sometimes suggest
a bit of a fascination with all that, but drew a blank.
     However, "I do believe in spirits, and I also believe that
people communicate by much more than word of mouth. There are people
like beacons sitting on top of hills. You must have some friends that
you can just feel calling you some days. They're just saying 'help!',
and you pick it up."
     She's well into the individual "stating your presence," citing
Punk as an example. But everyone's got the same insecurities and fears.
"It's so bloody easy to be forgotten. It's so easy to go under unless
you fight. Everyone has to fight, and there are different ways of
fighting.
     "I'm definitely trying to state my presence, I must be. It's
important for me to do things on a one-man basis. I seem to work,
produce, create, better as one entity, and then I involve others
for feedback. That seems to be the ideal way for me to work. You see,
musically, too, I feel I've only just begun. I'm not doing what I
want to do musically, yet. I'm getting there, but it's nowhere near
to what I actually want. I'd love to play you some of the new stuff
I'm doing."
     So what are the new songs like, then?
     "They're much more up. I'm getting to work much more easily with
rhythm boxes and synthesizers at home, and I've got some time. That's
what I need, and this year is the first I've really had any time to
breathe. I'm experimenting all the time and finding new things.
It's great, all the toys that are around to play with -- digital
delay, chorus pedal, you could write a sound purely round the sound."
     Do you ever feel the pressures of success
.us (that
old one!)?
[That is the interviewer's own comment. -- AM]
     "Sometimes. It really depends on the areas I go in. When I'm in
the studios I'm not aware of my success. It's only really when you do the
rounds of promotions, things like this. But the real pressures of success
I think are something that come from the inside. Probably more than
outside in, and that's got a lot to do with the kind of person. It's a
big trap for a lot of artists because they're normally very sensitive
people, maybe slightly neurotic.
That's why they write, because there are things they have to get out.
Normally what goes along with that makeup in
a person is this neurosis, this insecurity, and it's inevitable that
someone who is like that, when they're put in a situation where there's
pressure, things they can't actually see as a reality, are going to
crack. They find the pressure is too much. They lose themselves
and everything they have, and that's very sad. I don't intend to let
pressures  of success make me go under and lose everything I have.
Pressures of life, yes, I think that's something that can happen to
anyone. There's nothing you can do about it except to try and be as
strong as you can. Pressures of success are something so meaningless
anyway. Success is a label other people like to put on you so they can
go (points): 'Success!' I don't feel successful. There's so much more
that I have to do to feel that I've really done what I want to."
     Yeah; but you have shifted a pile of the old units, Kate.
     "Yes, which doesn't mean a thing to me. My success is in terms
of fulfilment of my art, perfection of my art. That's something I'll
never reach. I never will. And I have to accept that."
     Talk gets onto "Breathing", her best yet.
     "It's great to hear you say that. From my own viewpoint that's
the best thing I've ever written. It's the best thing I've ever produced.
I call that my little symphony, because I think every writer, whether
they admit it or not, loves the idea of writing their own symphony.
The song says something real for me, whereas many of the others haven't
quite got to the level that I would like them to reach, though they're
trying to. Often it's because the song won't allow it, and that song
allowed everything that I wanted to be done to it.
That track was easy to build up.
Although it had to be huge, it was just speaking -- saying what
had to be put on it. In many ways, I think the most exciting thing
was making the backing track. The session men had their lines, they
understood what the song was about, but at first there was no emotion,
and that track was demanding so much emotion. It wasn't until they
actually played with feeling that the whole thing took off. When we
went and listened, I wanted to cry, because of what they had put into it.
It was so tender. It meant a lot to me that they had put in as much as
they could, because it must get hard for session guys. They get paid
by the hour, and so many people don't want to hear the emotion. They
want clear, perfect tuning, a 'good sound'; but often the
out-of-tuneness, the uncleanliness, doesn't matter as much as the
emotional content that's in there. I think that's much more
important than the technicalities."
     The NME review said the album was all glossy dressing and little
else.
     "Well, the other two albums were what I would call glossy, and
I could understand them saying that. I feel this one is the rawest it's
been, it's raw in its own context. I feel perhaps the guy just wouldn't
let me in, and that was the problem. He saw me as this
chocolate-box-sweetie little thing who has no reality in there,
no meaning of life. That's cool, I really understand that, but I like
to think that people will let me in, and I'm lucky to have so many who
do.
     "I think it's good for you to read reviews like that about
yourself, because they don't matter, and although people are going to
read them, it's good for you to realise in some ways that people can
say anything they want about you. It shouldn't matter what they say.
I think the public are starting to realise the hype in the media
manipulation, the propaganda. I pick up papers and read something
about someone, and I start believing it, and then I realise,
'God, I'm doing just what other people are doing to me!' I think
journalism could be such an art, and some people treat it as such.
Others use it as an extension of their egos. You get nothing out of
reading it, other than this thick blanket of: 'Me-e-e-e!'"
     "Breathing" and "Army Dreamers" are social comment songs,
which you ain't really done before, have you?
     "No. I've thought a lot about the political aspect -- this
is when people label them as Political Songs. But it's only because
the political motivations move me emotionally. If they hadn't, it
wouldn't have gotten to me. It went through the emotional centre --
when I thought: 'Ah...OW!' And that made me write.
     "The nuclear situation is such a real danger, the fact that
buttons have been pushed and planes have gone into action. It's
something to be scared of, it really is. None of us wants it to
happen. We're the innocents. Saying something about it from the
heart is not going to change the world or anything, but at least
people can think more about it."
     It's good that you've got a big following among very young
kids and are doing this, cos they'll have to know more than just
Janet and John books and "Tiswas" [British children's television
programme. -- AM] soon...
     "So many of them knew, you know. They hear a lot more than the
media generally give them. They really understand the
song, and I don't think it frightens them, but it really upsets a lot
of them. That's good -- it's not nice but it's good that that actually
got through to them.
     "When I wrote the song, it was from such a personal viewpoint.
It was just through having heard a thing for years without it ever
having got through to me. Till the moment it hit me, I hadn't really
been moved. Then I suddenly realised the whole devastation and
disgusting arrogance of it all. Trying to destroy something that we've
not created -- the earth. The only thing we are is a breathing
mechanism: everything is breathing. Without it we're just nothing.
All we've got is our lives, and I was worried that when people heard
it they were going to think, 'She's exploiting commercially this
terribly real thing.' I was very worried that people weren't going
to take me from my emotional standpoint rather than the commercial one.
But they did, which is great. I was worried that people wouldn't want
to worry about it because it's so real. I was also worried that it
was too negative, but I do feel that there is hope in the whole thing,
just for the fact that it's a message from the future. It's not from
now, it's from a spirit that may exist in the future, a non-existant
spiritual embryo who sees all and who's been round time and time again
so they know what the world's all about. This time they don't want to
come out, because they know they're not going to live. It's almost
like the mother's stomach is a big window that's like a cinema screen,
and they're seeing all this terrible chaos."
     Another track on the album, "Egypt", paints a convincing picture
of a country that isn't all sun and sphinxes. Kate, who hasn't been
there, clashes the romantic view against the reality of starvation and
disease. I remember that TV show she did round Christmas, when several
.us Never For Ever
tracks got previewed. "Egypt" was one,
illustrated by a veiled Kate fronting a backdrop of both sides of
Egypt, then getting set upon by two nasty "Phantom Flan Flinger"-like
demons as the eerie music built up. [Needs's memory is a little
faulty. There is no specific demon image in the "Egypt" video, just an
increasingly aggressive montage of grim footage of third-world
poverty. -- AM]
     "The song is very much about someone who has not gone there
thinking about Egypt, going: 'Oh, Egypt! It's so romantic...the
pyramids!' Then in the breaks, there's meant to be the reality
of Egypt, the conflict. It's meant to be how blindly we see
some things -- 'Oh, what a beautiful world,' you know, when there's
shit and sewers all around you."
     Coo, this is turning into a marathon, hope I've got enough room.
By now I'm feeling totally at ease with Kate. I dunno what I was
expecting: the afore-mentioned standard answers, a bevy of "amazings",
the spaced hippy of that reprehensible biog that's just emerged...
[This is a reference to the Vermorels' first book about Kate,
.us Kate Bush: Princess of Suburbia.]
Got none of that, just a highly likeable girl totally into what
she's up to. Her little-girl South London voice, bubbling enthusiasm
and turns of phrase could be construed as naive or hippy gushing;
as I said, bait for the detractors. But it's obvious her head's
screwed well on. She's an Artist and all that comes with 'em, not
to mention shrewd. EMI-manipulated? Bollocks...
     Next we talk about another track, "The Wedding List", and its
theme of revenge: "The futility..."
     The song sees Kate blasting a hole in the geezer who shot her
husband-to-be as they get to the church. [In fact, he is shot as
the vows are being said. -- AM] She sees revenge as something that
fills you up like green bile and as dangerous as a gun, but admits
she's never been that screwed up by it, beyond the usual playground
twist.
     "Revenge is so powerful and futile in the situation in the
song. Instead of just one person being killed, it's three: her husband,
the guy who did it -- who was right on top of the wedding list with
the silver plates -- and her, because when she's done it, there's
nothing left. All her ambition and purpose has all gone into that one
guy. She's dead, there's nothing there."
     The conversation drifts into "Fade Away" [He means "Blow Away".
-- AM], Kate's fantasy of all the dead musicians in heaven. But
it's not just a jolly fairy story. The song tries to deflate the awe
around dying and act as a comfort for those who don't fancy it to
the point of hysteria. She mentions those people who you must've read
about in the Sunday papers who have been clinically dead for a few
minutes and report walking a corridor to paradise.
     "None of those people are frightened by death anymore. It's
almost something they're looking forward to. All of us have such
a deep fear of death. It's the ultimate unknown, at the same time
it's our ultimate purpose. That's what we're here for. So I thought
this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I'm coming to terms
with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after
someone very special died.
     "Although the song had been formulating before and had to be
written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was
also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren't physical:
art, the love in people. It can't die, because where does it go?
It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves...
There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin,
Schubert. We're really transient, everything to do with us is transient,
except for these non-physical things that we don't even control..."
     And with that we more or less called it a day, me to float to
the Green Man, Kate to booze up her number one.
     I find this rather amusing: Here's EMI's execs, grasping
champers with hands rubbed raw from glee at their album charts coup.
Here's Kate, knocked out and smiling with delight, saying right things
to right people everywhere, but not moving an inch. She's got them,
got the public, but there's much more to come despite all this.
     Fairer hearing and digging beyond popular conceptions are highly
recommended. I want this to help. Kate Bush cures sore ears.

-- Kris Needs

END OF FIRST ZIGZAG INTERVIEW
.sk 5
.ce The Second ZigZag Interview, January 1982
.us on
.ce Dream Time in the Bush
.us off
.sk 1
.ce on
Kris Needs rises with the dawn (Wot?) to talk with the elfin Kate Bush
about her new album
.us The Dreaming
.ce off
.sk 2
     Wake up! Is everybody in?
.su The Dreaming
is about to begin...
     But this morning insomnia rules. I'm going to talk to Kate Bush
in a few hours. This fills me with warm anticipation from past
experience. So why am I jerked to a wide-eyed horizonatal at 6:30
when I needn't get up till ten?
     Maybe the Breakfast Show will lull the electrocution away...
     Only makes it worse. Any contentment is shattered as the gimmicky
strains of a cheap cover of Rolf Harris's abo-anthem
"Sun Rise" [sic. The title is "Sun Arise". -- AM] pollutes the air.
And this, the day after Kate's formidably bold single
"The Dreaming" takes a dive in the charts!
     Dropped off and had a nightmare. The only records were covers
and anyone who tried to release their own song got locked in a big
dungeon beneath the BBC.
     "The Dreaming"
deserved so much more than to prod an exec into putting out a cash-in.
It really did conjure the dusty mystery of baked deserts down under
and sun-kissed centuries. Electronic vultures swoop, goats bleat
(courtesy Percy Edwards), the boomer gets bonked by a jeep...All this
while a mammoth outback thud makes love with the lowdown breath
of Rolf Harris's dijeridu.
     "The Dreaming" was a brave step. Not easy enough for the radio so it
stiffed. But Kate stands by it as a necessary trailer for the breadth
and progress of her strange new album.
She can be a pop star or go on and break ground way beyond the
Radio One rhino enclosure where feeding time is all glossy white soul
and those covers.
.pp
.us The Dreaming
can't even be spotted in the hills. It pulses with new shapes and guises,
voices crawl over your ears and gnaw the brain like beautiful maggots.
The drums are enormous, the spaces cavernous. Few songs have an
actual chorus [This is absolutely untrue. All ten songs on
.us The Dreaming
follow traditional verse-chorus-bridge structures. -- AM], but each has
its own atmosphere and theme, from a macabre look at Vietnam to
pure horror. Life and death.
     I was bowled over by the new depth and range in Kate's voice.
The new deep one on
.us The Dreaming
contrasting with the airy familiar. A cracked rasp slicing through
"Houdini", defiant scream frazzling "Pull Out the Pin" while a nest
of demons burst out of the stomach on "Get Out of My House". Backwards
and beyond "Leave It Open".
     "This is the first time that I actually enjoy listening to my
voice," says Kate modestly as we talk on an EMI sofa. "It's a
big breakthrough. Though
.us Never For Ever
was getting there, it was really compromise all the way, because I
couldn't do any better at the time. I think it's the vocal chords as
you get older. They do something. I can actually put some balls into
my voice for the first time. It's exciting!"
     The songs are longer and more open, less defined, with a
different feel on each. [The songs may be more complex, but they
are no less "defined". -- AM] Kate welcomes this outsider's first
impressions, however garbled mine come over.
     Tilts head: "It's like a progression. I've never written songs as
long as these before. Before they were like three minutes. They
all had quite a different process. The idea was to go into the studio
each night, put on the rhythm box machine and write something on the
spot. Every night I was getting a song, even if it wasn't much good.
There'd be an idea I could use in another song.
     "It was all spontaneous initially, and became very thought out
afterwards. Before, it probably worked the other way. We'd spend ages
writing songs, and get it all down quick in the studio."
     Hence the greater emphasis on rhythm throughout.
     "Yeah. The rhythm box did that. It took me a while to get used
to it. I kept moving with it instead of in and out of it, which was
restricting me. Now it seems so natural."
     It seems to have made your writing more aggressive.
     "Mm! I like that, too. It's hard for me to really get power
coming across. It's the first time I've had to get that much power,
because the songs were demanding it. It was hard."
     So how do you think your public are going to react? I ask.
You might finally be doing what you want to, but it's gonna shock
the comfy listeners and maybe lose a few fans.
     "I don't know how they're going to take it. (Not too bad,
as it happened, it still came in at three.) I think the people who've
understood where I've been so far are going to be into it. They're
expecting something different each time, so it's almost predictable
in that respect.
     "But I think a load of people won't like it. They probably
won't understand what it's about. I find the more I write the stuff,
the less I worry about this stage, and the better it is. I remember
on the second and third albums there were lots of times when I was
writing a song and I kept thinking what people were going to think of it.
I'd rather not do that and lose some of the people who are into my
music, because I'm really doing what I want to do. I'm going where I
want and I'm going to keep going for it. I've no idea what's going to
happen."
     Two years ago
.us Never For Ever
had just come out. Kate saw it as a breakthrough with such tracks as
"Army Dreamers" and the holocaustic birthpang epic "Breathing".
Waterwings before she went for Jaws. Maybe that's drastic, but you
catch my drift?
     "It feels like that for me. On the last album I felt like I was
starting to get there, that power thing, it was starting to get into
a deeper area. A number of songs on the album were still like
commercial ditties. This is the first one I feel like I've actually
got somewhere. Already I'm starting to hear things that I think I could
do better."
     Can you talk about the title track, Kate?
     "The title actually came last. It always does. It's the most
difficult thing to do. I tried to get a title that would somehow
say what was in there. It was really bad. Then I found this book
(hands me huge tome on Australian lore). I'd written a song and hadn't
really given it a proper name. I knew all about this time they call
Dreamtime, when animals and humans take the same form. It's this big
religious time when all these incredible things happen. The other word
for it is 'The Dreaming'. I looked at that written down and thought,
'Yeah!'
     "We got Rolf Harris on that. He's great. I think he's really
underestimated because he's a children's entertainer, but he's
probably one of the greatest mines of information on ethnic music.
He was involved in the soundtrack of the film
.us Zulu
and he just stood and sang this whole song in African. He's so
uninhibited, he just does it.
     "I knew the beat from 'Sun Arise' and Aborigine music, so we
just ripped that off, used what was already there ethnically. Rolf
just came in and did dijeridu."
     We started delving deeper into the album. And as usual, Kate's
been delving already. A subject grabs her, so she'll research it until
there's enough soaked in to be spewed out as a song.
     "Yeah, delving, definitely. A few of the ideas for the songs
have been in my head for a couple of years, but I didn't feel I could
do them. I wanted to do the Australian one on the last album but I
hadn't written it. I just knew I wanted the sound. It's probably
as well it didn't manifest till this album, because it never would
have sounded the same."
     Good example of this and a centrepiece of the album is "Houdini".
Normally titles like this get the Boney M treatment ('Hoo-hoo-hoo
Houdini, master of escaperee!' or some such bollocks). Not Kate. Her
immersion in the story of the legendary escapologist must've equalled
that of the actress taking on a character. In the song, she emerges
as Mrs. Houdini.
     There's a mysterious quote on the sleeve: "With a kiss I'd pass
the key..." It comes from this song, and there she is on the sepia
sleeve embracing a chained man, key on tongue.
     "It's a little depiction from the song. I didn't even know he was
married, but apparently she used to help him out quite a lot. As he
used to go into his tank or jump in the river, she'd give him a parting
kiss and pass a tiny silver key into his mouth. He'd wander off, then
take it out and unlock the thing. That started that side of things
because I didn't realise she'd been involved with his tricks.
     "He used to be involved with spiritualists -- go round exposing
them because they were hurting a lot of people. I think he tried to get
in contact with his mother, and had some bad experiences. He and his
wife made a code together so that if he or she died and the other
came back through a medium or something, they would know it was them,
not a fraud. When he died, she started going to all these seances,
all frauds, but she went to one guy and he really had come through.
The code was given; so far as she was concerned, it was him.
     "It's such a beautiful image: for this guy, who'd been escaping all
his life, to escape death and come back to her. But I didn't know
if he had come back, because the other stories said he hadn't, so
I rang up 'Psychic News', and this nice lady got all these papers from
the 1920s and read me this apparently official declaration from Mrs.
Houdini that this had happened. I feel that they were terribly in love
because of the whole story. She was saving his life every time. It's
such a great story, I couldn't resist it."
     [Actually, considerable doubt has been cast upon Mrs. Houdini's
testimonial since the time of the declaration. Typical of Kate to
disregard such anticlimactic evidence -- to see life through the
veil of art.]
     Kate recalls the legend of his last escape, where they had
to smash the tank with an axe to free Houdini. Shiver at the stage
possibilities! "Terrifying," says Kate.
     The song itself, which Kate would like to be the next single
but isn't sure if it's obvious enough -- "I feel under pressure
to go with the obvious one" -- is a masterpiece. Kate's handling
of potentially dodgy subject matter proves her talent is beyond any
law. The most haunting refrain here (love) turns to parched despair
(grief) as she coos, then cracks over dark brown strings.
     "Pull Out the Pin" is a great contrast. Kate is a Vietnamese
soldier going to fight. A ringing piano motif is the only rope ladder
to grasp as the slow beat sprawls through a jungle of helicopter
flutterings and creature sounds taken from a cassette recording
drummer Preston Hayman made in deepest Bali. "I love life!" she
screams in defiance.
     "I saw this incredible documentary by this Australian cameraman
who went on the front line in Vietnam, filming from the Vietnamese
point of view, so it was very biased against the Americans. He said
it really changed him, because until you live on their level like that,
when it's complete survival, you don't know what it's about. He's
never been the same since, because it's so devastating, people dying
all the time.
     "The way he portrayed the Vietnamese was as this really crafted,
beautiful race. The Americans were these big, fat, pink, smelly things
who the Vietnamese could smell coming for miles because of the tobacco
and cologne. It was devastating, because you got the impression that the
Americans were so heavy and awkward, and the Vietnamese were so
beautiful and all getting wiped out. They wore a little silver Buddha
on a chain around their neck and when they went into action they'd
pop it into their mouth, so if they died they'd have Buddha on their
lips. I wanted to write a song that could somehow convey the whole
thing, so we set it in the jungle and had helicopters, crickets and
little Balinese frogs."
     The conversation is following. Kate Bush's music has this curious
effect, where I go babbling streams of thoughts and queries and she
sometimes has to fight to get a word in. I won't go on about her toes
like a recent paper ("That really pissed me off"), but I love this
elfin creature perched on the floor, bursting to explain the dreams
she's making.
     From its title, "All the Love" could've been
.us The Dreaming's
only straight love song, but the doleful remorse swamping the
verse/chorus sections is suitable for what Kate describes as a
.us lack
of love song. She cites this one when I ask if any of the songs
are about herself.
     "Some of them are definitely
.us parts
of me. I think "All the Love" definitely says something...
Not necessarily the negative side of me but the self-pitying side.
The way you look at human beings and yourself, and think we're
just a heap of shit. If we weren't so scared of saying what we meant,
it would be so much better. All the times you didn't say things to
people, either because of pride, or rejection fears -- that sort
of thing. That may not be an example of my own life, but I felt it
.us nearly
happening.
     "It's just a terrible feeling, the thought of people having
gone without the right amount of feedback. I think that really fucks
people up. There are loads of people who spend all day saying,
"What do
.us you
think?" I get an awful lot of feedback; even if it's negative it's
better than nothing."
     "Night of the Swallow" flits from calm to a torrent of pipes
and fiddles courtesy of Irish band Planxty. When Kate sent a cassette
of the song to arranger Bill Whelan in Ireland he was back on the
blower in no time with an arrangement, which he played there and then
through the cables. Kate then went over to Ireland for the recording:
     "They were incredible: the energy and attitude towards recording
music. We worked from five in the afternoon till eight the next morning,
then went straight to the airport.
     "The whole idea of the song was that the choruses were this
guy flying off. He's a pilot who's been offered a load of money if
he doesn't ask any questions. He really wants to do it, for the challenge
as well, but his wife is really against it because she feels he's
going to get caught. The verses are her saying 'Don't do it!" and
the choruses are him saying "Look, I
.us can
do it, I can fly like a swallow". We used the idea of the ceilidh
band
.us taking off."
     But
.us The Dreaming
goes out on a nightmare. "Get Out of My House" sends shivers up
the old flagpole. It's inspired by the book of
.us The Shining
and the film of
.us Alien.
The scares prompted Kate to pen a suitably seat-clutching extravaganza
which eventually mutated into the rolling torture of the closing track.
Basically the haunted house one, but in Kate's hands anything can
happen -- and does! She becomes an old black landlady shrieking her
throat off at the entity; the wind; a bird; and finally, a venomous
donkey when she turns and faces the evil. Voices everywhere, not to
mention a sinister clattering backdrop. It took a week just to mix.
     I tell Kate that the space between my ears felt like pale jelly
after first exposure to this one on the Walkman. She is pleased!
     "Oh, good! It's meant to be a bit scary. It's just the idea
of someone being in this place and there's something else there...
You don't know what it is.
     "The track kept changing in the studio. This is something that's
never happened before on an album. That one was maybe half the
length it is now. The guitarist got this really nice riff going,
and I got this idea of two voices -- a person in the house, trying
to get away from this thing, but it's still there. So in
order to get away, they change their form -- first into a bird trying
to fly away from it. The thing can change as well, so
.us that
changes into this wind, and starts blowing all icy. The idea is to turn
around and face it. You've got this image of something turning
round and going "Aah!" just to try and scare it away."
     Time was running out. Two more...
     Do you think you've changed much, Kate?
     "I think I've definitely changed a lot since it all started
happening, the last three years. You can't
.us not
change. I think in some ways I don't worry about things so much, but
in other areas I probably worry much more. I can't work it out. Maybe
I'm a bit harder..."
     When are you going to play live again?
     "Oh, I don't know. It's probably going to take six months to work
it out, but I really want to. Now's the time, because I really wanted
a new album before I could do another show again, so I could just work
on these two albums and forget the two before. It's different stuff, so
it wouldn't mix. I feel the new stuff is more suited to the kind of
stage thing I'd like to do. The last show was really like a big
experimental thing, to see what could work and what we could do, but
it turned out a bit like a circus, all happy with a heavy bit here
and there. I feel these two albums can make something more intense,
but it's going to be so hard..."
     And that was about it.
     I don't care what they say, Kate Bush is a technicolour
lighthouse in all the murky covers and boring crap. She deserves
more from many quarters. Maybe you.
     I'm writing this in bed. Funny that. Good night. Zzz...

-- Kris Needs

END OF INTERVIEW

-- Andrew