John Shearlaw's second interview with Kate Bush (9/80)

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick
 Subject: John Shearlaw's second interview with Kate Bush (9/80)

 <The follwoing interview appeared in _Record_Mirror_ in September 1980.>


                        _The_Shock_of_the_New_

         Depression, introspection and reassessment--they've all
      been part of Kate Bush's life since her "Tour of Life"
       over two years ago. Her new single marks a radical change in her
         style, and she says: "I was drained and tired--I needed
         a shock to my writing to get me going again. Now it's
         come back it feels really great!" John Shearlaw falls
           backwards going forwards...and brings Kate up to date.

     Kate Bush has come to terms with her success and
reputation...and still she contrives to surprise with every
turn.
     No longer the little girl, wide-eyed, fey and whimsical,
so beloved of award-show presenters with her squeaky string
of "amazings" and "fantastics", she's
a determined, at times even gently aggressive character who
manages to ride at the helm of an "organisation"--principally
her family and her friends--entirely devoted to nurturing and
at times protecting her talent.
     Kate Bush today sets up her own interviews, controls
her own photographs, slavishly protects her fans through
her club and, more so than ever, works on albums and tours
at her own pace. <Pace? What pace?> And still we love her
for it? <Damn right.>
     It's been two years now since what Kate calls her
"Tour of Life", a massive circus of a tour that won't,
repeat won't take place again until next year at the earliest.
Again, it's been six months since the last single and _Sat_In_
_Your_Lap_, as much as anything she's done, is the start of a new era,
another "cosmic cycle" that will see the release
of a new album later this year.
     And now that all those ideas in the past--a
theatrical tour that was a combination of the innovative
and the unexpected, an album last year that surpassed all that
went before it--have become reality, she's
a powerful personality. SHe makes points where she
used to make only comments, argues from experience now
as much as from excitement, pushes herself as an artist
("one of us", she says, referring to the type)
much more than a surprised, precocious talent.
     Yet she's still infectious <huh?>, vulnerable at
times, as open to ideas as ever. Richness and fame don't
embarass her; slowness in honing her creativity probably
does, just a little.
     Her favourite expression on this meeting wasn't
one of wonderment, astonishment (ah, the cliche!); rather
a dismissive pout of "_Pah!_"--almost French: knowledgeable, and
nearly coquettish. "_Pah!_ Let them think that! _Pah!_ That's wrong!"
she seems to imply, ready to underline _her_ ideas.
Call it a change, call it maturity, call it confidence
in her art, for it almost certainly is. Take money:
     "I've changed. I don't pretend it's
not there any more, which I used to do," she says.
"I'm not worried about being rich, I just
didn't think of taking advantage of it. Now I buy
things that I can use, things that will help me, like
synthesisers and drum machines.
     "My life has never been into money, more into
emotional desires; like being an incredible singer or
an incredible dancer; and if I can buy something that can
help me, I will now. But I wouldn't buy something
that I couldn't live with, like a country house
which I don't need. <Actually, about two years after
giving this interview, Kate bought--a country house.>
I'd rather buy a huge synthesiser that I could live
with all day."
     She emphasises and explains, thinks out the question,
returns to her theme. The easy answers have gone over the
years. Take her career...
     Kate maintains that there hasn't really been a _gap_, even
though she admits that _Sat_In_Your_Lap_ only surfaced
after her longest break to date.
     "My slowness at doing things surprises me,"
she says, "but i have been doing things continuously.
It's a battle to keep up with all the things I want
to do, and obviously things like dancing are going to
suffer. I couldn't spend twelve hours a day in a studio
like I'm doing at the moment, and dance, as well."
     Again the emphasis on her way of working--the only way.
The ups and downs are of her own making, they don't
follow rules. And Kate only bows to her own pressures.
     "The last album was the first one that I would actually
hand over to people with a smile," she says, almost
seeming to imply that it was the first one she was
actually pleased with, "and that was followed by a
greater period of non-creativity, when I just couldn't
write properly at all.
     "It happened before, when the tour was over,
and then I felt I'd just given so much out that I
was like a drained battery, very physically and tired
and also a bit depressed.
     "This time it was worse; a sort of terrible
introverted depression. The anti-climax after all the
work really set in in a bad way, and that can be very
damaging to an artist. I could sit down at the piano and _want_
to write, and nothing would happen. It was like complete
introspection time.
     "I suppose I had about two months out earlier this
year...and that was a break I really needed. It gave me
time to see friends, do things I hadn't been able to do
for three years.
     "It wasn't really as if I was missing out on
normality," she laughs. "I'd rather hang on
to madness than normality anyway, so it was more like recharging."
     But something more came out of it than just a rest?
     "Oh yes!" The smile returns. "I felt as
if my writing needed some kind of shock, and I think I've
found one for myself. The single is the start, and I'm
trying to be brave about the rest of it. It's almost
as if I'm going for commercial-type "hits"
for the whole album.
     <I have always been struck by this statement. It seems
to me to indicate that Kate really doesn't have a very
sound notion of what is "commercial"--which is all
to the good, of course. For if she felt that _The_Dreaming_
had a commercial sound, then some listeners's criticism that she
seemed to have developed a calculatedly commercial sound for the
next album--_Hounds_of_Love_--loses credence, since her mental
loses credence, since her mental image of "commercial"
image of "commercial" sound is so different from the sound of
_Hounds_of_Love_.>
     "I want it to be experimental and quite _cinematic_,
if that doesn't sound too arrogant. _Never_For_Ever_ was
slightly cinematic, so I'll just have to go all the way."
     The shock that Kate refers to, eyes almost ablaze
as she uses the word, came months ago...after she started
to work with a rhythm machine while she was writing.
     "I'm sure lots of things that I'm trying
to do won't work," she says, "but I found that
the main problem was the rhythm section. The piano, which is
what I was used to writing with, is so far removed from the
drums. So I tried writing with the rhythm rather than the tune."
     _Sat_In_Your_Lap_, naturally, is the first fruit of the new
approach--original (in that it could only _be_
Kate Bush) marriage of pounding drum sounds and two layers of
voice. There is a theme, but it's the rhythm that hits
you first, blasting right through to the synthesised end--a step
that she knows is likely to continue the critical division.
     "I was really frightened about the single for a while,"
she admits. "I mixed the song and played it to people,
and there was complete silence afterwards, or else people
would say they liked it to me and perhaps go away and say
what they really thought.
     "Of course it's really worrying, because
there's an assumption that if you're one of _us_--an
artist--you don't need feedback at all, when in
fact you need it as much as ever, if not more.
I really appreciate feedback, and I'm lucky that
the people closest to me, my friends and family, are used
to me and realise that I've got my own 'bowl of
feedback' to rely on."
     And that's more important than the public reaction,
or do you worry?
     "There will always be some who are irritated by me.
I seem to irritate a lot of people," she smiles, "and
in a way that's quite a good thing."
     Nor will the change stop there. Drums, Kate enthuses,
are as wide a concept as music itself, and she's determined
to go further than "a lazy acceptance of a drum kit."
Add that to the news that she'll be working with other
musicians on the new album--"the best around"--and
it seems likely that "Kate Bush 4" will be one of
the big surprises of the year.
     As a preview she plays me one track that's currently
being worked on: a wild soaring collusion with Irish group
Planxty entitled _Night_of_the_Swallow_, which
also features one of the Chieftains. Again the sound
is unmistakable, but this time it's Kate Bush married to
the heartbeat of traditional Irish folk.
     Discussing the project brings Kate Bush into larger-than-life
focus once more. The burning enthusiasm returns, along with the string
of "amazings", "incredibles" and "fantastics".
She'd been up all night in the studio the previous night in
Dublin, and her reactions are genuine, real and hard to resist.
     "I'm still really up from the experience," she says. "In fact,
I'm still _reeling_ from it. I asked them if they'd be interested, and
the whole thing was so relaxed, it was wonderful. I badly
want to work with them again. I'm so excited about the
fusion.
     "And I think that there's so much of the
Irish in my mother that it all suddenly came back to me--it
was fate rearing its head at just the right time!"
     So that's two surprises already, and although
Kate has been making demo tracks since March, and Abbey
Road is now her second home, the rest will have to wait
until summer completion...if all goes according to plan.
     What about the book you're planning to write, though?
Again, she sighs (a marginal sigh) and repeats her line:
"There's so many things I want to do, and it's
so hard to fit them all in..."
     But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the
end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write
it myself. Without saying anything about the other books,
which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak,
otherwise there's this _huge_ misrepresented area.
misrepresented area.
     "In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's
much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything
yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective
reality, obviously.
     "It'd be about what it's like being me, my
feelings, my friends, the people that I rely on. I
_need_ to be represented in a positive way, and I'll have to
do it myself."
     <This book, tentatively titled _Leaving_My_Tracks_, was
shelved in 1984.>
     Slowly Abbey Road is beginning to wake up for another
Kate Bush day that is likely to last until the early hours
of the next morning, and she announces candidly:
"I'm beginning to feel like _shit_. Ireland's
catching up on me. And all the things that
have to be done. It's impossible to do it all in the time...perhaps
if I could stop sleeping it would helpf."
     But she doesn't really believe it, even if she does
wonder if transcendental meditation does help you to relax
enough to cut down on those "very wonderful"hours
of sleep. No, she decides, it's work as usual.
     Twenty-two years old, a Tour of Life and three albums
behind her...and the rest can wait. Treading devastatingly
and surely between the doubters and the devotees, Kate Bush
may well continue to "amaze" us all.

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-- Andrew Marvick