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

[Doug Alan <nessus@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>]

>  From: Andrew Marvick
>  Subject: John Shearlaw's second interview with Kate Bush (9/80)

This interview, which talks in part about the making of parts of *The
Dreaming* could not possibly be from '80, unless John Shearlaw had a
time machine.  9/81 would be much more believable.

> KATE: "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 [*The Dreaming*].

> 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" sound is so
> different from the sound of _Hounds_of_Love_.

C'mon Andy.  This is a silly argument.  There are three years
inbetween *The Dreaming* and *Hounds of Love*.  Clearly Kate had
plenty of time to revise her notions of what "commercial" is.  *The
Dreaming* was a dismall failure commercially compaired to Kate's other
albums.  This fact alone could do much to catalyze the process.

(An interesting point to note is that in England, the masses almost
wrote off Kate because of *The Dreaming*, while in the U.S., it was
*The Dreaming* that got her seriously noticed for the first time.
Life is weird.)

> KATE: "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."

It seems likely that Kate learned the hard way that you just can't
really be very "experimental" and "commercial" in the same song.

|>oug