Mike Nicholls interview, September 1980

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Mike Nicholls interview, September 1980


         <Edited by Andrew Marvick. Not too much of interest in
this brief interview, but worth reading for one or two of Kate's
comments. More than two thirds of this "interview" consists of
vapid padding by Nicholls, rather than Kate's own words. It's
amazing to learn that he talked with Kate for two hours, and could
only come up with the following to show for it.>

                         Among the Bushes

     In a one-page extravaganza not-paid-by-the-word Mike Nicholls
   has a jaw with Kate Bush about magicians and death. Andy Phillips
           whips out his...Box Brownie (ha--fooled you!)

     Inevitably there's more to the picture than meets even a
familiar eye. Take Kate Bush. One is scarcely sticking one's
neck out when describing her as the brightest and most original
new rock talent to have emerged these past few years. Hit singles,
albums, an astonishing tour and an unspoiled, warm personality
to go with the sympathetic smile and occasionally voluptuous body.
     Not only that, but she's just spent six months
producing a new collection of ten songs. Of these, four were
recorded beforehand and another five already written before her
long sojourn at Abbey Road Studios. So you might be tempted to
add the word "perfectionist" to the gathering list of
credits, though the lady herself would disagree.
     "I know I'm not perfect, and it's that imperfection
that keeps me wanting to do more. I think all my paranoias, all
my doubts, all my vulnerabilities are what I depend on to keep my
songs happening."
     And make no mistake--her songs are her _life_.
     "One of the band told me last night/That music is all he's
got in his life" (_Blow_Away_, from the new LP, _Never_For_Ever_).
     Is that really you, using the third person as a slender
disguise?
     "Yeah. Well done. It is. All we ever look for--"
(another title, as it happens) "--is God--in inverted
commas--inasmuch as it's something you believe in. Belief
is motivation, and without that you don't do anything. I
mean, if your 'God' is to have a husband and children, and
you actually fulfill that...Many people don't
see the thing they love and believe in as 'God'. Most
of us aren't happy, really, and it's only because our God
isn't complete."
     And work is your God?
     "It is, really, yes, as everything in my life goes into
my music. Everything that happens to me affects me, and it comes
out in my music. If I did become perfect, and was no longer
vulnerable, perhaps I wouldn't get the same shocks of emotion
that make me want to write."
     So while philosophers and related beings have for centuries
been ruminating about how to attain perfectability, Kate Bush,
still a baby at twenty-two, has decided this is the very thing
that ought to be bypassed. Heavy stuff, huh? Then again, she wasn't
exactly brought up in a lightweight atmosphere.
     Since our last rendezvous at the beginning of the year, I'd
heard that her father and brothers, ostensibly the greatest
influences in her family-orientated life, were great believers
in the Russian "magician" George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
Thinking it might assist our dialogue, I spent some time before
the interview swotting up on the guy, who in the early
part of this century ran a school for wealthy mystics, that
preached stuff like "We had better torture our own spirit
than suffer the inanities of calm," and "Any unusual
effort has the effect of shaking the mind awake."
     Now there seems to be a certain amout of overlap between
these observations and Kate's remarks about "shocks of
emotion", but, perhaps fortunately for your good selves,
she didn't seem into having a protracted natter about G. I.
Gurdjieff (classic initials, what?)
     Besides, it wouldn't entirely have suited the circumstances
of our discourse. On a marginally sunny day, it seemed absurd
to be cooped up inside some dusty office at EMI, particularly
when outside their West One premises there is a little park. Now
you might think that in talking to Kate Bush in central London one
runs the risk of attracting inquisitive stares from God knows how
many passersby--especially when, during a photo-session on the same
piece of greenery last year, Cliff Richard was besieged by scores
of drooling school-kids.
     But rate-payers (no quips about EMI's ability to retain
this status, thank you very much) are allocated a key to the
gardens, so Kate and I spent a chatty couple of hours locked within
these leafy confines, and I was too much a gentleman to throw
away the key.
     Since the interview was for promotional purposes, it was hardly
surprising that she was happiest talking about the new songs. And
because these are the latest instalment of her life, questions were
answered conscientiously and, of course, enthusiastically. With
promotion being an extension of her work and hence her life, etc.,
it was illuminating to see how she handled interruptions to it.
     These came first from a couple of scruffy pubescents who
athletically scaled the spiky railings to see if she really was
who they thought she was, and then from a slightly lunched-looking
gardener who reckoned it was us that had done the climbing.
     Kate dealt with both in untypically peremptory fashion,
even though in retrospect the distractions added a little light
to the generally serious, if nonetheless enjoyable, shade of the
proceedings.
     Light and dark, good and bad. Both types of emotions flow
out of Kate Bush and into her songs. Visually, it's all there on the
sleeve of _Never_For_Ever_. Nick Price's
Hieronymus Bosch-style cover shows a confused
mass of bats and swans. The latter symbolise good, and on their
backs ride the bad--all of them billowing out of Kate's
dress, which is handsomely decorated with the clouds of her
imagination.
     The good emotions have produced songs like
_All_We_Ever_Look_For_ and _Blow_Away_--the one about
living for music and being naively optimistic
about death. The idea is that when she (or the musician she
is purportedly singing about) dies, he will go and join all
the other musicians in the sky. Hence, references to Keith Moon,
Sid, Buddy Holly and even Minnie Riperton, who died around the
time the song was being conceived.
     It was based on an article she read in the _Observer_
about people who had temporarily "died" through cardiac
arrests. Apparently several members of the public interviewed
about this experience reckoned they felt their spirits leave their
bodies and go through a door, where they were re-acquainted with
dead friends and relatives.
When their hearts were resuscitated, it was almost with
reluctance that they stepped back out of the room and returned
to their bodies.
     "So there's comfort for the guy in my band,"
Kate explains, "as when he dies, he'll go 'Hi, Jimi!'
It's very tongue-in-cheek, but it's a great thought that
if a musician dies, his soul will join all the other musicians',
and a poet's will join all the Dylan Thomases and all that."
     Hmmmm. The darker side of her emotions shows the lady
as down-to-earth as her surname befits. In fact, it's more than
realistic: it's downright sinister. Hence _The_Wedding_List_
and its obsession with revenge.
     What happens here is that at the point two people are about
to be married, the bridegroom gets shot. Who by is irrelevant,
but the bride's need for vengeance is so powerful that
all she thinks about is getting even with the villain. Since
his death is the best wedding gift she could have, he goes
right to the top of the (wedding) list.
     "Revenge is a terrible power, and the idea is to show
that it's so strong that even at such a tragic time it's
all she can think about. I find the whole aggression of human
beings fascinating--how we are suddenly whipped up to such an
extent that we can't see anything except that. Did you see the film
_Deathwish_, and the way the audience reacted evey time a
mugger got shot? Terrible--though I cheered, myself."
     Another film Kate saw recently was the highly publicised _Elephant_
_Man_, which, though directed by loony humourist Mel Brooks
(_Blazing_Saddles_ and _History_of_the_World_Part_I_)
is ultimately a tragic movie.
<Both Nicholls and Kate were mistaken on this point. The film was
directed by David Lynch (_Eraserhead_, _Dune_, _Blue_Velvet_). Mel
Brooks merely produced _Elephant_Man_, mainly because he was able to cast
his wife, Anne Bancorft, in a leading role. Given Kate's increasing
involvement in the craft and business of film direction since the time of
this interview, however, it's unlikely that she still
retains this misconception.> Ever ready to seek out the introspective
angle, she philosophises as follows:
     "I thought, 'How weird for a comedian to do such a
serious film,' but if you think of the syndrome of the
comedian who is hilarious onstage but really manic-depressive
at home, it figures."
     Of the few artists in her field whom she has met
she cites Peter Gabriel as one who is able to separate
his public and private personas.
     "Offstage he's very normal, and that's the
kind of thing I believe in." Kate helped out with the
backing vocals on his excellent recent album, and describes
the experience of walking into someone else's work as
"lovely--especially after the pressure of going out under
your own name.
     "I was thrilled to do it, and it's not often
that I meet people in the same position that I can relate to.
It's not like relating to people at EMI, as they're
on a completely different side of the fence."
     Does she not meet many artists at these notorious
record-biz ligs?
     "Well, I don't go to parties very often. Only if
I'm invited (shame!) or I've got time, or there's
someone there I want to meet. Often I don't like the hype
of the situation and that worries me a lot. Because there are
things I do which I feel are hyped, but because there is a good
motivation in there, I think you should do them. But it's
a drag that there always has to be a forced situation."
     Meeting Gabriel came about via different circumstances,
but he's obviously had a profound effect upon Kate, and on the
album sleeve he is thanked for "opening the windows". At
the end of the interview, she offered (honest!) to sign my copy of
_Never_For_Ever_, and included in the lengthy inscription the words
'Thank you for making me think.'"
     I don't know about that--it seemed very much a
case of vice-versa, and she does seem to do quite enough
thinking already. As she pointed out herself, "I'm
learning things all the time, and the more I learn, the more
I see there is to learn, and that's fascinating."
     The more open the road, the broader the horizon, and each time
I meet Kate Bush, the more there seems to be found out about her.
There's more to the picture than meets the eye; and,
particularly in her case, that's...fascinating?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Andrew Marvick