Karen Swayne's _Kerrang!_ interview, fall 1982

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick
 Subject: Karen Swayne's _Kerrang!_ interview, fall 1982

     <IED has transcribed the following interview with Kate in
the hope of expiating his recent sin of misdating two events
in Kate's career. This interview is much better than the one
which IED posted yesterday. Maybe it's because she was more
relaxed with a female interviewer--but maybe it's just because the
interviewer didn't act like a total jerk, as Mike Nicholls did. Some of
Kate's answers are stock, but somehow they seem a bit more spontaneous
than is the case with some of the other interviews from the period.>


                        _Bushy_Tales_

       Kate Bush tells Karen Swayne about her latest dream

     The long-haired denim-clad figure emerging from the recesses of
_Kerrang!_ stopped in his tracks, listening intently to the record on the
turntable.
     "This Kate Bush?" he queried. "Good, isn't
she? I really like her stuff."
     When I told my mum I'd be interviewing the lady, she was
so impressed I thought for one awful moment that she was going to
ask me to get her autograph. Now, I can't think of many artists
with that kind of across-the-board appeal, and the funny thing
is that Kate Bush makes some very strange records.
     Her first album in two years is _The_Dreaming_,
and it's as far-removed from the current chart sounds as you could
possibly imagine (or hope for), but in it went at number three--proof
that you don't have to conform to commercial formulae to be (or
stay) successful.
     A surprisingly slight but strikingly attractive figure with
a direct gaze, clad in baggy jumper and jeans, Kate Bush
is nothing like her dreadful public image--that of a breathless,
squeaky-voiced girl whose vocabulary is limited to words like
"wow" and "incredible". I wondered if she finds it
disconcerting that people have such a weird image of her.
     "Oh yeah, and it worries me a bit, too," she says.
"That image was something that was created in the first two
years of my popularity, though, when people latched onto the
fact that I was young and female, rather than a young female
singer/songwriter.
     "Now it's much easier for females to be
recognised as that, because there are more around, but when I
started there was really only me and Debbie Harry, and we got
tied into the whole body thing. It was very flattering, but not
the ideal image I would have chosen."
     Because people _see_ that, rather than hear the songs...
     "Right, and I've spent so much time trying to prove
to those people that there's more to me than that. Just the fact
that I'm still around and my art keeps happening should
convince them.
     "I can't go around all the time telling people
where I'm at now. I just have to hope that there are
people who see the changes and change with me. I think it was just
that the media didn't know how to handle it, because it
was so unusual at the time."
     Did you ever feel like you were being treated as a child
prodigy?
     "I felt that because I was so young people weren't
taking me seriously. They couldn't accept that I could be
so involved in what I was doing.
     "I was very lucky, because when I left school I knew what
I wanted to do, and it worked out; and I suppose I did grow up fairly
fast, because in a way, I was working in an area two or three
years ahead of myself."
     Kate is now twenty-four, and _The_Dreaming_
is undoubtedly her most mature work to date. It took over a year to make,
and the result is an intricate, complex web of ideas and images,
with sounds used to create pictures which are sometimes too abstract
for easy comprehension. I wondered if she was occasionally being
deliberately obscure.
     "No, not at all, because although there's a lot going on in
some of the tracks, to me they're kept on a simple basis within
themselves--all the ideas are aiming towards the same picture.
     "Like, some people have said it's 'over-produced',
but I don't think it is, because I know what I was trying to
get at. I think of over-produced albums as the ones that have
strings, brass, choirs, that sort of thing."
     What about the lyrics, though? As I sat struggling with
them, I felt that you had made them consciously oblique in places.
     "I don't intend them to be that way. <Ha!>
It's just the way they come out. The thing is, when I have
subject-matter, the best way I could explain it would be across
ten pages of foolscap, but as I've got to get it in a song,
I have to precis everything.
     "Maybe the album is more difficult for people than
I meant it to be. It isn't intended to be complicated,
but it obviously is, for some. A lot of it is to do with the
fact that the songs are very involved--there's lots of different
layers.
     "Hopefully the next one will be simpler, but each time
it gets harder, because _I'm_ getting
more involved. I'm trying to do something better
all the time."
     Do you worry about losing fans?
     "Yeah, I do, because obviously from a purely financial
point of view I depend on money to make albums, and if they're
not successful it's quite likely I won't have the
scope to do what I want on the next one.
     "But, I'd rather go artistically the way I want to
than hang onto an audience, because you have to keep doing what you
feel. It's just luck if you can hang onto the people, as
well."
     The time and cost of _The_Dreaming_ has already
been fairly well documented--did you intend to
spend that long recording it?
     "No, not at all. But I find that a lot of things I do
now take so much longer than I thought they would."
     What is it that takes the time? Translating your ideas onto
record?
     "Yeah, that's what's really hard. In so many
cases you need to be in the studio to get the sounds, and it can
maybe take a couple of days just to get one idea across. Sometimes
you wonder if you should just leave them."
     How do you feel about your early records now?
     "I don't really like them. A lot of the stuff
on the first two albums I wasn't at all happy with. I think
I'm still fond of a lot of the songs, but I was unhappy about
the way they came across on record.
     "Also, until this album I'd never really enjoyed
the sound of my own voice. It's always been very difficult
for me, because I've wanted to hear the songs in a different
way."
     Why didn't you like it?
     "I think a lot of people don't like the sound of their
own voices. It's like you have to keep working towards something you
eventually _do_ like. It was very satisfying for me on this album,
because for the first time I can sit and listen to the vocals and think,
'Yeah, that's actually quite good.'"
     Were you pushing it more to create different sounds?
     "In a way. But I probably used to push it more in other
ways. I went through a phase of trying to leap up and down a lot
when I was writing songs. I used to try to push it almost
acrobatically. Now I'm trying more to get the song across,
and I have more control. When I'm trying to think up the
character is when it needs a bit of push."
     Do you always try to put yourself in the role of a character,
then?
     "Yeah, normally, because the song is always _about_
something, and always from a particular viewpoint. There's
normally a personality that runs along with it.
     "Sometimes I really have to work at it to get
in the right frame of mind, because it's maybe the
opposite of how I'm feeling, but other times it feels
almost like an extension of me, which it is, in some ways."
     You have been accused in the past of living in some
kind of fantasy world. Would you say you refuse to face up to
reality?
     "No. I think I do, actually, although there are certain
parts of me that definitely don't want to look at reality.
Generally speaking, though, I'm quite realistic, but perhaps
the songs on the first two albums created some kind of fantasy
image, so people presumed that I lived in that kind of world."
     Where do you get the ideas for songs from?
     "Anywhere, really. There're two or three tracks that
I had the ideas for on the last album but never got together.
Others come from films, books or stories from people I know. That
kind of thing."
     What about _Pull_Out_the_Pin_, a song about Viet Nam?
Was that something you'd always wanted to write about?
     "No, I didn't think I'd ever want to write
about it until I saw this documentary on television which
moved me so much I thought I just had to."
     The title track concerns the abuse of Aborigines by so-called
civilised man. Where did that interest come from?
     "That's something that's been growing for years.
It started when I was tiny, and my brother bought _Sun_Arise_
<a pop/folk hit of the early 1960s by Australian artist Rolf Harris>.
We thought it was brilliant--to me, that's a classic record.
I started to become aware of the whole thing--that it's
almost an instinctive thing in white man to wipe out a race
that actually owns the land. It's happening all around the
world."
     Do you hope to change people's opinions by what you write?
     "No. Because I don't think a song can ever do that.
If people have strong opinions, then they're so deep-rooted
that you'll never be able to do much. Even if you can change
the way a few people think, you'll never be able to change the
situation anyway.
     "I don't ever write politically, because I know
nothing about politics. To me they seem more destructive than
helpful. I think I write from an emotional point of view, because
even though a situation may be political, there's
always some emotional element, and that's what gets to me."
     The thoughts and ideas are expressed through a variety of
sounds, an adventurous use of instruments and people--from
Rolf Harris on dijeridu to Percy Edwards on animal
impressions! Kate has also discovered the Fairlight, a
computerised synthesiser.
     "It's given me a completely different perspective
on sounds," she enthuses. "You can put any sound you
want onto the keyboard, so if you go 'Ugh!', you can
play 'Ugh!' all the way up the keyboard. Theoretically,
any sound that exists, you can play.
     "I think it's surprising that with all the gear
around at the moment, people aren't experimenting more."
     Whatever you may think of Kate Bush, you could never say
that she's not been prepared to take risks. In the four
years that have passed since her startling first single
_Wuthering_Heights_ she has grown increasingly adventurous
and ambitious, creating music that she hopes will last longer
than much of today's transient pop.
     Of _The_Dreaming_ she says: "I wanted it to be a long-lasting
album, because my favourite records are the ones that grow on you--that
you play lots of times because each time you hear something
different."
     Never particularly a public fave, her last live shows
were three years ago, and although she plans to do some in the
future, they'll take at least six months to prepare. <Try
six years--and counting.>
     She admits that she found her initial success hard
to cope with at times.
     "I still find some things frightening. I've
adjusted a hell of a lot, but it still scares me. There are
so many aspects that if you start thinking about are terrifying.
The best thing to do is not even to think about them. Just try
to sail through."

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-- Andrew Marvick