Jane Solanas's _New_Musical_Express_ interview, October 1983

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick
 Subject: Jane Solanas's _New_Musical_Express_ interview, October 1983

     IED has done it again. For those who want it, here is yet
another Kate Bush interview. This one really annoyed IED while he
was transcribing it--the result is that he interrupted with
comments more than he should have. Perhaps it provoked him
because it seems to revel in the very smarminess and
exploitation that it purports to criticize. Ms. Solanas apparently
has a very confused attitude toward Kate, especially as it
relates to sexuality. Also, in what seems almost to be a
tradition among British interviewers, she much prefers her own
commentary to the replies of her subject. Out of a two-hour
conversation with Kate, Ms. Solanas is able to produce scarcely
five hundred words of actual quoted speech--yet her "interview" is
2,500 words long.

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                           The Barmy Dreamer



       Kate Bush has molded herself in an icon of pop erotica--
           so much that suburban couples claim her breasts
     stimulate their love-making. Yet to like her voice and music
       is the ultimate in being uncool. Jane Solanas decides to
    give Kate the benefit of the doubt. Photography: Anton Corbijn.


"Dear Kate,
      "I love you. My brother is in the army and he's a git.
I couldn't tell anyone else that. And no one else seems
bothered about soldiers getting blown up young. I know you care.
I just don't know you..."

"Dear Kate,
     "Me and my wife watched you on the telly and we
found your breasts stimulate our love-making..."

"Dear Kate,
     "Your being Roman Catholic interests me..."


     There is the school of thought that Kate Bush is for mums
and dads. Freakily lovable. The ET of pop--something to laugh
at when females impersonate her on TV by donning explosions of
brown wig, making stabbing actions with their hands, all the
while wailing like a cat-fight.
     And there's a school who believe Kate Bush is "profoundly
subversive," like Fred Vermorel. <Off to a great start--citing Vermorel.>
     Fred--more familiar to _NME_ readers as
Malcolm McLaren's old philosophical sparring partner,
and co-author of a brilliant book, _The_Sex_Pistols_File_--
for some reason freaked on Kate's nipples, which stuck
out on the first EMI promotional poster; and went on to
weave an almost demi-goddess identity for her, largely
drawn from the rustic history of the Bush clan and Kate's
turbulent schooldays <This is a reference to the second
Vermorel book about Kate, _The_Secret_History_of_Kate_Bush_.>
(e.g., Why did Kate never fight back when girls pulled her hair?).
     But among a younger generation, the school of thought seems to
be that liking Kate Bush is about as hip as owning a set of Melanie
albums, or else that she is _wonderful_. <Interesting
that Kate was out of fashion in 1983, following the
release of her most difficult and experimental album (_The_Dreaming_),
but that only two years later, with the release of _Hounds_of_Love_,
she would be "re-discovered" and labeled "hip" once again.>
     Someone at EMI said, "I've yet to see anyone sum
Kate Bush up."
     Kate Bush has said, "The thing I don't like about _NME_
is that it seems so cynical..."
     Those are the two main problems.
     It would be so easy to be horrible about Kate Bush. A hundred,
even affectionate, jokes immediately come to mind.
     The press tend to think Ms. Bush is immune to satire,
innuendo and downright rudeness. Somehow it's all right
for Simon Bates to phone her up live on Radio One and bellow
down the receiver about Kate's bank balance and sex life.
The press can always say, "Fuck you, you turgid cretin,"
but a household name is trained to be polite. It's a shame.
     But on the other hand, Kate Bush is enigmatic, and what do
you do when you don't understand someone? Either attack
them ("Kate Bush is a spaced-out Druid with lush tits..." is
a familiar cry), or build fantasies around them _a_la_ Fred Vermorel.
     I fell foul of the latter approach. I had so many
preconceptions about the woman that it was becoming painful.
I expected her to be into horror movies, astrology, mysticism
and sex, and I based my questions around those subjects. I also
expected her to have a sense of humour that would have me rolling
in the aisles. I asked about the Kate Bush sense of humour at
EMI and was told, Yes, it existed, but was "off the wall".
Unfortunately, it seemed to be out of the room when I was present,
but then I shouldn't have expected a sideshow.
     I don't think the press would get Kate Bush so wrong if she
did not marry her music, which is strong enough already, to
a controversial visual presentation. We've all got an instant
picture of Kate Bush to draw on: "Oh yeah, she dances, don't
she?" being another familiar cry. But think about it: how
many dancing songwriters can you count on one hand?
     Kate Bush has been somewhat dogged by her past, particularly
in light of the facts that she has been out of the public eye for over
a year and that her last major tour was as long ago as 1979. Hence
impressions of Kate tend to be hopelessly outdated.
     I never saw Kate Bush live, and had no interest in her
work until the release of the _Sat_In_Your_Lap_ single,
so I asked EMI to show me some videos. I watched
the Hammersmith gig from '79 and got a total shock:
all Kate's songs which were finely imprinted on my brain
were transformed into something straight out of _Salem's_Lot_.
     I got the impression that the twenty-one year-old Kate Bush was
trying to be Peter Pan, but to me she came across as Varoomshka
crossed with a vampire. It was genuinely frightening watching Kate
stalking around the stage in various strange garb being manhandled
by two male-slave dancers <This is apparently a reference to
the fact that Stewart Avon-Arnold and Gary Hurst are black!>,
and pulling pained expressions with that extraordinary face of hers.
Subtle it wasn't.
     Four years on, Kate has calmed down a bit. I watched a
preview of her _Single_File_ video: as might have been
predicted, she is in her element on video. There's still
quite a lot of frantic arm-waving (and jeezus has she got
a pair of arms!), but when she interprets her later material,
she's easily one of the most entertaining musicians on film.
The ones to look out for are _Army_Dreamers_ (see Kate get blown up),
_There_Goes_a_Tenner_ (see Kate blow a safe), _Sat_In_Your_Lap_ (see
men wearing goats' legs) and _The_Dreaming_ (see God?). <Ms. Solanas
seems to have confused the last video with the
_Suspended_in_Gaffa_ video.>
     Kate Bush hit her artistic peak on _The_Dreaming_ album.
Yet sadly, it wasn't recognised as an important
or courageous album, and caused more confusion than fuss.
The three singles taken from it--_Sat_In_Your_Lap_, _The_Dreaming_
and _There_Goes_a_Tenner_--were her finest
ever, and sounded to me like sure-fire radio hits.
But the Radio One DJs (except for David Jensen) titered nervously, and
_The_Dreaming_ just about did the whole station in.
     She blew away that MOR _Wuthering_Heights_ image
by changing her voice (lowering it) and injecting
aggression into the music. There's a note on the bottom of
_The_Dreaming_ album instructing you to play the record "LOUD!". Before,
Kate Bush as a flaming great noise would never have occurred to anyone.
<Oops! IED must have been imagining his first
four years of speaker-busting listening-sessions with
_The_Kick_Inside_ and _Lionheart_!>
     Kate Bush has always been a unique talent on the music scene.
Her individuality and imagination are unusual in an industry which
constantly makes do without either. As a songwriter, she has the
ability to take intriguing subject-matter--yes, _Wuthering_Heights_,
Houdini, Henry James's _The_Turn_of_the_Screw_, aspects
of war, anything from aborigines getting mowed down by
trucks to soft-porn--and condensing it into song.
     She wrote one of the best anti-army songs ever (_Army_Dreamers_);
and, of course, she has that voice: distinctive and constantly changing.
     Her attitude to work is interesting. It's well known that the
EMI machine has been good to her, allowing an extraordinary freedom
in the running of her career. But there is still the pressure
to promote herself, and she has wilfully taken a back-seat. She
spent so much time working on _The_Dreaming_ that
she knackered herself, and scrapped plans to tour. She
is currently working on new material, but this is still only
at the demo stage, and how long she will spend in the studio
throwing her voice at walls is anyone's guess.
     She is reluctant to do press because of bad experiences.
She seems obsessed with doing things right, be it a performance
or a photograph, and she does not seem afraid to wait. I find
that a rare quality.
     The interview I did with Kate Bush <Oh, yeah! That's
right, there was an interview!> for two hours in a dance
studio in South London was marred by the preconceptions I mentioned
earlier.
     I've got only one clear impression of Kate Bush's
personality: she's sweet. <Two hours "interviewing"
the greatest artist of the last thirty years, and her only impression
is that Kate is "sweet." And Ms. Solanas was even paid for
this work!> She wouldn't stomp on a spider if it was three
inches wide and crawling through her hair. She wouldn't
shout at anyone no matter how obnoxious they were being. I got the
feeling that all the energy other twenty-five year-olds might
expend on being sassy, sexy and a minor hell-raiser in order to
impress their personality on the world, for her is contained
and released in her work.
     This is not to say Kate Bush outside of a studio or
off a stage is vacuous or innocent, but she is unusually quiet.
I saw no trace of the extravert that comes across in her music.
I don't think I gave her enough scope to talk about the
things--chiefly her songwriting and her dancing--that she would
have like to.
     A lot of the time was spent patiently explaining that No,
she wasn't into this or that, or no, that was an interesting
way of looking at it, but not her way. As a "fan", I
was probably cute. <Fan? Cute? IED has missed something
here.> As an interviewer, a load of crap.
For example, I liked the way she handled this question:
     Fred Vermorel wrote a curious thing about your lacking
aggressive emotions. Yet _The_Dreaming_ seemed to work because it
sounded so aggressive. Can you comment on that?
     "I think the last album is about trying to cope...to
get through all the shit. <Cf. _Not_This_Time_.>
I think it _was_ positive: showing how certain people
approach all these negative things--war, crime, etcetera. I don't
think I'm actually an aggressive person, but I _can_ be.
But I release that energy in work. I think it't wrong to
get angry. If people get angry, it kind of freaks everybody out
and they can't concentrate on what they're doing."
     I thought that was an admirable piece of logic. I wasn't
so keen on Kate's surprised dismissal of my question on her
sexual identity as a female performer:
     I once saw a photograph of you taken from your live tour
and you were covered in sweat and licking the barrel of a
gun. I found it erotic but frightening, because it was so blatant.
(I also accused her, after watching the video of the Hammersmith
gig, of oozing sex all over the stage.) What, as a performer, are
your feelings with regard to an audience's erotic reaction to you?
     "I suppose it's something I don't really know
about. Your energy on stage dictates the character you are--then.
I'm too subjective. I just see me...Either I get embarassed,
or it's working."
     It seemed to be news to Kate that her visual presence might
have a dramatic sexual effect on people. I closed that part of the
conversation with a muttered, "Well, it must be my filthy
mind (chortle)." But later, I remembered all the comments I'd
heard when I'd told people I was going to meet Kate Bush:
"tits" and "naked photographs" being uppermost.
<Oh, well, that's proof...of something, at least.>
     Also, in a later question about her initial press identity,
Kate remarked: "When I first appeared, the press couldn't
handle me in any normal way. I was the girl who sang in a funny
voice, with 'The Body'..."
     There is a video on the _Video_File_ <sic> that shows
"The Body" to wonderful effect. As you can
imagine, I buried the next question--Do you think women get off
on you?--in fine flippant style. <This is _very_ peculiar.>
But I liked her candidness in other areas. Do you like books?
     "Yes. But I'm a really slow reader. Every time I read
a good book, it's in my head for weeks...Like _The_Shining_.
That went straight into a song <_Get_Out_of_My_House_>."
     We had already established that Kate was a keen film fan when I
asked this one:
     Do you like gory things or taboo subjects?
     "Some taboo subjects definitely attract me...I don't
think I do like particularly gory things. With _Don't_Look_Now_,
_Psycho_. It's not the gore so much as the emotional effect--the
distortion. I don't think I'd ever go and see _Texas_Chainsaw_Massacre_
and _Friday_the_13th_, things like that. I think it's sick: you _know_
everybody is going to die disgustingly. I prefer films that work
around the subject, build you up..."
     Did you ever go through the hippie stage?
     "No. I was just a few years too young. In some ways,
my attitudes could be associated with the time. I mean, I was
growing up in the '60s..." (Kate is well gone on the
Beatles.) <Likes the Beatles? Well, that clinches it: hippie
through and through!>
     Were you ever into teenage (fashion) cults, like a
skinhead (titter) or something?
     "No. I don't think I ever felt I could be
convincing enough in any of the roles."
     Do you ever get drunk?
     "I don't really like alcohol. It doesn't
get on with my body...(But) I've got a strong stomach.
I can eat a lot...a great combination of things."
     Well, I think it's far more interesting to know
that Kate Bush is a gut than that Lena Zavaroni is a Freudian
anorexic. <Huh?>
     You wouldn't believe how physically small Kate Bush is.
After the interview, I looked down at her and, for a split second,
I wondered how she'd ever make it across the street, let alone
be someone people would like to touch, annoy, know. She lacks the
cynicism and mistrust of the '80s, yet she's got a
singlemindedness that transgresses all the pitfalls of fashion
and falling sales.
     We should stop bugging her.

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-- Andrew Marvick