Chris Heath's interview, fall 1985

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Chris Heath's interview, fall 1985

         A brief interview from not too long ago, edited by IED>

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

                              _Kate_Bush_

          She had a number one single when she was eighteen,
              and followed that with a string of hits.
                Then she vanished. So what happened?
                    Did she disappear to France?
             Did she turn into an eighteen-stone blob?
          No, she didn't, actually, reports Chris Heath...


     "It's really exciting," giggles Kate Bush. "It's great. I'm
really knocked out. It's wonderful..."
     From the moment I walk into the drive of her South
London "retreat", it's obvious that Kate Bush
is excited about life--and the success of her first single
in three years, _Running_Up_That_Hill_. She
unlocks the forbidding black iron gates and bounces up to
welcome me, casually dressed in yellow jacket and turned-up jeans,
looking smaller, more friendly and less sophisticated than in all
those arty videos. After ushering me upstairs into the huge dance
room (this house is mainly used for rehearsal and dance practice),
she disappears to make some tea.
     There's hardly any furniture here, just two large
cushions in the middle of the floor. But one wall is covered
in mirrors (to watch herself dancing in) and another is nearly
obscured by a huge, rather gruesome painting of a baby doll,
its head cracked open, half-submerged in a pool of water. In
one corner there's an archery bow; in another, an arrow.
This strange, quiet place seems a long way away from the noisy
record-company offices, expensive hotels and trendy clubs
where most popstars are found. But then Kate's never been one
for that kind of thing.
     "I'd just prefer to get on with my work: writing
and recording songs," she explains, bringing the tea and
sitting herself down on the cushion next to me. In fact, that's
the lifestyle she's really wanted ever since she released
her single _Wuthering_Heights_, when she was eighteen.
It shot to number one as the nation became bewitched by
her extremely strange dances on _Top_of_the_Pops_.
     "I haven't seen that video for ages," she laughs.
"But the last time I saw it I actually thought it was quite
good."
     Those days, despite her success, most people thought of
her as the rather weird doctor's daughter with the "funny"
voice and the funnier dances, who said either "amazing"
or "wow" (or possibly both) whenever she opened her mouth.
     They only took her a bit more seriously a couple of years ago,
when she had a hit about nuclear war (_Breathing_),
and then another about a boy who grows up wanting to be a soldier
(_Army_Dreamers_).
     "That's my favourite video," she says fondly.
"It was the only one with a true sense of story and simplicity.
It said what the music was saying."
     Then things went a bit wrong. Her last LP, _The_Dreaming_,
in 1982, had no big hit singles and met with a mixed response.
Some said it was her best record ever, but others either said she
was down the dumper or just laughed because it featured Rolf Harris
playing dijeridu. She's still fuming about that.
     "There's so much snobbishness. Their attitude was
not to take him seriously, but in fact, on levels of musicianship
he was fantastic."
     After that she seemed to disappear completely. &odqIt's
incredible," she laughs. "I must have heard at least
a dozen completely different rumours about things I was doing--that
I was living in France for three years, that I'm now eighteen
stone!"
     The truth, she insists, is far less sinister. She took her first
proper break in five years, spending time at home, "cleaning
it up, sleeping, watching TV and videos," seeing friends
and finding a new dance teacher. Then she bought, designed and
equipped her very own massive recording studio at home, wrote some
songs and spent ages recording them--especially the long
"concept" piece about a girl alone in the water close
to drowning (_The_Ninth_Wave_), which fills up the whole second
side of her new LP. By the time she'd finished that, she
looked at the calendar and it was the middle of 1985. And here
she is, back with another huge hit, just like the old days, with
_Running_Up_That_Hill_.
     "It's about the way men and women don't
fundamentally understand each other--that we're different,"
she explains. So what's al this stuff about making a
deal with God to swap places? "If you were in a situation
where you could see things from the other person's point
of view," she answers, "you'd understand their point
of view a lot better. It's really about two people who
are in love and who are scared about the other person not
feeling the same."
     In fact, quite a lot of the new album, _Hounds_of_Love_,
is about being scared of love. "The title track especially,"
she agrees. "It's about not wanting the hounds of love
to catch you and tear you apart. Because that's what you think
they're going to do. But," she adds cheerfully, "they _might_
want to catch you and lick you and play a game and be friendly dogs."
     "Talking about myself is _really_ boring," repeats
Kate time and time again as she sips her tea.
She says she's not especially fond of interviews, and she
only does them to help launch her records--"send it off safe
into the world, like you do a baby or a ship"--so that they
earn her enough money to make the next one. And she's not
very in touch with her competition in the charts. "I never
listen to much contemporary music," she says, admitting that
she'd never even _heard_ Madonna before Live Aid.
     But surely all the usual popstar things like getting
stopped in the street happen to her anyway? "Yeah,"
she replies, adding with genuine surprise, "I think it's
fabulous that people still remember me--I find it quite extraordinary.
And normally people are so nice."
     It's because of things like that that, at the moment,
she says she's "very positive" about everything.
"It's very exciting," she says again and again.
"More exciting than it was seven years ago, because now
the music's so much more a part of me."
     And if anything _does_ get her down, she's not prepared to
talk about it anyway. When asked about the worst thing that's
happened to her, she snaps, "I don't think that I
want to answer such a negatively-based question,"--though she
does then cryptically reply, "Losing my I-Ching card, and
Killing Joke splitting up."
     What _is_ she talking about? Can she explain?
     "No," she giggles. "Let's get off this
negativity. Next question!"
     How weird. Maybe the Killing Joke bit's got something
to do with the fact that Youth, the band's old bass player (now in
Brilliant), appears on the new LP. She does say later that "Killing
Joke were a band with such a good energy--I really liked _Eighties_."
And she does hint at one aspect of all this that she doesn't like.
     "The situation where a lot of people actually _say_
what they think about you--it's quite hard to cope with,"
she explains, sipping her second cup of tea. "I think
everybody's sensitive, because everybody wants to be liked.
Everybody would like to be attractive and loved, and all those basic
things."
     But apart from those worries, she's doing fine. "It's
very busy," she says, downing the dregs and standing up, "but--as
I've said about four million times--it's _very_ exciting."