Still another old (1985) article about Kate Bush: by Pat Thomas

[EDH7PBA%OAC.UCLA.EDU@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Still another old (1985) article about Kate Bush: by Pat Thomas


                _The_Story_of_A_Musical_Misfit:_Kate_Bush_


                Pat Thomas goes walkabout in the Kate Bush

     In the days when the Boomtown Rats actually had
something to contribute to popular music and Bobby Geldof's
aspirations were to feed his own basic desires
rather than the world, a strange sort of foil to the
new wave movement emerged in the shape of a doctor's
doctor from Plumstead in Kent.
     She was Kate Bush, and in the late 'seventies she and Bob used
to sweep the boards at the then prestigious _Melody_Maker_
Readers' Poll awards. They stood together like chalk
and cheese, but Geldof, not usually known for heaping praise
on other performers, thought Kate was ace.
     Kate, whose first single, _Wuthering_Heights_,
took her to number one in 1978, couldn't have been
more flattered by the chief Rat's praise, especially
since she thought the Boomtown Rats were, well, amazing.
     "I didn't think they'd be into me. With
really beautiful punk groups like that, and the Stranglers,
too, I wonder if they think I'm...not so much square, but
whether they think maybe I'm oblong."
     At the time it seemed like a typically Kate Bush thing to
say. But actually, it's quite a perceptive statement. In
the context of the new wave, Kate Bush _was_
rather oblong, a sort of flower floating on a sea of muck.
     She was born July 30, 1958, and by the time she
was sixteen she had pocketed a 3,000-Pound advance and an
EMI recording contract. Mindful of her age, and since they
probably had no idea what to do with her anyway, EMI kept her
"under wraps", studying dance, music and mime, and
writing songs, for just over two years.
     The advance, plus an inheritance left to her by an aunt,
made sure that from the moment she left school, with ten
"O-levels", she would never have to cope with the same
worries that most sixteen-year-olds have about finding a job.
Also, by the time her first LP came out, her parents had set
her and her two brothers up in a three-story house (one floor
each) in Lewisham--so her independence was assured from an early
age.
     Although music was an option, it wasn't really
first choice. She really wanted to be either a psychiatrist
or a social worker.
     "I never thought of music seriously as a career,
because it's so difficult to make it. It's all a matter
of timing, contracts and talent--and luck. I deliberately
tried to have a career-orientated ambition, something I
could hold onto."
     But as luck would have it, she was so bad at physics,
chemistry and maths that music won almost by default. <This
statement conveys a false causality. Kate's
choice of a career in music was already well underway by the time
she returned to school briefly to take her "mock A-levels".>
So she began writing songs in her bedroom, never daring to
let anyone hear the results. <Kate had in fact been writing
songs since the age of eleven. There was in fact no connection between
Kate's discovery of her vocation as an artist and her performance
in the sciences.> Eventually, though, a family friend, Ricky
Hopper, heard her tapes and tried to flog them to the record
industry. The industry, true to form, was not impressed.
     Ricky decided to get in touch with his old pal from Cambridge,
Dave "Pink Floyd" Gilmour. Gilmour gave Kate some studio
time to do proper demo tapes, introduced her to a producer--Andrew
Powell--and eventually persuaded his record company--EMI--to
give her a contract. Without wishing to sound too glib, from there
on in it was plain sailing.
     Kate comes from a musical family who enjoyed a passion for
traditional English and Irish music. Indeed, to this day, Kate's
brother Paddy plays in her band. In the early days, though, she sang
in his band, the K. T. Bush Band. <Although Brian Bath and Vic
King were evidently friends of Paddy's and had been playing with
him for a time before Kate joined in, it's safe to assume that
the band's name did not pre-date Kate's involvement.>
As Pete Silverton at _Sounds_ wrote:
     "She talked about that period as though it were
a part of a fondly remembered but long lost childhood. Her affection
for it, for once, obscuring the hesitancy and
inarticulacy <sic> of her speech."
     The band, such as it was, did the rounds of South East London pubs
for only five months in the Spring of '77, singing songs by the Rolling
Stones, the Beatles and Free. The mind boggles at what, say,
_Satisfaction_ must've sounded like with Kate's tonsils wrapped around
it, but she insists that it was "a good experience".
<But?> So she didn't exactly pay her dues, but neither
was she the novice that early press reports made her out to be.
     Her first LP, _The_Kick_Inside_, and her second, _Lionheart_,
were released at opposite ends of 1979. <Sic--the year was 1978.> _The_
_Kick_Inside_ contained _Wuthering_Heights_ and the superb _The_Man_With_
_the_Child_in_His_Eyes_ (written by Kate when she was a mere fourteen),
and was a brave musical debut. Few listeners could understand how such a
young girl could write such sensual and perceptive songs. Men
wanted to get into her knickers <God how the IED hates
the kind of sleaze-bags who still make statements like this!>
and women wanted to scratch her eyes out <And like this, too!>
Nevertheless, enough of the U.K. bought the LP to put it at number
three on the charts.
     Kate's whooping, soaring vocals, described by _NME_
as capable of "aging the nation's glassblowers", became
an immediate target. She refuted suggestions that it was a deliberate
and cultivated hook. Her story was that it stemmed from her days
in the school choir. In those days she couldn't hit the high notes,
so she practiced hard until her voice could span an impressive
four octaves. <This figure, for some reason quite commonly
cited, is quite inaccurate. Virtually no human voice is capable
of "spanning" four full octaves. Kate' recorded vocal
range extends slightly beyond three full octaves.>
"Honest," she would smile, "I just opened my mouth
and out it came."
     Undoubtedly her most eloquent champion back then was Harry
Doherty of _Melody_Maker_. On the release of _Lionheart_ he wrote:
     "Kate Bush scares me for a combination of reasons.
The first is the diplomatic pleasantness and awesome logic she
displays in interviews. But that is only one dimension--she is in
fact a 'nice' person. It is when that initial impact
is paired with the multifarious intensity of her music that I
start to quiver.
     "The contrast is eerie and frightening. In the studio,
living out her imaginative fantasies, Kate Bush is stricken by a
rush of surrealism, and suddenly a range of weird personalities
are displayed."
     Which pretty much sums up what Kate Bush's music was, and
has continued to be, right up to her current LP, _Hounds_of_Love_.
It also brings up that old chestnut of her "niceness".
Most of her early interviewers were either trying to find the
chink in her armour of niceness or were full of ridiculous praise
for how well adjusted she was. It's particularly damning to the music
press that most of these articles were headed _Bush_Whacked_.
So much for creative journalism. <This from a man who ascribes to
"men" a communal passion to "get into her knickers"!>
     Kate, however, was difficult to provoke, and breezed through
the task of meeting the press with impressive ease. Everybody from
_Vogue_ to _The_Vegetarian_ was interested
in her off-beat views on sex, drugs and bean curd.
Kate's niceness was, in fact, a deliberate attempt to hold
onto sanity in a world where praise and success were being heaped
onto her faster than most personalities could cope with. She jibed
at Tim Lott from _Record_Mirror_, in a rare moment
of sarcasm and after considerable provocation,
"Actually I mug old ladies. Would you like me to smash a
window or something?"
     Of course, she didn't break the window. She was never
into drugs, either--her only real addictions being nicotine and
chocolate. In the same article Lott said, "She has experimented
with drugs--marijuana and something she never managed to identify."
He wrote it as an indictment of her naivete, but it really only
served to reinforce how incredibly average a teenager she was.
<Average? Nowadays, Kate's moderation is not at all
typical of teenagers.>
     Spring 1979 saw the next major event in the explosive days
of her early career. For months Kate had been locked away in a
North London theatre preparing for her U.K. concert debut.
It was one of the most highly publicised secrets of the time.
She was being wired up with a special headset-microphone so that
she could perform her interpretive dance sequences without hindrance.
     The second single from _Lionheart_ at the time was _Wow_--the
story of and "aging gay actor and a starlet who slept
her way into a dream role", according to _The_Sun_. She
sang it on TV for the first time on (and the papers made
a real "Shock! Horror!> out of this one) Good Friday--and
on the BBC, to boot! The occasion was an all-star Abba TV special,
_The_Daily_Express_ reckoned she would jam the switchboards by
flinging her body into wanton, erotic gestures". _The_Daily_Mail_
wrote: "She walks like Joan Collins. She looks like Joan Collins.
For a moment you think she _is_ Joan Collins."
     The Abba show was a taste of what her live show was to be.
Kate was given enough money to let her fertile imagination run
wild, and it did, in an onstage orgy of fantasy, theatre,
mime, dance, magic, and, oh yes--music.
<Actually, Kate used a large part of her
own fortune to finance the tour. She lost many thousands of Pounds
on the venture.>
She was so busy preparing the extravaganza that she had to
decline the coveted invitation to sing the theme from the Bond film
_Moonraker_. <Again, this is misleading. Kate probably could have
found time to record John Barry's song if she had wanted to, but
she has said that she did not feel it was quite the appropriate
song for her to sing. She said afterwards that the song was
"lovely", and praised Shirley Bassey's performance.>
     Things were still coming pretty easy to Kate Bush. The tour
was, overall, well received, although Charles Shear Murray of _NME_
.bf ital
did proffer the opinion that it was "one of the most
condescending gigs in history", and "crammed with
lame attempts to widen the audience's artistic horizons.".
<Something from which Mr. Murray would clearly have benefited.>
     "Just tell me one thing," asked Kate of the review,
"was he actually at the Palladium that night?"
     Charles assured her that he spent a week there that night.
<This is a distortion. Murray allegedly said something like that to
his colleague Danny Baker at _NME_, and Baker in turn told Kate.>
And so it went.
     Despite this, her international reputation continued to grow.
The only problem on the horizon seemed to be where she was going to
find the time to write material for her third LP. EMI, worried about
keeping the momentum going, released an EP--_Kate_Bush_On_Stage_--
which, for a show whose entire success hinged on a stunning visual
impact <Well, obviously not its _entire_ success!>, seemed a bit silly.
The later release of the video made eminently more sense.
     From the release of her third LP, _Never_For_Ever_
(1980), the Kate Bush story becomes a real problem. The big
noise amidst which she was unleashed onto an unsuspecting
public had died down. She toured. She kept her head and
persevered in reading the teachings of the philosopher Gurdjieff,
and in her belief in the supernatural. < All three of the
preceeding statements are misleading. Kate _had_ toured,
once only, in the spring of 1979. She did not continue
to tour; in fact, she has not concertised since then, except as
a guest performer at other artists' shows. She did _not_
"persevere in reading the teachings of the philosopher Gurdjieff."
All indications are that whatever benefit Kate gleaned from the writings
of Gurdjieff had been acknowledged and assimilated long before _Never_
_For_Ever_ was recorded. There is no indication that Gurdjieff's ideas
have had a particularly important or dominating influence on Kate's
life or work, at any time in her life--except insofar as those
ideas harmonised with her own. Finally, Kate has _never_ said
.bf ital
never

that she "believes" in the supernatural. She has always
tried to make it clear that she simply maintains an open mind on
such subjects as supernatural phenomena, as on all subjects about which
human beings have no conclusive data.>
She kept on having hit records. She kept making money in the pop
world, even though to the pop world she was a bit of an outcast.
     _Never_For_Ever_ gave her her first number one LP in September 1980,
and delivered three hit singles: _Breathing_, _Babooshka_ and _Army_
_Dreamers_. _The_Eastern_Evening_News_ (Who? -- Ed.) <original to text>
described the album as "faultless". _Melody_Maker_ gave it a grudging
thumbs up. _NME_, bless them, proclaimed it "dishonest" and "the very
opposite of what we need". _Annabel_, ever on top
of things, stuck its neck out and claimed Kate Bush
was "going to be B-I-G."
     Soon after, the "Kate Bush Silly Season" began in the press. _Oh_
Boy_ gave her the "Nastiest Barnet Award". "Seems
Angela Rippon's sick of hearing her hair compared
to a lump of stale meringue," they wrote. "Instead
we've presented the award to Kate Bush...And 'bush'
is the word, all right. Sometimes she looks like an old mattress
with springs sticking out! We'll bet if her hairdresser
dug deep enough, he'd probably find her school beret under all
that lot!"
     Kate took a break from music, but made a brief appearance
in the BBC series _Looking_Good,_Feeling_Fit_.
"Slinky, hip-swiveling singer Kate Bush can be seen tonight as
audiences have never seen her: tired, perspiring and completely
disheveled," wrote _The_Daily_Mirror's_ television editor--who was
obviously into that sort of thing. Her single, _December_Will_Be_Magic_
_Again_, just scraped into the Top 30. There was a six-month silence,
then a single, _Sat_In_Your_Lap_. Then a year's silence
broken by the occasional press report and a
_Record_Mirror_ interview with John Shearlaw.
     In it, she spoke about the tiredness and depression that followed
her only tour, the Tour of Life, in 1979. She recalled that _Never_For_
_Ever_ was "the first album I would actually hand over to someone with
a smile"; and the long period of non-creativity that followed
its release. She talked about "recharging" her creative
batteries and about the next LP. "I want it to be experimental
and quite cinematic--if that doesn't sound too arrogant."
There it was, that niceness creeping up again.
     Her fourth LP, _The_Dreaming_, appeared months later than scheduled,
in September '82. It was her first attempt at producing herself, and
once again the reviews were mixed. Peter Gabriel was a contributor <This
is untrue.> whose influence on the whole tone of the LP was
considerable. <This judgement has been made often. It is
untrue that Gabriel "contributed" to the album. He took
no part in its recording, and is not credited with any direct
input on the album's liner-notes. Some of the sounds and techniques
created for Gabriel's third solo album--on which Kate sang some
supporting vocals--did indeed influence some of the sounds on _The_
_Dreaming_. This is partly due, however, to the two albums' heavy
use of the Fairlight CMI, a sophisticated sampling synthesiser; partly
due to the innovative sounds which the drummer Phil Collins and
the engineer Hugh Padgham devised for the rhythms on the Gabriel
album; and partly due to the experiments which Gabriel and other
adventurous musicians were making at that time with the technique
of composing to the accompaniment of synthetic rhythms, rather than
or in conjunction with other musical instruments. But _The_Dreaming_
was every bit as innovative an album as the Gabriel LP--in some ways
considerably more so.> Of the disk's three singles--_Sat_In_Your_Lap_,
the title track and _There_Goes_a_Tenner_--
only the first one was a hit.
     Kate Bush is a musical misfit who would do better to turn her
talents to the cinema or the theatre. <"Do better"?!>
She is a bedroom musician who got lucky. <"Bedroom
musician"?! What does that make pop-music critics?>
A delicate creature who rationalises the creative process more
than is probably good for her. In an interview with Harry Doherty
she said of the process of recording her first album: "It's
very frustrating to see something that you have been keeping
transient for years just suddenly become solid. It's a little
disconcerting...but exciting."
     Kate Bush still sells lots of records, but now it seems
more like hard work promoting and explaining her increasingly
difficult-to-grasp concepts. With each release, her albums become
less of an entertainment and more of an adventure. <Adventure
is not entertaining?> Certainly _Hounds_of_Love_
(see reviews section) finds her diving deeper into that netherworld
of fantasy for which she is so well known. <Fantasy? _Hounds_of_Love_
is as firmly rooted in reality as any album of its time. The
question is, how narrowly can "reality" be defined?>