The _Blitz_ (N.B.: not the same as _Bitz_) interview

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: The _Blitz_ (N.B.: not the same as _Bitz_) interview

     <The following interview first appeared in _Blitz_ magazine in the
fall of 1985. Edited by Andrew Marvick.>

                             _Kate_Bush_

     The strange thing when I meet Kate Bush is that she seems so start-
lingly _ordinary_. Dressed in jeans, boots and sweatshirt, with
little make-up and a lot of charm, she is slightly 'sweet', very much
at ease, pert and perky, perfectly friendly. Her tiny tear-shaped face is
one of bright delight and then wan concern. She looks tired and rather
_plain_ until she smiles--sweetly enough certainly to make the thought of
tackling the tickly, tricky subjects (the validity of The Rumours,
the calculation of her image, the spite and spit of the Vermorels'
book on her) too churlish to bother with.
     She is sincere and considerate, enormously perceptive (she
asks me if I mind if she smokes but not if I want one). Huddled
up on a cushion, she doesn't look at all striking--neither
frail waif nor seductive sorceress. She is sort of gooey, er drippy,
with a girlish_, _soppy_ sense of humour (oh dear, forgive me).
We sit in a big bare room, a dance mirror along one wall, a large
floral painting <Surely he means florid? There are no flowers
in the picture.> of a baby floating out of a sewer-pipe in
one corner and two Swedish chairs, a Spanish guitar, a Delius
record and ashtrays scattered around. A huge calm toy dog watches
us from one corner.
     "It's a _really_ nice day today," she sings as she makes the tea.
She is terribly nice and looks like she hasn't got a care in the world.
     Kate Bush has been away...somewhere--I don't really care
where or doing what but everyone seems to have heard something
fantastic or drastic about her--for nearly three years. But all the
rumours--about break-ups and breakdowns, loves and deaths, this and
that--that drift round this business like a nasty, unavoidable smell,
all falter against her sunny charms and happy confidence.
     Are you happy? I ask her. <Christ what a dope.>
     "Ooh yes," she says with a childlike delight
that could kill any rumour.
     She's very relaxed. When asked about a sex symbol
she says three words: "Gosh" and "Klaus Kinski".
We find she's still saying those classic quaint hippy-isms
she's so renowned and teased for. Things that are "cosmic"
and "karmic", talking of "new energies", the
"inspirational forces of teachers", "where we're at",
or "having built myself as a person". Once she even
tries to stop herself saying she had "found herself", but
it slipped out. She doesn't care. It's all very fetching.
     So she's been away, writing, dancing, building a studio,
making a slow, involved, neatly epic new album, watching videos,
thinking...
     "There was some re-evaluation, yes. Taking so long
a break made me realise what was importatnt--which was my work,
much more than being famous. I did think it would be harder
coming back. Actually, it's quite exciting coming out to a Brand
New World, meeting people, not being locked away...Communication's
a really important thing."
     The phrase drifts out like a wisp of smoke; she says
it to herself as much as to me.
     Did you miss it at all?
     "Actually...no, I didn't."
     It's almost a whisper. Then a smile. Like a secret.
     Signing for EMI when she was, incredibly, just sixteen, Kate
was number one for four weeks with her first single, a centre
of attention at nineteen. With eleven hits, those fierce, fraught,
erratic, erotic videos, the Pamela Stephenson impersonations, the
Vermorel book, the devotion and obsessions...she has been ever since.
One wonders about the effect on one so sensitive.
     Can you stand the scrutiny?
     "By and large, yes. When it started I had to be
quite strong. I couldn't cope with it as well now as I did
then. I've changed a lot since then. I wasn't naive, no.
I was more innocent then, but not the lost little girl the press
presented me as. They patronised me. <Just like Jim Shelley still
does.> I do get shocked by the attention, though. The way I work
is very isolated. I won't go out for months--literally--so
there's definite culture shock when I do."
     Are you shy?
     "Yes. I am. Not as shy as I used to be. I'm still
fighting it. Why? Oh, there's nothing good about being shy.
It should never stop you from doing things, especially on a work
level."
     Can you chat up people?
     "Oh...I don't know. That's probably when I'm
at my most shy--in social situations."
     Her voice trails away, as if she'd almost forgotten <illegible>.
     Do you feel vulnerable, at a disadvantage, meeting people?
     "No, not really. It's true a person's music
says a lot about them--is revealing--but that doesn't unnerve
me."
     How do people react to you? Do you frighten them?
     "I think they're great, actually. Great. I do
frighten them a bit, though."
     They think you're a bit strange?
     "Yes, maybe."
     Do they take up the image...the sexuality...the strangeness...the...
     "The weird energies...?"
     A perfect phrase.
     "No, people are mostly very nice. Very gentle and positive,
mostly."
     And are you a bit strange?
     "A bit, yes, I suppose."
     Always at her most animated and cheerful when she's back
in the world of her work--the engineers, musicians, songs and studios
and producers--Kate Bush is already looking forward to the next
two-year project. <This must be a reference to the _four-year_
project which ensued.>
     "When I come out into the world like this, it's only to say,
'Here's the album', so I can get on with the next one."
     When she says the fame is enjoyable "for the opportunities,
the doors you can knock and that will open", they're all
to do with work. All the "really brilliant people" it's
taken her to meet turn out to be engineers or musicians. She sees
her best quality as being her ability "to work for long periods
of time". She does, though, confess to a certain conflict: "Being
shy and wanting communication, being a loner and liking people.
Feedback is very important to me."
    Indeed, when I mention what a neat series of singles she's had (_The_
Man_With_the_Child_in_His_Eyes_, _Wow_, _Hammer_Horror_, _Breathing_,
_Babooshka_, _Army_Dreamers_, _The_Dreaming_, the cane-swishing _Sat_In_
_Your_Lap_ and the new one, a most subtle, sneaky pop single, her most
modern song yet <What on Earth is that supposed to mean?>)
she is positively overjoyed. She seems very easily--if quite
touchingly--pleased.
     "I can't tell yo what a buzz it gives me for you
to say that, really", she gushes, clearly delighted.
     She fends off the sticky business of her obsessive, fascinated
followers and the Vermorel episode with a mixture of calm
and cuteness, innocence and knowing, that says she won't be drawn
into thinking about them. <This and Shelley's earlier mentions
of Kate's obsessive fans and Fred Vermorel are references to
V.'s two books "about" Kate and his third book, an essay
on the phenomenon of fans which contains some particularly nasty-minded
commentary about Kate's admirers. It's pretty clear that
Shelley has taken everything Vermorel wrote as the truth--a serious
miscalculation. Kate herself, true to character, is too polite to
name names or contradict the insinuations directly.>
     "People say there are these people...I don't know what they mean,"
she insists. "No, nothing that was written about me ever _hurt_ me, no."
She goes on: "Music is such a powerful force. If
people are affected by my music the I was by...early Roxy, or Lotte
Lenya or _Sgt._Pepper_, for instance--_that_, to me, is
staggering. I can't relate to that at all." And maybe she can't.
     Who do you do it for--yourself, for family, some vague
immortality...?
     "I'm not sure. It's very important for me that my
friends and family...It's almost to say, 'I'm writing
this and I want it to be as good as you'd like it to be,'
like choosing a present...The immortality of music, it's an
extraordinary concept, isn't it? People say I'm a
perfectionist. I insist on things being right. But I don't
know that anything can be perfect. When you're making it,
though, you know it's going to be like that _forever_..."
     She says it like a child: simple, astonished, overawed. She
holds her breath.
     Kate admits she is very happy, agrees she's probably
"more stable than I've ever been. I've certainly
relaxed." When I ask her if she thinks most about the past,
present or future, she is pleased to say, "The present. I think
a lot less about the past now. Which is good.
     "I've always felt there are more happy things to life
than sad, yes. I feel that's the only way to survive. I've
had a very happy life, especially when I left school and was with
Lindsay Kemp--it was so liberating. For the first time I was an
individual: mobile, free. I haven't found life very difficult,
no. I'm very lucky."
     Do things happen to you or do you make them happen?
     "I tend to believe that what you put out comes back.
I think you _can_ make things happen."
     What makes you happy?
     "Well, I have so little time. I don't have a manager
so I'm always organising things. Films amaze me--films like
_Don't_Look_Now_, Hitchcock, _The_Godfather_--totally, totally brilliant.
_The_Innocents_. I'm sure my love for films will take me closer to them,
although I don't know that I want to be in them." <This interview
took place before Kate began directing her own videos.>
     Is the single about the notion it might better to be
dead--"Doing a deal with Good, get him to swap places",
"Running up the hll" to Heaven, to be where He is?
     "That's a _nice_ interpretation. <Kate's usual way of saying it's
an incorrect interpretation, or at least not exactly the meaning she
intended.> It's very much about love, really: trying to keep it alive. I
don't know that perfect love exists in any human being, but I
don't think it can be encouraged enough."
     Do you think about death much?
     "Yes, my imagination's got a lot of negative
triggers. Images are always much stronger when they're negative."
     I've just had a day to think about Kate Bush, and she
seems to me an intriguing, strikingly strange affair. Certainly
the impish, demure, modest, meek, very plaintive <plaintive?>
person I met didn't resemble the stern, impressively _disturbed_
figure, clad in cloak and crossbow and proud, dramatic stare who
stepped challengingly into the soft smugness of the Wogan show
the night before. Nor the voluptuous, ferocious creature who lies,
breathless and abandoned, over the next LP sleeve. I wonder, turning
the rumour on its head, if it isn't in fact the severe isolation of
her life, rather than the greedy glare of press and public, that gets to
her most.
     She talks of "ringing friends after two years since the last
album was finished and being able to talk with them again."
     She mentions with a touching but very fresh sadness, the death
of Klaus Nomi (who died two years ago at least) almost as if she'd
just heard.
     She says of signing to EMI at sixteen. "It's quite normal
these days, though, surely. _Bands_, bands are quite young, aren't they?
     "It really is such a relief it is finished. I know the work
has arranged my life, but I'm very grateful, it's given me a lot.
It's a little like living life _faster_."
     Is it so important?
     "It's a very close second to my friends and family"
(that constant, enigmatic phrase <enigmatic?>). She calls
out to one of them: "Would you say I have a separate life from
my work?"
     "Not at all," says the voice, "but that's
how it has to be."
     "Your friends are the people you work with," she continues.
"I don't think it's possible to have a social
life...really."
     She looks a touch apologetic, sounds rather vague, and the
hint of uncertainty drifing over the silence distracts us both.
It strikes me then that Kate Bush lives in a very small world,
and at that moment, for no real reason, I feel rather sorry for her.