Radio One Interview (final episode)

[Steve Wallis <stevew%mushroom.computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK>]

Here is the conclusion of the interview on Radio One between Kate Bush and
the sadly late Roger Scott.  This interview occurred rather a long time ago
(the 14th October 1989) and I apologise for the delay, but better late than
never...

Many thanks to Dave Osborne for this transcription.

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KT: Again, I think it's such a human condition, where we 
actually, a lot of the time, have such fear of things 
actually there's no need to be frightened of at all. It's 
all in our heads, this big kind of trap --- you know, 
that actually it's not always as terrifying as we think.  
Again, you know, it's meant to be saying "OK, so it can 
be rough but there must be a way out --- it's all right!" 
<laughs>

<_The_Fog_ is played>

RS: Kate Bush and _The_Fog_ from _The_Sensual_World_.
I got to stick this question in at some point, because 
everyone's saying "When is he going to ask her?"  I ask 
you this every time and it's, "Are you going to tour 
this?" --- are you going to take it out on the road and 
'do it'?

KT: It's a very good question... <pause -- laughs>.  
Umm... <pause>... I really enjoyed touring and this is so 
ironic.  Everyone presumed I hated touring and this is 
why we haven't since.  I wanted to spend time being a 
songwriter and writing songs, not re-creating songs that 
were already written, in front of an audience.  They're 
two very different experiences.  Touring is very much 
about contact.  Real contact with an audience; with 
people.  It's really having a good time, and it's also 
quite exhausting.  It's a big commitment and exhausting.  
Now, music is completely different.  It's very 
microscopic --- that thing of taking lots of little bits 
of time and putting them together: it's just not running 
in real time.  It's very introverted and it is the actual 
process of creation from scratch, and that meant so much 
more to me over the last few years than that contact.  
And I think I've learnt a tremendous amount by being in 
the studio for such intense periods doing this.  Not only 
have I learnt a lot about the process of writing and and 
working with music but I've learnt a lot about myself, I 
think.  But I do miss the human contact of touring and it 
really scares me --- the idea of performing live --- 
because I haven't done it for so long and the odd times I 
have, I felt very uncomfortable.  I'd really like to tour 
again but I'm terrified of committing myself at this 
point, but I guess this is one of the first points for a 
long time I'm actually starting to think "...it could be 
fun!".  So the answer, in a short way...

RS: ...is "maybe"

KT: ...is "I dunno"!  <laughs>

RS: Only do it if it's going to be fun.

KT: Yes.

RS: Don't do it if it's going to be a nightmare.

KT: Yes, and I think another reason why I haven't is I 
haven't been sure about that.  You're absolutely right.

RS: I must ask you this --- you must know what this one's 
about.  It's called "Heads We're Dancing" and...  I read 
the lyrics here --- well, no, I'm not going to read them 
out but you just tell me what gave you the idea for this 
song.

KT: This is the darkest song on the album and I think, in 
some ways, it's not a song I would write now.  But I had 
a friend who went to this dinner, years ago.  He was 
sitting next to this guy all evening and they were 
chatting --- they had some of the most incredible 
conversations: he was so impressed with this guy.  He was 
so intellectual and charming; so well-read, you know.  He 
just thought this guy was perfect --- the chemistry 
between them... wonderful!  They talked all night.  And 
the next day, he went up to his friend who had arranged 
the evening and he said, "Who was that guy I was sitting 
next to last night?  He was fascinating!"  And the guy 
said to him, "Oh, didn't you know?  That was 
Oppenheimer!"  And my friend's reaction was absolute 
horror, because he had no idea.  And if he had known, he 
said he would never have behaved like that.  He's not 
even sure he would have spoken to the guy because he had 
such strong feelings of hatred for everything that man 
represented.  I thought that was really a bizarre and 
interesting situation, that he should really have liked 
this guy.  He was sitting there with this person and he 
really liked him.  But as soon as he knew the guy's name, 
he almost wanted to throw up in absolute disgust, he was 
so turned off by what this guy represented.  And I 
thought, in some ways it must have been a wonderful 
relief for Oppenheimer that night.  I think he himself 
perhaps paid the price --- you know what I mean?  He did 
not have an easy conscience, that man.  And I was 
thinking this was very interesting: the idea of someone 
you found so charming, and later you find out they're the 
most horrific thing you can imagine.  And I thought, 
well, this is kind of like the devil, isn't it?  Where 
the devil is meant to be very sweet-spoken, very 
charming, very good looking!  Everything that's kind of 
attractive in order to tempt --- temptation is an 
attractive thing.  And I thought, what about the idea of 
someone who dances with the devil?  And then I thought, 
you can't, you know --- it has to be a human.  Who is the 
nearest thing to the embodiment of the devil?  It's 
Hitler: he is the personification of evil, as far as you 
can think of a single being out of history.  It's a very 
dark idea, but it's the idea of this girl who goes to a 
big ball; very expensive, romantic, exciting, and it's 
1939, before the war starts.  And this guy, very 
charming, very sweet-spoken, comes up and asks her to 
dance but he does it by throwing a coin and he says, "If 
the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!"  
Even that's a very attractive "come on", isn't it?  And 
the idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with 
him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and 
she is hit with this absolute horror --- absolute horror.  
What could be worse?  To have been so close to the man... 
she could have tried to kill him... she could have tried 
to change history, had she known at that point what was 
actually happening.  And I think Hitler is a person who 
fooled so many people.  He fooled nations of people.  And 
I don't think you can blame those people for being 
fooled, and maybe it's these very charming people... 
maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to 
be.

<_Heads_We're_Dancing_ is played>

RS: As Kate was saying, a very dark song: 
_Heads_We're_Dancing_, from her new album, 
_The_Sensual_World_.  Well, from that, let's move to this 
truly beautiful song right at the end here, called 
_This_Woman's_Work_, which you've done with the 
orchestra.  This one I can't get to grips with, either.  
What it is she's just done; whether she's expecting; or 
exactly what's going on in this.  All I know is: I hear 
it; it's a beautiful song; but I can't quite get to grips 
with it.

KT: All right.  John Hughes, the American film director, 
had just made this film called "She's Having a Baby", and 
he had a scene in the film that he wanted a song to go 
with.  And the film's very light: it's a lovely comedy.  
His films are very human, and it's just about this young 
guy --- falls in love with a girl, marries her.  He's 
still very much a kid.  She gets pregnant, and it's all 
still very light and child-like until she's just about to 
have the baby and the nurse comes up to him and says it's 
a in a breech position and they don't know what the 
situation will be.  So, while she's in the operating 
room, he has so sit and wait in the waiting room and it's 
a very powerful piece of film where he's just sitting, 
thinking; and this is actually the moment in the film 
where he has to grow up.  He has no choice.  There he is, 
he's not a kid any more; you can see he's in a very 
grown-up situation.  And he starts, in his head, going 
back to the times they were together.  There are clips of 
film of them laughing together and doing up their flat 
and all this kind of thing.  And it was such a powerful 
visual: it's one of the quickest songs I've ever written.  
It was so easy to write.  We had the piece of footage on 
video, so we plugged it up so that I could actually watch 
the monitor while I was sitting at the piano and I just 
wrote the song to these visuals.  It was almost a matter 
of telling the story, and it was a lovely thing to do: I 
really enjoyed doing it.

RS: Has the film been out yet?

KT: Yes.  I don't think it was released here.  It was 
released in America and did OK, but not really as well as 
his other films, which have been very successful.  But it 
was a lovely thing to be asked to write for, because it 
was such a moving piece of film and I really like writing 
to visuals as well --- I find that very exciting.

<_This_Woman's_Work_ is played>

RS: Just to conclude, you said earlier that the making of 
this album and the years of work that have gone into 
this, that one thing that came out of it, you did learn a 
lot about yourself.  What sort of things have you learnt 
about yourself over the past three or four years?

KT: Um, well that's a very "up front" question there, 
Roger!  And I suppose, I don't think I would have said 
after the last album "this is just an album".  That's a 
very important thing for me to have learnt: I am very 
obsessive about my work.  I spend most of my time 
working, and I think this is something that I've really 
looked at in the last few years: there's a lot more to 
life than just working and just making an album. It is 
just an album, it's just a part of my life.  It's not my 
Life.  And I think it was, you know... making albums was 
my life and it doesn't feel like that is any more.  And 
that's tremendous, the sense of freedom that that gives 
me.  It's so good and I think it's really healthy and 
much better for me, to try and put these things into 
perspective, you know.

RS: Right.  Let us conclude with _Deeper_Understanding_ 
here... just fill me in on that one.

KT: This is about people... well, about the modern 
situation, where more and more people are having less 
contact with human beings.  We spend all day with 
machines; all night with machines.  You know, all day, 
you're on the phone, all night you're watching telly.  
Press a button, this happens.  You can get your shopping 
from the Ceefax!  It's like this long chain of machines 
that actually stop you going out into the world.  It's 
like more and more humans are becoming isolated and 
contained in their homes.  And this is the idea of 
someone who spends all their time with their computer 
and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount 
of time with their computer.  People really build up 
heavy relationships with their computers!  And this 
person sees an ad in a magazine for a new program: a 
special program that's for lonely people, lost people.  
So this buff sends off for it, gets it, puts it in their 
computer and then like <pyoong!>, it turns into this big 
voice that's saying to them, "Look, I know that you're 
not very happy, and I can offer you love: I'm her to love 
you.  I love you!"  And it's the idea of a divine energy 
coming through the least expected thing.  For me, when I 
think of computers, it's such a cold contact and yet, at 
the same time, I really believe that computers could be a 
tremendous way for us to look at ourselves in a very 
spiritual way because I think computers could teach us 
more about ourselves than we've been able to look at, so 
far.  I think there's a large part of us that is like a 
computer.  I think in some ways, there's a lot of natural 
processes that are like programs... do you know what I 
mean?  And I think that, more and more, the more we get 
into computers and science like that, the more we're 
going to open up our spirituality.  And it was the idea 
of this that this... the last place you would expect to 
find love, you know, real love, is from a computer and, 
you know, this is almost like the voice of angels 
speaking to this person, saying they've come to save 
them: "Look, we're here, we love you, we're here to love 
you!"  And it's just too much, really, because this is 
just a mere human being and they're being sucked into the 
machine and they have to be rescued from it.  And all 
they want is that, because this is 'real' contact.

RS: Let's hear the song:  _Deeper_Understanding_, Kate 
Bush, from her _Sensual_World_ album.  Kate, thank you 
very much.

KT: Thank you.

<_Deeper_Understanding_ is played>

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   \       / /\ // / \      // /         |       Steve Wallis       |
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     \    \/ //\\/ /   \  / \/ /         |  stevew@uk.ac.man.cs.r5  |
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