KT Interview Transcription

[Stephen Thomas <spt1@ukc.ac.uk>]

The following is a transcript of an interview with Kate
recorded in 1982 a little after the release of _The Dreaming_.
The interview is the first of two that may be found on an
interview picture disc CD (catalogue number CBAK 4011, on
the Baktabak label), and takes approximately 20 minutes.
Text enclosed in [] are either comments, clarification or
parts where the transcription was unclear.

Transcription by Stephen Thomas.
Proofreading and corrections by Jeffrey Burka.
Additional thanks to Doug Alan.

The interview was recorded at a meal that Kate and the
interviewer (whose name is not mentioned) were sharing.
The recording quality is not particularly high (noticable
tape noise) and there is a lot of restaurant style noise in
the background.  Kate also had a tendency to speak with her
mouth full.

K = Kate, I = interviewer.

K: I've just got back from Europe, and I only got back the
   day before yesterday and I spent yesterday catching up
   on all the stuff I got behind with when I was in Europe.

I: What were you doing there?

K: TV's and a little bit of radio, but mainly TV's, and
   we did Italy and Germany.

I: And was that for the album?

K: Yes.  It was indirectly for the album because out there
   _The Dreaming_, the single, is still happening.

I: It has done better over there, has it?

K: Well, it's only just starting to happen, so we're doing
   TV's to help it, and every show we did, we did _The Dreaming_.
   So, you know, been testing to see how it does.  But it
   all helps the album, really, so I was into doing it from
   that point of view.  It's great, it's just very busy,
   thats all.

I: I saw the video for _The Dreaming_ - they eventually did
   get it on TV -

K: Yeah!

I: Very ... up to scratch, should I say, you know?

K: You liked it?  [sounding very little-girlish]

I: Umm!  [affirmative]

K: Oh, good.

I: It was similar to the stage set, you know - the dancers,
   but it had the benefit of all the people in the background.
   Where was it shot?

K: We shot it in [garbled - sounds like "uiks"], which is a video
   studio in Wandsworth.

I: Oh, that was a studio?  [surprise]

K: Yeah!

I: Crikey!

K: It was a very good set, wasn't it?  Incredible set designers.

I: Where did you get the guys [designers] from?

K: We actually found those set designers through the director
   I was using, through their production company.

I: Who did direct it?

K: It was Golden Dawn Productions, a guy called Paul Henry.

I: And what's going to be the next single that you're working on?

K: Well, we've done the video for the next one, which is _There
   Goes A Tenner_.

I: Sorry?

K: _There Goes A Tenner_.  [she was speaking with her mouth full]

I: What's that about?  Is it about robbery?

K: Yeah, yeah.

I: What, sort of pickpockets in the East End, et cetera?

K: Yeah.  It's about amateur robbers who have only done small
   things, and this is quite a big robbery that they've been
   planning for months, and when it actually starts happening,
   they start freaking out - they're really scared and they're
   so aware of the fact that something could go wrong that
   they just freaked out, and paranoid and want to go home.

I: Really?  Is this based on any kind of film?

K: [mouth full again] No.  It's sort of all the films I've seen
   with robberies in, the crooks have always been incredibly in
   control and calm, and I always thought that if I ever did a
   robbery, I'd be really scared, you know, I'd be really worried.
   So I thought I'm sure that's a much more human point of view.

I: Yeah.  You see I thought it might be based on a film.  It was
   on telly over Christmas.  It was about a guy who was blackmailed
   into doing a robbery and of course he really was scared, the
   further he got involved in it and he had to carry it out.
   But he was having the sleepless nights and stuff.  [Kate
   making interested-sounding noises throughout this - it was
   obvious that she had not seen the film]

K: How did he get blackmailed?  Because he'd murdered someone?

I: He'd been in prison a long time, and therefore when the robbery
   took place the mafia bosses who were organising it knew they
   had a stool pidgeon, and so they got him to do it.

K: Great.  Yeah, a similar sort of thing, isn't it?  I'm sure a
   lot of these young kids, when they actually get into a situation
   where it is not just a little job, they must be really scared.

I: Yeah.  What made you think about it?  I mean, have you run into
   these East End types before?  [humour]

K: No, no.  I think it was much more the thing of watching a
   lot of films, things like _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_,
   you know.  There are lots of films where robberies take place
   and yet they glorify them, they always make the robbery
   something very heroic and fun, risky and dangerous, but for
   me it's something incredibly scary, something that has such
   a potential of going wrong that it's not worth the risk, and
   I don't think it's something that should be glorified at all.
   I think it's something that should be made very real, so that
   people realise it's not worth the effort - it's not something
   that's fun, it's something that's just not worth the effort.
   You'll end up in gaol for thirty years!

I: And is that the video that you were shooting in the train
   carriage on the way up to Manchester, or practising for it?

K: That was the one we were practising for, yes, but only because
   we didn't have any time, because that show came up at the last
   minute and we were planning to rehearse all that night, so
   instead of doing it in the studio, we did it in the back of
   the train. [laughs]  I couldn't see anything!

I: And how many of there were you in that guard's van?

K: There were just the three of us.  They cleared it out for us -
   it was really great of them actually.  Each station we stopped
   at there'd be various guards who would pull the window down and
   go "alright, then?", because they were just checking us out.
   It was great - they cleared out all the postings, chickens and
   pigs, and all the other things.

I: You get some odd things, don't you?

K: So it was a completely empty carriage, it was beautiful.  The
   only thing was we could hardly hear the tape recorder, because
   the noise was so bad, so we were more of less having to, sort
   of, keep checking, and it was very hard to stay stationary at
   a hundred and fifty miles an hour! [slight exaggeration there,
   I think!  British Rail would not go at 150mph even if they
   could!]

I: And that's how that kind of dance somehow can get incorporated
   into a film about robbery?

K: Yeah.

I: That should be interesting.

K: One of the bits in the song is all about waiting, and how the
   first time they're just waiting for something to go wrong,
   and the second time they're just waiting for the guy to blow
   the safe up, because when he blows it up, there is so much that
   could go wrong.  It's a dance routine that's based on waiting -
   it's just all these ideas with people waiting.  [she a slight
   accident with cutlery at that point, when she may have tried
   to demonstrate part of the dance routine]  And the rest of the
   dancers are all acting out what the story says, really. It's
   not so much a dance at all.

I: Do you think this one's going to be more successful than the
   last one?

K: I don't know.  [pensive] I don't know what to think about
   the singles anymore.

I: Was it your idea for it to be a single?

K: What, _There Goes A Tenner_?  Yes, I think I was in full
   agreement with them [the record company].  But I think I've
   reached a stage where, because _The Dreaming_ didn't work,
   we all felt, especially from an airplay point of view that
   in order to get airplay, which you need for a single to
   work, we should go for one that was more obvious, and there
   is no doubt that _There Goes A Tenner_ is one of the more
   obvious songs.

I: Not that there are a lot on the album that are obvious.

K: No, so we're just going for this and seeing what happens.

I: It's quite a bold move to go in that kind of direction,
   particularly when you've been out of the limelight for a year
   or two.  How sensible do you think it is, to make?  It's
   easily the least commercial step you've ever done, this album,
   at a time when perhaps you should have been doing the most.

K: Yes.  You see, from my point of view, although I've been out
   of the limelight, from the last album all I was planning to
   do was make another album as quickly as I could.  But as soon
   as I wrote the songs I realised that it was very different,
   and all the time I do very much want to change my art, and
   I do actually think that the direction I'm going in is away
   from the commercial, well the obvious commercial.  But I think
   from my point of view it wasn't so much because I was out of
   the limelight that I had to do something more commercial,
   because at that time I wasn't actually out of the limelight,
   I was just starting my next album, and I thought it was only
   going to take me a couple of months, but before I know it
   the whole thing has become much more involved, the songs are
   much more involved, and I know that it's going to take me at
   least six months to a year to get it the way I want.  So by
   the time it's finished, I've been out of the public's eye for
   maybe ... apart from _Sat In Your Lap_, or course.

I: Which was a bit of a stopgap.

K: Yeah.  In fact, it got to number eleven, and most people forget
   about that, you see, they just forget that that ever happened,
   so I've been completely out of the public's eye for two years.

I: Well, it's funny, actually, you should say _Sat In You Lap_,
   because when that came out, and all those drums, I, thought
   aha! she's trying to cash in on the old Adam Ant tribal drum
   sound.

K: Yeah.  You see, again, that was very annoying, because when
   I'd actually started getting that together, Adam Ant wasn't
   really happening.

I: Was Rolf Harris more of an influence even then?  Things like
   _Sun Arise_?

K: Yes, I'd wanted to work with Rolf for two or three years, but
   when we did the last album, I had an idea for doing a song all
   about Australia, which would have dijeridus and all this sort
   of thing.

I: Really?  What, for _Never For Ever_?

K: Yes, but I just didn't have the time to actually sit down and
   write the song, and the same with Houdini.  I had lots of ideas
   about writing the song for Houdini, but I just couldn't, didn't
   have the time to do it because I was actually making that
   album, and already for that album I'd managed ... because at
   that time I hadn't written _Army Dreamers_ yet, but I knew I
   wanted to write a song about that, and it was during the album
   that I wrote that song.

I: What, the false romanticism of the military, sort of thing?

K: What, the _Army Dreamers_?  Yeah, the whole thing of kids
   getting caught up in it, yeah.  And it was only really 'cos
   I'd only just managed to pull the song together in time that
   that got on the last album.  I really wanted to make that song
   a few years ago, but I'm sure If I had have, it wouldn't have
   sounded anything like it did on this album, so I'm glad that
   it waited, really.  I think a lot of the ideas for the stuff
   on this album have, in fact, been things I wanted to do for
   years, but just haven't been ready for it, or haven't had the
   time.  Because the whole tribal and ethnic thing has really
   been happening within my family because of my brother Paddy
   for, ten years?  He's the one who's been gradually pulling me
   that way.  Even on the first album, there are a lot of unusual
   instruments, hidden amongst the arrangements, which were very
   much speaking from my side of things and my brother's, and I
   think gradually, each time I've done an album, I've got more
   control, and therefore been able to portray a lot more of what
   I really mean to get across.

I: Oh, I see.  I mean, it's a wild track, that Houdini.  It
   certainly gets a little bit manic.

K: Great.

I: What's it about?

K: It's all about Houdini from Mrs Houdini's point of view.

I: Sorry?

K: Mrs Houdini.

I: *The* Houdini, the escape artist?

K: That's right.  He was married, and his wife was actually quite
   involved with his whole life and his work, and she used to
   help a lot with the tricks.  And one of the things, which is
   what the album cover's about, is before he went off into his
   tank, when he was all tied up and everything, she would give
   him a parting kiss, and as she kissed him, she passed him a
   tiny little key, which he then later used when he was in the
   water to unlock the chains.  And as soon as I heard that imagery,
   I just thought it was so beautiful, and so extraordinary.  He
   tied that into the whole side of his life where he was completely
   obsessed with exposing mediums as frauds.  I don't know if
   you know anything about that.

I: No?

K: This was another side of him.  His mother died, and he was
   really, really close to her, like really close, and when she
   died he needed desperately to try and communicate with her
   through a medium, and he just came across all these people who
   were basically making money out of the art of pretending to
   speak to the dead, and when he realised all these people were
   just basically ruining peoples' lives just to make some money he
   decided to, in a very positive way, show that they were frauds
   and tricksters.  So he spent years of his life dedicating time
   to finding any medium that said they were really authentic
   and proving that they were completely false.  So he spent
   years of his life doing this, and ruining peoples' careers
   and getting an awful lot of spiritualists up tight [she has a
   wonderful way with words, sometimes!].  Before he died, he said
   to his wife that "I'm going to die before you, and when I do,
   I am going to try everything I can to try and come back through
   a real medium, and there'll be one way you know it's me,
   because all these tricksters are going to jump on the wagon
   and say that I've come through and I'm going to use words that
   only you and I know.  It's a code, so you'll know that it's me,
   and no-one else."  So they made this code together, and when
   he died she went round all the seances waiting for him to come
   through.  It's extraordinary really, because the thing happened
   on the three levels, because apparently when he first got his
   stage set together, he was more into magic and the same kind
   of fraud, and he would do things where he would pretend he
   was contacting the dead, and he would tell the audience these
   messages from their dead people, and it was all a trick.  Then
   it happened to him through his mother, where they were all
   tricking him because he wanted to contact his mother, and then
   exactly the same thing happened to his wife after his death,
   when they were all trying to trick her, that he had come
   through.  And it's just so extraordinary that really, the
   whole thing with him escaping, chains and things, and then
   trying to escape death, and this wierd sort of parallel of
   contact and frauds.  It's just an incredibly extraordinary
   man and story.

I: How did you get into all this?

K: I just heard about it.  I don't even remember how I first heard
   about the big thing of exposing mediums.  I mean, that was what
   started it, because it was such a strange story, the fact that
   he should be so obsessed with proving that they weren't real.
   And then I started hearing how his wife was involved, because
   I didn't even know he was married, and as soon as there was an
   emotional contact with that bit - there was some woman who was
   really in love with him through it all, it became a perfect
   angle to write from, really.  Especially when you thought about
   that, even when he was dead, she spent all her time trying to
   be with him.  It's very strong stuff, I think.  Beautiful.

I: The credits on the album.  There's two mentioned, there's
   Gordon Farrell.  Who's that?

K: He was my singing teacher!

I: Really?

K: Yeah!  Years ago I used to go every week for these lessons,
   and really it was great 'cos he gave me loads of confidence
   in singing, which is what I needed more than anything.  I
   just used to go to him half an hour a week, and by the end
   of the year I felt a lot more confident in myself as a singer.
   He worked wonders!  And on Houdini, I don't know if you
   noticed at the end there are these [she makes a noise that
   sounds like the backing vocal that accompanies the very last
   "You and I and Rosabel believe" lyric, just after the strings
   section] and thats him.

I: So you gave him a mention from that point of view?

K: Yeah.  He sang in it.

I: And the "Rosabel believe" bit?

K: Ah, well, thats actually the words that were the code, between
   him and her.

I: Between Houdini and his wife?

K: Yeah, and they were the words that proved to her that it was
   him, and only him.

I: And why do you put Del Palmer's name next to that?

K: Because he was the one who actually pretended to be him, in
   the song.  The idea in the song is that it was the voice of
   Houdini, perhaps from the other side, and in fact it was
   Del on the telephone.  [laughs]

I: Oh, I see.  Del played that part, he played that sort of role.

K: Yeah, it was on the end of a telephone - it was good.  [laughs]

I: And Del's also the bass player on quite a few of the tracks.

K: Yes, he is, yes.

I: Because the funny thing is you've got Jimmy Bain, who was
   in Rainbow, and is in Wild Horses.  He seems to play on all
   the crazier tracks.

K: I think, what I enjoyed again about this album was each track
   has got a very different mood to it, really, or groups of
   tracks have got different moods, and it was nice to use people,
   almost specifically, for what they were very good at, and I
   always think of Jimmy as being a really super rock'n'roll bass
   player, which doesn't mean to be detrimental, because I
   think its great, actually, because what those songs needed that
   he was on was a very simple, very driving bass that was going
   to keep the whole thing going, without being distracting, or
   too full, and Jimmy was just right for that, really, so he
   worked on the three tracks that I would definitely say they're
   the rockiest, were the most up-tempo, perhaps the most
   aggressive.

I: And did that have something to do with the fact he, with
   Wild Horses, had had a contract with EMI?

K: Ah, you see I didn't even know he was with EMI.  I knew he
   was with Wild Horses, and I met him when I just bumped into
   Phil Lynott in a recording studio.

I: Really, when was that?

K: This was at The Townhouse, and I was there to just look over
   the studio, because that's where I wanted to work, and Phil
   was actually going to give me a weekend of his time that he
   wouldn't be using, so I just went in to check out that it
   would be OK.  And he was doing a really far-out vocal at
   the time ...

I: Phil was?

K: Yeah, it was really beautiful.

I: For his solo album?

K: No, I think it was Thin Lizzy, because the band were there
   with him, and Jimmy just happened to be there, and I just
   sat next to him, and we were both going "oh, what a great
   voice", and I just happened to hear that he'd been involved
   in a couple of things that I liked, so it was quite a
   coincidence, and it seemed just sort of right, really, to
   use him for the rockier tracks.  But like, there's a couple
   of other tracks, right - _Pull Out The Pin_ - where I really
   wanted a double-bass, so I had to get a double-bass player,
   and I wanted it to be quite sort of funky without being
   flippant or jazz rock, you know what I mean?  And I knew
   Danny Thompson, from having seen him work with John Martin,
   and I really liked it, because with John's voice and his bass
   it was really very free, and I found it very expressionful,
   not sort of technical, very emotional double-bass playing, so
   I thought he'd be perfect for that track.  That happened with
   quite a few musicians, where although I've more or less the
   set band, there's really quite a few tracks where perhaps
   guest people come in for this or that reason.  I suppose that
   in other ways it worried me at the start, because of, perhaps,
   lack of continuity, but then because the songs were so
   different from each other, I'm glad now that that's the way
   it worked.  But I did have some worries at the time, because
   I was using three or four different people.  I'm actually
   quite pleased with the way it came out.

I: So you've not really got a band, as such, any more, have you?

K: No.  That's actually quite a depressing thought.

I: Well, not really.

K: Well, no, I suppose not, because it leaves me nice and open.

I: You see what Kevin Rowland's doing with Dexy's Midnight Runners?

K: No?

I: He's got a central nucleus of about three, and the stage show
   incorporates about eleven, and he can't keep eleven people on
   wages, so he calls them up when he wants them.

K: So he just keeps the three.

I: And I think that really how rock's going to move.  And the
   people who aren't working with him, when they're not working
   with him, they've got a reputation from him to go on and
   do session work.

K: You see, I think I'm a bit like that, in that right from the
   start I definitely carried two people with me all the way,
   or three I suppose, as Pad has always been with me.

I: He's your brother, though, isn't he?

K: Yes, he is.

I: Is he a guitarist, or [plays] accordian?

K: No, he plays a lot of different instruments.  Again, he really
   is the one who's allowed me to use unusual instruments because
   he happens to be able to play them, so it's great because
   Pad's got this real knack of being able to pick up nearly
   any instrument that's unusual and just have a feel for it.

I: Is he some kind of influence behind the dijeridu, for example?

K: Yes, I do think Pad actually started the initial interest in
   me in unusual ethnic instruments, because for years he's been
   interested in them, and building them.  Like you'll find an
   instrument that hasn't been made for hundreds of years, and
   he'll build one.  That's very stimulating.

I: How old is Pad?  Is he younger or older than you?

K: No, he's older than me, yes, but I think he definitely has
   been a strong stimulus in that area.  Especially with the
   instruments, because he's really brought to my notice a lot
   of instruments that I'd never heard of before, but he makes
   them familiar to me.  I get to know the sound of them, and
   then maybe one day when I'm writing a song, I think "Oh yeah,
   that sound that Pad had, that'd be great in there."

[END]

-- 
  Never give   |  Stephen Thomas
  fate an      |  email: spt1@ukc.ac.uk
  even chance  |  Telephone: +44 (0)227 764000 ext 3824
               |  Snail: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.