Re: Kate Bush biographies etc

[Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU]

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Really-From: ed@das.llnl.gov (Edward Suranyi)

>Really-From: graham@ug.cs.dal.ca (Michael Graham)

>To start with - how young is Kate - 32? When is her birthday?

Yep.  She was born on July 30, 1958.

>I was wondering if there were any good Kate biographies. 

There are some Kate biographies, but few of them are any good.
One of the earliest was _Kate Bush_, by Paul Kerton.  I've never
read this one (it's extremely rare nowadays -- in fact, the only
copy I've ever seen is the one in Andrew Marvick's personal collection)
but I believe it has the problem most of the biographies have:  Too
many errors.

There are Paul Vermorel's books (_Princess of Suburbia_ and
_The Secret History of Kate Bush_), but these books shouldn't
be taken seriously by a fan. In PoS, Vermorel tears Kate to
pieces.  IN TSHoKB, he creates a ridiculous theory that Kate's
long-dead ancestors have something to do with her talent, and
goes to great lengths to trace her family tree.  Vermorel later
said he wrote both books to parody or satirize the cult of fandom.
Unfortunately, TSHoKB is probably the easiest book about Kate that
can be found in the U.S.

There's Kerry Juby's book _Kate Bush:  The Whole Story_.  Andy Marvick
wrote a review of this for _Homeground_ a couple of years ago.  
It's overloaded with errors -- I think Andy found an average of
one per page.  Later, _Homeground_ had a long article about how
the publisher was upset by the number of errors and was trying to
get the author to correct them, or something.  It's the only
hardcover biography, though.

There's _Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary_, by Kevin Cann (sp?) and
some other guy.  This one's pretty good.  Not too many errors and
lots and lots of wonderful pictures.  If you had to choose one book
it should probably be this one.

_Kate Bush Complete_ is primarily a book of the lyrics and music (vocal
lines only) for all of Kate's songs through _The Whole Story_, including
B-sides.  It is valuable for that.  It also has a short chronology of
Kate's career through 1987 or so.  The chronology was written by the
_Homeground_ people, so it has only a few, minor errors, mostly caused
by typos.



-- 
Ed Suranyi             | "I couldn't hope to do it anywhere near as well
ed@das.llnl.gov        |  as Kate Bush because she is a Goddess."
(415) 447-3405         |                 -- Sinead O'Connor