Q sleeve notes

[nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk]

Andy Semple has kindly typed in the Q sleeve notess for HoL
but has had trouble trying to post them so I am having a go.

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From: ***SEMPSY*** <sre017@cck.cov.ac.uk>
Date:       Fri, 3 May 91 16:47:34 -0100
Message-Id: <3766.9105031547@cck.cov.ac.uk>
To: love-hounds@eddie.mit.edu

Here is the transcript of the Q magazine sleevenote for 'Hounds Of Love'.
This comes free with the June edition(number 57):

"The Dreaming was my 'She's gone mad' album,my 'She's not commercial any more'
album," says Kate Bush,amused in retrospect,thinking about her predicament
when after a three-year silence,she released Hounds Of Love.Its predecessor
had been the first serious setback in a chart career that began when her debut
single,Wuthering Heights,hit number 1 for a month in 1978.When the spell broke
-The Dreaming single an apologetic 48,the album a sorry silver after the
parade of platinum-previously paternal executives were moved to make indelicate
enquiries about what,for instance,Rolf Harris(on didgeridoo) and Percy Edwards
(animal noises) were doing on a record intended for the mainstream youth market
 It was hard to take.The Dreaming was the first album Kate had produced herself
"I wanted to take control of everything and go for it," she recalls.But the
charts and the business said she'd failed.So she retreated into normality.For
six months she saw friends,went to the pictures and dance classes,and learned
to drive( she bought a modest VW Polo).
 Then,in June,1983,work began on a 48-track studio in an old barn located
handily for her parent's home in the kentish suburbs of London and for the
house she shared with Del Palmer,her boyfriend since the pub rock days of the
K.T Bush band.It wasn't quite state-of-the-art because she couldn't afford it.
But if one chart misfire could provoke EMI to turn the recording budget on her
like heavy artillery,she had to move out of range."The way I work is very
experimental," she says,"and,when you know the studio is costing a phenomenal
amount of money every hour,it just zaps creativity."
 It was a matter of power and arithmetic.Abbey Road then cost 90 an hour,Kate's
placenothing.She'd taken her music-making out of the music industry and back to
the fond embrace of the family where it began.after some preliminary doodling
at Abbey Road,as soon as her own studio was ready she began work on Hounds Of
Love in January,1984.
 In the windowless room she'd designed,communicating with Del at the desk
through mike and headphones,she settled into a looser variant of the rhythm-
based writing method she'd developed on The Dreaming(inspired by sessions on
Peter Gabriel's Games Without Frontiers) and continued with what she calls the
"very male" production style she wanted then-weight and strength to justify
herself in the Man's world of the studio.
 But progress was slower than ever."In music," she's said,"you have to break
your back before you even start to speak emotion."On lead vocals,where most
singers strive for one good "take",she routinely assembled six to choose from.
She would often create arrangements on the fairlight and then replace the
synthesized lines with natural instruments: hence the "real" strings on Hounds
Of Love and  Cloudbusting and a kit snare drum on Running Up That Hill although
the rest of the rhythm track comes from Del Palmer's programming.Even the muted
sound of waves between and Dream Of Sheep and Under Ice had to be re-recorded
because the effects discs available didn't provide "the right kind of sea".
 And the words came even harder,she says.As usual,many of her starting points
were in books and films-Cloudbusting from Peter Reich's book about his inventor
father Wilhelm,Hounds Of Love from a 1957 horror movie Night Of The Demon,and
the whole of The Ninth Wave from both memories of war films like The Cruel Sea
and keeping company for years with a macabre painting called The Hogsmill
Ophelia(it shows a doll drowning in sewage;"It cost me all the money I had
once," she says).
 For more than a year,Bush sightings were rarer than ospreys,and when she did
emerge it was to find the chubby cheeks and double chin she acquired during
studio immersion(through lack of exercise and too much chocolate) translated
by the tabloids into"Kate blows up to 18 stone" rumours.
 "Between albums I always get fat in the papers," she says."It's quite funny,
me as this balloon.And then by the time I start doing interviews I've lost all
that weight again,it seems.It must go into the music."
 Hounds Of Love was completed in June,1985,which meant the resumption of
negotiation with the outside world.She won an argument with EMI about which
track should be the first single-they wanted Cloudbusting-then lost one about
its title."For me,Running Up That Hill really is Deal With God,but I was told
that radio stations in Spain,Italy,America and so on would refuse to play it
with God in the title.Ridiculous.Still,especially after The Dreaming,I decided
I couldn't be bloody minded."
 In August,Running Up That Hill went to number 3,her first British Top 10 hit
since Babooshka,five years earlier.For the album launch at the London
Planetarium on September 5,she and Del decided to "come out" by appearing in
Public together for the first time.Subsequent tabloid "wickedness",as Kate
ingenously calls it,in fabricating a row between Del and Youth,who'd played
bass on The Big Sky,hardly mattered when the album was ecstatically reviewed-
even the dauntingly unfashionable "concept" aspect of The Ninth Wave-and went
straight to number 1 where it stayed for a month.
 Though "career" is not a notion Kate Bush readily relates to,hers had
undoubtedly turned around.Hounds Of Love and Cloudbusting(with the stunning
Donald Sutherland video) were also substantial single hits and the album
reached Number 30 in America,still her highest placing there.
 Even so,she expressed herself surprised by some reactions to her work,
"controversial" interpretations which,she always said,never occurred to her
when she was writing the songs.For instance,some were keen to see drugs
references in Under Ice where she sings of "speeding" and "cutting little
lines".Kate insisted the image was simply about skating.
 Then there were the hounds on the cover,draped about a smoochy-eyed Kate with
suggestive languor.No,no,it was just a matter of getting them to lay calm and
still for the shot,she said."It worries me if there is any kind of sexual
connotation.My God! Should I be careful?The thing is I can't see myself sexually
Ijust see me being silly."
 Naive or not,she preserved her mystery.Hounds Of Love is essence of Kate Bush,
the unbridled expression of someone who had achieved the creative privacy she
needed-incommunicado without forgetting how to communicate.
 "I've made some of my best decisions in the last two years," she said that
autumn,thinking of the studio in particular."I have to go back to the work
because that's what matters.Work obsesses my life and everyone around me is
dragged into it.It's terrible,really."
 Only, somehow,it's not.
             Phil Sutcliffe Q Magazine

There you go sports!

Regarding ftp,thanks for all the helpful  mail you have sent to me.
Unfortunately I've discovered that Coventry Polytechnic denies access to
any files outside of the polytechnic.
 _ __                                 __            Andy Semple
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                            /|                JANET:sre017@uk.ac.cov.cck
                           |/                 HOME TEL:(0203) 672308
'I'm the concierge,chez moi honey.Won't letcha in for love nor money.My home
my joy and I'm barred and bolted,and I won't letcha in!!!'KB '82



Date:       Fri, 3 May 91 16:54:35 -0100
Message-Id: <7192.9105031554@cck.cov.ac.uk>
To: love-hounds@eddie.mit.edu
Subject:    Q

In addition I've just spotted something about a rumourof a duet between Kate
and Prince!!There has been no denial or confirmation,though personally I can't
see it happening.
        Andy Semple sre017@uk.ac.cov.cck


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