Whole STory errors

[rhill@pnet01.cts.com (Ronald Hill)]

THe Whole story book was mentioned, here is 1/2 of IED letter regarding it, I
believe that he said he had already posted it, so I hope he won't mind.  :-)
        BTW keep those interviews comming, I am still short of early stuff and
if I have to type it in it will delay everything by 2 weeks or so, so search
those hard disks!!! :-) 
 
OOps the second half I will send tommorrow.   
 
OOPs - also I wouldn't recommend THE WHOLE STORY in light of Cloudbusting, the
book mainly just seems to be a rehash of many Kate quotes with errors and
stupidities introduced.  The pictures are cool tho, and it may be worth it for
the non-quote material, if you can get it cheap enough.  This book was the
first Kate book I read and it really helped me understand and thus like The
Hounds Of Love/Ninth Wave, but it also left me down THE GARDEN (sorry) path
for years until I found out about some of the errors.   
 
Editor
Sidgwick & Jackson
1 Tavistock Chambers
Bloomsbury Way
London WC1A 2SG
England

Dear Ms. Hurrell:
     I am moved to write this letter after reading your own letter to the
editors of Homeground magazine, which was reproduced in their 34th issue. In
it you expressed a wish to receive further comments from me concerning your
recent publication, Kate Bush: The Whole Story, written by Kerry Juby.
      First let me say that I found your letter sympathetic, and I applaud
your willingness to improve Mr. Juby's text for future editions. I understand
your natural reluctance to believe the book
to be as bad as it was made out to be in my review (and in others'),
and the tone of your letter was so appealing that I have taken the book down
again and given it another chance, so to speak.
      Before continuing, I would like to request that, whether or not you
decide to follow any of my suggestions as set forth in this letter, you do not
mention my name in future printings of Mr. Juby's book. I am
relying on you and on Sidwick & Jackson to respect my request for privacy in
this matter.
     Although I did acknowledge several of the book's redeeming qualities in
my review for Homeground, the text of my article was abridged by Peter and his
staff, and so my views may have appeared
more severe than in fact was the case. I do feel that the book has
some excellent features, not the least of which is its fine layout and design.
The collection of "candid" photographs is also of interest, and there is much
to be said for the trouble which Mr. Juby took to
interview some of the musicians and other people who have had the experience
of working with Kate in the past. Those passages--which
are more numerous than I had noticed upon first reading the book--are
of real value, I think, and I am grateful to Mr. Juby for them.
     I would also like to admit here that my tally of 111 errors
was harsh. Although the number is technically correct, it includes
literally every substantive mistake of fact--no matter how small--which Mr.
Juby makes in the course of his lengthy text; as well as those statements
which I believe are exaggerations or distortions of fact. Appearing as they do
without qualification, such distortions constitute errors in my view.
     In addition, I encountered a number of peculiarities of punctuation and
grammar. I will not bother to itemize these here, because I assume that you
are aware of them already. Perhaps I was a bit punctilious in totting up these
mistakes, some of which I will not mention in this letter because they now
seem relatively unimportant to me. Please communicate my regrets to Mr. Juby
for whatever distress my numeral "111" may have caused him!
     Apologies and qualifications having been duly made, here are the errors
which, as a devoted fan and student of the work and career of Kate Bush, I
feel should be corrected or at least defended by Mr. Juby before his book goes
to a second printing.

     Pages xi-xx, 2: Kate is referred to as "normal" no fewer than five times
(and several more times throughout the text). Kate has said this herself, in
referece to her childhood, and no doubt it is true, as far as it goes. But the
term "normal childhood" is quite vague and unhelpful. One use of it would
therefore have been more than enough. I can appreciate the honorable
motivation behind such statements, but it might be helpful to Mr. Juby if he
remembered that the appeal of Kate Bush lies as much in the complexity of her
music and persona, as in its superficial accessibility. Her background,
childhood experiences and present character are therefore as interesting for
their signs of abnormality as for their points of convergence with the norm.
     Page 3: Here is another sign of Mr. Juby's unfortunate tendency
to repeat himself unnecessarily. After Kate is "remembered," in paragraph 1,
"as always having a great deal of pocket money," Mr. Juby adds, in Paragraph
2, that "Dr. Bush...[found]...plenty of pocket money for his children..." Why
rehash such information needlessly?
     Page 7: "Sharply, iron pierces flesh, and the shake is raised on the
hill." The word "shake" should read "shape".
     Page 10, Paragraph 3: "School who becoming" should read "School was
becoming".
     Page 13: "Ricky Hooper" should read "Ricky Hopper".
     Page 14: "Kate recorded her first demo at Gilmour's home studio...They
chose Passing Through Air and Maybe and the new tape was circulated..." This
is misleading. The "first demo" at Gilmour's home included far more than two
or three tracks. What I believe Mr. Juby may have meant to say was that
Saxophone Song and The Man With the Child in His Eyes (but not Passing Through
Air), as well as a song known as Maybe, were chosen from among the songs
recorded at Gilmour's home, for re-recording under more professional
conditions. In other words, it should be made clear that there were at least
three stages in the
"demo"-recording process: the first consisting of many recordings
of songs (Kate has put the number at "about two hundred") which were made
alone at home, or with the family's help; the second consisting of a recording
of perhaps a dozen or fifteen songs made at the home of Mr. Gilmour with a
small band; and the third consisting of only three songs-- Saxophone Song and
The Man With the Child in His Eyes and
the so-called Maybe-- all of which were executed in a professional context and
submitted to EMI, with a successful result.
     Mr. Juby actually says as much in the last paragraph of page 14, but the
preceding misstatements put the later accurate ones in doubt.
     I know that this is rather dry material for a biography of a popular
figure like Kate Bush, but it is nonetheless important, especially in view of
the fact that some of these early demo recordings are now finding their way
into collectors' hands.
     Page 25: Andrew Powell is quoted at length expressing his opinion that
the extreme speed of the recording process for The Kick Inside "helped
immensely." Wouldn't it be appropriate to point out that Kate's own view is on
record as being quite opposite to Mr. Powell's?
     Page 28: Mr. Juby identifies James in James and the Cold Gun as "James of
the James Gang". Here's what Kate herself had to say (this is from an old
issue of the Kate Bush Club Newsletter): 

 Q.: In James and the Cold Gun did you refer to anyone in particular?
 A.: I've had lots of letters about this, many from people called James, with
plenty of suggestions for identities of the "James",
but the answer is:  nobody. When I wrote the song, James was the
right name for it.

     Page 31: Mr. Juby says that Keef MacMillan directed Kate's "first" video
for Wuthering Heights. It's quite well known and amply documented that Keef's
video--the one included in Kate's official video compilations--was created
after the "field" or "moors" video, which was made by a fledgling video
company called Rockflix early in 1978.
Mr. Juby confuses matters even more--and shows that he had not actually
seen either of these videos--by saying that the early "moors" video featured
Kate in a white gown in a meadow. In fact Kate wore a red dress in that video.
     Page 33: Mr. Juby says that "later [U.S. editions of The Kick Inside]
featured the U.K. design". This is false. There have been two different U.S.
cover-designs, but neither one is even remotely like the "official" U.K. album
design--which, incidentally, is the only one sanctioned by Kate. The first of
the "U.S." designs was actually the same as the Canadian design (still in
circulation there). It features a
close-up photograph of Kate with her hand against her face. The second U.S.
design (still in use here) features a shot of Kate crouching, and wearing blue
jeans and red socks. Both of these designs were decided upon at the regional
offices, and Kate had no part in their selection.
     Page 33: Also on this page, Mr. Juby describes the Efteling film (a film
of videos Kate made in Holland in 1978) as having seven songs. It has only
six.
     Page 61: Mr. Juby interprets "BVs" in Violin as an abbreviation for
"Beata Virgo"(!) In fact, Kate has several times explained that "BVs" is just
short for "backing vocals". The Blessed Virgin never enters into it, as far as
I know.
     Page 62: "Roy Harper was another of EMI's aspiring musicians, less
successful in the long run than Bush, but a close friend with whom she later
worked on a number of albums..." This is highly misleading. Kate only worked
on one album of Harper's: the Unknown Soldier LP; and furthermore, her only
real contribution was to a single track on
that album. This is the kind of statement that causes considerable damage,
because, as I know from experience, many newer fans will now be searching for
more than one Roy Harper/Kate Bush collaboration, based solely upon Mr. Juby's
inaccurate report. Collectors are plagued by more than enough distortions and
false rumours as it is, without being led further afield by a supposedly
"authoritative" new resource.
     Pages 68-69: Mr. Juby twice refers--wrongly--to the governess in The
Infant Kiss as the mother of the children. There is no familial relationship
between the children and the woman in either the song or the sources for the
song (the film The Innocents; and Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw,
which served as the basis for the film).
For this reason Mr. Juby's criticism on page 69 ("It is a distinct
juxtaposition of unmotherly, unnatural feelings and maternal love that Kate is
describing, and it doesn't quite fit her description of how she sees it") is
unjustified.
     Page 73: "[Apart from bicycling...] any exercise that [Kate] gets is in
the form of the movement that accompanies her music." Actually, Kate has
practised kyudo, an East Asian form of archery, for several years. She has
also been known to roller-skate on occasion.
     Page 49: Alan Murphy is quoted as saying that Kate kept "buckets of
tea...and Kit Kats and things" in the studio. Fine. But it's quite
unnecessary, not to say suspicious, to use this statement again on page 73 by
claiming that "most musicians [my italics] remember there being buckets of tea
and bicuits and Kit Kats about during every session."
     Page 61 (writing about Violin): "It is a coy, devilish attempt to breathe
a little fire into a staid violin, but in many ways it fails because of the
song's lack of melody." This statement is so silly and demonstrates such
colossal ignorance of music that I am sure I needn't argue further for its
deletion from future editions.
     Page 75: "Kate reads a great deal." Kate does not read a great deal! She
has explained many times that she seldom reads, because she is a slow reader
and feels that it takes up too much of her worktime (though she has also
admitted that her attitude is "silly, really"). I believe Mr. Juby was aware
of this fact, but for some reason chose to ignore it. It would certainly be
accurate to say that books have had a powerful influence on Kate's work, and
that she loves reading. But
she has not read particularly widely or deeply, and has said as much on
several occasions.
      Page 76: "...she expressed a great deal of interest in the latest cult
of New Wave artists." It is misleading to make this statement without dating
its source, since Kate's enthusiasm for virtually any kind of Western popular
music has been minimal since about 1981 or so--hardly contemporaneous with the
"latest cult".
     Also on page 76 is the statement: "A sixties child by heart,
she appreciates the Beatles, but finds most inspiration in Billie
Holliday [sic]...Gene Kelly and Judy Garland." This sentence is not only
illogical (Holiday, Kelly and Garland were scarcely typical role models for a
"sixties child by heart"), but false. To my knowledge her only mention of
Garland and Kelly were in reference to their inspiring influence upon her as a
child. By contrast the later work of the Beatles, and of John Lennon in
particular, have remained a powerful source of inspiration for Kate throughout
her career.
     Page 81: "The eroticism of Kate Bush is undeniable, however..." Assuming
that Mr. Juby means the eroticism of her work or performance style, this
statement is fine. But the sentence continues: "...and no
virgin, even one as imaginative as Kate, could write a song like Feel It, or
L'Amour Looks Something Like You." This is not only an extremely dubious
claim. It also constitutes an embarrassing lapse in taste. Surely idle
speculation about the date of Kate's loss of virginity is not something the
author or his readers can benefit from.
     Page 82: I'm afraid I found this paragraph particularly offensive.
"Kate is afraid of flying. She is slightly miffed, however, when the subject
is brought up, hotly denying that she is afraid, but rather explaining that it
just isn't her favourite manner in which to travel..."
      Then, on page 135, Mr. Juby writes: "Overcoming her fear of flying, Kate
agreed to fly over..."
     Mr. Juby is assuming, in other words, that the rumours that Kate is
"afraid" of flying are true, even when he himself is fully aware of Kate's
flat denials! That's really irresponsible. Especially since we have far more
than just Kate's say-so on this issue: Kate has made literally dozens of
flights between England and Europe, England and North America, England and
Japan, England and Australia, all of which she undertook, one may be sure,
without complaint. Mr. Juby has no business denying the facts in favour of
silly, unsupported gossip.
     It is at about this point in the book that Mr. Juby plunges into a low
celebration of similarly ridiculous rumours:  exhuming stories about Kate
being pregnant at a Peter Gabriel concert in 1987; having an affair with
Gabriel; and even being a drug addict! As in the case I cited above concerning
the false rumour about a fear of flying, Mr. Juby dwells on these bits of
nonsense with a fascination that implies they are somehow more true than
Kate's denials. And he does this even when he himself has already printed
those denials in his own book!
     Also on page 82: Mr. Juby quotes at length some uncredited hearsay
attributed to Kate by the writer Fred Vermorel--a far less responsible
author than Mr. Juby himself, as I'm sure Mr. Juby would agree. The context of
this dubious citation is the subject of the importance of
dream states as a source of inspiration for Kate. Yet even Mr. Juby
expresses doubt about the authenticity of the quotation. His text
would have been stronger if he had looked for more solid support for
his ideas. Sorely missing are any of Kate's several statements to the effect
that her works--and particularly The Ninth Wave-- deal with the character's
resistance of sleep, and with the conflict between dreams and the real-life
problems of her songs' characters. Also missing is Kate's interesting and
relevant opinion (expressed in the course of more than one televised
interview) that dreams are as much a part of "real life" and the "real world"
as wakefulness, and that her work should not be misinterpreted as less
"realistic" or more "escapist" because of its exploration of parallel states
of consciousness.
     Page 83: "She is a truly sweet woman, with a high, consonantless mode of
speech betraying a cross between a suburban South London accent and some sort
of contrived innocence." Mr. Juby's attitude toward his subject seems confused
in this statement--as in many other parts of his text. Kate's "sweetness"
wouldn't seem to be supported by her "contrivance" of innocence. On the other
hand, it is possible that Kate's speech patterns, and even perhaps her accent,
may have undergone some changes over the years, and Mr. Juby might have
searched for explanations of those possible changes.
     Page 88: "The family are able to control to a certain degree any
publications concerning Kate and ensure that her career is recorded with
complete integrity." I don't wish to sound callous, but Mr. Juby's text, which
was unauthorized and obviously not edited by anyone in the Bush family, and
which appeared with all the errors enumerated in this letter, is a manifest
contradiction of his statement above. The unfortunate fact is that the family
are unable to control the publications concerning Kate, and have had only
limited success in ensuring that her career is recorded with "complete
integrity." Witness not only Mr. Juby's unauthorized text, but also Mr.
Vermorel's two execrable "books", Paul Kerton's empty biography, and the more
recent Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary by Mayes and Cann--not one of which was
ever "controlled" by the Bush family (more's the pity), except insofar as
their non-participation may be construed as "control".
     Also on pages 88-89: Mr. Juby remarks upon the difficulty of obtaining
interviews with Kate, and in general of breaking the barrier of privacy which
guards her personal life from the prying eyes of journalists and biographers.
As a matter of fact, similar observations litter the pages of The Whole Story,
creating an almost bewildering impression of redundancy and sour grapes.
      Page 89 includes a fussy account of Kate's corporate earnings over a
five-year period. Such information is presumably accessible through public
records. I do wish, though, that Mr. Juby had stopped to consider whether this
kind of idle consideration of Kate's personal fortune serves any useful
purpose, and whether his standards of propriety regarding his intrusion into
the private life of his subject should really be limited solely by what is
legal. Sidgwick & Jackson, too, might weigh the importance and dignity of the
artist whom Mr. Juby contracted with them to write about, against the kind of
sleazy sifting through rubbish-bins which this sort of documentation
resembles.
     Page 91: "...Annie Lennox specifically incorporates Kate's style of
exaggerated vocals into her repertoire." This statement, which is phrased so
as to resemble fact, is actually a personal opinion which I for one find
absurd. Ms. Lennox's vocal stylings are almost completely based upon Blues and
other American popular vocal traditions. If Mr. Juby has found a statement by
Ms. Lennox herself attesting to Kate's influence, why not include it? The same
criticism can be made of Mr. Juby's likening of the vocal style of Susan
"Sarendon" [sic] in The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Kate's. I am unable to
detect any hint of a connection between the two styles, and I look in vain
through Mr.
Juby's text for a justification of his peculiar analogy.
     From the bottom of page 92 through the end of page 94: Mr. Juby does
nothing except repeat, almost verbatim, statements which he has already made.
I would have expected Sidgwick & Jackson to have made at least some effort to
put a rein on Mr. Juby's chronic habit of padding his text.
      Page 96: "Just prior to this, Kate had recorded Warm and Soothing, which
was also never released." In fact, as Mr. Juby would
soon have learned had he done some basic homework, Warm and Soothing was
released, as the b-side of Kate's December Will Be Magic Again single, in
1981.
     Page 97: "She appeared on two Radio BBC-1 programmes with Paul Gambaccini
where she played her music..." Kate didn't play any of her own music on either
of those programmes. She played only other people's music--that was the point
of the broadcasts.
     Also on page 97:  district [sic] use of the Fairlight." This statement is
unfortunately typical of music critics' view of Gabriel's
connection with Kate Bush. It implies that Kate's deep and longtime
fascination with the Fairlight CMI is somehow primarily a function of
Peter Gabriel's "increasing" influence. Kate has said several times that she
had envisioned an instrument with the Fairlight's capabilities from her
earliest years of composition. It is therefore more or less co-incidental that
she first happened to encounter the instrument during the PG3 sessions. The
growing role of the Fairlight in her composition and performance techniques is
therefore basically unrelated to her infrequent and rather minimal
collaboration with Peter Gabriel. The influence of Gabriel's own music on
Kate's, though real, has often been exaggerated.

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