More Canadian INterviews

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

    88. Good Rockin' Tonight, Much Music, The New Music, Toronto Evening News,
etc.: excerpts from interviews (all dating from the same day, in the same
Toronto studios) conducted by Christopher Ward, Nan Devitt and Daniel Richler
in late November, 1985.
     These interviews have a strikingly better atmosphere than their U.S.
counterparts, which had been conducted only a day or two before. Much of the
credit for this must go to the excellent interviewing techniques of the
Canadian hosts, particularly Mr. Ward and Mr. Richler. Both men had prepared
well for their interviews and both show evident respect for their guest on
camera. Kate responds, consequently, with greater frankness and fluidity than
she had in any other interviews of the 1985 promotional campaign. 

[Transcribed by Ronald Hill, above note by IED.  Boy does Kate look good in
these interviews! ]


[Interview 1: The MuchMusic Interview. - Running Up That Hill is played]

        I: Running Up That Hill, from Kate Bush.  And please welcome my guest,
Kate Bush.  Very nice to have you here.

        K: It's a pleasure to be here!

        I: Yes, indeed!  Congratulations on the success of Hounds of Love.  

        K: Thank you, it's fantastic! 

        I: It is going well isn't it? 

        K: Yes. 

        I: The UK is no surprise, but it looks like North America is finally
falling in line.  Are you happy about that? 

        K: I'm very happy.  It's always great when people like your music.

        I: You said that you anguished long over this record.  Is that typical
for you, recording wise? 

        K: I think so yes.  I think, um, certainly since the third album it
has been like that.  It just seems to be a long process.  You go into it to be
that involved and before you know it's dragging you behind it, until it's
finished. 

        I: Is that partly result of having your own studio now?  That you felt
you had to work out the kinks in that situation and learn to work in your own
facility?

        K: Yes, I think it was the last album that made me realize I needed
one because I was being so prohibited by the amount of money it was costing
every hour that I thought it was actually being anti-productive to what I
wanted to do.  We work very experimentally and it takes time.  So it really
made sense to get our own studio together.

        I: I understand that you moved to the country fairly recently.  Is
that part of the process of building a home studio as well?  Did that all come
part and partial?  

        K: It did really.  It was a kind of re-organization I wanted to do
between the last album and this where I moved from the city to the country, we
got the studio together, and I just took some time to get back in training. 
That kind of thing.  I think I made some of my best decisions during that
time.  

        I: Are you becoming more reclusive as a result? 

        K: I think I have extremes, where I'm very reclusive while I'm working
and then totally non-reclusive when I come out to promote and say to people
"here's the album."

        I: Would you consider yourself a social creature at the best of times?
 Do you have a community of musicians, aside from your family obviously and
those you work with, that you would see regularly and party with? 

        K: Yes I think there's, again, two parts of me.  One that's a very
social beast and the other side of me is probably very quiet and likes to work
alone, and in fact can't really work if there's more than a few people around.


        I: Do you have special work habits that you subscribe to?  You seem
like a very disciplined artist, just judging by your work.  Do you have a
special place you go to work, a certain environment, and certain hours?  Do
you do that? 

        K: I think the studio has become that disciplined place that I can go
to now.  It used to be my music room, wherever I had the piano.  And I think
it's helped me tremendously to actually have an environment where I can go to
work.  It just makes it that much easier for me to concentrate.

        I: And do you set hours that you go there? 

        K: Not actually set hours, it depends how I feel.  But normally I'll
go there for a certain amount each day, depending on how well the ideas are
coming through.  So it depends.  

        I: We mentioned the old videos and you said you would like to see
Breathing.  What was it about particularly about that one that you felt was a
success? 

        K: I think it's one of the few that I've done that I can say that I'm
quite happy with some of the things we did in it.  It's one of those things. 
The way you make a video, quite often the song isn't lending itself to the
kind of visual ideas you'd like it to.  And with Breathing, I think it had
such a strong story that it was easier for us to visualize something that we'd
felt was powerful.  

        I: The song sounds like it was built of visual ideas to begin with, to
some extent. 

        K: I think when I'm writing songs, I do have quite strong visual
ideas, but they're not necessarily video visual ideas if you know what I
mean...

        I: Yes. 

        K: I think in order to get to a place, or to consider yourself in
someone else's position, you try to imagine an environment.  And I think in
some ways you think quite visually about that.  

        I: Lets take a look at Breathing from Kate Bush on MuchMusic and we'll
be right back.  

[Breathing is played]

        I: There you have Breathing from Kate Bush on MuchMusic and my guest,
Kate Bush.  Very nice to have you hear.  You suffered a fate in the early
goings of you're career of being somewhat of a pin-up girl in the British pop
mags. [Kate laughs].  How did you deal with that?  

        K: I think what worried me was that it was going to stop people taking
my music seriously.  I've always found it very complimentary if people said
that they found me attractive.  And my worry is really that it would get in
the way of my music.  Its not that, um... I find that so much of a problem
as...as if people wouldn't accept my music.  But I don't think that that has
been a problem.  I think people do seem to accept my music for its sake.  

        I: And does your sexuality have a role in your music? 

        K: Well I think that's something I find very confusing because I think
that the essence of all art is sensuality.  And sexuality, I mean I don't
suppose I understand it fully, but I always tend to think that that's
something that's projected.  And that sensuality is really were art is at. 
It's a much more subtle form of expression.  

        I: You have interesting theories.  There was an interview that I saw
that Daniel Richler for the New Music did last year, he was visiting in
England, and his show is done out of this building as well.   And there was a
quote where you said "the artist is like a magpie, pitting out little bits of
gold, and storing them away" to use later.  What are you picking through these
days?  

        K: [Laughs]  I think the whole process is like that, you're
continually looking for lyrical ideas, musical inspirations, people that would
be good to work with, people that you want to involve in your work.  I think
all the time you have to keep looking and listening because it's that
accumulation of things that all your ideas and your work depends on.  

        I: What are you looking at and listening to these days? 

        K: Um, well at the moment I'm caught in the middle of a big
promotional trip...

        I: Of course. 

        K: ...but it's interesting for me.  I'm getting a great deal of
feedback from people which is incredibly rewarding.  And also I suppose one
positive side of it is it makes you think about areas of yourself and your
music that you wouldn't do unless people were asking you these questions.  

        I: So you don't have any current obsessions in terms of...oh film or
music or art that you might pass on to us? 

        K: I think my current obsessions are perhaps films.  Between the last
album and this one I got very into our video machine at home and taping lots
of films off the television.  I think they've become very inspirational for
me.  And I think perhaps my video work is moving away from being theatrically
and dance oriented to perhaps being more cinematically influenced. 

        I: We have the video for Sat In Your Lap, do you have a few thoughts
on that one to pass along? 

        K: Um, well I think that's one of the fun videos that we did, where
the song is about the search for knowledge.  And um, I suppose we just wanted
to have a bit of fun in this video and try to express that [makes funny voice]
"we're looking for that thing", yeah. [Laughs]

        I: This is Kate Bush, Sat In Your Lap, on MuchMusic. 

[Sat In Your Lap is played]

        I: Christopher Ward on MuchMusic with my special guest, Kate Bush. 
And Kate as early as about 1980 you were experimenting with the Fairlight
computer musical instrument.  Has that changed the way you approach creating
music? 

        K: Yes, very much so.  I think it was one of the best thing to happen
for me along side rhythm machines.  Not only has it helped with the initial
writing process, were I'm getting associations off the sounds straight away as
I start writing the song, but also from an arrangement point of view, where if
I want strings or brass on a track I can work out an arrangement on the
fairlight with that particular sampled sound and then if want get the real
musicians in to redo it.  

        I: Yeah, well your use of it has become more and more extensive.  But
you were perhaps one of the first artists that I ever knew, along with perhaps
Peter Gabriel, who used the Fairlight at all. 

        K: I was very lucky in that I was at the studio where they decided to
demonstrate the machine at a very early stage.  It had only been in the
country for a while and they were just setting up the company.  As soon as I
saw it I knew that I had to have one, and it was going to become a very
important part of my work.  

        I: Are you an aggressive business person?  We hear stories that on the
first album a very young Kate Bush insisted Wuthering Heights be the first
single, against some resistance.  Is that true, and are you, in fact, very
aggressive about your business? 

        K: I don't know if I'm aggressive about my business, but I do a lot of
the time feel strongly about what I want or how I want to see it presented. 
It is an expression of me at some point and it seems wrong that as soon as it
goes out into the world it should leave me and my expression behind. 
Wuthering Heights I felt was a much more interesting single then perhaps some
that were being suggested at that time.  And um, I just felt it was a good
idea at the time to hang [slurs words ???- out with it ??].  I did feel
strongly about it, [makes cute Kate confused face],  yes.  

        I: It certainly paid off, number one record in the U.K. 

        K: It would seem so, yeah. 

        I: Do you rely on dreams a lot for inspiration for your songs?

        K: It's strange, a few people have started asking me that question
recently, and I would so no, that I can't actually think of any song that a
dream has directly inspired.  No. 

        I: Are you a keeper of a dream diary or something like that?

        K: No I'm not, no.

        I: I've experimented with that sort of thing and it's interesting -
there's a surrealistic quality to some of your songs that might lead one to
think that, [Kate makes polite expression] but not the case? 

        K: No, not consciously but...

        I: Now I wanted to ask you about the second side of The Hounds Of Love
LP - it's a conceptual piece called The Ninth Wave.  And what led you to that
concept and how did you go about developing it? 

        K: It's quite hard to pinpoint the initial inspiration, but I'm sure
that it came from, um, a combination of war movies where people were, soldiers
were, either thrown out of the ship or a plane into the sea.  And that whole
strength of imagery of water, of the sea, this enormous great power with this
tiny little human being in it.  And I suppose the whole parallel to things
likes sensory depravation, where if you're in the water long enough, you know
you start, ah, your mind starts traveling.  So it gave me a vehicle to travel
to different places and yet keep a theme.  

        I: Did you take yourself to an isolation tank or anything to achieve
that particular sensation?  

        K: [Laughs]  No, it's something that I would certainly like to
experience.  But I spent a lot of time writing, particularly the lyrics, by
water.  I was standing by the sea or by lakes.  So a lot of the time there was
water stimulus.  

        I: We have your brand new video for Cloudbusting, also from Hounds of
Love.  And, ah, I read an article in Number One magazine and they said
something very unusual happened during the shooting of it.  Is that all
rumors? 

        K: [Laughs] Yes, I can't think of anything!

        I: They talked about ghosts and all sorts of things, so...

        K: Did they?

        I: Do you want to straightened out any of those rumors for us?

        K: Well as far as I know there were no ghosts present, but there were
lots of human beings.  And a particularly good actor called Donald Sutherland.


        I: Of course, a well known Canadian actor as well. 

        K: Absolutely, yes.  

        I: So tell us about the video, what were you trying to accomplish? 
        K: I really wanted it to be a short piece of film.  I didn't want it
to be seen as a promotional clip or even a video, but as a film.  And part of
that idea was having an actor, hopefully a great actor, that would play the
part of the father, and myself playing the part of the young boy.  And the
song was inspired a book that's all about a very special relationship between
the guy that wrote the book, as a child and his father.  His father was a very
respected psychoanalyst,  psychiatrist, and had lots of theories on life
energy, and also had this machine called a cloudbuster that could make it
rain.  And together they'd go out into the dry desert and make it rain and
this was a very magical moment for the child.  

        K: It's called A Book Of Dreams, and the man that wrote it is called
Peter Reich.  And unfortunately the peak of the book is that his fathers
arrested, his beliefs were considered outrageous, people afraid of things that
they didn't know - especially at that time.  And it was very, very hard for
the child to cope without his father.  And in some ways the connection with
rain, for him every time it rains he thinks of his father, so its a positive
of him coping without him. 

        I: Kate thank you very much for joining us today, it's really a
pleasure to meet you.  And I know that there are fans across this country who
love you dearly and would very much like to see you perform here, so we hope
that you will be able to come back to North America and...

        K: Thank you. 

        I: ...we'll see you on stage.  I think I have a present somewhere. 
Yes here it is.  [Kate laughs, he hands here a MuchMusic shirt] .  A little
memento to take with you.  

        K: [Makes funny Kate voice]  For me??? 

        I: For you!!!  Please wear it in good health. 

        K: Thank you. Really nice to meet you.  

        I: Thanks very much Kate Bush. 

        K: Thank you.  

        I: And here we have the brand new video for Cloudbusting on MuchMusic.


        K: [Looks again at shirt]  Oh...!


[Cloudbusting is played]


[Interview 2: With Daniel Richler]

        
        I: When you last met, you said that The Dreaming had been something of
a traumatic album for you, or at least had reflected traumatic experiences of
yours, but that the new record, The Hounds Of Love, was going to be a happier
thing.  Do you still stick to that? 

        K: Yes, I do think this has go a much more positive energy.  Not
necessarily that the last album was dark, but it was dealing with intensities
of emotion.  Perhaps a more introverted album and this is more outward and
happy, yeah.  

        I: You have this so called Running Up That Hill in which you want to
make a deal with God.  What exactly is the deal you want to make? 

        K: It's the two people in the song, a man and a woman, that what to
make a deal with God in order to swap places with each other.  That if the man
could be the woman, and vise-versa, they would understand what its like from
that other person's point of view and that perhaps there'd be less problems in
the relationship.  

[Part of Running Up That Hill is played]

        I: The second side of The Hounds Of Love has a concept feel to it-
there are a number of songs that are strung together and they're all under the
sub-title of The Ninth Wave.  What is The Ninth Wave? 

        K: The Ninth Wave is a quote from a poem by Tennyson.  Some people
have though that the whole side was based on this poem and in fact it's
completely the other way around - where I'd written the whole side, wanted a
title that would sum up the energy of it, and was looking through books, etc,
to try to find a title, as I didn't feel it was there within the songs
themselves.  And I found that and it seemed to be such a good parallel, the
fact that it's such water imagery, and he's talking about how waves work in
cycles of nine, all building up to the ninth one, and then it starts again. 

        I: There's lots of scary water images on the Ninth Wave - a man
drowning and trying to get out from underneath the ice, a witch being bunked,
fisherman at sea, and so on.  Where did you first get the idea to do this
theme about water and it's frightening aspects.  

        K: I don't think water is something I think of as threatening, really.
 It's an incredibly beautiful thing and its one of those imageries that I
think forever, both way back into the past and into the future, will always be
used by writers.  Water, the sea is one of those incredible images, it's so
powerful, so almighty, so kind and so cruel.  And I think, what attracted me
was all kinds of things.  Obviously the imagery there but also the idea of a
tiny human being, this little thing, all alone in this great expanse of
cruelty, that elemental force, and the contrast between the two.  Something
that I think attracts me as a writer in music as well, the contrast of
textures, putting something with something else that perhaps isn't meant to go
and playing with those ideas.  

        I: When I met you in your dance studio in London, I saw a painting
against the wall that we were laughing about.  It was a satire of that
pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia drowned in the reeds, this one was in a
polluted river.  Now on the inside cover sheave of the hounds of Love there's
a picture of you in the water, like Ophelia.  Is that a deliberate connection?
 

        K: Not a conscious connection, no, but I'm sure that that imagery is
there very strongly.  Ophelia is one of those beautiful paintings, its
extraordinary.  And I think my attraction to Ophelia in the first place is
what made me get that painting.  So it's probably still quite subconsciously
strong there in me.  

[An excerpt from Cloudbusting is played]

        I: Your new video for Cloudbusting has got Donald Sutherland in it,
and you look quite impish, and there's some story going on.  Can you tell us
where it came from, what it's about? 

        K: The song was inspired by a book, which was about the relationship
between the man who wrote the book and his father.  And it's written through
his eyes when he was a child.  There's an incredible sense of innocence in the
book.  And his father was a very respected psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and he
also had a machine called a cloudbuster that could make it rain.  And together
they would go out and make it rain.  And we really wanted to do justice to the
story and the relationship between the two of them, that was a very special
one.  
[Another excerpt from Cloudbusting]

        I: Who wrote that book? 

        K: Peter Reich. 

        I: Ah, Peter Reich.  And it was called Cloudbusting? 

        K: It was called A Book Of Dreams. 

        I: And does he know that you have...is he still a living writer? 

        K: Yes, he is and ah...

        I: I should know about him I suppose. 

        K: Well the book wasn't totally well known.  It was in print for a
while and is now out of print.  And we sent him a cassette of the song, hoping
that he would like it and he's been very responsive, which is great for me. 

[Still more of Cloudbusting is played]



[Third interview - Good Rockin Tonight]

        O: On behave of Good Rockin Tonight Nan Devitt talked to Kate about
why she left school to study dance and mime. 

        K: I think that actual decision about going for it was just before I
left school and that's why I left school.  I didn't feel that I could get what
I wanted out of school anymore in a way that was going to encourage me getting
involved with music.  I really had to leave and go into a more artistic kind
of lifestyle and dancing was a particulary good one to choose I think. 
        Well, when I left school I knew very much that I wanted to go into the
music business, that that's what I wanted to aim for.  And I wanted to do
something that would fill my day, that would be a good discipline for me, and
that would be complimentary to the music.  And dance was something that I'd
only just discovered recently at that time.  And I felt that there was a whole
world of expression there that I'd never experienced and that perhaps the
combination of that with singing would make an interesting performing vehicle.
 So I started training with a mine artist called Lindsay Kemp, who was a very
big inspiration for me, and then started dancing at a school.  And since then,
though the videos the dance has been an incredibly useful thing for me.  

[A portion of Wuthering Heights is played]

        K: As I've gradually gone through the business I've become much more
involved in other areas.  And I've found that when I worked in the studio,
there we all these areas that were connected to the song that were changing it
in a way perhaps that I hadn't intended when I was initially writing the song.
 And I felt that a natural progression for me was to get involved in
production, so that then I could take much more control over the whole thing
and therefore end up with a result that I felt was my expression, rather than
an indirect expression through lots of other people.  And again that was a
gradual thing, where I went into co-production, and finding that to be
pleasing and quite successful, went into producing solely.  

        I: Since then you've built a studio in your home, can you tell me
about that? 

        K: That's right, again that was another sort of realization on the
last album.  That as I producing and getting closer to the whole thing, I
found that the way I'm working now is so experimental, it takes me a lot of
time, I like to play around with ideas.  And in a commercial studio it's
costing so much money every hour that I found that was becoming
anti-productive, I was so nervous, because I shouldn't be taking so much time
playing around with things, that it was stopping me trying things.  And we
felt the only way really to cope with this was to have our own studio and then
also I'd be able to write in the studio and just do as much as I could there
and make it all part of the same environment.  

[The Man With The Child In His Eyes is played]

        K: During the gap between the last and this album, I'd seen quite a
few videos on television, that other people had been doing.  And I felt that
dance, something that we'd be working in, particulary in the earlier videos in
quite a foreway, was being used quite trivially, it was being exploited:
haphazard images, busy, lots of dances, without really the serious expression,
and wonderful expression, that dance can give.  So we felt how interesting it
would be to make a very simple routine between two people, almost classic, and
very simply filmed.  So that's what we tried, really, to do a serious piece of
dance.  [Laughs]

[Part of Running Up That Hill is played]

        K: I think until this album I've always treated them as individual
songs, and you just work on one at a time, trying to do the best you can to
get the best atmosphere across.  But with this album I really wanted to try a
conceptual piece, something I'd wanted to do for a while but hadn't really
gone for.  And I felt rather than making a whole of it, it would be
interesting to have a side that was conceptual, and then make the other side a
kind of counter-balance.  And it was a lot of fun working like that, I'm so
used to working on a piece of music that's no more than five minutes long. 
And although these are individual songs, they're all linked and they all have
the same theme and atmosphere, so you're definitely working within one entity.
 And it was very challenging.  

        I: Buy you decided not to do the whole album as a concept.  

        K: Yes, I think there were a couple of reasons for that.  One, I'd
felt that half an hour was a good length of time to get involved in a story. 
And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make something sustain over a
whole album and that I stood a better chance of doing that with one side of
it.  And also, I wasn't sure if was even going to work until I'd written a few
of the songs.  So it made sense for me to secure myself by witting a couple of
other songs for the other side while I was working on that side.  [Laughs]

        I: What do you think you'll do next? 

        K: I don't know, it's a very strange point in time for me here, where
I'm in the middle of promoting the album.  And we'll be making videos for the
next singles next year.  And sometime during this period I have to decide what
I'm going to do next.  There are a few things that attract me equally.  Going
straight into another album is something that I have a lot of enthusiasm
about.  And perhaps turning the conceptual side of this album into a film, in
an idea I'm toying with.  So, I'm not sure, we'll have to see what I'm feeling
like at the beginning of next year.  

[Cloudbusting is played]

        K: Hounds of Love is about someone who's scarred of falling in love
with someone, of being trapped, and sees it as a simile of a pack of hounds
that are chasing them.  And instead of being happy about it, terrified, so
they're running for their life really.  [Laughs]

        I: Is that something - is that personal for you or... is that
something you've observed about other people ?

        K: I think that everyone is scarred of relationship on some level or
other, but actually the song in many ways was inspired by an old english black
and white movie called Night Of The Demon, which is just one of those great
movies that managed to get through a whole phase of other movies that were
incredibly corny and not effective, and has a real atmosphere about it.  

        I: Do you have a favorite album of yours, a Kate Bush album? 

        K: It's a very close tie between this and the last one.  I think
probably this one.  The one that you've just done is normally your most
favorite and then becomes your least favorite and you want to get on and do
something else and make it better.  [Laughs]

        I: What do you know about Canada? 

        K: I know very little about it.  I wish that I had more time here to
actually go and see the country because it's one of the most beautiful
countries in the world.  I've only seen it on film, but it's beautiful. 


[Other quotes from the same interview, shown at a later date.  Starts with the
Hounds of Love quote above]

        K: Well touring is one of those things that could easily be the next
project.  I think what's put me off committing myself to it is the amount of
involvement - it enormous.  I mean it's financially costly, very tiring, and a
tremendous amount of effort goes into it.  But it's so rewarding.  And we only
did the one tour in '79, around England and Europe.  And I had to wait until I
had another two albums worth of material to be able to tour again, which only
took me to the end of the last album.  And since then, I haven't really been
prepared for that kind of commitment. 

        I: Well, what would a tour involve, what would a concert - a Kate Bush
concert - involve?  Would there be dancing...? 

        K: Yes.  Well this is how we approached it the last time.  Very much
inspired by the initial influences of people like Lindsay Kemp and the dance
that I'd taken up.  I felt that it was a really interesting combination to use
music, theatre, poetry, in live form.  And although all the songs we'd worked
were off the albums, we had lots links and different extensions to the music
and that.  And so it really does become a very involved process.  And I think
the last three albums, which if we did a tour would be what we'd cover,
actually lend themselves better towards being visualized theatrically, but I
just don't know if we'll every get 'round to doing it. [Laughs]







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