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

Kate Bush Touches The U.S. At Last
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>From Pulse!  April 1984 
by Richard Laermer

        Kate Bush first touched America's music sensibilities in 1977 with the
release of her first record, a mysterious, melodic collection called The Kick
Inside [the album wasn't released until 1978] and an appearance on Saturday
Night Live, performing strange mime to some of her more viscerally meaningful
lyrics.  While many viewers scoffed at the undefinable movement on the screen,
some ran out in curiosity to buy the product behind the performance.
        The Kick Inside feature Bush as writer, singer, and keyboardist, and
dissects such esoteric subjects as telepathy, sensuality, incest, and the
classic film Wuthering Heights.  In 1977, a year laden with disco, Kate's
vinyl presence stood out as new and original.  But the Bush sound - unusual to
be sure - has taken time to catch on in this country.  While British critics
call Kate "too commercial," because of her frequent appearances on family talk
shows and other promotional venues, her label, EMI, has felt until recently
that her records were "too British for American tastes."  So, with only one of
her four records available here domestically, Bush fans had to search the
import bins for her product.  Her second album, Lionheart, was suddenly
released without explanation by EMI on January 13 and it entered Billboard's
LP and tape charts at #202, Kate's first appearance on those charts. 
        "I don't know why they released it," said Caroline Prutzman of EMI in
New York.  "I think EMI believes in Kate and would like to see her break over
here.  They have all that material , and she does have a following, so it
seems like a good idea."  So good, in fact, that by the time this Pulse! hits
the stores, EMI should have a domestic release of Kate's third album, Never
For Ever, in the stores. 
        "It's hard to say exactly what they're trying to do." Prutzman
commented, "but Kate's video (Kate Bush In Concert) has been playing all over
the country, and it's been received very well."  That video is also
commercially available.
        "Only two of my records have actually been released in America," Kate
notes from her studio in Great Britain.  "I was really pleased that there were
so many people trying to get hold of the albums on import."
        This sentiment is from a 25-year old lady who began writing songs at
age 11.  She says, "I didn't think I was going to do it for a profession.  It
was fun, something I really enjoyed.  I spent most of my time create scenarios
for songs.  At 16 I had gotten to the point where my songs were presentable. 
That was after five years of writing ballads and slow songs like 'The Man With
The Child In His Eyes.'"
        Kate started recording her songs at that young age with the help of
close friend David Gilmour [actually they weren't and aren't "close friends"],
lead singer of Pink Floyd.  Gilmour was so impressed with his pal's burgeoning
talent that when she was 16 he introduced Kate and her vast collection of
music to EMI.  
        "I signed a recording contract at 16.  The hardest thing," Kate admits
modestly, "was choosing the songs."  Having stockpiled much more than an
album's worth of songs, she was able to choose from the cream of the crop. 
        "Wuthering Heights," the first single, was a huge it in several
European countries.  "The story in 'Wuthering Heights' had been bugging me for
about a month," Kate recalls, pondering on the lives on Emily Bronte's doomed
lovers.  "At the time I was recording the album, I began to down my thoughts
on Cathy and Heathcliff and their incredible relationship.  I really enjoyed
the energy between those two." 
        And so did single buyers in England, pushing Kate Bush to superstar
status her first time out.  She toured the continent and Japan - where The
Kick Inside still reigns as a national favorite - and returned six months
later to record Lionheart, a quickly-produced recording that Kate now things
[sic: thinks] harshly about: "I had only a week after we got back from Japan
to prepare for the album.  I was lucky to get it together so quickly.  But the
songs seem to me, now, to be somewhat overproduced.  I didn't put enough time
into them."  She gave more time, and thought, to her 1980 release, Never For
Ever, her first self-produced effort which, surprisingly enough, sported her
first released single ("Babooshka") in the states and a big selling cult
single in several American cities (the import "Army Dreamers").
        The U.S. record buyer, however, ignored Kate until '82 when the rocker
LP The Dreaming came out stateside in large quantities and suddenly the
anonymity of a singer from Kent, England was reversed.  That albums' hard
sound proved to be her American kick-off, and due to the newfound saleability
of Kate Bush, EMI quickly followed The Dreaming with a 1983 EP featuring some
of her best material from the pervious four releases (called Kate Bush). 
Available only in the United States and Canada, this limited edition, with
Kate dramatically poised in brass armor, was EMI's intended mode of bringing
U.S. attention to Britain's singer elite. 
        Strength was her one motive when commencing work on The Dreaming, she
says, explaining how for the first time she relied "on the power of the music"
rather than sultry tunes and serene lyrics prominent in her previous albums. 
And the power in Kate Bush's music was an evolutionary process that is traced
in the Kate Bush EP, fusing the new Bush force with those beautifics utilized
in the earlier records. 
        "I was trying, in The Dreaming, to get myself up to the point I knew I
was capable of," kate says of the search for power.  "the Dreaming was my
emotional image and I am thankful that I had good people to help with the
dynamics." 
        The last studio effort took almost two years to complete as she needed
to work with specific technical directors who, unfortunately, weren't always
available for her.  Today she works with only one.  "I was looking for a
certain imagination in an engineer and I ended up going with quite a few and
working in many different studios," she notes.  "That's not what I would've
wanted to do." 
        The visual imageries that come across in The Dreaming are due, she
points out, "to the painstaking time we took to get every effect perfect." 
>From The Kick Inside to the last album, movement has been an evident element
in her work.  Kate mentions how, "Back when I recorded Kick I had just
discovered the enjoyment of dance and I was so knocked out by that, that
writing was a breeze for me."  Dance, and the fine art of movement, Kate says,
are responsible for the free flow of many of her songs.
        In The Dreaming, she lends a topical theme to many cuts.  "Sat In Your
Lap," a punk influenced homage to pop Brit culture circa 1982, shows off
Kate's feelings on knowledge and education:  "Knowledge is something sat in
your lap/something that you never have," because, in the singer's eyes, "the
more you realize, the more you need to learn."  But other parts of the record
present a more maudlin view of things: The crazed "Get Out Of My House" was
inspired by the horrors in Steven Kings The Shining and utilized several
overlapping tracks that simulate madness.  Kate sings about a house that takes
over, a house possessed by devilish innards.  
        "When I'm writing a particular song," she says excitedly, "I can feel
a character so strongly that perhaps I'm feeling the same."  Well aware that
her songs provide listeners with some extreme characterizations, she finds it
"terribly important ... to make the person I am writing about come alive. 
Unless I can somehow live the experience I don't feel that I've achieved what
I want to as a writer."
        Kate is busy these days putting the pre-studio finishing touches on
her fifth record.  "I've been writing material for my new album - the songs
are almost complete now," she said.  "I hope to start recording in a couple of
months when I've finished writing and tightening up the lyrics."  As for the
direction the record's music will take, she hasn't decided yet.  She will
venture to the U.S. later this year to promote it but not to tour.  "It's a
shame, but for now I don't see the possibility of a tour," she says with a
sigh.  "We can't afford to do it the way I'd want to."  The way she wants to
do it is right.  For now she will wait and see the reaction to her newest
product, and in the meantime hope that her American success continues to grow.
 About America, Kate is glad that video has made it to the forefront of
entertainment.  Having produced a clip for each single to date, on of her
problems in not catching on here, she is well aware, has been the lack of
video venues.  These days most musically inclined cable channels carry Kate's
work, both past and present.  (According to ABC's 20/20, Kate was one of the
ground-breakers in video production - years before MTV.)
        On the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' invasion, Kate said she
only became "very interested in the Beatles about four years ago.  I'd always
liked their singles but only really started listening to their albums a little
while ago.  I think they are a great influence on any writer," she noted, "the
quality of their work is something, I feel, every composer aspires to." 
        Specific songs have left their mark on Kate Bush: "So many records
have left great impressions on me.  It is always hard to just call them all to
mind so quickly but to mention a few - "No. 9 Dream" by John Lennon: "I Am The
Walrus" by The Beatles: "He's  My Man" by Billie Holiday: "Best of Both
Worlds" by Robert Palmer: "Really Good Time" by Roxy Music: "Tropical Hot Dog
Night" by Captain Beefheart: "Montana" by Frank Zappa: music by Eberhard
Weber, and "the Wall" by Pink Floyd (and pal David Gilmour)." 
        The first record this lady of music ever purchased was "They're Coming
To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha" by Napoleon XIV.  She was very young.  Pondering the
subject of when she got into music, said that, "I've always been into music. 
I was a child then and I think all children embrace music."
        These days Kate finds she's too busy to get involved in pop culture. 
"Since I've been in the business I've had a lot less time to keep up with
what's happening," she said regretfully.  "I don't feel I have to 'keep up' as
such, but I always love to hear good music and see new interesting bands." 
        But most of what she listens to these days is classical.  "Very little
contemporary - mostly old favorite records and Radio 4." Britain's quiet one
on the dial. 

        
        

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