sunday times

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

        This next interview is one of the best I've seen in a long time. It
one of interviews that I haven't type in completely since in contains much
non-quote material.  I usually don't post these, but on my photo-copy the
bottom line is missing and so each column of text is missing its bottom line,
with the exception of the first.  If anyone has a better copy, please send me
those lines.  Thanks. 

How to write songs and influence people

by Derek Jewell

The Sunday Times
5 October 1980

EXCERPTS

        "I don't want to be managing director of the world," said Kate Bush. 
"I just want to be managing director of myself."  She seems, at 22, to be well
on schedule. 
        Her record company, EMI, didn't want to release a strange piece called
"Wuthering Heights" as her first single in 1978 when she was unknown - a
fairly predictable decision. 

        "We lived in a farmhouse.  I used to play hymns on an old organ in the
farm until it was eaten out by mice."

She used her advance money to buy herself dance instruction for two years,
left the convent, and went to live in London.  "As soon as you leave school,
you learn things at three times the rate." 

        "No, it's not personal.  It's just a mother grieving and observing the
waste.  A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have [??? LINE MISSING!] 
whatever.  But he's nothing to do, no way to express himself.  So he joins the
army.  He's trapped.  So many die, often in accidents.  I'm not slagging off
the army, because it's good for certain people.  But there are a lot of people
in it who shouldn't be."
        Hesitantly, she outlines artists who may have influenced her.  The
writers included Kurt Vonnegut, C. S. Lewis and T.S. Elliot.  But her main
inspiration has been traditional music.  "Irish airs, the uillean pipes -
music like that affect me physically."  The composers for her are Chopin,
Debussy, Sibelius and Erik Satie, and all of these are named before she comes
to modern popular music. 
        The litany begins with Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.  Billie Holiday
is less expected.  "I [??? LINE MISSING!] her upper range.  What she says with
her voice is so human and vulnerable."  Then, Bowie and Beatles, Roy Harper
and Roxy Music, Thin Lizzie and Boomtown Rats ("when they began - not now"),
Paul Simon and Ian Dury. 
        "I love Ian Dury because he says good positive things that will help
people, cheer them up.  I'd be a fool to think I could change the world, but
to influence people, yes.  It's important to spread positivity.  Stevie Wonder
has a song, "Love's In Need Of Love Today," and every time I hear it, it makes
me feel better.  Some writers concentrate on the negative area.  It's selfish
masturbating really, and art's not a selfish thing.
        "If I listen to Leonard Chohen, I get depressed.  So many of his songs
are autobiographical self- [??? LINE MISSING!!] with no hope or objectivity. 
One of my new songs, "All We Ever Look For," it's not about me.  It's about
family relationships generally.  Our parents got beaten physically.  We get
beaten psychologically.  The last line - "All we ever look for - but we never
did score."  WEll, that's the way it is - you do get faced sometimes with
futile situations.  But the answers not to kill yourself.  You have to accept
it, you have to cope with it."
        The managing director of herself was in full flood.  "I'm not a
businesswoman at all.  I just want to write and play and sing and dance.  I
don't feel I'm biting off too much.  I understand my music better than others.
 I can judge.  They can't.  So I'll cram in everything I can."  After all, I
might not even be around in [??? LINE MISSING !!!]

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