Melody Maker 1985 Interview

[rhill@netlink.cts.com (Ron Hill)]

Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes 
by Ted Nico

>From Melody Maker 
Aug. 24, 1985

        BOXED STATEMENT: After three years in the shadows, the ethereal KATE 
BUSH is back with a hit single and a - wait for it - concept album.  
Glassy-eyed Ted Mico switches on the tape recorder and signs a lot.  
Photography: Tom Sheehan

        "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my 
childhood than is the truth that is taught by life." - Shiller

        Just like the phoenix really .  ONce every two years she rise out of 
the ashes to once more bestow a touch of mysticism, a hint of myth, and a 
copious supply of inspired vision upon the burned-out landscape we call the 
chars. 
        She smiles.  We shake hands.  She's too polite to be a phoenix.  
Perhaps a Fairy Queen?  Tommy and I introduce ourselves at the doorway of 
her dance studio:
        "Oh yes Tom," she beams, "you're looking better then the last time I 
saw you." 
        Young Thomas looks flushed.  They're only met once before - three 
years ago for about five minutes.  Perhaps she does remember?
        "Oh yes, and I've met you before as well," she smiles.
        I try to explain this is not the case.  Mistaken identity perhaps?  
I'm damn sure I'd remember.  But she's adamant. 
        "Perhaps it was in another life," cries a whimsical voice from the 
room.
        "Yes," she stares at me, considering the matter thoroughly.  "It 
must have been in another life." 
        Oh deary me.  She is serious.  She is incredibly cordial.  She is 
unbelievably beautiful.  
        Over the past two years the name Kate Bush has once more receded to 
the back of the common consciousness, joining the smoldering ember of The 
Buzzcocks, et al - set for the scrapyard.  Yet once more she has confounded 
the rumour-mongers who had already pronounced her the Lady Lucan of pop, 
missing presumed dead.  Once more she has created an album to besot and 
bewitch the coldest of hearts.  Once more she has come out of her isolated 
refuge with the charm of a siren, and the innocence of a child.  Ms. Bush is 
incapable of growing old, she has merely grown up. 
        But what, you ask, has sister Kate been doing during this hiatus, 
this self-imposed exile?  As usual Kate explains much, but reveals precious 
little, slamming the doors of privacy with a single coy look.
        "After the last album, I had to promote it, and that took me to the 
end of '82, so it hasn't really been that long.  My life is quite extreme 
really; I go from a very isolated working situation, to going out and 
promoting my work and being very much a public creature.  After you've ben 
through months of that kind of over-exposure, you're left feeling a bit 
shell-shocked.  I need to take some time off and go somewhere quite 
different to write this new album.  I didn't want to produce it in the wake 
of The Dreaming."
        A wise move.  Music vogues move with such alacrity, that two years 
off can finish off a career.  In fact, such a time-span is the beginning and 
the end of most groups lifespan!
        "I didn't really bother thinking about that sort of thing.  I spent 
the time seeing films, seeing friends, building my own studio, and doing 
things I hadn't had a chance to do for ages."
        Things?  You couldn't elaborate on what these strange and wondrous 
things would be.  Trout fishing?  Hang-gliding?  Hamster hunting?
        "I found an inspirational new dance teacher," Kate replies with 
growing enthusiasm.  "The teacher's energy made me really enthusiastic about 
writing again."
        And once again the conversation turns back to the studio.  Kate 
talks about her beloved studio a great deal - a great deal more than she's 
willing to chat about herself.  She really doesn't have any hobbies, mainly 
because they wouldn't be beneficial to her work - the subject around which 
her entire universe evolves.  The one exception is an avid interest in 
archery.  And even this she has turned toward work, with the cover shot of 
the new single, believing it to be symbolic of Cupid's bow - an image which 
ties the threads of the single together.
        And so, naturally, we turn to Kate's new album, Hounds Of Love, and 
the current success of the new single.  Another new departure?  Another 
rebirth?  Another quest for new pastures?
        "Yes, I wanted something new, and to begin with it was extremely 
difficult.  All the songs I seemed to write sounded too much like the last 
album.  I've never seen any point in repeating things you've already done 
before.  I think it's a dangerous thing not to search for new ways of 
approaching songs.  Too many people sit and think 'it'll just come to me', 
instead of getting off their arses and going for it."
        Kate, of course, is far too polite to name names...
        "If you get out and go for things then those things will come to 
you.  I think it's too easy to wait and expect things just to come to you." 
        A certain Mr. M. Thatcher said similar words, but this time they 
ring with verity.  Must be her smile.  Kate's new studio, hidden away in the 
overgrown wilds of Kent, enable her to exorcise the ghosts of The Dreaming 
without sending EMI executives into prolonged thromboses over the expense of 
the operation. 
        "The pressure of knowing the astronomical amount studio time cost 
used to make me really nervous about being too creative.  You can't 
experiment forever, and I work very, very slowly.  I feel a lot more relaxed 
emotionally now that I have my own place to work and a home to go to."
        Sitting on floor cushions, drinking cups of tea, I can't help 
thinking if things got any more relaxed they'd be sound asleep.  Speak more 
of the new material Kate.  Speak words of love...
        "This time I wrote a lot of songs and just chose the best ones to 
put on the A side of the album.  I like to think there's not a song there 
that's been put there for padding.  Sometimes people get the impression that 
if you take a long time over something that you're literally going over the 
same piece again and again, and instead of making it better, you're making 
it worse.  I hate to think I've ever done that.
        This striving for perfection might well be cause by fears about 
disappointing her audience or her pet cats.  The longer the wait, the 
greater the expectation. 
        "There are always so many voices telling me what to do that you 
can't listen to them.  All I ever do is listen to the little voices inside 
me.  I don't want to disappoint the little voices that have been so good to 
me."
        Of course not.  The finely-tuned songs that made the final selection 
on the album differ greatly from the diversions of previous albums. They are 
all love songs (sigh) using elemental imagery that form a cogent and 
cohesive panoply of emotion.  A search and struggle to secure some sort of 
meaning.  The discovery that although you can strip away everything form a 
person, there will always be a residue of love awaiting resurrection.  
Sounds mawkish doesn't it?  Jane Austin world have loved it.  All those over 
expressive vocals and delicate orchestrations channelled into such pathos.  
Sounds risible, doesn't it? 
        Yet the songs' style and eloquence rise above bathos through their 
haunting overtones.  Phantasmagorical voices tilt the rose-coloured world 
off its trite axis with jagged eerie phrases.  Outside observations are 
slanted metaphors revealing states of mind.  No longer are we presented with 
the eclectic collage of The Dreaming whose continual shifts and spirals 
allowed an escape with diversity.  No longer is the entire story of Houdini 
crammed into three minutes, until a new fable takes up the torch.  Now the 
texture is more subtle, the production more adroit, and the mesmerism 
unrelenting.  
        "The last album contained a lot of different energies.  It did take 
people to lots of different places very quickly and some people found that 
difficult to take.  I think this album has more of a positive energy.  It's 
a great deal more optimistic.
        "I rather think of the album as two separate sides."  How astute.  
"The A side is really called Hounds of Love, and the B side is called The 
Ninth Wave.  The B side is a story, and that took a lot more work - it 
couldn't be longer than half an hour, and it had to flow.  This time when 
you get to the end of one track, what happens after it is very affect by 
what's come before.  It's really difficult to work out the dynamics within 
seven tracks.  The concept took a long time."
        Whoops!  There goes that word again.  Concept - a word mauled by the 
memory of Floyd, flares, baked lentils and chronic boredom.  It took some 
time to extract my nails from the ceiling and climb back down to earth.  It 
took even longer to summon up the courage to ask what this concept might 
entail.  Kate looks upset that I'm not jumping up and down with ecstasy. 
        "It's about someone who comes off a ship and they've been in the 
water all night by themselves, and it's about that person re-evaluating 
their life from a point which they've never been before.  It's about waking 
up from things and being reborn - going through something and coming out the 
other side very different."
        Sounds suspiciously like The Ancient Mariner revisited...
        "Oh no!  It's completely different.  It ends really positively - as 
things always should if you have control." 
        And Kate certainly has that.  From the writing, recording, 
performing, production of her tunes to the choreography on the accompanying 
video.  As usual the visual imagery is gleaned from a wide variety of 
sources: from the films of Godard, Herzog and Coppola, to The Book Of 
Dreams, yet their accretion with Kate's own personal fears and desires is 
shrouded in mystery.  
        "There are many films that you don't think much of at the time, but 
weeks afterwards you get flashbacks of images.  Sometimes films like Don't 
Look Now and Kagemusha have really haunted me.  You don't necessarily steal 
images from films, but they are very potent and take you somewhere else - 
somewhere impossible to get to without that spark."
        At this moment it is difficult to see how such a placid, genteel, 
and downright normal musician could ever produce songs like "Get Out Of My 
House" and "Sat In Your Lap".  Perhaps some strange transformation takes 
place over when she is asleep! 
        "Yes, I have very strange dreams you know.  Over the years I've 
collected the most incredible star cast of them.  Very famous people come 
and visit me." 
        Curiouser and curiouser...
        "Peter O'Toole came round to dinner last week and my mum met him and 
thought he was wonderful.  Keith Moon often comes round for tea as well.  I 
have a lot of vivid dreams, most of which I can't mention.  The images I get 
from them sometimes bleed into my songs."
        Most of Kate's heroes like Oscar Wilde, The Pythons, Roxy Music, 
Billie Holiday and Hitchcock have all visited her, but her mum didn't like 
Hitchcock - maybe she was just frightened by him?
        "Hitchcock was definitely a genius.  His dreams must have been 
extraordinary.  He must have plucked his ideas out of the sky, or had a 
private line to Mars."
        Slowly, very slowly we're edging closer to the point were the 
musician and her music bisect. 
        "I think some people use music as a means of expressing what they 
feel about things which they can't express socially.  I don't really know 
why people think my songs are strange.  Perhaps because I bathe in goat's 
milk!! It not something you should really ask me.  My mom could probably 
help you more.  It's probably something to do with my childhood." 
        I met Kate's mum in one of her dreams last Tuesday, but she didn't 
tell me much either.  The door slams shut again.  Perhaps a choice of 
character from the scrolls of history might reveal more. 
        "I would want to be Breugal, definitely".  Things are starting to 
come into focus.  Only a fool would have predicted Florence Nightingale - 
and Kate is nobody's fool. 
        "His work is so real, and yet depicted in a fantastic way.  It's so 
beautiful and elemental.  And his faces are so haunting."
        Things seemed to be going well - very well, until quite suddenly, 
just as Kate was recounting her favourite fairy tales, she comes over all 
unnecessary.  Lights flash, Kate wilts, and her world starts to spin in the 
opposite direction as everyone else's. 
        "I'm terribly sorry about this, but I keep feeling worse and worse, 
and I don't know whether I can talk properly any more."
        Her companion calls it overwork, the doctor calls it a severe 
migraine.  We call it a day.
        "I don't know what's come over me," she says - embarrassed.  We 
shake hands.  She smiles. 
        "I'm sure we'll see each other again very soon."
        Yes Kate I sure hope we will.  Probably in another life. 
        We exited, floating through the nearest wall. 

        
/;l
/l

--                    
 rhill@netlink.cts.com (Ron Hill)  
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