*** Vermorel's Boooks ****

[rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)]

        I'm going to be posting on and off ancient postings from the 
archives of Love-Hounds that I'm digging up for my _Deeper_Understanding_ 
book.  To start off, Anil asked about Vermorels book(s) on Kate.  If 
you've read them you can understand why they might be upset, especially 
since so much of it is negative (about her brothers and fans especially) 
and untrue. The latest HOMEGROUND has an article that quotes him after 
being asked if he regreted that she had been upset and he said: "It was 
vital to avoid thinking of her as a person rather then as an object." 
Which shows where he was coming from.  What follows are quotes from 
Paddy, Jay, and Kate, as well as an ancient (1985) article from Doug 
about the books. 

 
*       As far as books on Kate Bush, that have been published, they seem 
to be absolute rubbish. 
        PADDY AND JAY: YEAH!
        They've made Jay out to be some morose figure who hides in dark 
alleys..
        JAY: Yeah. [Laughter from audience] 
        And your whole family to be eccentric.  Do you resent that and 
could Kate Bush put the record straight by writing her own biography? 
        JAY: I think, yes, initially we resented it and it was a bit of a 
shock and that's the usually process, finding out whether I wanted to do 
anything to stop it, because a lot of it was quite unpleasant and very 
un-[??? flattering] to me.  And we decided that we wouldn't because that 
would fuel the fire of the sort of people who were doing it. 
        PADDY: [Makes funny voice] Nasty Bushes!  Stop us going to press! 
[???? inaudible] Us!  [Laughter from Audience]
        JAY: Actually for her to do a book we find it's rather difficult 
because she doesn't get on the [??? planet] that long.  And slight 
attempts were made of it but I think actually seeing your life spread out 
in one big long effort is very weird sensation.  So, no, they haven't 
have.  Whether they will in the future, I don't know.  I doubt it 
somehow.  But I'm sure they'll be plenty more books as far as the ones 
we've been talking about now.  But it's just an unfortunate aspect of the 
music industry.  But, as you say, they are rubbish and they're rubbish in 
so many details, not in what they say about us but just in what they call 
"fact" is all wrong.  And they don't rely them at all, [??? inaudible] 
        Did Fred Vermorel every meet you? 
        JAY: No, nor Paddy. 
        PADDY: No, not one of us. 
        JAY: He wants to know where he could find us.  [More laughter] 
Just for our own person protection from him, you know he went through our 
dust bins, too.  Some people make a living... [??? inaudible]  (1985, 
Kate Bush Con. Paddy and Jay Interview)
 


*       Bush, who is unerringly courteous in conversation, stumbled on 
the subject of the innumerable articles and several books that have 
portrayed her as starry-eyed romantic. 
        There's not much I can say about them, is there? she said after a 
long pause. 
        When reminded that these are the only descriptions of her that 
her American fans have, Bush paused again.
        Well, then, it should be very interesting when I come over there 
and make my mark.   (1984, L.A. Times)



>From nessus  Mon Oct 21 01:30:06 1985
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 85 01:30:06 edt
From: nessus (Doug Alan)
Subject: Break-Through and Fred Vermorel Bios

> I'd appreciate any thoughts on "Breakthrough" from y'all (this
> magazine may already have been discussed here, along, I'm sure, with
> the reprehensible Fred Vermorel bio, but remember, I've only been here
> for a few weeks...)

There hasn't been much discussion of any of this.  I have just mentioned
both.  There are two Fred Vermorel bios, which are very different.
There is "Kate Bush: Princess of Suburbia" and "The Secret History of
Kate Bush".  The first one is a parody of a National Enquirer style
expose.  It's complete with "proof" that Kate Bush was trying to control
people's minds with Gurdjieffian hypnotism methods and ritual dancing
and movement.  Vermorel seems to like Kate well-enough in this bio
(though I guess he seems to think she's a somewhat amusing figure or
something, and he has many nasty things to say about her family and
friends), so I have no idea why he chose Kate as the subject of a parody
on scandal sheets.  I can't find "Princess of Suburbia" too
reprehensible, though most KB fans seem to think it is, because it can't
possibly be taken seriously -- it's more funny than anything else.  I'm
told that Kate was quite hurt by it, though.

After "The Dreaming" came out, Vermorel seemed to totally change his
mind about Kate.  He decided that "The Dreaming" is the greatest work of
art ever, and wrote "The Secret History of Kate Bush".  This one,
instead of being a biography, is a hundred page long love-letter to
Kate.  Which makes it kind of ridiculous.  I'm not sure where Fred is
coming from on this one.  Maybe it's not supposed to be taken seriously
-- maybe it's supposed to be a parody of a hundred page long love-letter
to Kate....  But he sure seems serious.

This is chapter I:

        We recognized her as we always do stars.  A face "clicks",
        happens, transfigures anonymity.  As the eye jumps to a pretty
        face in a croud, the word "sex" on a page.  So decisively it
        seems a star is *born*,  But not out of labour.  Rather as a
        flying saucer crash-landed on earth.  Gleaming mysterious and
        seamless in its crater.  Surrounded by excited cameramen and
        fenced off by stern authority.  A worldwide object of
        speculation: Gee!  Is there anyone -- anything -- inside?  And
        is it friendly?

        So she burst through the telly in early '78.  All wrists and
        lisp and dimples, all sweet and clever, all arms like water
        flowing over stones, as clean and delicious as a scoop of
        avocado pear.  The suburbs breathed again.  Fresh air after
        punk's foul blast.  And very soon very famous.  A hit, a gold,
        a number one.  Introduced to gentry.  An institution.  Snap,
        crackle and pop.  A campaign of champagne.  Prizes, encore!,
        and: who the hell does she think she is?  "The most photographed
        woman in Britain."

        Then she disappeared.

        And destroyed her talent.  For two years worked to wreck her
        facility and build something more interesting in the ruins.  As
        every artist has to.  And has taken pop production its furthest
        yet.  As frank as Cliff, as crisp as the Floyd, and as potent
        as the Pistols.  And her work's now as sharp and inspired as
        David Hockney's (which it resembles).  Only more important.  For
        Hockney's art is defunct: fine art painting.  But hers is the
        only art which really counts today.  Not pop art, but the art of
        pop.

        A strange, could be dangerous art.  Crazy Kate, pop witch.  She
        exorcises our madness.  Lives and projects myths she can't
        always control.  Or understand.

        Also an unusual person with unusual reflexes -- a welcome
        antidote to most of us.  How did she come about?  I followed the
        fragile chances and distillation which produced her and her art
        and realized how nearly she never made it -- for which we'd be
        the poorer.  And also followed her appearance through her
        folklore: Kate sphinx, Kate harlequin, Kate harlot...  A history
        of our expectations and recognition.

                "Fear cautions me, 'Remain a stranger,'
                   Yet longing urges, 'Do not wait.'
                Her eyes spell secrecy and danger,
                   Yet they are my dark stars of fate."
                                (Heine, "Katherine")


This is from page 61:

        I remember that first EMI poster which loomed from buses and
        tube stations to katenap my eye in '78.  Grave, delicious Kate,
        plump owl in her tangled nest of puzzled hair with nipples
        blowing tiny kisses through a cotton vest.  Kate and I joined in
        instant photolock.  Kate Bush, bushy Kate laid out for me by the
        EMI artroom boys with a gourmet's delight like a table for
        guests.  A strawberry tea spread, with eyes like doughnuts full
        of jam, and butter lips and full cream cheeks spread with a
        blunt knife by the vicar's wife...

        So I turn Kate's glossy pages, crackling and soapy to the touch,
        paper which seems limp and heavy and wet with *realism*, as if
        her image were oozing and perspiring into my fascinated
        inspection.  Where she opens herself ultra-bright and
        ultra-sharp with what seems like almost effusive precision.  A
        kind of alacrity.  An implacably sunny and heartlessly
        optimistic photoworld where I can dwell for ever and ever with
        no problem or effort, and no hope of change or decay, over her
        lambent skin and sticky promise of her tropical lips.


        Kate Bush is our godess Frig.  And like the Saxons we both
        revere *and* fear her.  Shroud her in the mystery of her power
        and the power of her mystery.

        A fertility goddess for our Nature: the Economy.  Mother
        Commodity.

        Kate Bush is the smile on the steel of EMI, the mating call of
        Thorn Industries, British capital on heat, the soft warm voice
        of mass media, the sweet breath of vinyl, the lovely face of
        bureaucracy, the seductive gaze of power.  As every star is.

        And she also incarnates pure adventure, total freedom: the ad
        made flesh,  Fabulously rich, we rumor: an idol in our
        world-wide superstitious cult of celebrity, which is the only
        religion we all truly believe in now -- even a pope has to be a
        celebrity before we take him seriously.  The negative image of
        ourselves.  Of our anonymity and powerlessness.  Which her
        images dramatise and expiate.  Kate Catharsis.

        No wonder EMI takes such care to show her with the same
        scrupulous art as Moscow depicts Karl Marx and Thorn industry
        its computers.  Through hybrid images which hover just between
        photography and painting -- pictures which exist just beyond the
        camera's conventional vision but retain a ghostly residue of
        authority.  The art of airbrush and stencil, soft pencil and
        rubber.  The visual style proper to charismatic icons:
        celebrities are shown with its anonymous clarity, with the hard
        lustre of machinery and apothesis.  They appear to *shine*, by
        virtue of apparently effortless and bland tonal transitions,
        sharp black and white highlights, and meticulously separated
        edges -- detail given with hypnotic brilliance which displays
        people as if they had suddenly loomed, ready-made and perfect,
        like smooth obelisks from a fog into which they might also
        disappear -- monumental and intangible.

        But I like her so much because she spoils it for them.  She has
        Monroe's flawed and flagrant presence.  No wet-shine,
        deep-frozen cover girl.  No Beauty.  Not Debbie Harry's vacuous
        nonentity -- no blank screen for wet consumer dreams.  But a
        woman who besides posing looks like she might menstruate, or
        sign checks -- or punch my nose.  A self-contained exuberance
        which cheerfully stains the most pompous male tableau with
        female energy and wit.

        And her favorite photolook is the gaze openly returned to a
        friend.  Intimate, but not for sale.

He ends the book with:

                Kate Bush:

                "I think everyone is emotional and I think a lot of
                people are afraid of being so.

Gee... Could that be used as the theme for an album side?

                They feel that it's vulnerable.  Myself I feel it's the
                key to everything and that the more you can find out
                about your emotions the better"

        Unusually sensuous, unusually generous.  She wants to make us
        happy.  Give us everything she has all at once.  Superbly
        courageous, on a hire wire over ridicule, disdainful of her own
        safety, always ready to risk her talent and herself.  She opens
        her heart with her mouth and throws herself at us with
        frightened urgency and that half anxious curl of her upper lip
        -- as if fearful of finding nothing on our side.  And we would
        be most ungracious if she didn't.  If we didn't respond to her
        warmth and vulnerability with some vulnerability ourselves.

        Kate Bush is a profoundly *subversive* artist.

-Doug

 
 Note from Ron:  But the pictures are nice!!! :-) 

---
rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
NetRunner's Paradise BBS, San Diego CA