*** Sounds Interview PART II *****

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

        This is the second part of a 1980 Sounds interview with Kate 
that was just reprinted in Never For Ever.  The first part was printed 
last issue and the final part will be next issue.  I don't remember if 
I transcribed the first part, as it was mainly "comentary".
        
        Which reminds me, has anyone out (aside from Scott) ordered and 
received a copy of KATE BUSH: THE FIRST TWELVE YEARS?  I ordered it 
months ago and have now gotten THREE copies of their fan mag (which I 
ordered with the same check) but NO book!!  I'm "itchin" to transcribe 
any "new" articles the book might have that I don't. 



        I asked Kate about Moving, the first song on The Kick Inside 
and her most fitting blend of word and sound so far.  "It's a complete 
evocation of the movement of the dancer, speaking with his limbs, sense 
through sensuality, as sexy as his 'beauty's potency', the dancer and 
the watcher in harmony like lovers."
        So I asked her what whale noises were doing in there.  "Whales 
say everything about 'moving'.  It's huge and beautiful, intelligent, 
soft inside a tough body.  It weighs a ton and yet it's so light it 
floats.  It's the whole thing about human communication - 'moving 
liquid, yet you are just as water' - what the chinese say about being 
the cup the water moves in to.  The whales are pure movement and pure 
sound, calling for something, so lonely and sad..."
        "On the ground they're ppff (splodging sound), but in the water 
they're 'wahoo!'  Which is the way with a lot of dancers."      The 
song/dance dovetail is one of the ideals she's pursued in her stage 
show, TV special, and video's.  She can trace her love of movement back 
to when she was a tot.  
        "My father told me I used to dance to the music on the telly.  
I remember it vaguely.  It was completely un-selfconscious and I wasn't 
aware of people looking at me.  One day some people came into the room, 
saws me and laughed and from that moment I stopped doing it.  I think 
maybe I've been trying to get back there ever since."
        Moving is dedicated to Lindsay Kemp who led her into 
rediscovering herself with an inspiring performance and a series of 50p 
lessons in public the classes he gave. [Huh?]
        "He needed a song written to him.  He opened up my eyes to the 
meanings of movement.  He makes you feel so good.  If you've got two 
left feet it's 'you dance like an angel darling.'  He fills people up, 
you're an empty glass and glug, glug, glug, he's filled you with 
champagne."
        With dance, mime, and elaborate costume, Kate's performances 
are hardly your standard rough and ready rock shows.  They are 
rehearsed down to fine detail and she values exact execution far about 
'spontaneity', which again scores black marks against her name in some 
books.  So it was interesting to hear her reactions to the last night 
of the tour when nothing went according to plan.
        "The roadies were all very creative people and suddenly as a 
sort of goodbye to us, they were all joining in the show.  There were 
crowds of cowboys and indians, a crocodile.  During Egypt a panto camel 
walked in.  I went after it and it tried to run away, but I got it by 
the tail, pulled it back and there were these voices protesting from 
inside, 'leggo!'"
        That is, she loved it.  Kate Bush wants to create an illusion, 
not a machine. 
        "My imagination runs like a non-stop B-movie with me as the 
star - unless I'm daydreaming about sport in which case I'm always the 
commentator for reasons I'll leave to the psychoanalysts amongst you.  
It gives me excitement, a savour of heroism, free trial runs of 
situations I expect to face.  
        Kate agreed it was her version of that parallel reality which 
went into most of her songs, stories so far away from the suburban 
convent schoolgirl.
        "For instance, I really like guns.  NOt what they do, but 
detach them from their purpose and they're... fantastic, beautiful.  
And yet, they're designed to kill which is against everything I believe 
in."
        She talked in relish about the gun used by the assassin in Day 
Of The Jackel and with fascinated horror about dum-dum bullets (she was 
well up on the technical details).
        "How someone can even thin about lining a bullet with mercury 
so that it rips another human apart is incredible.  I'd never shoot 
anything living at all.  I was always given dolls when I was a little 
girl of course, so maybe if they had given me guns I wouldn't have had 
this thing.  Unless I'm trying to get back at all these people shooting 
me..."
        She looked at Mike and he countered with an astute enquiry 
about the routine she did on stage with James and the Cold Gun which 
produced the much used stills showing her licking the rifle barrel and 
firing from the crotch, raw phallic gestures.  She skipped around that 
for a moment though. 
        I was brought up on movies: love, revenge, and death.  Violence 
when used correctly can be a brilliant instrument in entertainment.  Or 
it can be disgusting.  Normally in James we used bits of red felt to 
represent blood, but one night we used capsule and spurted the stuff 
all over the place and the audience loved it.  They like strong 
imagery.
        Throughout the interview she kept coming back to films, TV and 
other peoples art, as the starting points for many of her songs.  
Forever fantasy.  She excepted it:
        "Each of them comes from something that makes me go Wow!  Most 
of the films I've drawn from were shown when I was a kid, which is 
strange.  They've taken ten years to work through my system and go 
"Ooee".  I know if makes me a thief, but the material is digested and 
changed, like with "The Infant Kiss".  In fact it's very difficult 
using a film story because they're so long and you have to precis so 
much.  Sometimes I feel I only get half of it across."
        Another of her favorite fantasies is the exotic setting, 
There's Saxophone Song in Berlin, Kashka From Baghdad and Egypt.  She 
hadn't been to any of these places and ignorance seems almost a 
necessity to her to preserve a pure, free flow of imagination.
        Saxophone Song was one of her earliest, written when she was 
about 15.  It curled us in closer to the roots of her music:
        "Sometimes chord structures make you think of a place... and I 
love saxophones so I wanted to write a song about them.  I think of a 
beautiful sax like a human being, a sensuous shining man being taken 
over by the instrument.  The perfect setting was this smokey bar in 
Berlin with nobody listening except me in a corner, the streams of 
light flashing off it to me, pa pa (explosion noises).
        In the song she is a 'surly lady in tremor... You'll never know 
you had all of me.'  Mike suggested that Freud would have made a meal 
of this one too, and this time, as she's fond of phrasing it, she broke 
through the barrier.
        "I'm very basic," she said.  "I wasn't thinking of it as 
phallic when I wrote the song, but I do now when I see a sax player.  I 
feel as if everyone understood the real things I'm, it wouldn't be much 
good, it wouldn't help me.  If it seems harmless on the surface that's 
all right.  I don't want to upset people who don't want to know.  There 
are enough people, thank God, who have seen it.  They're listening with 
their hearts.
        "The sax is a very sexual sound, all vibrating, resonating - 
like bowels.  Look at photos of musicians playing any instruments and 
it could be interpreted... it's not always sexual, but mainly.  You are 
cuddling the instrument, you are seducing each other.  Guitarists are 
up there so obviously waking with their guitars, but it's open, 
beautiful, it's at a love level."
        Kate Bush is in an awkward position.  She pour out passion 
unbridled, and then hopes that only the 'right' people will notice.  
For instance, she would hate The News of The World to understand her 
though they're welcome to print her picture any time they like.  So far 
her luck has held.  Her acceptable show biz face has proved a perfect 
disguise under the spotlight.

[Part III in a few months!]


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