*** Sound Internation Interview, PART II (FINALLY!)

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

        Here it is, part II, only a month late!  The stuff about 
BREATHING in here is really interesting and "new". 



        Kate helped out with some vocals on Peter Gabriel's recently 
acclaimed album and I presume it was through Peter that she met Larry 
Fast.  "We managed to get Larry before he flew off and he's a fantastic 
guy, wow.  He's wonderful.  He finished off "Breathing" for us.  We got 
to the point where there was a deadline coming up for the release of 
the song as a single.  So far up to then we'd been working on the 
tracks quite generously.  When we had a guitar overdub to do we'd do 
all the guitar tracks for the album as you logically would.  As we had 
a deadline for "Breathing" we put aside all the other tracks and worked 
on the one song until it was complete.  Larry came in for a day and he 
was wonderful.  We were all gathering such and intense vibe working on 
the one very nuclear song.  WE'd been working on it until about five or 
six in the morning each day for about a week.  It was very intense in 
the studio and very nuclear.  It felt just like a fallout shelter."
        For those unfamiliar with Studio Two at Abbey Road it is a huge 
studio with a high ceiling.  The control room looks down from a top 
corner giving a false impression of being underground.  Also the decor 
is basic and deliberately unchanged since the days when the studio's 
prime users were the Beatles.  "Larry came in in the middle of all this 
nuclear intensity and he was wonderful, " said Kate.  "He's put on some 
incredibly right animation sounds.  You see, I think of synth players 
like that.  It's probably wrong because I'm thinking just in terms of 
my music.  I see them as such an animation thing, they seem to complete 
the picture so beautifully.  It's like they put on the colour on the 
track sometimes.
        "So Larry was there for a whole day just working on the one 
track and built up some beautiful stuff, just sort of underneath the 
back of the arrangement.  It was such a pleasure to work with him 
because I've always wanted to but he's such a busy many.  I really hope 
I can work with him again.  His standards are ridiculous, I mean he 
works to the clock.  He'd say: 'Gosh, that took me 10 minutes and it's 
only supposed to take two!' and gets really upset.  He's such a 
professional and he works so hard, I think a lot of people can learn 
from him"  (see interview, SI March '80).
        Kate wanted to put together the promo film for "Breathing" - 
and did.  It became a visual presentation of the subject matter, and 
showed her as the unborn child at the time of nuclear attack.  "We 
decided to make it very abstract.  I had the image of me being a baby 
in the womb yet not a baby because it's like a spiritual being, 
surrounded by water and fluid in a tank because that's what a baby 
does, floats around inside this beautiful place."
        Keith Macmillan is the man who has been interpreting Kate's 
ideas and actually getting them on film for the great part of the 2 1/2 
years she has been releasing records.  He explained one or two problems 
to her with this particular idea.  Like she might drown.  Also no 
insurance company would underwrite the risk.  Kate has total faith in 
Macmillan and was happy to leave it with him to come up with an idea 
for overcoming the problems.
        "He went away, he's got fantastic guys working with him who get 
all the props together.  So he came up with he idea of inflatables 
which when filmed through would give a watery effect.  So I would be 
inside one which would be inside maybe one or two others.
        "Then we had a problem with the costume because an embryo is of 
course naked but we couldn't make it sexual because of the innocence 
and sincerity of the thing.  And we had a few problems with that 
because it is very difficult to look clothed but not clothed.  Because 
we were working with inflatables which were basically just plastic we 
decided to use the same material which would be pretty cool for an 
embryo because it would just be flesh that was amongst all the other.  
So we just wrapped polythene all around me and then the whole thing 
became this sort of transient stuff that wasn't either costume or 
inflatables.  The next thing with the video was to get from the break 
into the end where the baby has come out of the womb.  Because of the 
fallout the first thing that would happen is that the baby would be put 
straight into a protective suit, probably sprinkled with Fuller's 
earth.  [??? Does anyone know what this is?]
        "Again we tried to do that in an abstract way so that I would 
burst out of the bubble and land somewhere outside that was very weird. 
 Then the two guys with the suns - the anti-nuclear sign - hand me the 
fallout suit as the symbolism of being in the outside world full of 
fallout.  The end was getting as many people as I could in water - 
again water because that was the whole visual them - and say: 'What are 
we going to do without clean air to breathe?'
        "It too us two days of filming, one to do the studio lot and 
one to do the end sequence with all our friends in the water and for 
the nice quiet scene at the end.  It was really quite an epic compared 
with all the other videos I've done.  It wasn't that extravagant or 
expensive, not that long and not that anything.  But as I said it felt 
so important because that one song for me - and quite a few people who 
are close - was like a mini-symphony or something.  So everything had 
to go into it even if it wasn't going to be a big hit and that's how we 
felt about it.  OK, people say: 'It didn't get into the top five.'
        "But I'm so pleased with how it went because for the subject 
matter I was dealing with, you know my previous associations with the 
public: that I'm a very harmless unpolitical songwriter."
        The association of the image she projected on a totally 
unprepared public with "Wuthering Heights" in 1978 has stayed firmly in 
the minds of many: this strangely dressed peculiar person singing in a 
voice that can only be described as weird.  At least that's how it 
sounded at the time.  Kate maintains that at the time - as now - she 
was singing in a voice which was natural to her.
        "Yes it is natural for me.  So many people, I guess it's 
stopped a bit now, but "Wuthering Heights" was the one that started it, 
they thought it was a bit contrived."
        It was about the time of "Wow" that I personally began to enjoy 
Kate's singles.  Listening to the songs now on an album with lyrics in 
front of me I discovered there is far more to her songs lyrically than 
just interesting and effective hooklines.  "I think that was the big 
thing with 'Wuthering Heights", so many people didn't even know I as 
singing in English!  I think on the new album the diction is clearest.  
You see, for me it is important that I keep changing with each album.  
When I was singing on that first album it was the most incredible 
experience of my life because it was the first real  album.  The one 
I'd been waiting for for five years, it was actually being made.  And 
basically I was getting all my harmonies together in the morning before 
I went into the studio and just trying to sing my heart out.  By the 
time I got round to singing on the first album I was very tired and at 
that time I used to write so many of my songs in a higher octave 
because that was where I used to enjoy singing.
        "I used to find it fascinating to write in a note that I 
couldn't reach and then a week later I'd got my throat into the shape 
that it could reach that note.  It wasn't actually acrobatics that I 
was playing with.  It was just that the songs I was writing, they just 
seemed to leap, that was what I wanted them to do, just fly in the air 
and be high.
        "The fact that people thought I was contrived - especially on 
the first album - worried me a lot.  That there was this strange 
creature being manipulated by this huge record company.  I think that 
actually as I am managing to hang around a bit longer - a year goes by 
and I'm still here - people are beginning to take me seriously and 
that's a fantastic breakthrough because they're realising that I can in 
fact churn out albums.  And it's such a big achievement for me to feel 
that I'm actually getting through to people from me rather than the 
rumours and stuff that get around.  And I'm so thrilled when people do 
respect me, especially as a writer.
        "Singing is such an important thing for me.  I have such a 
strange thing about it, probably like every other artist.  I really 
often feel that I can't sing.  I know I can sing but when I hear the 
track back it's not what I want, it's just not.  I don't get paranoid 
but I do get very, very worried about it because it's so important to 
me that I express the perfect emotion of the word because they are 
telling a story, and unless I feel that I fulfil the character 
perfectly, I should get someone else to sing it.  Especially as people 
have been kind enough to give me awards as a female singer that I have 
to try so hard to make it good for them. 
        "I think maybe I should relax a bit more about it, I am getting 
a bit paranoid.  I love singing, it's just that when I hear it back on 
tape it is never quite perfect enough for me.  But I'm sure you 
understand that.  So many artists, like Eric Clapton, he probably 
thinks his solos could be better.  He probably wouldn't say it but I'm 
sure that he feels that.  But I wouldn't stop singing because I love 
it.  All I need is for someone to say: 'That's great.'  And then I can 
go: 'Really?'  Then I feel all right, especially in the studio.

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