Interview Fachblatt Musikmagazin 11-85, English translation

[uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel)]

I was sent another old Kate Bush interview, this time from the
German magazine "Fachblatt Musikmagazin" from November 85.

Uli

the following is reproduced without permission. Any translation
errors from German back to English are mine, as are any typos.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Fachblatt MusikMagazin Nr. 11 November 1985

                           Kate  Bush

                           Reappeared

With Kate Bush you have an easy job. Almost three years she
withdrew herself into her studio, without a sign of live, let alone
a new album. But in March it was said by the usually well informed
circles: in April Kate Bush will come to Germany with a new album!
Neither she nor the album came. Nevertheless, after years she
reappeared in the charts last summer with "Running Up That Hill".
After "Babooshka" she could launch the first hit at all and the
biggest one since her early days with "Wuthering Heights". This
song from the "The Kick Inside"-LP all at once made the lady famous
in 1978, when she was rather a girl. Her almost unnatural high
voice, lost in reverie, and her typical, powerful ballads, that was
something described well by an otherwise sucked out vocable: simply
beautiful.

Then came, after the work for the first album needed almost three
years, an all to fast follow-up and with "Never For Ever" a third
album that unfortunately also did not have the wanted success. But
before that Kate Bush drew attention to her as a live nature talent
with a spectacular tour. With an almost sensational show consisting
of revue, pantomime, dance and singing the gracile beauty enchanted
her audience, and this with a discipline and concentration as hard
as iron; even the acrobatic exercises she did sing live. Only with
"Hammer Horror" her voice came from a tape. Up to now this
unfortunately should be a unique experience, captured in the video
"Live At Hammersmith Odeon" and on a live LP that did not appear in
this country. After this it got quieter around Kate Bush. The
singer, once discovered and supported by David Gilmour, was not so
much in the limelight as in the beginning, she probably also had a
long lasting process of finding her own identity that found its
expression in her up to now most difficult accessible album "The
Dreaming". In often gloomy sound visions the former fairy undertook
excursions into the abyss of the human soul. That was a good three
years ago, and now she should reappear again. For August a new
interview date was hold out of . A meeting with Kate Bush - a
long-standing wish would be fulfilled. I have, this personal
marginal note is allowed, like probably every journalist a few
dream partners for an interview: Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Laurie
Anderson, Kate Bush. Laurie Anderson was "due" a year ago, I met
Peter Gabriel, but did not interview him, for Brian Eno I am
waiting yet, and Kate Bush...

Cancelled again! But a month later the go-ahead was really given -
I should come to the radio and television exhibition in Berlin,
there a conversation would be possible. Wonderful, I thought, sat
myself into the car, put a preview cassette of the new LP "Hounds
Of Love" into the recorder, and set off - not knowing that all 25
interviews were cancelled without replacement that very moment,
Stern and other high profile publications included. Meeting-place
Steigenberger Hotel Berlin, me punctual and still unsuspecting, she
of course not there, noone from the record company too. "Kate
Bush", the man at the reception talked through his nose a bit
condescendenly, "no, Kate Bush does not live here." The very momet
a lift door opened next to me - and she stood in front of me. No
manager, noone inbetween who would try to get rid of me. I say
"Hello, I want to make an interview with you!" She says, very
English, very polite, very certain: "I'm sorry, I cancelled all
interviews because I don't have time." But at least she stands
still for a moment and does not run past me. You have no chance,
but use it... Bringing up the most heavy artillery - the journalist
as fan, as secret admirer. Will this cut any ice? I try it out:
"Listen, for this moment I waited seven years and now I did take a
1000 km car trip on me. Couldn't we nevertheless make the
interview?" She again, very English, very polite and a bit moved:
"Wait here - I'll see what we can do..." After five minutes she
came back, compliments me under a torrent of excuses to a table -
and starts off, at first 20 minutes, finally almost one hour.
Coincidences happen... "These don't exists, you know that", she
laughs.

FACHBLATT: After I read an interview of the American magazine
"Keyboard" with you I expected a pure Fairlight-LP. Instead of
there are a lot of acoustic parts and even very silent piano
pieces, almost as on your first LP.
KATE BUSH: Interesting impression... To me it's completely
different. I find it's my least piano influenced album to date,
because I more or less completely switched to composing with the
Fairlight. All piano you hear now was added later.
FACHBLATT: You did, as with "The Dreaming", produce yourself...
KATE: Yes, I did build my own studio after the last album, and
because of that the borders between composing, recording and
producing became even more floating. The whole thing is a very
organic process, because everything can happen next to each other
and simultaneously. There are no demos in the usual sense any
longer. I record something on the 24 track machine and work on
that, so that the demo in principle is the later master.
FACHBLATT: But that cannot always work smoothly. How many versions
of one idea are there until a complete piece will emerge from it?
KATE: Astonishingly there were only two or three pieces that
experienced a dramatic change. I usually have the base for a piece
very quickly, the ideas often come like an explosion, a few pieces
of melody, a few fragments of text. But until the piece is
completely finished it can need a very long time and that of course
depends on the complexity of the song. In other cases I have the
complete composition ready and then I am suddenly stuck with the
text.
FACHBLATT: Let's pick out an example, the track "Hello Earth". At
first there's a very soft melody, sung by you, while the chorus,
sung by a choir, stands in a very strong and abrupt harmonic
contrast. That sounds very assembled, as if it was not created in
one piece.
KATE: Here the "initial ignition" came together with the idea of
the contents of the song that determined the structure. I recorded
the verse at first and recorded only a pilot track with piano for
the refrain.
Then the musicians from the Irish band Planxty were added and then
the choir.
FACHBLATT: Did you always intend real voices to be used or did you
use voices from the Fairlight at first?
KATE: It was clear from the beginning that a real choir was needed
there. Only the choice of singers was very difficult. This chorus
is based on a traditional that I picked up at some time. What I
imagined was not so much classical choir voices but voices that
somehow had to sound eerie and also a bit ceremonial. On the other
hand there was the problem not to imply pressure and to let the
people sing as natural as possible, since especially with choir
singing a posing artificiality arises quickly. Fortunately from a
gig I had with the London Symphony Orchestra I knew a man called
Richard Hickox who had an incredible experience with choir voices.
I let him chose the singers. For me it was an incredibly thrilling
experience, because I never before worked with a choir.
FACHBLATT: Almost sounds as monks singing sacred songs.
KATE: Sounds quite religious, doesn't it?
FACHBLATT: For me the song seems to have a transfered spiritual
meaning. In the fade out you speak the German words "Irgendwo in
der Tiefe gibt es ein Licht." [Somewhere in the deep there is a
light]
KATE: Yes, the piece is the highlight of the second side that has a
continuous string of action (more on this later). It's something
like a fever dream, the delirium, before the last song comes, that
is completely different, that is about hope, light and the break of
the morning. "Hello Earth" is about the point where you cannot go
further, where you are very weak. And then you perhaps are ready to
accept the things, now, where you have arrived at the end of your
journey. You can chose to change yourself or to continue and to
die. That of course also has a religious component. But I find it
difficult to talk about it, or rather to explain it. During the
work on the pieces I know it much more exactly, probably because I
am much more bound to what emerges from me while it is being
created. When the pieces are ready they want to speak for
themselves. They are not anylonger a piece from me, but rather
develop their own life.
FACHBLATT: How do you manage again and again to create such a
strong union of music and lyrics? I don't understand everything you
sing (my tape did not have any further givings or lyrics), but I
feel what it's all about. It couldn't be the words. Do you get the
music and lyric ideas for a piece simultaneously?
KATE: Yes, it's often so that I have the idea of what a song is all
about first and then the words and music come to me in parallel. 

With "Hello Earth" for example I knew that this piece would be the
dramatical highlight of the story. Therefore the verse had to be
very slow and the chorus had to be very heavy. Well, I'll explain
what it's all about. We are talking about a storm. There's a person
that went overboard in the storm and fights a whole night against
the waves, the tiredness and the danger to give up. I wrote all
pieces of the second side of the LP about this plot. A concept
album, or at least half an album, that was a huge challenge for me
and a long-cherished wishful dream. I wanted to do something where
I didn't have to be ready with the story after just three minutes.
FACHBLATT: Even if it's difficult for you, can you tell me a bit
more about the plot?
KATE: I wish I could show you a film about it. The pictures would
explain much more easily what I had in mind. There's someone going
overboard, at night. He gets insanely tired, wants to resign. Then
his past, his present and his future travel past him and try to
keep him awake and to bring him through this night. These are of
course metaphers for a very deep inner experience after which you
reenter the light at the other end as a purified human being.
FACHBLATT: As a kind of spiritual transformation...
KATE: Yes, like a rebirth. There is the external, physical moment,
and then there's a process that happens in the head, thoughts,
voyages to inner spaces.
FACHBLATT: Water is a diversely interpretable symbol.
KATE: Yes, it also includes the feeling of floating. In addition
here there's the night, the darkness, the complete loss of sense
for space and time, the shield from all outer impressions. And when
something like this happens very remarkable things start happening
in your head.
FACHBLATT: Like in an isolation tank...
KATE: Yes, even if I didn't make any personal experiences with that
by myself.
FACHBLATT: Did you by chance read "In The Center Of The Cyclon" by
John C. Lilly who experienced first with the tank?
KATE: Unfortunately I didn't read it, but I have heard a lot of
things about his work that I found very interesting.
FACHBLATT: I fear we come into areas that do not neccessarily
belong into a music magazine... Let's talk about your music again.
The difference between your last album "The Dreaming" and the new
"Hounds Of Love" is astonishing. I always had difficulties to
listen to "The Dreaming" in one piece, because in places it teared
a lot on the nerves. Did your musical and/or personal attitude
change that much in the last three years that you now can deliver a
quite accessible, at times poppish album?
KATE: The music always subordinates to the contents of the songs.
"The Dreaming" was an emotionally very intense and often conciously
aggressively sounding album, because it was about how terribly
cruel people could be, what we do to ourselves, what amount of
loneliness we expose ourselves. It was a searching, questioning
album and with the music did tear you from one point to the next.
It provoked extreme reactions, and there were many who were not
able to or did not want to get involved with the mood of the album.
I was and am very content with it, because for me I have
definitively achieved what I wanted to. I had to experience myself
what I wanted to explore there, and now I have made the experience
and could turn to other destinations. Suddenly I could go dancing
again, I spent a summer out of the house, something I did not do
for several years. Thereby I felt so positively that I also wanted
to write songs that give a positive prevailing mood. That was a
completely new challenge, because until then I got my inspirations
more from melancholic and gloomy moods. But suddenly I could get
enthusiastic about things that were light and lively. I wanted to
write about the positive power of love and not any longer about
people who destroy each other. The whole energy that developed
itself that way also transfered itself to the album. Thereby I did
not only want to describe love as a happy, lightful matter, but I
rather wanted to show it in all of her aspects, also the dark ones.
The LP has got two very different sides this way. The first shows
an overview over different forms of love and without exception
deals with relations, and the second side goes deeper, therefore
the concept spanning all tracks.
FACHBLATT: Both sides are very different musically too. The first
contains a couple of very danceable, rhythmic titles. Did you
expect to have a hit with "Running Up That Hill" or was this just a
nice side-effect?
KATE: At one point I stopped to have any expectations with respect
to the music business. But of course it is nice if what you could
expect happens... I always had the feeling that hopefully there are
other people too who like my albums, if I only put a maximum of
personal engagement into the work. And it works! Great, isn't it?
FACHBLATT: And why is the album called "Hounds Of Love"? These seem
to be two contradicting terms.
KATE: No, these are the hounds who chase  - symbolically of course
- those who fear love, who is frightened to be "trapped" by it. But
they aren't really bad hounds, you can see on the cover how gently
and nice the "Hounds Of Love" are.
FACHBLATT: Do you rather think of it as an advantage or a
disadvantage that there's so much time between your albums?
KATE: I cannot answer this question this way, since it simply is as
it is. I never said: I need two or three years to make an album. I
just began. Whereever this leads - as long as it's positive and
productive I continue to do it. If you do your work honestly and
with your whole heart It will tell you what to do...
FACHBLATT: But outside there's nobody who tells you if you are on
the right way. Someone who brings out a single every second month
experiences very fast how the course is at the moment.
KATE: That is a frustrating aspect of my method of working. Besides
I also like to busy myself with other ideas and projects. But I
cannot run away from the things I have to do at the moment. That
takes my complete energy. I just have to bring such sacrifies, and
with me it lasts longer as with others.
FACHBLATT: When did you start with "Hounds Of Love"?
KATE: 1983 the studio was built and set up, and in the beginning of
1984 I started with the album, all in all 18 months of work.
FACHBLATT: In such a long time many things can change. Wherefrom do
you take the safety that in the end you find those things you
recorded in the beginning  as good and important?
KATE: Well, if something does not work at all, because you did get
off course, you just have to have the courage to stop there, even
when you already did invest a lot of time and work. But this
happens very seldom with me, and except those two or three pieces
with heavy changes that I did mention earlier the founding
structures did not change. Changes did mostly occur only in the
fine parts, when we for example exchanged Fairlight violins by real
strings. I wanted to replace many Fairlight passages by real
instruments from the beginning.
FACHBLATT: Who played with you?
KATE: Mainly the people from the last LP, like for example Eberhard
Weber, Danny Thompson, Dave Lawson, Stuart Elliott, the musicians
from Planxty, my brother, but also others, like John Williams.
FACHBLATT: In which phase do you include the musicians into the
work?
KATE: Different. Sometimes in the beginning I only have a program
in the Linn machine, to which I bring in a few real drum tracks.
Normally the musicians record to a "demo" that's consisting of
Fairlight, voices and the Linn machine. But I also use a lot of
Fairlight percussion. The most improtant thing with the work with
other musicians are the additional stimulations, especially when I
sat alone at the Fairlight before. Then the influences from outside
are very helpful. I need the feedback, else in the long run it'll
get too boring for me. It's nice just to see some other faces
sometimes.
FACHBLATT: Do you get other feedback besides by your musicians?
Normally there's also a producer next to you who knows and says
where it's going.
KATE: That's exactly the reason why I produce myself. It is more
exhausting this way, but in the end I get exactly what I want
instead of explaining what I want to someone else who tries to
explain to the sound engineer what I could have meant. And then the
sound engineer has to create sounds out of words. I tell him
directly what I want, that is faster, more easy and more effective.
But there are, I say this with caution, people with whom I could
imagine to produce together, but only as long as I have the
influence possibilities on my productions that I have today. As I
said before: With me the composing and producing almost build a
unit in the working process.
FACHBLATT: Are there direct connections to your "discovery" of the
Fairlight as the key element of your studio work? You did, if I
recall right, work without a producer from the moment where you
started with the Fairlight.
KATE: No direct connection. Besides it's not completely correct
this way. I did work with the Fairlight, not with my own, on my
third album, but I only have been co-producer then. I couldn't take
the last and decisive step then, because I missed courage and
specialised knowledge. You need an enormous amount of strength to
control you own musical work.
FACHBLATT: What general meaning does music take up in your life?
KATE: Music takes up all my live. That is always a huge pile of
work that last exactly as long until the next one starts. But music
also means the pleasure to listen to pieces from others. Music is
everything for me.
FACHBLATT: I have heard that you are especially into ECM and
Windham Hill...
KATE: Yes, and I find it good to give some more attention to
something as beautiful as the music of these labels. Windham Hill
is almost completely unknown in England, while ECM has a slightly
bigger popularity through Pat Metheny or Eberhard Weber.
FACHBLATT: I think that artists who are very intent on harmonic
sounds like the most from Windham Hill find it especially difficult
in such a trend ruled music marked like the English one. If you
review your albums, the first one perhaps excluded, there never are
pieces that are just nice. Somewhere there's always a break. Don't
you dare to write a piece that's "just" nice?
KATE: Difficult to tell. If I write I try to get to something that
pleases me more than the idea of the moment before. And if it
sounds good to me to break out of the gentle character, then I do
this naturally without following certain rules.
FACHBLATT: What about gigs? Is there hope?
KATE: That is quite wierd, because I always want to, but somehow it
never works out all right. Until the last LP I did not have enough
material to appear with a completely new program. After I completed
the promotion work for "The Dreaming" I had to think about whether
to go on tour or to build my studio and to look at a new album.
Well, now I am again at the end of the work for the album, make
promotion, shoot videos and actually I would really want to realise
the said film about the second side of the LP. If this somehow
happens not to work then I'll think about a tour again...
FACHBLATT: Do you find everything that goes with it as a disruption
to the concentrated work in the studio?
KATE: Not as disrupting, but as a burden, yes. I try to put as much
time as possible into creative processes. When I am ready with an
album there are enough creative processes left, be it b-sides or
videos that get into the way of public relations work. I am of
course dependent on a certain amount of success to be able to
afford the next album. And then I unfortunately have to make timely
compromises with the things that are more important to me. To limit
this as far as possible I don't give many interviews. I find it
completely justified, since I find my actual work more important.
The only reason why I do sit here at all is that I worked on an
album for a long time and want to announce this. But when I used up
three years to meet journalists and to make promotion, then there
won't be a reason to sit here...

Andreas Hub