Kate Bush Article in Sunday Times - Part 1

[nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk]

As it is taking me ages to type in the Kate Bush article from the
Sunday Times magazine here is the first part to keep you going.

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The Sunday Times, September 12th 1993

Kate Bush likes to get her own way. She has done ever since her pop rendition of
Wuthering Heights turned her into a teenage star 15 years ago. She is still
only little, but mighty corporations tremble at the stamp of her tiny foot.
Chrissy Iley reports on a mauling at the hands of the Bush baby. Portrait by
Anthony Crickmay.


                         BEATING ABOUT THE BUSH

Kate Bush, shy megalomaniac. She shrugs a girlie shrug. Smirks. Oh, yes, yes,
she likes that description of herself. Its aptness tickles her. She's big on
paradox. Thinks that most people are extreme contradictions. Personally, I've
always thought shy was another name for awkward, and megalomaniac just meant
spoilt. Certainly, exposure to her special blend of diffidence, wariness and
clenched control is extraordinarily wearying.

We'll do control first. Ever since she was a teenager, bigwigs at EMI records
have scurried to the stomp of her tiny foot. It is a sensible little foot clad
in Chinese slippers: she doesn't believe in uncomfortable shoes. She's no
fashion victim, no anything victim.

In the late 1970s when she was spinning around Lindsey Kemp style and hollering
"Cathee come home ..." the hair was as plum-coloured as it is today and
her way of getting what she wants is similarly undiluted. Bob Mercer was then
the managing director of EMI; now he runs a record label in Nashville. He has
remained friends with Kate over the years. She calls him whenever she has a
dream about him. He was given a tape of her songs by Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour
when she was about 15. Mercer sent her off for piano lessons and encouraged her
to do her O-levels.

Four years later she came back with a completed album. Mercer recalls, "Kate
came to see me. She was unhappy at my choice of James and the Cold Gun for the
first single. She said she really felt it had to be Wuthering Heights. I told
her it was her job to write the songs and my job to market them and we should
stick to what we were best at. I felt that if she experienced failure at such a
young age she might not be able to handle it. I told her not to worry, hers
wouldn't be a commercial success straight away. It would take at least three
albums and she should be patient.

"In those days I was a very busy man. I had to contend with the Sex Pistols
fiasco and I didn't expect her to behave like this. I was getting angry and
fuck me if she didn't burst into tears. My leverage was gone, so I said all
right, but when this hits the wall it will teach you a lesson not to interfere.
It went to number one and stayed there four weeks. To her credit she has never
reminded me of the incident and after that I always had respect for her
instincts. It was in the days when artists didn't have much control over their
contracts. But she changed all that. EMI always had to listen to her"

Over the years eight albums have plopped out, each one taking longer to
produce. When they do come they are a blend of accessible pop sensibility and
quaking pain. Her image has always been of this intense quivering thing
plumbing her depths to deliver what is most sad. Yet her life can hardly be
described as tragic. She's doctor's daughter Kate, safe, cosseted from the
world. That's the way she grew up and that's the way she still is.

Me and the Bush baby have met to talk about her new album, out next month,
called The Red Shoes. A dilemma: she doesn't really want to talk about anything
but her music and I am not allowed to have the album to listen to. I was
granted five tracks, but not to take home with me, only to listen to in the
Abbey Road studios. I was also given a printed lyric sheet, but then like an
exam paper had to hand it in at the end. "I haven't found anyone who can take
in the album all in one session," she said. Lighten up Kate. It's supposed to
be a pop record.

She's made a film to accompany the album but goes tense when you ask her what
it's about. We know it has got Miranda Richardson in it, and Lindsey Kemp. And
she squeaks in her pithy high-pitched voice: "Well, it's something like Magical
Mystery Tour but it's not like that at all. It's not finished yet and I hate
talking about anything until it's there. It's like talking to you about the
album if you haven't heard the tracks. Completely ridiculous."

We are sitting side by side in a little preview theatre looking at a blank
screen because she can't show me the movie, nor any part of the movie, because
I might make a judgement, God forbid.

As the seats are cinema seats, it's difficult to swivel round to look her in
the eye and it's perfect for her to avoid being looked at. She stays quite
still and stares straight ahead. I'm fidgeting and feeling like a cheap
perfume. her diminutiveness hads the effect of making you feel huge and clumsy
and gruff.

The sweetness of her elfin face and tiny, tiny voice are curdled with
something; the bobbly eyes seem to belong to a very old person. The smile comes
zipped on with her lips pressed so tightly together that there is a constant
"Mmmmmmmmmmmm". The edges of the smile are tacked in place with invisible
threads that move up and down, up and down. Before I met Kate Bush, I liked the
record. It is probably a very good record. certainly, one track, Moments of
Pleasure, is compellingly sad and makes people cry for no apparent reason.

So, Kate, what was going on in your head when you were writing it" "Er, it's
just a very personal song. [This was the first of many 'It's personal'
responses] It's to show just how precious life is and all those little moments
that people give you. And that's how people stay alive, through your memories
of them."

It has been a gruelling three years for Bush. She's a strong person but
sometimes things have been so bad that "I couldn't even  work. Singing is such
a deeply personal thing to do, I couldn't manage it." She has "lost" a lot of
friends; her relationship with her boyfriend Del Palmer, who was her bass
player of 10 year's standing, evaporated; and her mother died. She was close to
her mother. "She got ill and she died." No details given. But when she was
alive and well she was full of old Irish sayings such as "every old sock meets
and old shoe". "Isn't that a beautiful little saying?" I ask if it means the
same as "we seek the teeth that made the wounds". She looks blank. You know,
pain seeking pain. "Oh, it's so cute, isn't it? So cute."


[To be continued]


Neil Calton