Sunday Times article - Part 3

[nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk]

Part 3 of the Sunday Times article - Beating About The Bush
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She has an acute suspiscion of journalists. She usually brings her own  tape recorder
to interviews to check if she has been misquoted. On the other hand, she does have a
schoolgirlie enthusiasm for other "artists". She's got great cred: she's worked with
the best, Eric Clapton and Prince. Price, who appears on one song on the new record, is
a fellow recluse. They never actually talked to each other, they simply exchanged
tapes.

"I think creative control is so incredibly important," she says. "If you don't have
that control your work will be interfered with until it's gone out of your hands. I was
always aware that things wouldn't be how I wanted them unless I was willing to fight.
You have to fight for everything you want. Struggle is important. It's how you grow and
how you change.

"I've always been tenacious when it comes to my work and I became quickly aware of the
outside pressures of being famous affecting my work. It seemed ironic that I was
expected to do interviews and television which took me away from the thing that had put
me in that situation. It was no longer relevant that I wrote songs. I could see my
work becoming something that had no thought in it, becoming a personality, which is
never what I wanted. All I wanted was the creative process."

She uses the phrase "my work" as if she's talking about some other person very close to
her of whom she is the guardian. She is in her mid-thirties and won't comment about any
biological urges to reproduce. Perhaps her albums are her children. She flashes me a
zipped smile. "No. Can you imagine a child which took three-and-a-half years to come
out?"

I remind her that she has been quoted as saying she is as tough as nails. "Ah, yes."
She squints, the brows knitting together under the short fringe. "The journalist made
that up. Also in the same piece [four years ago] she said I said I was as fragile as a
butterfly. People impose their own personalities on me. I'm surprised you don't know
that." And she looks at me with those cold limpid eyes. "I'm strong but I'm not as
tough as nails. The two are very differeent. Quite often people project their whole
life on you."

She is so full of contempt that communication is almost impossible. Is it just me that
she doesn't like to reveal things to? "It's quite dangerous to go through life
extremely open. In a way you need an element of trust. For some people it's just very
hard. Fear is such an enormous thing in all of us and I think it stops a lot of rather
nice processes."

Mercer believes that Bush has "matured enormously, but she's become more introspective,
more true to her art. There was a point where it could have happened the other way,
where she could have become more of a personality. Instead she dug deeper into herself.
She is a sadder, wiser person. It has been an exhausting process.

"It's so strange to imagine she must be 35. I'll always see her as that little girl
who's 15. She is the sweetest, a mensch. You don't either hate her or love her. You
love her or you don't know her. Getting to know her is difficult."

Still trying to discover that sad place from which these sad songs have sprung, I try
her childhood. What sort of things moved her then? I'm hoping there'll be an anecdote
about her father, her brothers, her mother, her grandparents. But no. "I was always
impressed by the sea, I think it's completely stunning. I'd love to be part of the sea.
Wonderful." I can't even swim I tell her. I feel as though I'm drowning. I persist and
she tells me, "It's been a difficult three years for everybody. The recession has
affected everybody so badly .."

We are both exhausted from the experience, with my wrangling and her not letting go.
She stands up to show me out. She's truly tiny, but not just in height. I see her as a
bonsai person. Everything that should be is perfectly developed but in miniature: her
emotional range is intense, stunted, trapped. Although she insists she is more happy
than sad, I have not found her sense of humour to justify this. I have not found her.

A few days after the interview I met an early biographer of hers, Paul Kerton, and he
understood my problem. He recalled, "I sent an asistant to get her birth cirtificate.
She came back saying, "Bad news: she was born a man called Martin.' I sighed, and then
she said, 'April Fool, April Fool'. But she's so mysterious and androgynous it would
not have surprised me."

Perhaps we can get an insight from a poem he sent me written by Catherine Bush, Form 2
(1970-71). It later became a song, and here it is. "I have seen him/I have noted him
seven times or more/but he has not seen me/He may have seen a girl called by my
name/But neither he nor anyone else will ever really see me."

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There is one colour photo of Kate lying on her back on a white rectangular block with
her hair falling over the edge of the block. It is shot from above.

Neil Calton