Kate Bush article in February 24, 1994 Rolling Stone

["William Rodham Wisner" <wisner@well.sf.ca.us>]

Dear Diary: The Secret World of Kate Bush

by David Sinclair

Cricklewood is not at all the kind of place you would expect to find Kate
Bush. Although immortalized long ago in the title of a Ten Years After album,
it's a peculiarly desolate and tragically unhip area of north London.

You feel Bush belongs more in an English garden, reading poetry on a bright
summer day, or else in the Yorkshire moors, nursing some terrible, unspeakable
grief. But on this gray morning, she is actually ensconced in a concrete
building so ugly and functional that it looks virtually derelict from the
outside.

It's a sound-dubbing studio where Bush has been frantically punching the clock
to finish work on a 50-minute movie, _The Line, the Cross, the Curve,_ the
cinematic companion piece to her latest album, _The Red Shoes._  Inside, there
is a plush reception area where we are introduced. Dressed in a big leather
jacket, she seems small but surprisingly sturdy. She complains of being tired
but looks bright and cleareyed if a little pale under her trademark thatch of
lustrously dark hair. We are swiftly tucked away in a tiny, cold back room,
where the stillness is disturbed only by the sound of thick sheets of rain
splattering steadily against the small windows.

As she points out several times, Bush doesn't do many interviews. She doesn't
leave herself much time, for one thing. As with her recent videos, she
directed this new movie -- in which she sings six songs from _The Red Shoes_
-- as well as handled the choreography and scriptwriting.

Co-starring her former dance instructor Lindsay Kemp and actress Miranda
Richardson, the movie is loosely based on the Powell and Pressburger film of
1948 _The Red Shoes,_ about a dancer (Bush) who is tricked into wearing a pair
of red shoes that are possessed, after which she can't stop dancing.
Explaining the title of her movie, Bush says, "_The Line_ is the path, _the
Cross_ is the heart, and _the Curve_ is the smile," quoting a line from the
movie _The Red Shoes._ So now you know.

A control freak who was already overruling her record company's decisions when
Madonna was still playing drums in her first group, Bush writes and produces
her albums, has her own publishing company and recording studio and is self-
managed. Right down to the post-production tasks of editing and sound dubbing
her movie, she maintains a strict hands-on policy. The effect can be draining.

"I don't have enough hours in the day," Bush readily concedes. "I don't do
everything myself. I have people working with me who are wonderful. But I've
managed for so long without a manager, I'm not sure there are a lot of things
I'd want a manager for. I suppose I feel that at least the decisions I make
are coming from me, and I'm not put into a situation that I wouldn't want to
be in."

But another, unspoken reason why Bush subjects herself to interviews so rarely
is her singularly English reluctance to dwell publicly on herself or her
private affairs. Gracious but guarded, she will cheerfully burble on about her
artistic motivations. But try to pin her down on a matter of emotional
substance and her expression goes blank, a shutter descends -- _clunk!_ --
and that's the end of that.

"Albums are like diaries," Bush says. "You go through phases, technically and
emotionally, and they reflect the state that you're in at the time. This album
has been a very big transition point for me. Right from the beginning of
writing there was a different energy coming out. It probably sounds a bit
silly. But I do believe that the people who are in the studio exude an energy
into the tape which is very much to do with what they feel. It's a very
emotional process, really. And when you get these close working relationships
with people, you start to get this weird communication."

Apart from Bush, the person who has contributed most to the album has been
bassist and studio engineer Del Palmer, her partner both musically and
romantically since the earliest days. But despite his continuing involvement
on a professional level, is it true that they are no longer a couple?

"We have an extremely good _working_ relationship," says Bush, "and I'd like
to think that the album reflects that. I tend not to talk about my
relationships, really. That's quite a personal thing." _Clunk!_

_The Red Shoes_ also features an unusual array of high-profile guest
musicians: Eric Clapton on the smoldering, bluesy "And So Is Love"; Jeff Beck
on a stately ballad called "You're the One"; and Prince, who contributes
guitar, keyboards, backing vocals and a very Princely arrangement to "Why
Should I Love You?"

"If started off as a bit of a laugh, a game that turned into reality," Bush
says of those star turns. "The sort of people that I would have dearly loved
to have played on the album, I actually got up the nerve to ring them up and
ask them if they would like to come and play on the track. I don't feel
they've been used for their names. I'd be very unhappy to think that they
weren't being shown off properly. But I do feel honored that all of these
people were so responsive."

Bush's surprise at finding such luminaries so willing to participate (even
the famously negotiable "fee-paid-will-play" Beck) may not be false modesty.
She has collaborated with one or two close friends in the past, notably Peter
Gabriel on "Games Without Frontiers" and the affecting "Don't Give Up." But
Bush hasn't spent much time fraternizing with the rock community since the
whirlwind success of her debut single, "Wuthering Heights," which topped the
U.K. chart for four weeks in 1978.

In many ways, Kate Bush has had a privileged -- some would say cosseted --
ride, having been elevated from an early age above the general rough and
tumble of rock & roll. She was still a schoolgirl when Ricky Hopper, a family
friend and wanna-be talent scout, financed a demo tape of her songs, which he
passed on to David Gilmour, a guitarist with Pink Floyd (who, she says,
neither sought nor received any financial reward for his efforts), Bush was
signed to EMI Records in Britain in 1974 at the tender age of 16.

Supported financially, but otherwise left to her own devices, she spent the
next three years honing her talents and developing material at her own speed.
It's a habit that has yielded diminishing commercial returns in later years
as gaps between albums have grown steadily longer. "Wuthering Heights" is
still her biggest single worldwide. In America, 1985's _Hounds of Love_ is her
only album to have even dented the Top 40, although _The Red Shoes_ has become
a current college-radio favorite.

Bush has toured only once, a multi-costume-changing, singing and dancing
extravaganza that played for 28 dates in Europe in 1979. It was a trailblazing
show, so much so that it was Bush's sound engineers who first hit on the idea
of the microphone headset, developing a prototype made out of a wire coat
hanger, which she used in the early shows.

"I did enjoy it," Bush says of her touring experienced, "but I was really
physically exhausted. Eventually, I got nervous about performing live again,
because I hadn't done it for so long, and I think I actually started losing
a lot of confidence as a performer. I felt that I'd become a writer in a very
isolated situation, just working with a small group of people.

"The more I got into presenting things to the world, the further it was taking
me away from what I was," Bush says, "which was someone who just used to sit
quietly at a piano and sing and play. It became very important to me not to
lose sight of that. I didn't want my feet to come off the ground."

Does she worry that she is missing out, that she is, to use her own word, in
danger of becoming too isolated?

"Touring is an incredibly isolated situation," Bush argues. "I don't know how
people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can't stop touring,
and it's because they don't know how to come back into life. It's sort of
unreal."

For Bush, the trick seems to be shutting out as much of the background blare
as possible. She rarely reads the papers or listens to the radio or goes to
see shows or buys albums. She claims no knowledge of the notoriously Bushlike
singer Tori Amos -- "I heard one track and I thought it was very ... uhh,
nice" -- and cites as her own primary influences the English and Irish
traditional music that her piano-playing father, her singing mother and her
older brothers played and sang in the house when she was growing up.

"From the earliest age I can remember," Bush says, "I was hearing the most
beautiful tunes being made up."

The recent death of her mother, to whom she was always very close, is one
reason why Bush has taken so long to produce _The Red Shoes,_ her first album
since 1989's _The Sensual World._  According to those around her, it took
Bush the better part of a year after the death to get back into the frame of
mind to work. But despite the long periods out of the spotlight, she has
maintained a core following with a deep and unswerving loyalty.

Her fans, Bush insists, mean a lot to her. "It's very moving that a lot of
people that I don't know are so supportive of what I do," she says. "I don't
tour, I don't give them that much, really. Obviously I try to make the best
music that I can, but after about two years of making an album you start to
worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned
out?' And then you get odd little letters from fans here and there encouraging
you, and that's a fantastic boost. I suppose I hope that if I keep an
integrity in my work, then they'll always feel that."