Re: rumours??

[Richard Bensam <rabensam@earthlink.net>]

Kerry White wrote:

> Hi,  What do we do if the rumours that KaTe is getting/has got out of the
>"music business" because she is tired of dealing w/ record companies and
>record executives and all the crap that they put out?  A friend of a
>friend, etc. of an acquaintence of mine (and we all know how that kind of
>info is written in stone) said that *he* had heard from some1 close to
>KaTe herself.  If this were true, some1 connected to Homeground, or some
>other source close the Bush family, etc have broken the news to us. Have
>rumours such as this circulated in the vast lengths of time between albums
>in the past??   Just my little pebble tossed in to keep the waters churned
>up. 8-)

This can be dismissed as highly unlikely for a variety of reasons.  For one
thing, it seems that Kate has a considerably more agreeable and friendly
relationship with her record label than any other artist I have ever heard
of.  From the time that Bob Mercer of EMI agreed to invest time and money
in three years of training and development -- three years in which Kate was
of course producing no income for EMI -- they have granted her considerable
leeway and veto power over things she wanted or did not want to do.  (EMI
received a good return on that investment, but it was quite a gamble for
them at the time.)  Kate's entire catalogue is profitable for EMI, each
album seems to sell consistently many years after its original release, and
they have no real reason to tamper with her or try to change her direction.
I think we can also suppose that EMI doesn't interfere with Kate often
because she seems to speak freely about occasions on which they *have*
interfered -- choosing a song over the one Kate preferred as the first
single from a given album, for example, or requesting that "A Deal With
God" be renamed.  If there had been significantly greater interference,
almost certainly we would have heard of it.

Kate was possibly (probably) irked with the successive failures of Harvest,
EMI America, and EMI Manhattan to provide her with even minimal support in
America, leading to her transfer to Columbia here, but those failures were
by regional labels and do not necessarily reflect on the home office.

Don't get me wrong, all record companies are full of crap, including EMI
and Columbia.  It's just that Kate has had to deal with less blatant crap
than most anyone else.  She is apparently doing well and has not much
reason to complain.

To answer your first question: what do we do?  Ignore such rumors, I say,
and <sarcasm>get back to arguing about important issues like whether or not
Kate's voice cracks in Wuthering Heights.</sarcasm>  Sigh...


RAB

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