Cloudbusting; Kate's Explanation

["[hARRISON sHINN]" <jerjerrod@worldnet.att.net>]

i hope i don't get throttled by kate for copyright infringment, but this is what she intended "cloudbusting" to be about.  this is straight from kate's mouth and i've copied it from the 1985 "Hounds of Love" album issue of the KBC newsletter.

"The last song is called "cloudbusting" and this was inspired by a book that i first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago.  it was just calling me from the shelf and when i read it i was very moved by the magic of it.  it's about a special relationship between a young son and his father and the book was written from a child's point of view.  his father is everything to him, he is the magic in his life and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open minded and not to build up barriers.  his father has built a machine that can make it rain; a cloudbuster and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting, they point big pipes up into the sky and they make it rain.  the song is very much taking a comparison between a yo-yo that glowed in the dark that was given to the boy by a best friend and it was really special to him, he loved it but his father believed in things having positive and negative energy and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy as was the material they used to make glow in the dark toys then and his father told him that he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it.  but the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden so he would placate his father but he could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it.  it's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo and how special it was but that it was considered dangerous.  he loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people) and how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve that whenever he wanted to play with it but there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless.  but it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father.  it is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes but being told by a sad adult."

there was an interview with kate at the time that was conducted by some chap from breakthrough and his interpretations were all wrong as to what she was writing about regarding several tunes on the HOL album.  she's always said that maybe because she's too close to the songs, what really matters is what the individual gets out of it.  but during that interview, kate pointed out to the interviewer that he was really off base on several points in regards to what her songs mean.  she mentioned that perhaps some people like to dig a little TOO deep into what a song is about and sometimes choose to ignore what is blatantly in front of them.

harrison shinn

...scares me silly but it get's me going...
- kate bush