Cloudbusting -- Kate Bush In Her Own Words

Babooshka

: ``Babooshka'' is about futile situations: The way in which we often ruin things for ourselves. (1980, KBC 7)

"Babooshka", which was a surprisingly big hit after quite a slow start, it did take a little bit of time didn't?

And the story behind ``babooshka'' very quickly because everyone was saying it's russian for grandmother, yes?

: Yes, well apparently it is grandmother, it's also a headdress that people wear. But when I wrote the song it was just a name that literally came into my mind, I've presumed I've got it from a fairy story I'd read when I was a child. And after having written the song a series of incredible coincidences happened where I'd turned on the television and there was Donald Swan singing about Babooshka. So I thought, ``well, there's got to be someone who's actually called Babooshka.'' So I was looking through Radio Times and there, another coincidence, there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought ``Jesus is in there.'' So they went in and he wasn't. And they wouldn't let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka. [He laughs] So these really extraordinary things that kept coming up when in fact it was just a name that came into my head at the time purely because it fitted. (1980, Never For Ever Debut)

: I love the melody line of the bass guitar on this song. We got through a lot of boxes of broken crockery to get the right sound at the end - the canteen ladies were not impressed. (C.1986, AVD)