Cloudbusting -- Kate Bush In Her Own Words

The Kick Inside

The song The Kick Inside, the title track, was inspired by a traditional folk song and it was an area that I wanted to explore because it's one that is really untouched and that is one of incest. There are so many songs about love, but they are always on such an obvious level. This song is about a brother and a sister who are in love, and the sister becomes pregnant by her brother. And because it is so taboo and unheard of, she kills herself in order to preserve her brother's name in the family. The actual song is in fact the suicide note. The sister is saying ``I'm doing it for you'' and ``Don't worry, I'll come back to you someday.'' (1978, Self Portrait)

That's inspired by an old traditional song called ``Lucy Wan.'' It's about a young girl and her brother who fall desperately in love. It's an incredibly taboo thing. She becomes pregnant by her brother and it's completely against all morals. She doesn't want him to be hurt, she doesn't want her family to be ashamed or disgusted, so she kills herself. The song is a suicide note. She says to her brother, ``Don't worry. I'm doing it for you.'' (1978, Trouser Press)

Paddy bush: The track owes its roots to a traditional english-scottish song called ``lucy wan'' And it's an incredibly sad, heart rending song about incest and terrible things and blood and death and it's about the sadist thing that's every been...

Jay bush: And it's very long.

Paddy: Oh, very, very long. And much in the same way that st. Claustintine's [??? Spelling] fire dance provided the [??? Grabbing] inspiration for the `` jig of life", you could easily trace a lot of the energies in ``the kick inside'' directly back to ``lucy wan.'' and in fact there were one or two experiments at the time of recording the album where actual sections from ``lucy wan'' were taken and processed and used in a very unusual way, which I'm not going to tell you about because we might try and use it in something else. But it wasn't actually kept for the track. But if you find the song ``lucy wan", you'll find all the inspiration for it. (1985, kate bush con. Paddy and jay interview)

In the first album there are a couple of songs that I thought are about having a baby. Is that true?

Um, yes. Not actually having a baby. But... Yeah, `` The Kick Inside'' is about a lady who is pregnant who is going to do herself in. [Laughs]

Does it mean much to you, I mean the idea of having a baby?

I think that is one of the most incredible phenomenas of the world, the fact that two people can produce another person. I think it's just incredible. And I think a lot of people don't respect that amazing thing enough, I think to many people treat it in a selfish way. (1979, Personal Call)

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