Cloudbusting -- Kate Bush In Her Own Words

Saturday

: I live alone - in southeast London - and today I don't get up until late: perhaps one or two p.m. A friend of mine from the Hare Krishna temple rang me up about eight-thirty, but I was too tired to natter much. About three o'clock I go over to my parents' - they live twenty minutes' drive away, in Kent. I'm doing a TV show in Germany on Tuesday [The programme was rockpop, and the taping was in mid-september, 1980] and my Mum's got some clothes to lend me. I'm going to do two numbers for the show. ``Army Dreamers'' is one, and I want to dress up as a cleaning woman. My mother lends me a headscarf, an old apron, and lots of my old jumble clothes. The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action - it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream.

: I stay round my parents for a few hours - after all, you can't just go round, take all the clothes you want and rush off - drink lots of tea and eat chocolate eclairs and sandwiches, the sort of things that mothers like to fill you up with. I feel absolutely delightful after that, and I go back to start work on my routines for Tuesday.

: What I do is have a little cassette machine with the mixes I'm going to work on, and I go into my back room where I have four mirrors propped up against the wall, and I rehearse in front of them. It's all very well to work out the routine for `` Army Dreamers,'' but the two dancers I work with [Stewart avon-arnold and gary hurst] are busy - one's in Godspell and one's in France. So I needed people who would be able to perform. Paddy, my brother, he does pretty well. And the guys from the band, who are natural performers anyway. I am pretty wiped out still, and I don't get as much done as I could have. After working out for a while I don't feel too good, so I have a bath and try some more. I work out for two or three hours, then cook a meal for myself.

: I'm not a bad cook. I love making bread. It's such a wonderful thing to do. So I watch the telly - the late-night movie: guys having their eyes pulled out, or something really awful. Paddy has come back by now, so we have a long chat and I get to bed about three o'clock. [Apparently kate was still sharing the family's lewisham building of flats with her two brothers. She has since moved to a house of her own, situated nearer her parents's home in kent, and she uses a third building as a private dance studio. - ied]