Cloudbusting -- Kate Bush In Her Own Words

Billy Holliday

And I notice from your long list of records that you gave us kate, and unfortunately we won't be able to play all them. But there are one or two with quite a deep jazz influence in them, like there's one with Billy Holliday. We've got another one latter on which we'll find that is the same. How heavily were your influenced by jazz.

I think Billy Holiday hit me very strongly when I first heard her. I just couldn't believe her voice, I mean it just made me want to cry, it was just amazing. And she's very strongly Jazz and Blues, but there is something about it that I love. Maybe it's the indulgence. [Laughs]

Right, well that's the right of every composer, would you say, to be slightly self-indulgent at times?

Oh, yeah. I think thats unanimous, yeah. (1979, Personal Call)

About your singing, I know you used to listen to Billie Holiday. Did you make deliberate efforts to imitate her, singing along with her records and so on?

Well, that was when I was about seventeen, and I was listening to all kinds of music. And no, I think billie holiday is one of the very few artists whose records I would never join in with while she's singing, she's too good. I just couldn't get near it. I think the reward you get from her is in actually listening to her voice. That is what is so beautiful about her, you can almost hear what she's been doing for the last three weeks. Her singing is extraordinary, it's just terrifying, the amount of, well, agony, and yet beauty, which comes out of just that one voice. Terrible suffering, yet so entertaining for those who listen. (1985, Musician)

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