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Dali
Also known as Ferry Me Over. This is a provisional title given to a demo version of a song which was never released. It is available only on bootleg recordings; see the Phoenix section for more information.
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Davy
This is a provisional title given to a demo version of a song which was never released. It is available only on bootleg recordings; see the Phoenix section for more information.
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Dawson, Danny
An assistant engineer at Abbey Road during sessions for the album The Dreaming.
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De Souza, Barry
A session musician who has played with artists ranging from Leslie Duncan to Lou Reed. De Souza played drums on the song Saxophone Song, recorded in 1975 by producer Dave Gilmour.
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Deal With God, A
The original title for the song later known as Running Up That Hill. According to Kate, the song began with musing on the idea of making a deal with the Devil, and how much more powerful it would be to make a deal with the other side, so to speak. The title was changed only after Kate was informed that a song with the word "God" in the title would not be played in any religious country. Feeling that this would be, in Kate's words, cutting her own throat, she agreed to the compromise of retitling the song Running Up That Hill -- a decision which she told more than one interviewer she has regretted ever since.
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December Will Be Magic Again
A song first performed on The Winter Snowtime Special and the television special Kate, and only released as a single nearly a year later.
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Deeper Understanding
This song from The Sensual World was partly inspired by a documentary on Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist crippled by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, who can only talk through the use of a speech synthesizer. "It was one of the most moving things I've ever heard. He was so close to the answers to everything, and yet his body was going on him. The things he was saying were so spiritual, it was like he'd gone straight through science and come out the other end."
It has also been noted that the Fairlight CMI, the computer-based musical system Kate has used most often throughout her career, has a button labelled "Execute" -- leading to speculation that the lyrics of this particular song may also have a partly autobiographical component.
Kate on the presence of The Trio Bulgarka in the song: "Who else could embody the visitation of angels but the Trio Bulgarka?"
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Delia Smith's Cookery
Kate was interviewed about vegetarianism and showed examples of her favorite salads and recipies on this cooking program in 1980. Kate concludes "I hope people will think about it, because there really is a lot in vegetables!"
A transcript of this appearance is available in the Cloudbusting section.
See Woman's World for further evangelising about the vegetarian lifestyle.
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Delius, Frederick
(b. Fritz Theodore Albert Delius, 29 January 1862 - 10 June 1934) A prolific and much-admired English composer. As a result of a syphillitic infection in childhood, Delius became partially paralyzed and lost his sight as an adult. At this time, Eric Fenby served as his assistant. The song Delius is a tribute to his life and work.
In December 1980, appearing on BBC Radio One with Paul Gambaccini, Kate played the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge recording of the Delius composition To Be Sung Of A Summer Night On The Water.
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Delius (song)
A song on the album Never For Ever, subtitled "Song Of Summer." The song was inspired by the life of composer Frederick Delius.
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Denny, Sandy
(d. 1977) A British singer, twice a member of the folk-rock group Fairport Convention as well as having a successful solo career. She is also remembered for her vocal contribution to The Battle Of Evermore on the fourth album by Led Zeppelin. Denny is named in the song Blow Away.
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Desert Island Discs
Although Kate has (to date) never appeared on the famous BBC radio program, in 1990 the British music magazine Q asked her to select recordings she would choose to bring on a journey to a desert island. Her choices were: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles, My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno, the Nigel Kennedy recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the song Strati Angelaki by The Trio Bulgarka, Donal Lunny's album Donal Lunny, Eberhard Weber's album Fluid Rustle ("a lot of fond memories"), Billie Holiday's rendition of I Love You Porgie ("the singer of singers. Lindsay Kemp used to use this one in a show of his, and the combination of her singing and his theatre was terrific"), and Comfortably Numb from The Wall by Pink Floyd.
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Digeridu
A large bamboo tube used as a wind instrument, native to Australia. On the song The Dreaming, the digeridu is played by Rolf Harris. Kate wrote the track using a digitized digeridu sample on her Fairlight, but turned to Harris on the finished song because "it would be insulting to the instrument to suggest that the Fairlight could do it better. The digeridu is one of those incredible instruments with the circular sound that's sort of rooted in the earth." Irrepressable multi-instrumentalist Paddy Bush plays digeridu on the songs The Big Sky and Jig of Life.
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Disbelieving Angel
This is a provisional title given to a demo version of a song which was never released. It is available only on bootleg recordings; see the Phoenix section for more information.
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Do Bears...
A comedic duet sung with Rowan Atkinson during the Comic Relief benefit show at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London on 4 April 1986. The song was written by Richard Curtis.
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Don't Give Up
A duet sung with Peter Gabriel on his album So.
A striking video for this song was directed by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, former members of the British group 10cc. Having furthered a trend toward faster edits in music videos -- their video for Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung featured an edit in every single frame -- Godley and Creme reversed themselves here by using a stationary camera and creating all "scene changes" by placing Peter and Kate on a rotating platform in front of an ever-changing backdrop.
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Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake
A song on the album Lionheart.
"Streetlights reflecting on black leather, on upholstery."This song is also listed in the Discography section.
Kate Bush,
The Best Of Kate Bush
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Donovan
(b. Donovan Leitch) Originally promoted as "the British Bob Dylan", this folk singer and songwriter proved to be a highly original artist in his own right. In the mid-to-late Sixties, Donovan enjoyed huge chart success with whimsical tunes such as Mellow Yellow and I Love My Shirt and the improbably stirring anthem Atlantis, and also collaborated with such artists as Jeff Beck and Alice Cooper. More recently, Donovan has all but disappeared from public attention. Kate released a cover version of his song Lord Of The Reedy River as the b-side of the single Sat In Your Lap.
Kate on her appreciation of Donovan, ca. 1980:
"Donovan has got the most beautiful voice -- that very slow vibrato that people like Cliff Richard can put on, but [Donovan] has it very naturally. I mean he sings like this all the time. And again, he's an incredible song writer, lyric writer. He can play the guitar and he has that fantastic voice. And it seemed that he'd really got caught up in the copying of Dylan when he first signed up and was singing. And he was wearing the hats and he was carrying the guitar and everyone thought he was just a Dylan copy, when in fact he wasn't at all. And it seems that he's just been forgotten, he's gone under. It's ridiculous. I can't stand to see that happen to people, especially someone like him."
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Downes, Geoff
A British keyboard player who co-founded the group Buggles with studio wizard Trevor Horn, best remembered for their 1980 hit Video Killed The Radio Star. The pair later formed the second incarnation of the progressive rock group Yes. Downes played Fairlight CMI Trumpet Section on the song Sat In Your Lap.
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Doyle, Julian
Director of the video for the song Cloudbusting. A reknowned film technician, Doyle was recommended for this job by Terry Gilliam; he had previously worked with Gilliam as an editor and production assistant on the films Monty Python And The Holy Grail, the successive Monty Python films Life Of Brian and The Meaning Of Life, and Gilliam's own Time Bandits and Brazil.
Trivia: Aficionados of British comedy may be interested to learn of Doyle's odd contribution to the classic television series Fawlty Towers, which Kate has cited as "the best sitcom ever": according to author Johnathan Margolis, Doyle, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in 1974 told series creator John Cleese about an odd elderly couple who were the CP subscription collectors in Tufnell Park and Camden Town. Doyle still wonders why he bothered to tell Cleese about the couple, as there was nothing particularly notable about them -- except for their archaic names, Basil and Sybil.
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Dr. Hook
Formally known as Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show, this group hosted a television special on 20 March 1980, during which Kate performed the song Babooshka and showed the video for the song Delius.
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Drake, Simon
A magician and clown who was part of the cast of the Tour Of Life.
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Dreaming, The (album)
The fourth album by Kate Bush.
This album is also listed in the Discography section.
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Dreaming, The (song)
Title song of the album The Dreaming. This song was heavily influenced by the song Sun Arise by Rolf Harris; Harris himself plays digeridu on this track.
"Woomera" is a kind of throwing stick used by Australian Aboriginies to launch spears further and faster than they can be thrown by hand alone. It can be thought of as a precursor to the bow used in archery. Aptly, it is also the name of a major aeronautics and rocketry center in Southern Australia. The double meaning of the name makes it especially appropriate to this song.
The muttered words at the end of this song are lyrics from an Aboriginal song called Aeroplane, Aeroplane, which has been described as one of the first Aboriginal songs about airplanes. The aforementioned aeronautic reference, and the immediate segue into Night Of The Swallow which follows on the album, might not be entirely coincidental.
This song is also listed in the Discography section.
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Dreamtime
An instrumental version of the song The Dreaming, largely unchanged except for the absence of lead vocals, released as the b-side of the single version and unavailable elsewhere.
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Duffield, Bill
(d. 2 April 1979) The lighting director for the Tour Of Life. Duffield fell to his death on 2 April 1979 after a show at the Poole Arts Centre in Dorset, just prior to the official start of the tour. Less than a month later, on 12 May 1979, in the midst of the final days of the tour, Kate performed a memorial concert for Bill Duffield at the Hammersmith Odeon. Also appearing on the bill were special guests Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley, who had each worked with Duffield in the past. The song Blow Away, which envisions a special afterlife for those who lived and died for music, is dedicated to Duffield, and he is named in the song Moments of Pleasure.
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Duncan, Leslie
A popular British folksinger and songwriter of the early 1970s. Duncan's charity single Sing Children Sing pre-dated the Band Aid recording of Do They Know It's Christmas? as one of the first "all-star chorus" recordings of a pop song for charity purposes.
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Dunne, Pearce
An assistant engineer at Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, who worked on the album Hounds Of Love.
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Durius, Adam
Kate's first mime teacher, at a dance training studio in the London district of Elephant and Castle.