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Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 14:31 PDT
From: IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu
Subject: con 85 and video party
IED has been asked to say a word or two about the "last" official KT convention. IED did not attend that one. In 1986, following the hugely successful 1985 convention which IED did attend (along with your Humble Pseudo-Moderator Doug Alan and about 400 other dediKated fans), Homeground organized what they called a "video party" in a club in Argyle St. in London. Unfortunately the club was overpacked with fans who had somehow learned that Kate herself would be attending, and as a result that party turned into something of a fiasco--Kate ended up sitting at a tiny table signing an endless stream of album covers, etc., there was near-pandemonium, and few fans had a good time.
IED's experience at the 1985 convention was, in contrast, very positive indeed. It occurred in November, at the Dolphin Centre in Romford, a suburb of London. There was no over-crowding, as only those who had bought tickets in advance showed up; and there was no rushing of Kate or excessive album-signing, because everyone had cleverly been led to believe that Kate would "probably not attend" the convention. When at the very end Kate did turn up onstage, the whole group went wild with excitement, rushed en masse to the foot of the stage, and then held their breath to hear Kate thank everyone for coming, and to watch her as she was presented with a platinum album for HoL. It was a great moment.
Before Kate's appearance, however, lots of other fun things happened: there were two rounds of a Kate Bushology Quiz, conducted by Peter FitzGerald-Morris, the Dean of Kate Bushology (who wore a cap and gown from H.G.U.). Our Pseudo-Moderator actually participated in the first round, sitting onstage and answering the questions with his usual deftness and aplomb.
There was a slide show, during which a tape of a then-exclusive interview with Kate was heard (this was the Capital Radio interview of 1985, conducted by Tony Myatt and since posted in Love-Hounds). There were door-prizes, including one of Kate's gold albums and Del Palmer's Tour of Life leather jacket (presented by Del). There was a lot of official KT merchandise on sale in a back room, as well as a good deal of unofficial KT trading among the crowd. (One person had at least fifty different KT badges on his person, many of which were for sale; and Scott Shepard, an American fan, had brought a big case full of posters to peddle.)
There was a very interesting (though, unhappily, under-miked) interview with Kate's brothers Paddy and John Carder Bush, conducted by--Kate's brothers Paddy and John Carder Bush. And best of all, there were Kate's entire family and Del Palmer at the back of the main room throughout the entire event, ready and willing to chat with any and all fans who were interested. It was a really friendly atmosphere. Also, a lot of exclusive video clips were shown, including coverage of Kate's trip to Japan and outtakes from the Hammersmith Odeon film.
If the next convention is held in a big enough room, and ticket sales are carefully limited, and if Homeground don't go spreading assurances that Kate herself will attend (a little late for that!), then the occasion should prove to be another amazing, magical success, like the '85 con. Let's hope at least a few Love-Hounds are able to put in an appearance and represent our group, eh?
-- Andrew Marvick
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1991 23:04:56 -0700
From: rhill@pnet01.cts.com (Ronald Hill)
Subject: 1985 Convention Jay and Pad interview
John and Paddy Bush Interview
From the 1985 Kate Bush Convention
November 30, 1985
[Transcribed by Ron Hill. Unfortunately the microphones were not too loud so much of the interview was inaudible.]
DAVE CROSS: Few people know Kate as well as her immediate family, which I'm sure you've realized. So we're going to have two interviewees and two interviewers, but only two people on stage. Would you please welcome, to interview each other, John and Paddy Bush. [Applause]
PADDY: Hi everybody!
[Applause]
PADDY: Hello, everybody can you hear me OK now?
JOHN: [Inaudible]
PADDY: Yeah, I am Kate Bush Fan, I have everything she does. [Applause] But I'm not on the collecting side - I haven't got any Kate Bush T-Shirts or [inaudible]. Purely into the music. Question number 2...
AUDIENCE: Louder.
PADDY: [Shoats] Question number two!! It says, John in particular, seems to have been closely involved musicly - more closely [laugher] involved musically with Hounds Of Love then previous albums. Is there any particular reason for this?
JOHN: Well, I think it's the new studio, because having the studio at home gives a very relaxed feeling to the work. So I mean there are a number of other reasons, really the creative ones and there were some gaps in there and I cleaned them up a bit.
PADDY: Right. And in fact this particular album has shown a slight trend toward using this vocal voice with music as well as the song's voice and [microphone screeches loudly, blasting your transcriber's ears in the headphones. The audience laughs. Double thumping sound.] And so quite a lot of us were involved in an audio kind of way. We're asked to say things, things are put on to message machines - telephone answering machines and stuff like this. We're asked to phone people up and say silly things like "good morning, dear this is early morning call." All this kind of stuff. So vocally, quite a lot of it's [??? inaudible] and Jay in particular and we're very honour to have him on here [??? Inaudible]
JOHN: [Inaudible]
PADDY: Do you like it, by the way? [Applause]
PADDY: It says question number 3. [??? Have the honour..]
JOHN: How far does the material on Hounds Of Love reflect highly special music interests of Kate, such as traditional music and such? Very much I'd say...
PADDY: Yes, definitely.
JOHN: Particulary again the second side [??? inaudible] but certainly Celtic music is the biggest thing. You know, it runs all the way though. Even though that's not the specific [??? inaudible]
PADDY: Yes. [??? inaudible] Yesterday, I was spoken to some two or three people there, and we were talking about the Jig Of Life and they were saying, to them, The Jig Of Life sounded as though it came from Breton [??? spelling] and to them it sounded exactly like Breton music. And I think the country influence is very [??? slight]. Would you like to know where the idea for The Jig Of Life came from?
[Audience mumbles "Yeah"]
PADDY: Well that was [??? Baton's fire dance] that came from northern Italy. And there's a rhythm that they use, which they play all day long, which is the rhythm that goes underneath the Jig Of Life. And the rhythm goes [thumps out rhythm] And these people are in a little village in northern Greece, they're all Christian people. They start dancing at about nine o'clock in the morning to this rhythm and [??? inaudible]. And they dance all afternoon and all evening and they're grown up people, not [??? English] but grown up [??? huts]. And they carry these saintly paintings on their [??? backs]. And they sorta cuddle these things, and dance all afternoon, right into the evening. And at the very end of the night they lay a bonfire out on the ground and all the people in the village dance on top of these flames and nobody catches fire, except for visitors. Cause actually they have visitors to this village and they get very moved and carried away by the music and feel inspired to jump onto the flames. And inevitably they burst into flames and instantly combust, much to everybodies... [laugher]
JOHN: I think maybe what's the most interesting thing about that second side, where there is traditional music, is I think it's the first sort of integration of folk music into rock music that I've heard for a while. A few people have tried it in the last ten years, but it hasn't had the same dynamic as that.
PADDY: Would you agree?
[Applause. A voice that sounds suspiciously like IED's suggests "Night Of The Swallow."]
JOHN: Next question. Do you want this question?
PADDY: No.
JOHN: Alright sir. [Laughter] To what extent could it be said that Kate's music is a collective family effort? Do both of you make your own creative contributions, IE Paddy's music on Jig Of Life, John lyrics on the same song? I don't... maybe we've answered that a bit. But, yes it is, I mean when you talk about things together, there's no really particular [??? target for it], but if somebodies just saying, "why don't you write a [??? book] about a piece of music," it gets mentioned, it gets listened to, it gets looked at. And that's part of the process which adds to writing songs. But something specific, no. No, it's just a general sort of garden really of information. And [??? inaudible] if somebody finds a particular [??? socket], then [??? inaudible] It hasn't actually come from oneself. And it's just keeping your ears open. [??? Inaudible] then hopefully it gets recycled into [??? inaudible].
PADDY: Yeah, that's perfectly true. We all do this. We're often asked to contribute, taking from ourselves. You know, "have you got anything that may fit this particular idea." And then, on the other hand we can often asked to do specific things like to say very silly words and make very silly sounds. [??? inaudible]
JAY: The lyrics on Jig Of Life are interesting because originally it was going to be Edna O'brien [??? Spelling?]. But she wasn't available. And then when I was asked to do it, I thought I was going to have to pretend to be Edna O'Brien. [laughter] I wrote a very specific piece of poetry which is based mainly on W.B. Yates, for influence, so that it could be read with an Irish accent. It ended up though by just being read by a sorta Irish accent on a normal voice, although originally it was just going to be my voice speeded up, sounding like an Irish woman. [Laugher] So all that went into the lyrics coming out in that [??? little] way. The lyrics and the poetry. Question six.
PADDY: At what stage did we realize that Kate had a very special musical talent? That's easy.
JAY: Last week. [Laughter]
PADDY: [inaudible] a couple of days ago, seemed to be talented.
JAY: A very hard one, that.
PADDY: From the word go, really.
JAY: Yeah, she started playing the piano when she was eleven, I mean teaching herself.
PADDY: Ten.
JAY: Ten. [Laughter] And then the songs started to come a little bit after that.
PADDY: Ten and a half. [Lots of Laughter]
JAY: [??? Wishful percussions] more than anything else. I suppose around fourteen or fifteen they started to get some body behind them and then it looked as though something was going to happen. But it really until she'd actually made the first album that it became very clear.
PADDY: But we knew all along. [Laughter] Here's a good one. It says do we have any special memories of early performances in folk clubs or of the KT Bush band - it must have been 1977. And what songs were sung, standards or Kate's own?
JAY: Traditional. I mean I don't think... I mean Kate's never preformed in folk clubs. She certainly used to sing along with various folk bands that we had. Then she was very small so she couldn't have preformed anyway. And most of the songs she learned were Victorian sea shanties which were pretty dirty songs. [Laughter] So I suppose, in a sense that is where it started. [Laugher.] [??? Walking up here] and sing a dirty song. She's not worked in any traditional folk [??? styles] it's really just what she listened to as a child.
PADDY: KT Bush band performances in '77. They were really quite interesting. They all took place in a pub in Lewisham. The idea was to give Kate a little bit a practice of preforming. She had a contract with EMI and it was pretty obvious that the album was going to come out at some time. And it was [??? inaudible] be an experience of directly singing to a group of people. And so she thought maybe it would be interesting to [??? impression]
There was this place in Lewisham, it was called The Rose Of Lee, it doesn't exist anymore. The first night that we turned up, there were four people there. And it really hotted out about ten thirty, another two people came in [laughter] - Jay and my father. [More laughter] Really, really marvelous. And then the next week it was a bit better, it was about... about twelve people there. The songs being sung were, they were mainly standards, actually. Tracks Of My Tears, [??? inaudible] But then in about three weeks [??? inaudible] the word started getting around and the club became more and more and more packed. And I think maybe about the fifth or six week [??? inaudible] you couldn't get in. And this was all pre-... before the album was released or anybody knew anything about Kate, it was just the name of a group. [Laughter] I think about the fifth or six performance [??? inaudible] that night... The night she first did James And The Cold Gun...
JOHN: Yeah.
PADDY: ... in fact, that was really good. I working the lights [laughter] and Lisa [??? invented ] fantasicly. We were hoping to get these huge blocks of dry ice which we were going to try out in the night. They [just said... stringing in the dust bin ???] pore some hot water on it and watch what happens. And we did and it was phenomenal! [Laughter] Six foot of [thrown ???] ice over here. Kate said ["what are you laughing about" ???] [Laughter] Yeah, that was very, very impressive. I felt, I felt James And The Cold Gun had a very phenomenal effect on the audience and if anything was maybe the truest sort of insight into the way it was going to go. And maybe the nearest thing there was to anything like the tour before the tour started.
JOHN: Yeah, certainly... particularly that song was the [??? end of it] for the performances that came out of the tour.
PADDY: Yeah. Question number eight. Will Kate tour again or will she contemplate on other ways of visually presenting her work?
JOHN: She's bound to tour again, obviously. But when, I don't know. I think she's faced with the situation now in which she can go three ways -she can do another album, she get a tour together, or she can concentrate on something more visual, which might be film or, I don't know, maybe an extended video. And until promotions for this album are finished, and that means making another video for every [next single ???] and maybe another video for every single on [the planet ???] she's not going to really know. So I suppose until the spring of next year she wouldn't really have any idea about what direction she's going to take. But of course yes, there's bound to be another tour, but when, who knows?
PADDY: Yes, and I promise you we are considering this very, very seriously. I mean it's not something that we're going to put off for ever and ever and ever. There will be another tour, if not next year, the year after, and it will be marvelous. I guarantee you, we're going to be better than the last one. [Laughter] That will be nothing compared to what we're going [to do ???]
How did the sleeve for the Running Up That Hill come to be archery themed and the idea of lyrics on Kate's back? The archery... Archery is something that we have been interested in for many years. It symbolizes the very basic learning processes, archery. You aim an arrow at a target and you let it go and it flies towards the target, it misses the middle and it moves a little bit to the left and a little bit low, then you know that the next arrow you're going to shoot has to be a little bit to the right and a bit higher. And [??? inaudible] where you find another learning process [??? inaudible] spending all the English summer walking up and down the hundred yards between the target and the [??? inaudible]. And [??? inaudible] a few summers ago Kate was very active, very good actually, too. Very good [??? inaudible] skills. Excellent [??? inaudible] and it just [??? inaudible].
JAY: I think there's some levels of archery which now... in terms of a simple fact, you can see archery as... with the left hand holding the bow, as the future, and the right hand is pulling this way, it's going backwards, as the past. And you're the present. You could see it as the left hand as the passive thing, the female, and the right hand as the male. And it's obviously [??? inaudible]. And there are a lot of esoteric levels, but I'm sure they're not very interesting. Perhaps they threatened to get into the [??? single fan].
And the idea of the lyrics written on Kate's back was... we'd been working on a series for about the last eighteen months and a photograph... because I never found a photograph and a poem written on the page opposite -it never seems to work. You look at the poem and you're having to read the words and that's more concentrated thing, particularly these days, because less of us are used to it. And then you look at the photograph and you get a much more immediate reaction. So trying to balance all that's going on. And I though the only way to do it was actually to write the poem in the photograph. And writing it on the person, that meant you could take a portion of the person, you could write your poem. You take a photograph too and get a much more complete thing. So I'd done a few of those and Kate saw them and liked the idea, so we tried... initially we were going to try them for the album cover, but that didn't work out, it was much too busy. But it worked well I think for the single back.
PADDY: [??? Inaudible] Are there any other [??? silly] questions.
FAN: As far as books on Kate Bush, that have been published, they seem to be absolute rubbish.
PADDY AND JAY: YEAH!
FAN: They've made Jay out to be some morose figure who hides in dark alleys..
JAY: Yeah. [Laughter from audience]
FAN: And your whole family to be eccentric. Do you resent that and could Kate Bush put the record straight by writing her own biography?
JAY: I think, yes, initially we resented it and it was a bit of a shock and that's the usually process, finding out whether I wanted to do anything to stop it, because a lot of it was quite unpleasant and very un-[??? flattering] to me. And we decided that we wouldn't because that would fuel the fire of the sort of people who were doing it.
PADDY: [Makes funny voice] Nasty Bushes! Stop us going to press! [???? inaudible] Us! [Laughter from Audience]
JAY: Actually for her to do a book we find it's rather difficult because she doesn't get on the [??? planet] that long. And slight attempts were made of it but I think actually seeing your life spread out in one big long effort is very weird sensation. So, no, they haven't have. Whether they will in the future, I don't know. I doubt it somehow. But I'm sure they'll be plenty more books as far as the ones we've been talking about now. But it's just an unfortunate aspect of the music industry. But, as you say, they are rubbish and they're rubbish in so many details, not in what they say about us but just in what they call "fact" is all wrong. And they don't rely them at all, [??? inaudible]
FAN: Did Fred Vermorel every meet you?
JAY: No, nor Paddy.
PADDY: No, not one of us.
[Inaudible and Laughter]
JAY: He wants to know where he could find us. [More laughter] Just for our own person protection from him, you know he went through our dust bins, too. Some people make a living... [??? inaudible]
ANOTHER FAN: I was just wondering how much communication there is between Kate and the Bush camp and EMI America? Maybe specificly concerning MTV not showing the original video of Running Up That Hill?
JAY: Yes, that's quite interesting. There has now been [??? some] good communications because we just came back from America. Where the reaction to Kate's music was good, very positive. And Canada too. And I think the high point of that was the personal appearance at Tower Records in New York, which surprised not only us but the record company and the people who run the store. On all levels, because the people went right around the block which they hadn't expected. They'd got a lot of police to police it, when they didn't need to, everybody was very well behaved. And the enthusiasm of the fans and, well you all know this anyway, took them by surprise. And I think it also made them see that there's a much bigger market and that's all their interested in, is making money. They saw a much bigger market potential because there were people from 15 to 50 queuing. And they'd never been able to isolate a Kate Bush fan and in a sense they still couldn't. But you could see with all the signs moving round and round [laughter] [??? inaudible]. So I think communications with them are much better, yeah.
PADDY: As far as Running Up That Hill goes, it's this great technical problem. MTV weren't particularly interested in broadcasting videos that didn't have synchronized lip movements in them. They liked the idea of people singing songs.
FAN: But I've seen lots of other videos on MTV where they have lots of parts where they aren't any syncronizations of...
JAY: Yes, but I think... Yeah, I see what you mean but I think that what they've done is they decided to typecast her very early on [??? inaudible] - It didn't actually work and they're still trying to get out of that habit. And when they saw the video, it wasn't at the time in which the record had taken off the way it did in the states. So they were probably trying to be fairly cautious. And that's why they [??? inaudible] vocal track.
FAN: They didn't approach you saying make another video where she's lip synching did they?
JAY: No.
PADDY: Not exactly. [Laughter]
JAY: No. Well if they paid for it, maybe...
PADDY: Yeah, but there just wasn't the time available. So [??? inaudible] was it re-instated?
JAY: Well, the original one is being shown now [???? and it's the only version that I love]. I think maybe its an educating process. [??? people] have to get used to it.
IED: They did actually show the original video in Los Angeles on a spanish salsa station. [Laughter]
FAN: And in most of the clubs they showed the original one, too.
JAY: Yeah, but that was... the big reaction to that [??? video in] the dance clubs really surprised everybody, cause it's certainly the first time Kate's had a dance [??? inaudible]
PADDY: [??? inaudible]. Yes.
FAN: Explain the Kick Inside.
PADDY: Explain The Kick Inside. [Laughter]
JAY: The track The Kick Inside, or the album?
PADDY: The track.
IED: [Mumbles] The meaning of life.
PADDY: The track owes its roots to a traditional English-Scottish song called Lucy Wan [??? spelling]. 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: 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. Ah, is that it?
FAN: What's the strange saying on the B-side of The Hounds Of Love Album [??? inaudible]
PADDY: Yes, it's... In fact it's not Kate it's one of the ladies from EMI. [??? inaudible] Her name is [??? inaudible]. And she sang "deeper, deeper..."
FAN: "Somewhere in the death there is a light"
PADDY: "Somewhere in the death there is a light."
FAN: In German.
JAY: In German.
PADDY: In German.
FAN: [??? inaudible]
PADDY: Well, it snowed a couple of days ago. It snowed a couple of days ago [??? inaudible] and I'm just on my way [??? inaudible] at this moment. I'll let you know [??? inaudible] what's going on. They keep melting on me. Thank you.
FAN: [??? inaudible]
PADDY: [??? inaudible]
FAN: [??? inaudible]
PADDY: [??? inaudible]
JAY: You got to remember that record companies are only there to make money and if you saw them as washing machines, manufacturing companies, it's like that. And I can't really blame them. If they don't make the effort in some direction its something that they don't think is going to make them money.
PADDY: They tend to promote at the time, when there is something to promote.[??? inaudible]
JAY: And if they see something that they think is going to work [??? inaudible] and certainly the accessability of the last album, for most people, and they did it and it worked.
PADDY: Did most of you get the album this time without any difficulty? [Laughter] Good.
FAN: [???? inaudible]
JAY: Ah, dear!
FAN: [??? burning]
JAY: I think it's just, it's just what it means. If you know what gaffa is, and in the music business "gaffa" is a very heavy duty tape. It's used everywhere, sticking things down, mending things, makings cases. And I think the idea is probably if you're wrapped up in this stuff and just [??? stuffed] 'round, your suspended waiting for time. And I think the rest of it is saying [??? inaudible] that's the problem.
PADDY: One more question.
FAN: [??? Inaudible. Something like do you have a favorite Kate Bush song?]
PADDY: For me. Yes, yes. [??? inaudible], singing on the end of it, but it's Get Out Of My House, really, was my favorite track. I think if Alfred Hitchcock ever made hit singles [Laughter] [??? inaudible] And I love it, I love the energy that it deals with. It's fantastic. And Paul Hardiman's vocals on the very beginning of it I think are, to me, one of the most fantastic things thats ever been recorded. I used to go into fits of extascy when we listened to the multi-track tapes of that and those opening "Eoyores" and a marvelous [??? inaudible]. I love that track.
JAY: I think my favorite one's Houdini [??? inaudible]. But I think the emotional whatever it is that getting across on that track is very inspired and very dynamic and I still find it very exciting.
PADDY: Final question, then? [??? inaudible] arm over there? FAN: On the album [??? inaudible] I'd love to hear what you did. It sounds like [??? inaudible]. Is that right?
PADDY: Yes. [??? inaudible] They're singing a phrase. You take a phrase and you record it. Then you play that backwards so it comes [sings backwards. Laughter]. Then you learn how to sing that, like you learn how to [sings backwards. Lots of laughter and applause] Then when you record that... then when you play that back the other way [talks like reversed tape] it all comes out in a very strange way. Like you've heard this technique used before, and it's something that we all [??? inaudible. Laughter] Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to being [??? inaudible and applause]
written by Love-Hounds
compiled and edited
by
Wieland Willker
Sept 1995 June 1996