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KATE BUSH has a strong sense of family. Her brother Patrick played mandolin on her hit single "Wuthering Heights" and will naturally be a part of her band when it comes to gig time. Two of her brothers live in a separate flat in the same house in Lewsham which is owned by her father. They are the two brothers who were astute enough to notice Kate's talent and start her on the road to fame.
"I have two older brothers and they were both very keen on musical instruments so I just grew up with music all around me." she says.
"When I was about 11 I just started poking around at the piano and started making up little songs.
"It was just an easy way to release all the energy I felt inside me. I never played Beatles songs or anything Iike that. I was always just exploring the instrument.
"Then, when I was 14, 1 started taking it seriously and I began to treat the words to the songs as poetry. I'd always been keen on poetry at school and it was lovely to put the poems together with music."
The most important piece of furniture in Kate's flat is an old honky-tonk piano she bought in a second-hand shop in Woolich.
"I feel as though I've built up a real relationship with this piano," she says. "It's almost like a person. Like, it's really comforting just to sit down and play it.
"And the piano almost dictates what my songs will be about.
"If I haven't got a particular idea I just sit down and play chords and then the chords almost dictate what the song should be about because they have their own moods.
"Like a minor chord is very likely to tell me something sad. A major chord tells me something a little more up-tempo and, like, on a more positive level of thinking."
The success of "Wuthering Heights" and her album 'The Kick Inside" will help Kate realise one ambition. Much as she loves her old honky-tonk piano, she had a wish before she hit the top of the charts.
"If ever made enough money I'd like to get a piano that sings; a great big singing beast like a Steinway." Bet she has her beast by now.
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"The pull and the push of it all..." - Kate Bush
Reaching Out
is a
Marvick - Hill
Willker -
Mapes
Fitzgerald-Morris
Grepel - Love-Hounds
Presentation