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Date: Thu, 30 Nov 89 20:35 -1000
From: James Smith <munnari!cc.nu.oz.au!CCJS@uunet.UU.NET>
Subject: TV Week Australia, 14/10/1978,
From TV Week, 14th October 1978. Interviewer's name not given.
The article is accompanied by two photographs, one being that used on the back cover of Lionheart . The other photo bears the caption: Kate Bush*...``In 10 years, I might just be starting to get good."
The girl with the child in her eyes...
and the angel in her voice.
From our London bureau
There were no crowds, no welcoming fanfares when Kate Bush made her first trip to Australia.
The wide-eyed six-year-old was here to visit her godmother. She stayed about four months but, 13 years later, does not remember much about it.
The second time around will be a different story.
Kate Bush, hauntingly beautiful and with the giant hits Wuthering Heights and Man With The Child In His Eyes behind her, will be here to headline the list of stars who will appear at the 1978 TV WEEK King Of Pop Awards.
And Australia might be the country where raven-haired Kate decides to premiere here second album, Lionhearts, [sic] the follow-up to the enormously successful The Kick Inside.
"I can't explain what it's like," she said of the album as its finishing touches were completed.
"It's very hard to describe...perhaps it's just a little bit more up-tempo than The Kick Inside.
"I want to perform some of the new songs in Australia.
"I'm really looking forward to the trip and to hearing some of the local talent."
Kate Bush was just 16 when EMI Records decided that she had the potential to become one of the most important women in rock 'n' roll.
The company advanced her 3000 pounds living allowance and, over the next three years, her song-writing and singing talents developed beyond the wildest dreams of even the most optimistic EMI executive.
Kate's fascination with relationships between people prompted her to write Wuthering Heights, the song which saw her emerge as the most exciting female singer in Britain in 10 years.
It is a strange, almost mystical song, based around the part of the novel by Emile Bronte where Cathy wants to take Heathcliffe's soul so they can be together in the spiritual world.
"I developed a kind of fascination with Cathy after I saw the last 10 minutes of the television series where she was at the window and cutting herself with the glass. It always stuck in my brain," Kate said.
"It was probably a lot to do with the fact that her name was Cathy--and I was always called that as a child.
"My feeling about it was so strong that it kept coming back to me again and again.
"Then I read the book and discovered that Emily Bronte had her birthday on the same day as me, July 30, and I really, really wanted to write a song about it all."
Kate said it was "not for me to say" whether Lionhearts [sic] would see the emergence of equally stunning material.
Kate Bush, the daughter of a general practition-er, was brought up in a middile-class home in Plumstead, Kent.
"I have two older brothers who were both very keen on musical instruments, so I just grew up with music all around me," she said.
"When I was about 11, I just started poking around at the piano and started making up little songs.
"When I was 14, I started taking it seriously, and began to treat the words to the songs as poetry."
Eventually, via a friend of a friend, Dave Gilmour, Pink Floyd's millionaire guitarist, came to hear this strange little girl who sang like an angel.
"I was really nervous about meeting Dave, but he was so nioce and kind," Kate said.
"He told me to go into a studio to make a finished demo tape and then to select the three best songs and to of-fer them to a record company. He took me into Air London studios and put up all the money for everything. It must have cost a fortune, but he didn't want anything out of it."
EMI jumped at the chance of signing Kate when they heard the tape.
"But," she said, "I was only 16 then and, though everyone had been telling me for a couple of years that I was going to be a star, I wasn't really capable of handling it. I needed time."
Kate decided to study mime under David Bowie's former tutor, Lindsay Kemp, then modern dance...and thus evolved her striking stage presentation.
But her imagination and ambition obviously reach out fuyrther than the expertise with which she is already equipped.
"I went in thinking, `Oh well, I'll have this off in a week'," she said. "But after a year I realised I didn't know anything. In 10 years, I might just be starting to get good."
After headlining the TV WEEK King Of Pop Awards and making limited other appearances in Australia, Kate will return to London to start training--not rehearsing--for her first tour, scheduled for early next year.
The importance of dance movements in her act requires her to be totally fit.
The tour will take Kate throughout Britain and Europe, then she intends settling down to more writing.
The TV WEEK King Of Pop Awards might be the only chance Australians get to see Kate Bush for some time.
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"The pull and the push of it all..." - Kate Bush
Reaching Out
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