To the Reaching Out (Interviews) Table of Contents
To
the Reaching Out (Interviews) Table of Contents
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 22:11:08 -0800
From: rhill@pnet01.cts.com
(Ronald Hill)
Subject: Billboard by Kathy Gillis Dec. 14 1985
Top 40 Success At Last
Kate Bush Ascends U.S. Hill
From Billboard, Dec. 14 1985
By Kathy Gillis
NEW YORK With the single "Running Up That Hill" and the album "Hounds Of Love" now in the top 40 of their respective charts, Kate Bush has leapt into a far brighter spotlight than she's ever been under in this country.
But Bush's success here has hardly been achieved overnight. Bush signed with EMI in England in 1976 and released a number of albums there from 1978 through this year's "Hounds Of Love." While not all her recordings were released domestically by EMI America, critical acclaim slowly built up in this country as well.
Still, Bush hadn't been to the States since a 1979 appearance on "Saturday Night Love [Live]." With the current success of the album, she's on a promotional tour which will take her to Canada as well as New York.
"I really had no reason to come here to promote a record until now," she says. "Obviously promotion is a helpful thing, but unless the music is being picked up by people, there's nothing I can do. In a way my time is wasted. I'd rather be working on the next album at home."
Since she's acting as her own manager, Bush can implement that decision as well as her decision not to tour. She hasn't been on the road since she released her second album in England.
"I'm not planning a tour," she says. "It's an incredible commitment. Once you're committed, you're really talking about a year's worth of effort.
"Also, so many other things that I want to do wouldn't get done. Now that I'm at the end of this album, there are other things I'd like to do, like getting to another album and maybe experimenting with some visual ideas."
Bush has been more than experimenting with visual presentations during most of her career. In addition to working on her own videos, she studied dance with mime artist Lindsay Kemp.
"To see a group of people working to music without saying anything I found incredibly moving and very, very interesting," she says. "I thought that if [movement] was combined with music, it could be a very interesting way of visually expressing yourself. It was through [this] that I decided to take up dancing." Bush has choreographed her own videos from the start, and has enjoyed a growing involvement in other aspects of video production, from working on storyboards to having a hand in editing.
She has been her own producer for the past few albums, and completed construction of her own studio in England before recording "Hounds Of Love." As yet unnamed, the studio is a luxury she's not anxious to share. Nor does she wish to share her production skills.
"When I'm working on my own things," she says, "I summon up a kind of confidence from somewhere that in a way is quite blind and has faith in the thing turning out in the end. I don't get very nervous about it. But I think working on other people's material, I'd have to feel certain that I could help or I'd just be so nervous, I could just ruin it for them. If I don't have enough confidence in something, my nerves really do get in the way."
Bush suggests that a number of elements in her style have flourished on "Hounds Of Love," especially her rhythmic sense. "Consistency of rhythm is what's happening on this album. Rhythm has always attracted me, but it has taken me time to understand it and come to terms with it in music."
To
the Reaching Out (Interviews) Table of Contents
"The pull and the push of it all..." - Kate Bush
Reaching Out
is a
Marvick - Hill
Willker -
Mapes
Fitzgerald-Morris
Grepel - Love-Hounds
Presentation