** REACHING OUT **

Interviews & Articles



1985 
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Musician (unedited)
 by Peter Swales
 Fall 1985




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the Reaching Out (Interviews) Table of Contents

 







(This interview was taken from Andrew Marvick's
The Garden.)


                  Peter Swales's Musician interview (fall, 1985)



     [The following group interview was conducted by Peter Swales for
Musician magazine. This version includes what was printed in Musician as well as
that which was edited out. Peter Swales, for those who are interested, is a
friend of the Bush family, and he is the author of several papers on aspects of
psycho-analysis. In particular, he has recently dealt with the ongoing
controversy surrounding the publication of some unedited correspondence of
Sigmund Freud, which appeared a few years ago in a book by Jeffrey Masson, and
which was the catalyst for extensive argument within the psycho-analytic
community. He is currently writing a book on the subject of Freud's
collaboration with Wilhelm Fliess. This version of the Swales interview with
Kate Bush is edited by Andrew Marvick.]



     It fascinates me that, despite the basic rock instrumentation which you
employ, your music doesn't seem to owe very much of its ancestry to American
sources. I would venture to say you're one in the very few popular artists to
have evolved such a uniquely British kind of music.



     "Yes, that's very interesting. I think probably most of the stuff
I have liked, though, has actually been English, and possibly that's why my
roots aren't American. Whereas perhaps with the majority of other people, well,
you know, they were listening to Elvis and people like that and most of their
heroes would have been American. But the artists I liked, such as Roxy Music and
David Bowie, they were all singing in English accents and, in fact, were among
the few in England who were actually doing so at that time. I mean to say, Elton
John, Robert Palmer and Robert Plant sound American when they sing, although of
course they're English."



     Yes, right, but it must go a lot deeper in terms of musical genetics. I
mean your melodic invention and conceptions of rhythm are really quite
un-American. You were born in 1958. When did you first tune in to what was
happening in music, who were the first artists you began listening to?



     "Well, I think the first pop thing I ever heard which I really
liked was Little Red Rooster. I heard it in a car coming back from the shops and
I thought it was fascinating. It was the first song I'd ever heard where the
singer was actually singing out of tune. I don't mean that derogatorily. What I
mean, I suppose, is that the record sounded so unconventional, and I just hadn't
experienced anyone singing like that before."



    The Stones had that record out around 1964, was this when you were about
six years old?



     "Yes, around that time, I suppose. It was really a fantastic sound
-- the fact that someone wasn't singing quite in tune and, because of that, was
getting a very different emotion out of it. But I suppose, really, I first
became aware of pop music around the late 1960s. I was hearing that sort of
music through my two brothers and thinking just how good it was. But for the
fact that my brothers were playing those records, I probably wouldn't have heard
them, as my friends in school wouldn't have been listening to things like that!
I think that was the earliest pop music that I really felt was good."



     Paddy Bush: "But you see now, that's an interesting thing, because
we weren't really involved in the pop thing at all at that time. Jay [John
Carder Bush, Kate and Paddy's elder brother] and I were very much involved in
the English folk revival, we had an incredibly staunch approach towards
traditional folk music."



     Paddy, surely you're not going to mind talking about your sister right
in front of her like this. When was it you began to become aware not simply that
Kate was musically gifted, but that she was also a force to be reckoned with?



      Paddy: "Right from the word go. She was about ten years old at
the time."



     And did you and perhaps Jay attempt to cultivate this gift in the hope
that she might one day bear fruit?



     Paddy: "Oh no, no, it cultivated itself. To cultivate music you
have to spend a lot of time by yourself, making a lot of very strange sounds
over and over again. It's not the sort of thing you go hammering into others.
When there's a family all in one house and you're getting your music together,
normally the others in the family close the doors and try to keep the sound out.
And when you've got several people playing instruments in the same house, well,
things can get a bit complicated! I remember having things thrown at me during
the early days because I was playing the same tune for six months. It would get
people down! And when Kate began working on the piano, she'd go and lock herself
away and wind up spending five or six hours, seven days a week, just playing the
piano."



     You mean by now she was about thirteen or fourteen?



     Paddy: "Yeah, and wow! I mean, at the age of thirteen or fourteen
she was spending tons and tons of time writing, but starting in fact when she
was about ten."



     And did this begin to assume almost pathological proportions and start
alarming the family?



     Paddy: "Absolutely!"



     Kate: "Pathological!" (Kate, the daughter of a physician and
a former nurse, seems to find this notion rather funny.)



     Paddy: "Yeah! But no! Because of the heavy Irish tradition in the
family, I think it was escapism on her part. Our mother is Irish and I think
Kate maybe felt, you know, that there was a slight obligation to appease the
Irish spirit. And somewhere out of my mother's imagination came the idea that
Kate should learn the violin. It seems to be a tradition that the violin is
forced upon people. I mean, there are few who take it up of their own volition!
And Kate was certainly one of those who only took it up under pressure, she
didn't really like it very much. So the piano was a kind of way of exploring
music in dimensions diametrically opposite to what the violin must have
represented to her. Escapism, pure escapism! You know, the command would be, 'Go
and practise on that violin, Kate,' but the piano music came out instead! I
think perhaps we Bushes are a bit like that...So yes, her piano playing was in
the first place a direct reaction to straight music as we knew it, or as she
knew it, at the time. The sort of style which she evolved in her piano playing
and singing were direct opposites of all the kinds of straight music which she
was being fed right then. Pure escapism, and very beautiful!"



     But then, Kate, did your family soon come to accept what you were
doing?



     Kate: "Yes, I used to go to my father and to Jay for opinions on
my songs and their feedback was very important to me. Jay is a writer, and he's
written some really beautiful things, and altogether he's been a big influence
on me. It was through his help that I got my first contact in the music
business, which led to my break, and now he deals with the business side of my
work. And, besides putting lots of good ideas my way, he's introduced me to a
lot of artists who probably otherwise I would never have heard of, and of course
hearing new music can be a very big influence."



     Going back to the piano, surely your playing didn't evolve in a musical
vacuum?



      "Well, when I was about twelve, that sort of age, I was such a
big fan of Elton John. I think really he was the first musical hero I had in
that I aspired so much to what he was doing. I was just sort of starting to muck
around writing songs, and then I saw this guy and he was the only one I'd ever
seen who wrote songs and accompanied himself on the piano. And his playing was
brilliant, and still today I think his playing is fantastic. It's always so
right for his songs."



     About your singing, I know you used to listen to Billie Holiday. Did
you make deliberate efforts to imitate her, singing along with her records and
so on?



     "Well, that was when I was about seventeen, and I was listening to
all kinds of music. And no, I think Billie Holiday is one of the very few
artists whose records I would never join in with while she's singing, she's too
good. I just couldn't get near it. I think the reward you get from her is in
actually listening to her voice. That is what is so beautiful about her, you can
almost hear what she's been doing for the last three weeks. Her singing is
extraordinary, it's just terrifying, the amount of, well, agony, and yet beauty,
which comes out of just that one voice. Terrible suffering, yet so entertaining
for those who listen."



     You never sing a song straight. Are there singers whom you studied in
developing your own style of phrasing?



     "I would really be missing the point if I didn't mention Bryan
Ferry, because I thought he was the most exciting singer that I'd heard. His
voice had limitations, but what he managed to do with it was beautiful, I mean,
b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. For me it covered the whole emotional spectrum, and I just
couldn't get enough of it. You know, the early Roxy albums, with this beautiful
voice and lyrics, and Eno there in the background-- magic!"



      But Kate, I'm very curious. I know you grew up listening to artists
like Bowie, Bolan, Dave Edmunds, Roxy Music, Elton John, all that sort of stuff.
Yet in my opinion you're so much more musically eloquent than people like that.
Your music has a depth and complexity, also a certain opulence, which aren't
easily attributable to pop music and which sugges to me that perhaps there are a
quite different set of aesthetic values underlying it that you've assimilated
somewhere along the way, perhaps even deriving from classical music or opera.



     "I think in a way that classical music is, if you like, a sort of
superior form of music because it has so much space for the listener to move
around in. I think as soon as you have words in a song, it's somewhat
restricting for the listener. And I really love listening to classical music
because, actually, I find it quite inspiring for my work. So maybe because I
love those things so much, I suppose they do tend to rub off on me..."



     I see, so you think they just rub off. It's not as if you are
extrapolating classical formulae into your own music with any knowing intent?



     "Well, I do think that a lot of classical music is so good that it
challenges you. When I hear something really beautiful, I think, wouldn't it be
great if I could write something even just a little bit like that! So I'm sure
that's what it's all about. It's not really copying but, rather, wanting to
produce that same kind of, well--vibe. To try and get the same kind of
atmosphere which that music creates when you listen to it."



     Did you have much of a formal education in music? Are you capable of
comprehending your own work in terms of music theory?



     "Well, I do know what chords are, basically, but I've not really
had any classical training at all. My knowledge of theory comes from when I
learned the violin when I was little, and that's about it."



     Paddy: "You see, really our roots are in the oral tradition. I
mean, that's the way music is carried on in our family."



     Kate: "Yes, I think there are an awful lot of major influences
deriving from traditional music, especially English and Irish folk music. 'Cause
when I was very little my brothers were devoted to traditional music and it's
something I've always loved and still love. Especially Irish music, which I love
very much. I think I was always impressed by the words in folk songs. I mean,
even when I was very little I was aware that the songs had great words. They're
always stories, each song is a story, not like the lyrics of most pop songs."



     And did you yourself play things like accordians and concertinas?



     "No, Paddy used to have a big collection of them and occasionally
I used to sneak up to his room and have a quick play when he wasn't there. But
really, Pad would always play those sort of things, and I always stuck to the
piano."



     On different album tracks you've featured not only Irish musicians but
also an array of other ethnic sounds. Does this betray a lot of your own
listening? Are you listening to a lot of pretty far-out stuff, music for example
of aboriginal, oriental, or comparable ethnic origin, and deliberately seeking
to integrate that into your own music?



     "No, I don't think I am really. There was a period when I used to
listen to certain ethnic music. But I don't think I was ever really an avid
listener. Paddy is much more of an avid listener to ethnic stuff, he listens to
it nearly all the time."



     Paddy: "Yes, I take ethnic music very seriously and collect the
instruments and the music."



     And is it then you who's responsible when you add one of those
instruments to one of Kate's tracks, is it you who's conceived of what is
possible there?



     Paddy: "Normally, yes, when it comes to unusual or ethnic
instruments. Because that is what I am interested in. I come in with the
suggestion for such and such an instrument. Kate then listens to it in the
context of the track and if she likes it, it stays; if she doesn't I try and
find something different."



     Paddy, maybe you'd give a quick sketch of your career as a musician
prior to your involvement with your sister.



      Paddy: "Well, I suppose it all started off initially because
there's always been so much music in our family. Our mother comes from a very
musical family, all her brothers, i.e. our uncles, played on accordians and
fiddles and stuff. So music was something we were always exposed to as young
kids and we were always hearing Irish dance music, which has been very special
to me ever since. But my initial involvement in music came when I used to play
for an English Morris Dance team. I used to play the concertina, and the
Anglo-chromatic concertina. I did that for a very long time and worked for the
English Folk Dance and Song Society. The Society's image is one of lady
dance-teachers sat at pianos with children prancing about. But, basically, at
that time, it was the only source of broad-spectrum information concerning folk
music. So I used to play for their Morris Dance team, not a very big nor a very
popular team really, but that was where my earliest experience of performing
came from. We used to work a lot in folk clubs and, at that particular time in
the Sixties, the folk revival was happening in England and out of it came
several thousand LPs that are almost all unavailable and forgotten by now, but
some of the stuff was just incredible, and that was our source material until I
started getting involved in Irish dance music. It's crazy! I happened to go to
school, here in England, with a guy called Kevin Burke, who's considered the
best fiddler in Ireland. I was just walking past this classroom one day, and
there was this geezer in there doing this absolutely incredible Sligo fiddle
playing. I'd never heard anything like it, I mean, it was a delirious kind of
music! And then, from all that, my interest in musical instruments just grew and
grew to the point where I tried to seek an apprenticeship with a musical
instrument maker, actually with a harp maker at that particular time, 'cause I
was interested in learning how to play all the things. So I looked for an
apprenticeship for nearly two years--that would have been when I was between
about eighteen and twenty--but I couldn't find anybody at all interested in
taking me on. But then eventually, towards the mid-1970s, I discovered a place
in London that was offering a course in musical instrument technology, not just
on one instrument, but on everything. I mean literally, piano tuning, violin
making, harpsichord building, keyboards, ethnic musicology with Jean Jenkings,
and so on. And it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So I went and studied
at this college, the London College of Furniture in Shoreditch, for three years
and became a musical instrument technologist specializing in mediaeval musical
instruments."



      And you were still playing around folk clubs during those years?



     Paddy: "Oh, yes, certainly. Folk music--it's very, very hard to
give any sort of adequate description of what folk music can mean to you if
you're not yourself completely involved in it. It's more like a way of life. It
can't stop. It's like swimming, once you've learned the art you can't go and
forget how to do it. You know, somebody goes 'dum-dee-diddle-dee-dum-dee-da'
(Paddy breaks into an Irish jig) and you're off! It instantly makes sense! If
you're born into a tradition of playing some particular kind of music, you can
branch out into all kinds of other music. But the tradition is something that's
always there and just never, never falls apart. So, in my case, the folk
tradition was constantly there. But my major interest in broad-spectrum musical
instruments just grew and grew and grew. And being at that college was the
perfect place to pursue it..."



     So then you came out of that into helping Kate?



     Paddy: "Well, I struggled by myself for a time as an artist, an
artist of weirdness. I had a couple of exhibitions of some things that I'd made
during that time. You see, towards the end, my course in musical instrument
making became very curious and strange, I started making instruments with arms
and legs and out of very unorthodox materials; and instruments that didn't play
and which demonstrated other sorts of principles. I had an exhibition at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery and sold a couple of things, there was a great deal of
interest, but not much success! Then one day Kate said, 'Do you want to join the
band?'"



      Del [Palmer, Kate's demos engineer, mixer, bass player and boyfriend],
you played bass in the original K.T. Bush band. The guitarist Brian Bath was
once telling me how one day in the mid-70s, Paddy asked him to sit in and play
with his kid sister and he was so overwhelmed, he just couldn't believe what he
was hearing...



     Del: "Yeah, and he wasn't the only one. I'd heard about Kate from
Paddy 'cause I'd known him for some time. And Brian had told me he'd heard some
of her songs and they were really great, and I trusted his opinion. But I just
had this impression that she must be older and more mature. Then at our first
rehearsal--Kate, Brian and me, and a fellow called Vic King on drums--I felt a
little nervous because, you know, I felt a particular emotional involvement
coming on right from the word go. But I also just thought: this girl's like just
eighteen, whereas I'd been struggling for years on my bass. And I knew I just
had to get involved some way because this was going to be mega. It was a
phenomenon because it was so completely different from what anyone else was
doing. And I've never had any desire to work with anyone else since. It wouldn'
be anywhere near so adventurous and demanding. It's no good you sitting there
laughing, Kate, it's true! The songs always started off in a way I found
instantly...well, familiar. But then suddenly they'd leap off somewhere
completely different, and I'd think, how could you possible think of going to
there from what you were in originally? I would never have thought of doing
that, and yet it always works! And that's the case even moreso nowadays. For me,
a great musical artist is someone who can always keep surprising you with what
they do, and there's very few people who can do that for me, very few. I've got
very limited musical tastes..."



     When you first met Kate, was she herself aware of her own musical
precocity, or was she totally naive about it all?



     Del: "I'm not sure if I can answer that one. I think maybe she
kind of underrated how much of a talent she actually was, if you see what I
mean."



     Is that still true, Kate?



     Kate: "I don't know! This is all very interesting for me, it's
almost like I'm a fly on the wall."



     Del: "No, but I think you do underestimate yourself a lot. And I
think you're not the only one who does. I think there's a lot of people in the
music business and the press who underestimate what you're doing and what you're
capable of."



     Outside of your own work, you must meet with other musicians, most of
them male, of course. Musically speaking, do they tend to take Kate Bush
seriously?



     Kate: "Yes, I think they do. In fact, a lot of the people who said
how much they like the last album, The Dreaming, were musicians. And that really
means a lot to me."



     It does seem that, while Kate Bush is something of an acquired taste,
she does on her own tend largely to satisfy the musical appetite of those who've
acquired it, so that henceforth they tend to have a diminished interest in other
artists.



      Del: "Well, you've just summed up my own sentiment exactly. I
mean as far as being a musician is concerned, I don't really feel it's worth
bothering with anyone else. I mean, sure, there's a certain amount of emotional
content in that. But one's always surprised by what you do!"



      Kate: "Gosh, I don't know if I can take this!



     This is bound to sound a bit off the wall, but it does seem to me that
in a way you're the true heir to everything that was good, all that was great,
about the 1960s. Sure, a lot about the 1960s was crap, but what I have in mind
are things like the Beatles' Walrus and stuff like that. Your own music is
similarly large, it seems to me, both in its conception and the actual
execution. Very eclectic, experimental, often very exotic, and at the same time
animated by a certain spirit...



     Kate: "Well, that's great if you think so, very interesting, very
complimentary. I think certainly the sixties was the time when I was growing up
and all those early influences are very strong. But I don't know whether I would
say what you said, although I do find it very flattering."



      Del: "Well, I think you've hit the nail right smack on the head,
it's the truth, Kate is more or less all that was good about the sixties."



     And you know her music does strike me in a way as rather Beatlish. I
mean, most rock artists work within one or another genre but usually tend to be
limited by it. But, like the Beatles, you're always able to flit around in
different styles while yet remaining recognizably yourself. Also you're always
musical, always dynamic, always very polished...



     Del: "Yes, exactly. And it's remarkable, too, because you were
never really exposed to the Beatles at the time."



     Kate: "Well, I take that as a great compliment. I think that,
because I was too young to be caught up in Beatlemania, then when I did hear
them--and that wasn't perhaps till four or five years ago, I heard them
objectively, if you like. And I was just so astounded by their musical quality,
I mean, every track! And something like the Walrus track, it's still so
contemporary. I mean, there are very few people who are doing something really
good. But apart from the sixties, when there was this huge wealth of stuff like
Motown and everything, it really does seem that you get just two or three who
are fantastic. Occasionally you get great bursts of wonderful things, but not
often."



     Do you know Laurie Anderson's music?



     "Yes, I really liked her album Big Science, there was some very
interesting stuff on it. I love Oh Superman."



      I was amazed recently to see that one of your favourite things was
Captain Beefheart's Tropical Hot Dog Night.



      "Oh, he's fantastic! And the lyrics on Bat Chain Puller, wow!
He's a bit like Lindsay Kemp: he's terribly underestimated and yet he's been
such an incredible artist, you know, people tend to use so many of his ideas."



     Are there certain singers you are into, or do you tend to listen more
to instrumentalists?



      "Well, there are certain singers I listen to, but I'd say
generally I'm much more into instrumentalists; like there's a jazz pianist,
George Winston, for instance, on the Windham Hill label, whom I find beautiful
to listen to. But the thing is, when you've been working on an album so
intensely, like I've been doing, in fact to unwind I tend to watch visual things
because your ears get so tired and your brain gets so cotton-woolly from all the
concentration in the studio--say, for instance, if you're listening for clicks
or things that are out of time. I find that if I listened to music after a day
of that, I'd be sitting there criticizing it: 'Oh, that's out of time or out of
tune,' or stuff like that. So it's really nice to watch comedy because it's good
to relax and have a laugh. Also comedy is very observant stuff, as well. It's
all based on observation of people."



     Kate, you've got so many different voices and a four-octave range, but
how do you keep it in shape? I mean, it's not like you're getting practice doing
performances or anything like that.



     "No, no, that's right. Well, the hardest thing is sort of being
psyched up in the right way to do the vocal with the right emotional feeling.
And the hardest thing for me is to be able to feel relaxed enough to be
uninhibited. So sometimes I do get just a little drunk, and at other times I
like to do them with Del, because I feel much more relaxed than if there's an
outside engineer there. I mean, I do become quite sensitive when I start
singing."



     So can I assume you're pissed out of your head on "The Big Sky"?



     "Yes, I might be getting drunk on that one--the ad libs on the
end, that was where I had to get drunk. And definitely on Waking the Witch. I
was very drunk doing that!"



     Del: "But you were asking whether she practices singing at all,
and I think she practices without ever realizing it. I mean like, for instance,
travelling in the car and there's a cassette on and she'll always sing along
with it and try and get some weird harmony going..."



     But I mean, the ability to pitch a note or sustain it, does that suffer
because you're not performing?



      Kate: "Um, it depends. I mean sometimes I have to sort of work my
voice into it, like just learn it, and other times, well, it does tend to depend
on how I feel. If I'm tired, it's a lot harder for me to get a vocal. Backing
vocals, they're not so much trouble at all. It's the lead vocals that require
the right feeling and atmosphere, mentally and in the studio."



      So most of the vocals we hear are dubbed on later?



     "Yes, most of them take a long time and a lot of work, especially
to get the right emotional inflections and that kind of thing. But Man With the
Child in His Eyes and The Kick Inside on the first album, those two tracks were
done live, vocal and piano with the orchestra, which was absolutely terrifying.
I mean awful! I was petrified and I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been
forced into it. There aren't any live vocals on the new album, and particularly
for the reason of the vocal sound, as much as wanting to be able to control it
all separately."



     Del: "Yeah, but what so many people don't realize is that Kate is
an amazing ad libber. The Big Sky is a really good example, that whole end
section is just ad lib all the way through. I remember on the third album, the
song The Wedding List, I can remember going in there and the engineer saying to
me, 'Man! You should hear what she's doing here!' I mean, they took about six or
seven tracks of Kate ad libbing and you could have used any one of them, they
were all just amazing. And people don't generally think of Kate as someone who
does a lot of ad libbing, they think of her as being totally produced with
everything completely worked out and contrived. But that's by no means the case."



     I must admit, while of course I love the mature Kate Bush, what I do
miss is that very young and enchanting, almost ecstatic sort of voice on the
early albums. You don't often sing in that high register these days but rather
an octave or so lower.



     Kate: "Well, I think it's li e periods you go through. Albums are
really very auto-biographical, and at that time I was writing and experimenting
to try to push my voice higher and into different areas, and I'm not really sure
why, but I think at that time I felt my voice was strongest at that pitch. But I
find that interesting 'cause when she was really young, Joni Mitchell used to
sing very high, though now she's very low and jazzy."



     Del: "But I think you do actually approach your singing quite
differently from the way you used to."



     Kate: "Well, I've always found lower voices more appealing, I
guess, and I didn't really like that high pitch very much. With high voices, the
words tend to escape you more. I think when it's lower you tend to listen more
to the words and a little less to the voice as an instrument."



     Kate, do your songs just burst out of you like so many Athenas out of
the head of Zeus, or are they very crafted and do they cost you a lot of
suffering and effort to construct as finished art-pieces?



     "It's very different every time, really. With the Never For Ever
album, I had to work really hard to write most of those songs. It would take me
weeks and weeks just to get a chorus or to write the words. But then, when we
went into the studio, it was actually quite spontaneous and very quick. Whereas
with most of the songs on The Dreaming, I just sat down at the piano, got a
rhythm and just literally wrote the songs. I couldn't believe it! I mean to say,
the words probably weren't there, but the idea was there, and all the tunes were
there. That was the first time I'd actually demo'ed the songs while writing
them. I put the piano down, put a voice down, put backing vocals down, and I had
a song! And apart from Houdini, which nearly killed me, the rest were just so
easy, it was really frightening. But then, as soon as I hit the studio, all that
speed and spontaneity seemed to evaporate and turn into something completely
different. The recording became really, really hard work, and it was very
intense. With the new Hounds of Love album, the songs took quite a lot of time
and effort to come out. Now that I've got my own studio, a lot of the writing
process is very much the recording process so, rather than going in with a
finished song, I'm able to go straight in and actually write the song in the
studio, so that took a little bit of time."



     So it's not as if you're so abundantly creative that we're being
deprived of a whole wealth of songs that never got onto disc?



     "I wish, I wish, I wish! I think if I was abundantly creative, I
could just sort of sit back and go: 'Ah, there's another one, how about that!'
But I just find it so hard. Usually with every album I'm in a situation where I
scrape together the songs. The first album was the only one where that wasn't
so, then I had literally hundreds of songs to choose from, as I'd been writing
from about the age of eleven. But now it's just getting harder for me to write.
I think the longer I'm around, the harder it is for me to find something
convincing in my art. There are all kinds of subject-matters which I think I
could probably have enjoyed at an earlier time, but which now I find trivial. So
there are all these changes. You know, the more you see, the more there is to
fear, and the more there is to learn. And I think that very much applies to my
work."



     And presumably your own criteria of perfection tend to escalate, so it
gets a lot harder to reach that threshold.



     "Yes, I think so, yes, that's right. And also, of course, you
can't really control what comes out, which is something that I have to keep
telling myself. Because, you know, I think I'm going to sit down and write this
or that, but it all just depends on how you're feeling or what's happening. You
can't really control it. Other than rejecting or accepting things and putting
them into different bits of order, you don't have any control over it. It's not
something that you actually own. I could write an album very quickly, but maybe
only one of the songs would be what I considered interesting enough, and I
wanted to make sure with the new album that all the songs were good. Really,
it's the lyrics that are like a big process that keeps on happening right from
the word 'go' till I've done the last lead vocal. I mean, still then I'm playing
with little bits of lyrics here and there that maybe weren't quite right..."



      Is all that what accounts for the three-year gap between The Dreaming
and Hounds of Love? 



     "Yes, it takes me a long time to write stuff that I feel is
interesting enough, and also it takes me a long while to come out of the wake of
one album and come into the energy of a new album. Because it would be wrong, I
think, to be in the same frame of mind that I was in for the last album. And, in
a way, you have to sort of say, 'Well, O.K., that was it; now I'm gonna go out
and just find some new stimulus.' 'Cause, you know, you go from one very intense
atmosphere into another one, and you've got to get some new inspiration in
between. But another big reason why the new album took so long is Side Two, The
Ninth Wave. It was incredibly difficult to actually be brave enough to go for
it. I had the feeling that that was what I wanted to do. But then I started
getting scared of it--you know, I knew that, if it didn't work out, then I'd
have wasted all that effort for nothing. Then I decided, though, O.K., yeah, I'm
gonna go for it; but that was a relatively brave thing to do and it took a lot
of time. What really consumed the time, though, was that the tracks took a long
time to finish, they weren't as good as they should be, there were lots of
things that still needed to be done."



     Del: "I think it all really depends on what the context is. If the
content wasn't too deep, then it could all be done very quickly. It's when
you're trying to create a specific atmosphere that it gets difficult."



     "It does, it depends on what the songs themselves demand. And the
best thing about having the studio was not having the pressure of being in a
studio that was costing nearly a hundred quid an hour. We do like to experiment,
and sometimes it takes a while to make an experiment work. So we were able to
take the time..."



     But is having your own studio a two-sided coin, in that, while it makes
life a lot easier, you don't feel under the same pressure, and it's therefore
much harder to complete things and tie them up?



     "Well, I thought that might be a problem but actually, the way we
worked, I don't think it was, there was a pressure all the time because the
album kept taking longer and I was very concerned that it should be finished."



     I think, only naturally, a lot of people are wondering to themselves
why there's been a three year interval since The Dreaming, and they're fearful
they'll have to wait another three or four years before the next album. Was
setting up the studio responsible for some of the delay?



     "Yes, yes it was, to set up base down here rather than coming up
to London all the time. As well as actually getting the place together, it takes
some time to actually get ahold of and accumulate all the equipmentt, so that
you've got what you need at hand. Also we made the step up from 24-track to
48-track while doing it."



     You don't think that if you were in an urban environment you'd be under
a different pressure, under a different stimulus, and you might be more
productive?



     "No, I think there're more distractions when you go into an urban
environment, and I think that was one of my big problems."



     Del: "I think you've been more productive since you've been living
out here."



     Kate: "I have, absolutely."



     So then the bottom line is that, even if the bottom were to fall out,
now that you've got your own studio you'd be able to keep on making new records?



     Del: "Yes, but I think there'll always be a market for Kate's
music."



     I think so, too! But even if worst came to the absolute worst, with the
studio you'd be able to keep on recording even if only for your own edification.
Once an album finally exists, can you enjoy it or will you have nothing more to
do with it?



     Kate: "I couldn't with the first two albums as they didn't turn
out the way I wanted them to, so obviously when I listened to them it was quite
disappointing for me because I kept thinking of all the things I'd have liked to
have done. But the third and fourth albums, yes, I could listen to those and be
quite critical about them and yet feel quite pleased about some of the things on
them. Artistically, I was especially pleased with The Dreaming. I achieved lots
more on it than on the earlier ones. But then the songs were, in a way, more
accepting of that kind of emotional style because they were so intense and
demanding. The new album, which is the one I'm most happy with, was a very
different energy. It was summer last year and I felt I wanted to write songs
that had a very positive energy rather than staying in all that intensity of
emotion that was so strong with the last album. I think it's important that each
album should be different, otherwise you're not going anywhere and exploring but
staying in a rut. But then it takes time to carry yourself over from one energy
to another because you tend to get into little riffs and phrases and so on that
perhaps you've got as some kind of theme on the last album, even if that's not
obvious. And it's important, I think, to start writing in a slightly new style.
Now that it's all done, I can sit here and enjoy it, especially here in the
studio because this is the optimal way to hear it, because this is where it was
all done. As soon as it gets onto vinyl, onto disc, sounds different. And now I
can just sit here and relax instead of taking notes, you know, like to remind me
I've got to study that bit and so on..."



     Del: "Yeah, you should see the notes! There's two files, this
thick! Full of notes, you'd never believe it."



     Kate: "Yes, they're little memos and scribbles and charts on takes
that are good."



     You don't have staves with whole lines of music written out?



     "Well, no, the only time I did that was for the cello parts in
Hounds of Love, that's the only time I've ever written out a part. I stayed up
all night to do it and wasn't sure if I could. But I worked them out on the
Emulator and wrote out the chords that I played in the treble clef. Then the
cellist Jonathan Williams--he's such a great player and so into the music he
was-- helped me out by working it an octave lower."



     How did you manage, right from the word go, to find such a great bunch
of musicians, all of them so terribly articulate and tasteful, yet none of them
so stylized that he might detract from your own musical identity by imposing
something inappropriately idiomatic?



    "Well, in all fairness, the first album was all down to the
producer, Andrew Powell, and the engineer, Jon Kelly. As far as I know, it was
mainly Andrew Powell who chose the musicians, he'd worked with them before and
they were all sort of tied in with Alan Parsons. There was Stuart Elliot on
drums, Ian Bairnson on guitar, David Paton on bass, and Duncan Mackay on
electric keyboards. And, on that first album, I had no say, so I was very lucky
really to be given such good musicians to start with. And they were lovely,
'cause they were all very concerned about what I thought of the treatment of
each of the songs. And if I was unhappy with anything, they were more than
willing to re-do their parts. So they were very concerned about what I thought,
which was very nice. And they were really nice guys, eager to know what the
songs were about and all that sort of thing. I don't honestly see how anyone can
play with feeling unless you know what the song is about. You know, you might be
feeling this really positive vibe, yet the song might be something weird and
heavy and sad. So I think that's always been very important for me, to sit down
and tell the musicians what the song is about."



     Many of your songs are very intimate and extremely revealing of your
own inner life. Does it ever happen that you write a song for self-satisfaction
but then decide it is too intimate, too personal, too compromising perhaps, to
offer to the public?



     "No, that's never happened yet. The only reason a song will get
dropped is that it's not good enough--you know, the tune is a bit weak, or the
lyrics aren't good enough, or the concept isn't tight enough. If it was good
enough it would go on."



     The sort of vignette-songs like Coffee Homeground or Houdini, are those
conceived in the first place as ideas, intellectually so to say, while there are
others which take shape while you're actually playing the piano, whereupon you
look for suitable words?



     "Well, Coffee Homeground would have been a song where the words
and the music were coming together probably at exactly the same time. Actually,
that's the only song which I wrote when I visited America about seven years ago
[to appear on Saturday Night Live]. Which is quite interesting, as it's not at
all American...



    A little bit German, maybe? Who did the arrangement?



     "Well, actually, Andrew Powell arranged the orchestra. But the
riff (Kate sings it)--that was written on the piano and--"



     Paddy: "Then translated into different instruments. As a matter of
fact, Coffee Homeground vibrantly ["violently"? The word is not
clearly audible.] mutated. When the very first demos of it were done, it had a
decidedly different flavour. The Brechtian treatment didn't appear until much
later on, that only took shape when Kate got the idea of treating the song with
a slightly German sort of flavour."



     So, with a song like that, it's Kate who actually conceives what is
possible, and then looks to the musicians or to an arranger to actualize it?



     Paddy: "Oh, yes, yes. But in the case of Coffee Homeground it did
mutate. The Brechtian feel is something that appeared only gradually, during the
actual recording, and became more definite as time went on."



     Del: "It was like that, too, with The Big Sky on the new album.
That song song changed about three times. Originally it was radically different
from the way it's found on the album, the melody-line, the interpretation,
everything. But Kate scrapped it and then rewrote it, retaining only a few
elements of the original song."



     Did you get in the guy Youth on that track because he's highly thought
of as a rock & roll bassist?



     Kate: "Yeah, absolutely, the energy was right for the track, he
used to play with Killing Joke."



      Del: "Also he'd played on the original version and we thought
it'd be good, karmatically, to have him play on the later one too. And he plays
that particular style that's just perfect for that kind of track. That was very
much a case of getting the right person for the right thing on the right track.
Horses for courses..."



     Besides Youth and Del, you have other bassists on this album, Danny
Thompson, ex-Fairport Convention; and Eberhard Weber.



     Kate: "Yes, I do love the bass, it's a very beautiful instrument
and, there's no doubt, it does put a very strong mark on the track with the
player's personality really coming through. And, it depends, but often there are
some tracks that are asking for someone's particular style. And on this album I
felt that Hello Earth and Mother Stands for Comfort were very much in the style
of Eberhard Weber, actually it was partly Del's suggestion. I've been a fan of
his for a long time and a few years ago we brought him over for Houdini on The
Dreaming. This time he came over specially from Munich, and stayed two days to
do the two tracks."



     Del: "I think bass players in particular, more so than, say, a
guitarist or something like that, are so individual in style, and there are
songs that lend themselves to certain players like Eberhard. He's such a
talented bass player, he's so together in his attitude and his playing. He turns
up with this upright electric five-string double-bass that's like a work of art,
and he brings his own amplifier, a tiny little one that I've never seen before
that looked home-made and that he carries in a little suitcase, and he has his
own stool that he always uses with a little frame that fits on the bottom so the
bass is always at exactly the same angle and height. And he sets himself up, and
I remember, on the second day, I was standing in the kitchen in the studio
making tea and he was just sitting in the other room playing just to get himself
going, and what he was playing was unreal. I wish I'd had a tape recorder going!
I think personally he's the greatest bass player I've ever seen play. A
beautiful player, and so fluid as well."



     And how did you come to get in John Williams on The Morning Fog?  



   Kate: "Well, as part of the concept of the second side, The Ninth
Wave, the last song had to be very positive, very much the idea of everything
bursting into light so it's all suddenly reborn, rather than that everything
completely dies. And I thought how lovely the acoustic guitar is, it's such a
delicate and uplifting sound. So I wrote out the part on the Fairlight with an
acoustic guitar sound and then wrote the song to that. But I thought it didn't
sound nearly so good as a real guitar would. I'd met John a couple times over
the years when we were working at the same studio, Abbey Road, and times like
that. So I asked him if he'd come in and do it. I got someone to write out the
part, and he just played it and did it really quickly. Yes, he's got a lovely
way of projecting his own personality in there, you know, the little thrills
[sic--perhaps she really said "trills"?] and things. Lovely!"



     So tell me, how did it come about that you came to bring in Planxty,
both on The Dreaming and Hounds of Love?



      "My brother Jay was a big fan of theirs and played their records
all the time. And when I heard them I though they were fantastic! Then one day I
was writing the song 'Night of the Swallow' on the last album and I thought:
what would go really well on the chorus is a ceilidh band. So I thought:
'Planxty!'"



      Who came up with that beautiful melody-line on the Uillean pipes?



      "Bill Whelan, who is a producer and also the keyboard player of
Planxty. It was fantastic, 'cause I sent him a cassette of a rough mix, and then
he rang up and said, 'Listen, do you want to hear the arrangement?' He was at
home in Ireland and I was in the studio here in London. And I said, 'Yeah, I'd
love to.' So he said, 'Well, hang on a minute,' and he put down the phone, and
then I could hear these pipes and this whistle. They had my cassette going on a
machine and they were playing live with it over the phone, and it was beautiful!
And then I heard these little steps up to the phone and he said, 'Well, what do
you think?' I said 'Great!' It was wonderful..."



     Oh wow, what a pity you didn't tape it all!



     "Oh I know! If I'd known beforehand, then I'd have had everything
going. It was really beautiful, a fantastic moment."



     Was that a demo you sent them, or a backing track? Did they eventually
overdub their part, or do it live with your band?



     "Well, for the actual session with Planxty, we took a 24-track
tape over to Ireland with the complete track mixed down rough on two of the
tracks, also with a time-code on one track so we could synch it up again with
the original tape when doing a final mix back in London. So the rest of the
tracks were all free for Bill's arrangement and any other ideas we might get.
Planxty were very different to work with as musicians, it was all so much fun."



     You brought in Rolf Harris to play dijeridu on the title track on The
Dreaming. Were you familiar with the extraordinary records he made with George
Martin during the 1960s?



     "Yes, it was really because of his Sun Arise that I brought him
in. I'd heard it through Paddy when it came out, as it was one of his favourite
records. And I couldn't believe it and thought it was fabulous!"



     Paddy: "Yes, I think it's one of the most important records ever
made; for me it was, at any rate. And since I met Rolf Harris I've gotten into
playing the dijeridu myself, like on Kate's new album. I think Rolf Harris was
on to something very special; aboriginal music is something very special..."



     Those songs which you've used as flip-sides on singles, like Warm and
Soothing, The Empty Bullring and Under the Ivy, on which you simply accompany
yourself on the piano with no other arrangement, were those tracks recorded
originally just as demos?



     Kate: "No, they weren't, but in a way they are just demos. Warm
and Soothing was a demo-tape which we did basically just to see what Abbey Road
sounded like. We wanted to work there, and we went into Studio Two, and really
the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a
piano vocal. So I did, and it sounded great. Under the Ivy we did in our studio
in just an afternoon."



     You play the piano track on all your recordings, right, but then on
stage?



     "Well, on stage, because of course I'm dancing and doing all these
other things, I used a guy called Kevin McAlea who was an incredible find.
Because I've never met anyone else who plays the piano, or who can play it if he
wants to, so like me. My style is really quite simple, and that's the problem.
Professional pianists tend to sort of flourish everywhere, and that doesn't work
in my songs because I use a simple style. I did play two or three numers on
stage, the ones that I thought were important, but the rest of the time I was up
front. Obviously, though, because it's the instrument that I always used to
write on, it made sense for me to put down all the piano arrangements on record.
But most of the songs on the new album I wrote on the Fairlight. I'm sure,
though, that I'll still continue writing on the piano, somehow it's such an
extraordinarily versatile-sounding instrument."



     Actually I'm a little intrigued by the fact that, while so much of your
music tends to sound so natural and organic, you're often exploiting all the
technological wizardries of the studio, and the Fairlight even, yet without
there ever being any clash or contradiction, musically speaking.



     "Well, although the Fairlight is called a synthesizer, so many of
its sounds are actually of natural source. And I think really that's why I like
it so much. I think there's perhaps not such a great gap between the Fairlight
and natural music as there is between synthesizers and acoustic music. The
Fairlight really seems to be a huge bridge between all kinds of music, it's not
actually so removed from natural sounds as you might think. Like what you
thought might be a koto near the start of Cloudbusting was actually a banjo
which I played on the Fairlight. And, as an album, Hounds of Love was really
quite different because the Fairlight was very involved, rather than, as on the
last albums, all the tracks being written at the piano. But Waking the Witch I
actually wrote through a guitarist, Alan Murphy, because it needed to be written
from a quitarist's point of view, a piano was just so wrong for that one. And he
was brilliant about it. I mean, it was very hard for us because both of us felt
a little embarassed. And then we said, look, let's just go for it. And I said,
play something like this--this is actually in the studio, he just came in for
the day, and all we had down was the drums and hand-claps, he had nothing else
at all to play with. But I told him the idea that I wanted."



      In the studio these days, now that you're producing yourself, is it a
kind of benevolent dicatorship where what you say goes and the musicians just
take it?



(Paddy falls about laughing, suggesting that the true state of affairs might
not be too far different.)



     Kate: "Well, quite honestly, I think it is sometimes. But I think,
in most cases, I really do know what I want..."



     Presumably you must command the respect which induces all these fellows
to willingly subordinate their own egos...



     "Well, there are never really any serious problems because the
fellows I work with are great, and I think they just find amusing all of the
things that I like and ask them to do. And they're fabulous, really. I mean,
I've never really been able to communicate properly, like those producers you
see sitting there talking about A-flats: 'Now take it from the A-coding,' and
all that. I don't find that comfortable at all because, for a start, there might
be one of the band (like me!) who doesn't know what you're saying. So what's the
point? Because everyone needs to know. So I talk in really basic language.
Obviously I have to identify chords and things like that. But in a way, the most
important thing for me, I feel, is if I can convey to them the atmosphere of the
song, the sort of feeling which I want them to produce. Then I feel that they
will give me what I want. As long as they're in tune with the song on the same
level as I am, then I'm gonna get what I want. So, rather than saying to each of
them 'You do this,' or 'You do that,' I spend an awful lot of time trying to
explain the story and that sort of thing. And I think the one that was the most
difficult, but the one I was most pleased with was Breathing -- that was an
epic. We spent three days trying to get that backing track. And the silly thing
was that we had all the riffs and everything by the second day, it was just that
no-one could play as if they meant it, because we'd been playing it for so long."



     We're both agreed it was a great artistic success, why was it not such
a commercial success?



     "Well, actually, I think it did incredibly well, it got to number
sixteen in the singles charts in this country. And it was without any promotion
and everyone thought, gosh, it's far too uncommercial. But I think sixteen is
pretty good. And also what is nice is that, although in a way it didn't really
get that much attention at the time, it's one of those tracks that people are
still talking about now, even though they may have ignored it when it first came
out."



     Oh, I hope so. That's a brave record. I see it's been included in a new
compilation album put together for Greenpeace.



     Kate: "Yeah, Greenpeace approached us asking us would we like to
put a track on it, and we felt Breathing was the most relevant to what they were
trying to say, it was quite a conscious track, we thought."



     Is there quite a lot of stuff which you begin recording but which you
abort and dump half way through?



     "That's not happened much. There's only been stuff dumped on
Lionheart and Never for Ever, the second and third albums, and I prefer to think
resting rather than 'dumped'. Some of the stuff would be fun for a quick listen,
perhaps, but not for much else. On the new album, there was actually quite a lot
of stuff that didn't get on. But it was in a very embryonic sort of stage, or
else I just felt it wasn't interesting enough, it was too ordinary. Although
there were a couple of finished songs that nearly made it to the album but
didn't. I just didn't feel they were strong enough. And the thing with The Ninth
Wave, the second side, was I had the idea and wrote a first draught of it and,
though I hadn't written all the material, it sounded like it would work. The
hardest thing was making one song flow into the other one because creating
dynamics in one song is very different from building it between seven songs. You
have to sort of pace it very differently and yet hopefully you want it to keep
interest and not have any boring bits. But then, by the second stage when things
had already begun to be sort of sprinkled on the tracks, I realized there were
certain songs that weren't working. The concept was very strong-minded and there
were certain things that it certainly didn't want having done to it. So I had to
totally re-think the thing and say like, 'Okay, look, this song has got to go.'
So, although we'd been working on it, it was still in really quite an embryonic
stage and had no part of where it was. So the song would go, but maybe it can be
used some time in the future."



     Does it sometimes happen, then, that you resurrect songs years later,
like perhaps any of those hundreds you wrote as a teenager?



     "Little bits. There was a little bit resurrected in Suspended in
Gaffa on the last album. No, but this new album was, I think, all sort of
contemporary, and little ideas that I'd put down on the Fairlight, which I'd
thought might perhaps turn into something, then turned out perfect for a little
bit in a song or whatever as the concept started taking more shape."



     Do you generally record in the daytime or nighttime?



     "Much more in the day with this album than the last. And I think
that sort of goes with the energies, actually. The Dreaming was much more of a
nighttime album, I'd normally do my vocals in the evening. But on this album I
tended to do them in the afternoon when it was sunny because the atmosphere was
right then, because the songs were quite uplifting."



      There seems to be so much water-imagery on this album.



     "Yes, well I think as soon as I decided to go for the concept, I
sort of said, 'Oh, let's be brave and go for it,' then the energies, the
synchronicities, or whatever you want to call them, started coming into play and
nearly everyone I was working with was a water-sign! But I think, again, a lot
of people have commented already on how the album seems to them very
elemental--you know, full with the elements wind and rain. And I can't help but
put quite a lot of that down to the fact that I moved out into the country.
Instead of being boxed in by big houses, the visual stimulus coming in was that
of fields and trees and seeing the elements doing their stuff."



     Certain of the new songs, like And Dream of Sheep and Hello Earth,
strike me rather like Hollywood show-tunes: they're rather cinematic.



     "I think in a way they're, umm, probably the most visual songs
I've written in that, when I was writing them, I had in mind what potentially
might be done with them, visually, which isn't normally the sort of way you go
about writing a song. So it'll be interesting if we can ever actually turn it
into a film, which is what I'd like to do, and to see if it takes to it well."
[This plan, to make a film of The Ninth Wave, was later abandoned.]



     Do you think in your writing you've gradually departed further and
further, structurally speaking, from the standard pop-song formula?



     "I don't know! I suppose I have in some ways. But particularly
rhythmically perhaps subconsciously I've moved more towards that. I mean the
constant rhythm with fewer breaks is more in evidence on the new album: though
the music is changing, the rhythm keeps on going, and in a way I think that
actually makes it a little more commercial. But I think trying to tell the story
musically is the biggest concern for me now, rather than...I mean, obviously the
structure of the song is always important, but in a way the story tends to
dictate that a little bit."



     I suppose the songs on Side One are more to formula: verse, verse,
chorus, etc.



     "Yes, absolutely."



     But it's not just the case that Side One was just put together out of a
lot of odds and sods?



     "No, no, not at all!"



     Del: "I would say that, in fact, probably over the course of time
there's been more time and effort spent on some of the tracks on Side One."



     Kate: "Recording, yes, but, compositionally, more on the second
side, The Ninth Wave. The songs on Side One were written quite quickly."



     It seems to me that perhaps Hounds of Love doesn't cohere so
organically in terms of texture and emotion as did The Dreaming and that, rather
than being such a masterpiece, it's a collection of several smaller masterpieces
like Hello Earth, Jig of Life, and things like that.



     Kate: "Well, I think the problem with Side Two, The Ninth Wave, is
that it is an overall concept, and ideally I would have liked two sides of an
album to develop it. But I wouldn't like to feel the album was just lots of
little cameos that have been put together but rather that the album does flow.
It's true, the first side is very much made up of separate songs. But it's so
interesting what you say, because so many people have just the opposite reaction
in that they found The Dreaming terribly difficult, I just don't think they
could understand it. That's fascinating, extraordinary!"



     Was that album not so successful in Britain, then, as the earlier ones?



     "Well, I think it was a physical success. It got to number three
in the album charts in England, it went straight in at number three and, for me,
a top three album is a success. But everyone felt it was uncommercial and so
different: 'Oh, what a lot of time you've spent in the studio, Kate!'; and there
were no hit singles. And I think, because of that, everyone felt that it wasn't
successful.



     But in America, allowing of course that EMI didn't see fit to release
your second and third albums until last year, it got a lot more attention and
acclaim than anything you'd ever done.



     "Yes, absolutely, the general reaction from the States was
incredible. Several of the reviews, for instance. I've just never read reviews
like them, they were just fantastic! The media in America reacted so differently
from the media in Britain, it was just extraordinary. And it seems American
reviewers take their writing more seriously as a creative form, more so than in
this country. And some of those reviewers had really heard the music. I felt
there was such a great sense of positivity and acceptance towards what I was
doing on that last album, much more so from America than from anywhere else.
Whereas all the earlier albums, which I'd have said were far more easily
listenable and commercial, had no response from that country And that seemed to
me completely contradictory to what I'd been told about the American market. You
know, it's said that Americans are terribly conservative in their tastes and
that they like things which fit easily on the radio. Yet, in fact, the response
to the last album, like from the reviewers and that, has been incredible. They
really did like it..."



     Paddy: "Yeah, they really went into Kate's music. They take music
seriously.



      Kate: "They were ready to actually listen to it, not just to sit
there and only hear it superficially."



     Well, you must have realized by now there's a huge Kate Bush cult
throughout the whole of America. But I find it a little sad to think how so many
allusions in your lyrics are bout to get lost on American ears, things like the
ravens in the Tower of London, the bit about the Sweeney, stuff like that which
Americans won't understand the meaning of.



     Kate: "Yeah, all kinds of things, very English things, that's very
true. But I think there are as many American colloquialisms and allusions in the
music coming from the States, words and ideas that we can only pick up on
through the American T.V. programs we get. Steely Dan are a good example of
something very American."



     But perhaps, in having talked about what I consider to be the
peculiarly British nature of your music, we've been touching on the reason why,
despite the massive cult following, America--and especially the media--has been
so slow in catching on to Kate Bush, because you do, I suppose, sound rather
alien to their ears. (Kate finds this notion rather funny; she wiggles her
forefingers above her head, exposing the fact that, in truth, she is an
extraterrestrial creature equipped with antennae.)



     "Do you think it's maybe all a bit complex for them?"



     Well, complex, yes. But I mean unfamiliar. Your songs just aren't so
easily sing-able, they're not very easily predictable, in the manner of most
indigenous American music. I mean, once you've heard one verse and a chorus of
an American song you've as good as heard the whole thing. And I think that's
what so surprises me about the comparative success of The Dreaming in the
States, as so much American pop music is incredibly trite, so much of it has to
do with stupefaction rather than revelation. But, you know, in one or two of the
American reviews of The Dreaming, your music has been described as "schizophrenic",
and to tell you the truth, I feel I can well understand why people have said
that. You know I'm a historian concerned with Freud and psychoanalysis. And it
seems to me that, in a manner of speaking, your music represents a virtual
compendium of psychopathology; I mean to say, it is alternatively hysterical,
melancholic, psychotic, paranoid, obsessional, and so on. And yet, in your case,
such traits obviously proceed out of strength, not out of weakness, they
represent roles which you're assuming, or states which you're simulating, for
the sake of a given song.



     "Yes! Well, I think that's fabulous that you should say so. You
see, while I'm maybe not scientifically interested like you, I am absolutely
fascinated by the states that people throw and put on. And, you know, I think
that that is the most fascinating thing there is to write about really, the way
that people just distort things and the things they think and the things they
do. And it's really fun for me if I can find an area of the personality that is
slightly exaggerated or distorted and, if I feel I can identify with it enough,
then try to cast a person as perfectly as I can in terms of that particular
character trait, especially if I don't really show those kinds of things myself.
Take anger for instance: it's really fun to write from the point of view of
someone who's really angry, like in Get Out of My House on the last album.
Because I very rarely show anger, although obviously I do sometimes feel it. And
it was the same sort of thing with Waking the Witch on the new album. What
fascinated me in doing that song was the idea of a witch-hunter hiding behind
the priesthood, as a guise, and coming to get this woman who isn't a witch, but
he wants to make her so. The girl closes her eyes to get away from it and goes
to a church where it's safe and secure. You know, churches are supposed to be
places of sanctuary and their doors are never shut, even perhaps for people
being chased by the Devil; but the priest turns out to be the witch-hunter. I
didn't really have any heavy experiences like those that the song is about. It's
based very much on other people's imagery of Roman Catholicism which I've found
fascinating--you know, the kind of oppression, even madness, it can create, I
suppose, in some people. And it's much more that, really, than any personal
experience of my own. My school was Roman Catholic, so there was a big emphasis
on religion, but it wasn't incredibly strict, and I didn't really go to church
an awful lot, so I don't think the experience of religion was as heavy for me as
for a lot of people..."



     So you're able to live those things out vacariously through your songs?



     "Yes, and it can be really fun." 



     But then, does this ever backfire on you? Do the forces which yo
unleash or the identities which you assume ever start gaining their own strength
and begin taking you over?



     "No, I don't think they ever take me over. While I don't believe
there is very much of me personally in these characters, obviously there must be
a bit, or I simply would not be able to come up with them. But I think hopefully
I'll recognize that most of them would not be beneficial to me; and, as long as
I can recognize that, then I don't think they'll take me over. But, you know,
I'm by no means a perfect person..."



     But you do allow them to take you over, to become you, for as long as
you're actually writing or recording a song?



     "I can feel very affected by them, but I don't think they actually
take me over. I think I was very much affected by Breathing; and, when I was
making the last album, I was very affected by Houdini. Because it was really sad
trying to be Houdini's lady, because he had died and obviously he must have been
amazingly special as a person, someone trying to escape not only throughout his
life, but also in death."



     And were there any such role-playings on the new album?



     "Um...yes. I think Cloudbusting was quite like that. It must have
been nearly ten years ago, when I used to go up to the Dance Center in London,
that I went into Watkins' occult bookshop for a look, and there was this book
and it said, A Book of Dreams, by Peter Reich. I'd never heard of his father,
Wilhelm Reich, but I just thought it was going 'Hello, Hello,' so I just picked
up the book and read it and couldn't believe that I'd just found this book on
the shelf. I mean it was so inspirational, very magical, with that energy there.
So when I wrote and recorded the song, although it was about nine years later, I
was nevertheless psyched up by the book, the image of the boy's father being
taken away and locked up by the government just for building a machine to try to
make rain. It was such a beautiful book!"



     Much of your music is very literate. Is reading a passion of yours? I'm
curious, in fact, whether you're in tune with authors like Doris Lessing or Iris
Murdoch; sometimes I describe Kate Bush to people as being a sort of Doris
Lessing of rock.



     "I'm sorry, Doris who? I'm sorry, but I don't know the author. But
reading was once a very big passion. When I was about eight or nine, for about
three years I got through dozens and dozens of books and was very much into
reading, mostly fiction. But as soon as I began writing poems at
school--basically, as soon as I started getting into writing songs--everything
else seemed to go out the window. I'd sit down and read a book, and think how I
could be writing a song rather than reading It's only really in the last few
years, when I get the time to read a book, that I realize how incredible it is.
During journeys by car, I've got into reading again. It's very good, I really,
really enjoy it. There's nothing like reading a good book. The sense of
involvement-- and, you know, you actually feel you're one of the people in the
story. That sense of involvement, it's incredible, it's good. But I'm such a
slow reader and, unless I'm on holiday, which is a very rare thing, I always
feel that there's something better, more productive, that I could be doing. So I
tend not to read, as I always feel guilty, and I think I should be doing other
things."



     Del: "I think that's just an excuse, I think you should make time
to read."



     And especially if songs like Cloudbusting come out of it.



     Kate: "Yes, but I read that so long ago and it's just been waiting
to come out for nine or ten years. The thing is, I had to wait till I was at the
right point to write that song in such a way that I could do it proper justice."



     If one knows a little about Houdini, one knows that, before he died, he
promised he would send back from beyond the grave some signal of his continuing
existence if it proved supernaturally possible to do so. And so you have
beautifully incorporated that moment in your song when you have him finally
speak to his lady from the spirity-world. I take it I've got the right
interpretation, yes?



     "Absolutely, yes..."



     Well, are people clued in enough to pick up on all these sort of
subtleties and allusions in your songs, generally, and to know what they mean?
When you talk with people, by and large do they show a good understanding of the
concepts?



     "You know, I think that the majority of the people really do. Yes,
I really think they do. Because, if they bother to listen, then after about
three or four times they start putting the words or the ideas together. And I
mean the one that really amazed me, we did a video of Breathing and the idea was
being in this huge inflatable; and I was at this conference somewhere and there
were all these women in their forties and fifties, real Monty Python sort of
women, and they all came up and said (Kate affects a strong London accent, which
requires merely an exaggeration of her normal accent): 'Oh, we loved your
video!' And then one of them says: 'But listen, you must tell me, I had this,
you know, this argument with my daughter; you were meant to be in a womb,
weren't you? I mean, that is what it was meant to be wasn't it? A womb?' And I
said yeah!"



      You mean she got it, it was true?



     "Yeah, she got it! And she said: 'There you are, didn't I tell you
it was a womb.' And I thought yeah, that's fantastic! I mean, I wouldn't have
even expected her to sit and watch it..."



      But Kate, I'd like to pick an argument with you. I must confess, I
find it difficult to watch your performances, I think for a few reasons. It
seems to me so much of your music flows right out from essence, so to speak,
whereas all the acting, all the theatrics, by their very nature they're
something artificial and contrived. Also, because there's often a more or less
flagrant sexual element to your performance, the viewer is automatically thrust
into the position of being a voyeur, and being a voyeur is not necessarily
everyone's cup of tea. You know what I mean?



     "Wow, yeah, that's h-e-a-v-y. But I have only ever consciously
projected the sexual element in a couple of characters, and if that's present
for you in every performance, well, that is worrying for me, as it's not
intentional and I'm not aware of it."



     Well, be that as it may, I know just how seriously you've taken the art
of performance, how you studied under Lindsay Kemp and all that. And I'm also
aware how much effort and skill it takes; to act like that is not something just
anybody could get up and do. Now I'm not sure to what extent my own perception
is idiosyncratic, I mean to say, I do know people who love your performances.
But, myself, I wonder-- and here's where I'm trying to pick the argument-- if
all these theatrics might not detract from your potential for being taken
seriously as a musician, especially in America.



     "It's a big problem. Because I don't think I've been completely
happy with any visual performance that I've done except for Army Dreamers and
perhaps Running Up That Hill. But they were videos which took a lot of time and
work and control. Except for one I did recently of Running Up That Hill for a
British TV show, where I look a bit like Richard III, there are no TV
performances I've done where I think I've ever even got close to pulling it off.
So, apart from those few things, but also the videos of Wuthering Heights and
bits of Breathing, I don't think I've accomplished what I really wanted
visually. Usually the problems are lack of time or money. We always have a lot
of challenging ideas but then end up compromising somewhere or other in order to
meet deadlines or budgets. But occasionally things do come together well. If
anything, though, I think my performances help audiences understand the music
better, especially the lyrical aspect, and the tour of Europe definitely caused
a change in attitude both among the public and the media. Many people began to
take me seriously as a musician for the first time. The audiences could see me
there singing and dancing, leading the band and in control of the whole act. And
that's quite different from the kind of controlled, far-away image that one gets
through the media..."



     But in these performances, Kate--and really they are what I wanted to
talk about, not your videos--there are only a couple of songs which you yourself
perform on the piano, usually one or two of the more gentle and intimate ones
like The Man With the Child in His Eyes. Yet someone like me, at any rate, would
like to see you as a performer, as a serious musician, singing at the piano and
leading the band, which I know you could do very well if you wanted to. I told
you earlier how the first time I saw Kate Bush was early on, around 1978, when
you did two or three numbers in that manner on a TV show, and it was then that I
recognized in an instant, that this young kid was an exceptional artist who had
to be taken very seriously, I mean musically. Am I right in thinking that one of
the reasons you've never toured in the States is because you suppose you need
this big show with all the people involved and all the expensive props? Do you
not feel--and I suppose this is really what my argument comes down to--that you
could come to America just with your band and play more or less
straightforwardly?



     "No, no, I would feel that that was such a cop-out. I don't think
I'd be able to feel that I had any effort or sense of challenge left in me. I
don't really feel that happy doing something, in a way, unless I've really
pushed myself to the limit. And, you know, it's like when we do videos and
things, I don't really feel right unless we're all filthy and exhausted by the
end of the day. Otherwise it doesn't feel like you've put enough effort into it.
When you hear an album you listen to the music; but when you go and see a show,
you're going there to see that person or the band come alive, and hopefully give
you everything that they've got, so that you can really have a good evening and
enjoy the music within the concept of a show. And I think, if I was just going
to stand up there, then, you know, what are the audience getting apart from
seeing me just standing there that they can't get on an album? On the albums,
they get much better arrangements, much better vocals which are in tune, all
that sort of thing..."



     Except that there are of course artists who can give a straightforward
performance yet who do it in such a way that they invest it with something quite
special in terms of musical spontaneity and so on...



     "You see, I don't think I want to be up there on the stage being
me. I don't think I'm that interesting for people to see. I think what I want to
do is to be up there actually being the person that is there in the song. I
think that is much more interesting for people and it is much more of a
challenge for me. If I can be the character in the song, then suddenly there's
all this strength and energy in me which perhaps I wouldn't normally have,
whereas if it was just me, I don't think I could walk on the stage with
confidence. It's very hard for me to be me on a stage, I just stand there and
twiddle my fingers."



     But Kate, it seems to me that all those in the States who've taken Kate
Bush so deeply to heart and who are feeling deprived not to have had a chance to
see her perform, what they love perhaps more than anything is precisely that so
much of your music is so deeply personal. The personae you assume are fun, but
it is the real Kate Bush whom your fans love more than anyone else. Could you
not come to the States to perform and simply be yourself?



     "Well, that is great if you think people would like that, but I
cannot help but feel it is very important to give people something visually
special. That was what made me feel there was something special when I saw
Lindsay Kemp all those years ago. He opened up a whole new world for me that I
had not really thought about before, the fact that he was doing something so
incredible without even saying anything! It really affected me emotionally, like
when I was younger and used to listen to records and the way they affected me
was incredible and I used to think, if I could ever do that one day to other
people through music, that would be great. I think in a way Lindsay had a
similar influence on me; what he was doing was so exciting and powerful, I
thought to myself, if you could possibly create music and have it accompanied by
such strong visuals, then it would just have to be good; and really interesting.
And I don't think, by any means, that the tour which we did some years ago was
perfect, there were a lot of things that were experimental, and we didn't know
if they were going to work, but I think we did explore new territory, visually
speaking, and the reaction was so positive--I mean, I think that probably opened
up more people to listening to my stuff than the records themselves ever did.
Partly, I think, because people didn't expect me to be quite like that and they
all enjoyed it. And I see that as a very positive, rather than a negative,
thing. Had they not enjoyed it, then that would be a different thing and perhaps
I would not feel so inclined to want to do it again. But I have had an
extraordinary amount of encouragement from people not just on the musical side
but also on the visual side, maybe even more so! And I do feel that, when
eventually I get the time and money to do another show, I hope we will continue
working along those lines of combining music with dance and with theatre and it
would be even better and much more interesting than the last time. I think that
is a very untouched area in rock music, and it has great potential."



     Del: "Yeah, anyone can set up their gear and sit down at a piano
and sing for an hour. But not everybody can put on a whole integrated show. And
as soon as we got our little band together years ago, right from the word go it
was theatrics and show. We were only playing little pubs on tiny little stages
like at The Rose of Lee, but we had a whole light show, we used dry ice, and all
that. What you are saying is that Kate's fans in America would love it even if
she just came over and set up and played. But think how much more they would
love it if she was there with a whole show."



     Well, are there any plans yet for a return to the stage?



     Kate: "No, I have got some projects that I want to try and get
done before I can get on to a live project. There is promotion to be done on the
album, which I hope to get done as quickly as possible. I have got a couple of
videos to do for the singles, which are demanding, so I am trying to put as much
work into them as possible, and then get into the visual thing on The Ninth
Wave. And then I can maybe think about live work and the next album."



     To go back on stage, would you actually have to get together some Irish
musicians--perhaps even Planxty themselves!--to execute things like Night of the
Swallow and Jig of Life?



      "Oh, Planxty, wouldn't that be great! That would be fabulous. It
would be incredibly difficult to do songs like that without Irish musicians. But
I don't know, it would all depend on boring things like money; it would be
terribly expensive to take a band like that on tour with you. Jig of Life would
be very very different without a ceilidh band, though it could be interesting.
But I am hoping the film project that I would like to do would get around that,
as originally The Ninth Wave was written very much as a story, and ideally I
would like to make a film of that, and then that whole side of the album with
Jig of Life would be very much covered, I feel. And so maybe for a show I would
be doing the other new numbers and a selection of numbers off the third and
fourth albums, because those would be more suited to live performance."



     But are you primed to follow up the North American end of things if
things take off there?



     "Yes, I mean, I'll go over there. Obviously if things were
happening out there, then I would come out there."



      Well, I really think things could change for you very profoundly in
the autumn [of 1985].



     "They are going to! I think everything is going to be different by
October or so, yes. Things are really starting to happen and change, already,
things are very positive in the record company with this album. But if I can
avoid it, I do not want to get caught up in a long drawn-out promotion thing
that would keep me away from the creative side of things. Because the longer I
work on promotion, then in a way th harder it is for me to get back to doing
what I really like doing-- recording. We do work in a very isolated way, you
know, most of the time it is just three of us in the control-room: the engineer,
Del, and myself, say. And then suddenly to go out into the world to do promotion
is quite a culture-shock. There are really a lot of people out there, and to
walk into a room with perhaps a few hundred people in it and they are all
looking at you, it is a very different world! And it is all a bit unreal, it
tends to get a bit scary sometimes."        



  Well, then, will you promise us that you won't keep us waiting another
three years for the next album?



      "I would never like to break a promise. But I would like to say
that the next one should be a lot quicker."



     [Note: As of October 26, 1988--more than three years since the date of
this interview--Kate had not released the follow-up to Hounds of Love. Current
estimates for release center on the spring of 1989.]







==========================
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