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Date: Tue, 28 May 91 00:04:54 PDT
From: rhill@pnet01.cts.com (Ronald
Hill)
Subject: More Canadian Interviews 1985
88. Good Rockin' Tonight, Much Music, The New Music, Toronto Evening News, etc.: excerpts from interviews (all dating from the same day, in the same Toronto studios) conducted by Christopher Ward, Nan Devitt and Daniel Richler in late November, 1985.
These interviews have a strikingly better atmosphere than their U.S. counterparts, which had been conducted only a day or two before. Much of the credit for this must go to the excellent interviewing techniques of the Canadian hosts, particularly Mr. Ward and Mr. Richler. Both men had prepared well for their interviews and both show evident respect for their guest on camera. Kate responds, consequently, with greater frankness and fluidity than she had in any other interviews of the 1985 promotional campaign.
[Transcribed by Ronald Hill, above note by IED. Boy does Kate look good in these interviews! ]
[Interview 2: With Daniel Richler]
I: When you last met, you said that The Dreaming had been something of a traumatic album for you, or at least had reflected traumatic experiences of yours, but that the new record, The Hounds Of Love, was going to be a happier thing. Do you still stick to that?
K: Yes, I do think this has go a much more positive energy. Not necessarily that the last album was dark, but it was dealing with intensities of emotion. Perhaps a more introverted album and this is more outward and happy, yeah.
I: You have this so called Running Up That Hill in which you want to make a deal with God. What exactly is the deal you want to make?
K: It's the two people in the song, a man and a woman, that what to make a deal with God in order to swap places with each other. That if the man could be the woman, and vise-versa, they would understand what its like from that other person's point of view and that perhaps there'd be less problems in the relationship.
[Part of Running Up That Hill is played]
I: The second side of The Hounds Of Love has a concept feel to it-there are a number of songs that are strung together and they're all under the sub-title of The Ninth Wave. What is The Ninth Wave?
K: The Ninth Wave is a quote from a poem by Tennyson. Some people have though that the whole side was based on this poem and in fact it's completely the other way around - where I'd written the whole side, wanted a title that would sum up the energy of it, and was looking through books, etc, to try to find a title, as I didn't feel it was there within the songs themselves. And I found that and it seemed to be such a good parallel, the fact that it's such water imagery, and he's talking about how waves work in cycles of nine, all building up to the ninth one, and then it starts again.
I: There's lots of scary water images on the Ninth Wave - a man drowning and trying to get out from underneath the ice, a witch being bunked, fisherman at sea, and so on. Where did you first get the idea to do this theme about water and it's frightening aspects.
K: I don't think water is something I think of as threatening, really. It's an incredibly beautiful thing and its one of those imageries that I think forever, both way back into the past and into the future, will always be used by writers. Water, the sea is one of those incredible images, it's so powerful, so almighty, so kind and so cruel. And I think, what attracted me was all kinds of things. Obviously the imagery there but also the idea of a tiny human being, this little thing, all alone in this great expanse of cruelty, that elemental force, and the contrast between the two. Something that I think attracts me as a writer in music as well, the contrast of textures, putting something with something else that perhaps isn't meant to go and playing with those ideas.
I: When I met you in your dance studio in London, I saw a painting against the wall that we were laughing about. It was a satire of that pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia drowned in the reeds, this one was in a polluted river. Now on the inside cover sheave of the hounds of Love there's a picture of you in the water, like Ophelia. Is that a deliberate connection?
K: Not a conscious connection, no, but I'm sure that that imagery is there very strongly. Ophelia is one of those beautiful paintings, its extraordinary. And I think my attraction to Ophelia in the first place is what made me get that painting. So it's probably still quite subconsciously strong there in me.
[An excerpt from Cloudbusting is played]
I: Your new video for Cloudbusting has got Donald Sutherland in it, and you look quite impish, and there's some story going on. Can you tell us where it came from, what it's about?
K: The song was inspired by a book, which was about the relationship between the man who wrote the book and his father. And it's written through his eyes when he was a child. There's an incredible sense of innocence in the book. And his father was a very respected psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and he also had a machine called a cloudbuster that could make it rain. And together they would go out and make it rain. And we really wanted to do justice to the story and the relationship between the two of them, that was a very special one. [Another excerpt from Cloudbusting]
I: Who wrote that book?
K: Peter Reich.
I: Ah, Peter Reich. And it was called Cloudbusting?
K: It was called A Book Of Dreams.
I: And does he know that you have...is he still a living writer?
K: Yes, he is and ah...
I: I should know about him I suppose.
K: Well the book wasn't totally well known. It was in print for a while and is now out of print. And we sent him a cassette of the song, hoping that he would like it and he's been very responsive, which is great for me.
[Still more of Cloudbusting is played]
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"The pull and the push of it all..." - Kate Bush
Reaching Out
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Marvick - Hill
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