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Date: Fri, 24 May 91 04:28:03 PDT
From: rhill@pnet01.cts.com (Ronald
Hill)
Subject: The New Music by Daniel Richler on March 15, 1985
72. The New Music (Much Music): interview conducted by Daniel Richler for Canadian TV in Kate's dance studio on March 15, 1985.
One of the best of all Kate Bush videotaped interviews, though it is rather brief. Richler, like most of the Canadian interviewers, has done considerable homework and shows evident respect for his subject. Kate responds enthusiastically and informatively. This clip shows a view of Kate's own dance-practice studio, and a shot of a painting which Kate keeps on her wall, which she identifies as The Hogsmill Ophelia.
[Transcribed by Ronald Hill, above note by IED. Some of this interview was also used later in the The Story So Far special. I am not sure if this is the complete interview, as I have two different versions and don't know if there is a longer, complete version. Any further information is appreciated]
A: Kate Bush has not released a record in over two years, but a new one is scheduled for this summer, and Kate was in the middle of recording it when we met her in her dance studio in London.
K: They're not a title yet, that's always one of the last things to happen, if not the last thing. And really I think most of the songs are about love. I was feeling very happy when I wrote most of these songs and I wanted to try to get a positive attitude as apposed to the darker, anguished attitude that was a part of some of the tracks on the last album.
I: Those earlier songs, Breathing and the Army Dreamers had what you might call a political conscious. Now that so many groups are doing political musics like the Ethiopia relief fund music and that sort of thing, is your new album going to contain something similar?
K: No. No I don't think actually there are any tracks that are political as such. And I've never felt I've written from a political point of view, it's always been an emotional point of view that just happens to perhaps be a political situation. I mean war is an extremely emotional situation, especially if you're going to be blown up. You know, I think with the whole thing of nuclear war people are really terrified and increasingly so the more we hear in the media all the time about it. And I think writers always do have a conscious about the things that scare them. They want to write about them to relieve themselves.
[Part of Breathing is played]
[Second tape]
K: I think the last album was very dark and about pain and negatively and the way people treat each other badly. It was a sort of cry really. And I think perhaps the biggest influence on the last album was the fact that I was producing it and so I could actually do what I really wanted to for the first time. And there were a lot of things that we wanted to experiment with and I particularly to play around with my voices because there are a lot of different backing vocals and things like that. So the different textures were important to me. I wanted to try and create pictures with the sounds by using effects.
I: You had been popularly associated with a very sweet voice, and what you were doing in some places on The Dreaming was making very guttural sounds - hoarse and raw. In a way what David Bowie did on recently on Blue Jean, where he deliberately made his voice crack and tear.
K: Yes, I find that much more interesting. The first two albums, my voice really wasn't capable of doing that and I think my writing and my voice have continually tried to get better to be able to do something that I actually like. And it's very frustrating when you are actually writing songs and singing them and you're not actually enjoying what's coming back. So hopefully, you know, it will become more pleasurable for me, the actual process, because it is quite painful, listening to things awful, you really want them to sound good.
[Part of Sat in Your Lap is played]
[In this tape the above Breathing quote is repeated]
I: I was reminded by this painting in the corner hear, which is sort of a satire of a pre-Raphaelite painting, and I always thought those victorian painters, the pre-Raphaelite's, were an influence on the texture of your songwriting.
K: Yes. Yes, I think it was particularly in my very early teens. I was very enchanted by the whole romance of it, yes. They found their way into songs, the imagery. I think that's what happens, something attracts you because of the imagery and you digest it and it come out in a song. I think that's how artists work, they're like magpies who are picking out little bits of gold and storing them away.
[Part of Running Up That Hill is played]
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