FEATURE:
MOJO: The Collectors’ Series: Kate Bush
IMAGE CREDIT: MOJO
Challenging the Traditional Songwriter, Remaining Private and Blowing Minds
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I am sliding an extra Kate Bush feature in…
this weekend, as I took delivery of a great magazine. MOJO have a Collectors Series, which means they dedicate an entire magazine to a particular artist. If you want to order the one on Kate Bush that has just come out, then this is what you can expect:
“MOJO The Collectors’ Series: KATE BUSH DIRECTOR’S CUT 1958-2020
MOJO is delighted to present its finest writing on Kate Bush in a collectable single deluxe volume.
As one of the most original and extraordinary figures in music, Kate Bush deserves to be saluted in style – and that’s exactly what this sumptuous 132-page magazine does. Drawing on MOJO’s many exclusive interviews with the singer down the years, plus a wealth of archive features and rare and iconic images, DIRECTOR’S CUT 1958-2020 traces Kate’s remarkable story from her pre-fame days recording demos with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and breakthrough success with Wuthering Heights and The Kick Inside album, right through to the creation of the mid-’80s masterpiece Hounds Of Love and on to her millennial return to live performance with 2014’s breathtaking Before The Dawn shows.
Among the other wow-some treasures you’ll find within its covers are an unguarded 1980 Sounds interview conducted by writer Phil Sutcliffe, Tom Doyle’s epic four-hour encounter with the singer after she returned from a decade’s hiatus with 2005’s Aerial album, a run-down of Kate’s 50 greatest songs and guide to all her key albums. Plus much more besides. Unbelievable indeed!”.
It is a wonderful magazine, and it covers all of her career; going into detail regarding specific albums; showing us some interviews Bush conducted with MOJO, and giving us so many great photos. It is something I would recommend to everyone and, whilst I know much of the facts and stories that are laid out through the magazine, there were sections and snippets that compelled me to write this. This is going to be a fairly general piece but, having read through the magazine a few times, it amazes me how Bush transformed the way we approach a female singer-songwriter, and that influence and ripple is still being felt now!
Not only that, but the blend of the private and musically bold – which I have covered in a previous feature – really comes to the fore. In interviews, Bush talks about being shy and quiet, yet we have a body of work from an artist who exuded so much confident and inhabited so many different guises through the years. I am going to quote a few snippets from the magazine, as we get this detailed impression of a songwriter who, since 1978 (and actually before that), has left jaws hanging and created some of the most interesting and incredible music ever! Going from the earliest pages that caught my eye and, when MOJO talk about Bush’s early T.V. appearances, it made me feel sorry for her. Throughout Bush’s career, she has always been seen as a sex-symbol, and her beauty and sexuality has always been on the minds of interviewers. I am going to bring in that side of things – Bush and her approach to sex and its liberation – in a feature next week but, as this otherworldly and very excited young artist coming onto the scene in 1978, it must have been daunting and, at times, a bit angering having to navigate (mainly) male interviewers, who were either focusing on her looks or were asking quite clumsy questions. I think the way Bush navigated this minefield, with grace and composure, is one reason why people have so much respect for her – other artists might have shot back or had a go at the interviewers!
When The Kick Inside was released in 1978, Bush appeared on Saturday Night at the Mill and, as Mark Blake writes for MOJO, she must have seemed “absurdly out of place” as she played Them Heavy People and name-checks philosophers and spirituality – they wouldn’t have seen her like on the show before! Hosted by Bob Langley, the T.V. show was quite a formal and stuffy thing, so Bush’s presence and unusual music might have taken people by surprise. Langley was quite the old schoolmaster when speaking with Bush, and she answered all his questions “but looks like she might be silently telling him to piss off”. Bush wanted to overhaul the cliché expectations of female songwriters and make music that was quite intrusive and physical. The Kick Inside – and subsequent albums – deals with sex and love in a very open and raw way, and her vocals are far more arresting and imaginative than that of many of her peers of the time. Just looking back on some of those very early T.V. appearances, and one can only imagine how a young Kate Bush would have felt. She was excited to get her music out there, but one feels that the business of being interviewed was something she never truly enjoyed. As Blake writes, Bush’s music had “one foot in the BBC studio” with its piano and gorgeous strings, but songs (on The Kick Inside) that looked at incest, suicide, and orgasms were the kind to raise a few of the more conservative eyebrows!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Italy in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Angelo Deligio/Mandadori via Getty Images
That is the one thing that I love about Bush’s music above all else: the subject matter was always fearless and tackled themes that were not often discussed in music. Not only were the lyrics and vocals produced by a singular artist, but the compositions, even on The Kick Inside, nodded back to Progressive Rock. Kate’s early boyfriend, the future D.J. Steve Blacknell, recalls that he took her on dates to see Camel, and the Incredible String Band – “you can hear elements of these and more on The Kick Inside”, as MOJO (rightly) observe. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Bush was attracted to the psychedelic and progressive, as her music was brought to the attention of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. In 1973, when Bush was at St Joseph’s Convent Grammar School, her brother Paddy passed a simple demo tape to his friend, Ricky Hopper, who was playing with Unicorn (a Folk Rock band), whose producer was Gilmour – he heard potential on that tape and was intrigued. It is clear that the music world was witnessing a true and unique star come forward in 1978. Gilmour oversaw recordings at Bush’s family home and at his studio in Essex. He was pitching Bush to EMI, who he saw as “cloth-eared record company folk”; they were probably expecting something very conventional, commercial and unchallenging. Gilmour fronted the money to bring Bush to AIR studios in 1975, and she recorded three tracks – including The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Producer Andrew Powell was there, and it must have been remarkable for Powell, Gilmour, and those musicians in the sessions that were hearing a then-sixteen-year-old Bush deliver these sublime-yet-unusual songs!
When EMI’s Bob Mercer was given the demo tape of Bush by Gilmour, he signed her on an “apprenticeship deal”, and she was given £3,000 to write some songs and gig – Bush left school, moved out of the family home and embarked on, in her words, “the beginning of my life”. One very obvious thing I gleaned from reading the earliest pages of the MOJO special is that Bush dreamed of putting out an album long before she encountered David Gilmour. I have discussed Bush’s childhood influences and exposure to music, and Bush herself said: “Since I was 14, my only ambition was to get 10 songs on a piece of plastic”. There was an urgency and desire that one can hear through The Kick Inside, and producer Andrew Powell almost had to forewarn the musicians that the songs were not your usual fare, and that they should not judge them/her. It didn’t take long before these experienced male musicians had their jaws opened by an artist whose extreme musical beauty and extraordinary talent was like nothing they had ever witnessed! Bush’s lyrics have always astonished me. She has said how many take time to formulate, whilst others “just come out like … like … diarrhoea”. Why, as MOJO ask, would Bush start singing a Sanskrit mantra – “om mani padme hum” - in the middle of a track (Strange Phenomena) that covers the celestial power of the moon, coincidence and menstruation?! It is that sort of un-linera and unpredictable sense of narration. I guess Bush faced a lot of judgement regarding her age.
How could someone who, when her debut album was released was only nineteen, be aware of the complexities of love and the challenges of life?! She explained how she, like many teenagers, had gone through some heavy times and the best way to channel these experiences and emotions was through music. If so many artists of the late-1970s were using their music as a platform to express anger and rebellion, Bush’s music (on The Kick Inside) was always positive and beautiful. I want to move on from 1978, as I am really interested in how Bush was already fully-formed and this stunning artist right from the get-go. In hindsight, I wonder whether record men and bosses like Bob Mercer regretted not listening to Kate Bush more closely. Many at EMI did not know what to do with her, and when Mercer suggested James and the Cold Gun as the first single, Bush resolutely knew it had to be Wuthering Heights; at which juncture there was quite a heated moment between them where, depending on who you believe, Bush broke down in tears because she knew that she was right – Bush denies that she cried, but it was clear that she had this determination, stubbornness and sense of her own music that many others did not see at that time.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the Plaza Hotel, Copenhagen in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorgen Angel
Moving forward a bit, and there was, in many magazine and newspaper pieces, this clash of Kate Bush the musician and Kate Bush the public figure. In teen magazine, Look-in, Bush’s rise to attention was described thus: “To every young girl working hard at dance classes and learning music, the story of Kate Bush’s rise to fame must seem like the ultimate fairy story. Few may look as striking as Kate, and it is unlikely that many have her incredible vocal range, but her rise to acclaim gives us all a model to aspire to – showing just how much sheer hard work is involved in reaching the top”. When Never for Ever arrived in 1980, many had heard Bush’s previous singles and albums (Lionheart arrived in 1978; Never for Ever was her third album), and there has been a bit of a change from the higher-voiced artist who was ripe (rudely) for parody in 1978, to a growing artist who was discovering the joys of technology – she used the Fairlight C.M.I. for the first time on Never for Ever -, and was changing all the time. That said, and reading an interview she conducted with Sounds in 1980, and there was still these tags she could not shake off! When that piece/quote from Look-in was read to Bush in the Sounds interview, there was this exasperation – she would have left school and worked at Woolworth, as that sense of pressure scared the hell out of her! Like many artists, Bush was subject to misquotes and the lure and grubbiness of the tabloids. She told Sounds how she saw an early interview that was entirely made up. Sounds themselves ranked Bush at number-two in their list of Sex Object(s) (Female). Today, there would be an outcry and social media backlash if a magazine was ranking female artists in terms of their sex appeal, but it must have been galling and unwanted (rather than flattering) to be seen as a sex-symbol and reduced like this, whereas her music was so majestic, worthy and passionate! Even two years after her debut album, Bush was still being handled and addressed as this slight young girl by many.
She explained how many male interviews were flirty and try-too-hard in the flesh, whereas they would tear her apart in print. She sort of knew that came with the territory, but how could she be anyone but herself?! Maybe people expected Bush to be akin to her sword-wielding, sexy character in the Babooshka video (from Never for Ever) in person, rather than who she really was: quite shy, private and nice. By 1980, Bush’s lyrics were turning slightly more to the political but, even when her attentions were pure, she was still finding interference from record bosses who thought she was putting sex into the mix. Take the anti-war song, Breathing, which Bush saw as her symphony and one of her best moments – she was worried some would feel she was exploiting nuclear war, but her song, told from the perspective of a foetus whilst nuclear war was in the air, was a very honest and serious thing. There is a line, “Breathing, in-out”, which was construed by someone from EMI as being pornographic. He felt the ‘in-out’ was Bush being saucy, which shows that she was not being taken as a serious artist, even in 1980 – as she was progressing and putting out this heavy song, the men from the record company were almost acting like fathers who were dissuading their daughter from meeting boys and talking about sex! It is clear that, in every album and movement, Bush was not only changing the role and view of a young female songwriter, but she was having to battle interfering record bodies and this never-ending perception about her! I do think the media can do more damage than good when it comes to how the public perceive an artist. It was a while until the narrative shifted from Bush being this sex object and ingénue, slightly star-gazing songwriter to a young woman who was crafting some of the greatest music of her time and, unbeknownst to everyone, she was also inspiring artists years down the track!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing on Peter's Pop Show on 30th November, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: ZIK Images/United Archives via Getty Images
Skip through to Hounds of Love – the MOJO magazine does not really talk about 1982’s The Dreaming -, and we see Bush embark on her most confident transformation. On The Dreaming, Bush was viewed by many in the media as being too experimental and releasing these singles that were too uncommercial to be taken seriously and played – The Dreaming, and There Goes a Tenner charted very low, and there were doubts from EMI that Bush should produce Hounds of Love (after she produced solo for the first time on The Dreaming). I think Bush’s most successful and happiest work (in the sense that she felt happier and less exhausted) arrived when she was in the producer’s chair alone. The Dreaming was a hard transition and album where Bush was pushing technology, the studio and herself to the limits, but Hounds of Love was a much more pleasurable experience for Bush. By 1985, the media had (in a large part) changed their view of her and there was more talk of her as a successful and accomplished artist, and less reliance on her sex appeal and young age. As singles like Hounds of Love, and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) charted higher than her efforts from The Dreaming, she was afforded new respect and focus – although The Dreaming did well in the U.S., Hounds of Love was a bigger breakthrough. One interesting change that occurred after The Dreaming was the relationship between musicians and Kate Bush. Stuart Elliott, who played on every Bush album up to Aerial (2005), remarks how Bush started using one musician at a time and, as she told MOJO’s Phil Sutcliffe, “Now the chemistry is between the individual musician and the track he is playing on”. MOJO’s special on Kate Bush notes how, even though technology was a big part of Hounds of Love, the physical performance and the importance of nature and the water was elemental.
Bush has always been interested in the power of people – Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is about a man and woman trading places so they can better understand one another -, and the beauty and wilderness of nature (The Big Sky is Bush embracing clouds and the child-like wonder they provoke, whereas The Ninth Wave, is about a woman stuck at sea and at the mercy of the darkness and unpredictability of what lies below). One thing that is not talked about enough – and was covered well by MOJO – is how Kate Bush not only blew away musicians and the media with her music and extraordinary abilities, but of her courtesy, hospitality and down-to-Earth aspect. Musicians playing on Hounds of Love noted how tea and snacks would be prepared for them at the farm kitchen before they headed to record in the barn (it sounds primative, but Bush installed a nice studio in there!). “Brian Tench, who oversaw the album’s final mix (barring the title track and Mother Stands for Comfort), was similarly impressed. “You couldn’t see her doing her vocals” Tench tells MOJO. “She enjoyed being in there and getting into her own world. Then she’d come out and say, (quiet voice) ‘How was that?’ and we’d all be sat there with our mouths wide open”. Hopping to her next album, and there is a quote that she provided that seems to relate to the making of that album: “In music you have to break your back before you even start to speak the emotion”. One of the biggest observations from Bush’s work post-1980 is that albums were taking longer to record and release. As I have said many times before, Bush could write songs pretty quickly, but the actual finalisation became lengthier as each new album came out about. By 1989’s The Sensual World, there were notable gaps. Bush said the actual album took about two-and-a-half years to make, but there were gaps and stops. “There’s tremendous self-doubt involved”, as she admitted.
Bush also noted how she started working on the album soon after Hounds of Love; perhaps trying to capitalise on the momentum created, she was tasked with making another album but, as The Sensual World was very different to Hounds of Love, I can understand why it was four years between album releases. Bush came to resist and hate going from one album to another, and she needed a wall so she could shut off and recharge – that might explain why Aerial arrived twelve years after The Red Shoes! I think one reason why Bush was able to continue recording after The Dreaming and was able to keep writing is because she took some time out to detach and relax. She took up gardening and spent more time with her family – something that would become hugely important before Aerial’s release as her son, Bertie, was born in 1998. I have covered Bush’s early career and that media perception and sense of judgement; taking it through to the breakthrough of Hounds of Love and how different life was for Bush then (Bush’s mother, Hannah, died on 14th February, 1992, and whilst many of the songs on 1993’s The Red Shoes were written before that even, the emotional impact of her passing was another reason why that album took four years to follow on from The Sensual World). The grounded and domestic aspect of Kate Bush came to the fore when she was conducting interviews in 2005. MOJO were lucky enough to be invited into her home, and it is amazing to think about Bush in 1978 and her life then compared to the mother of 2005 who was more interested in spending time at home rather than putting music out – she was keen to release Aerial but she was not going to be rushed or intruded upon! Tom Doyle spoke to Bush in 2005 and, in the years between albums, there was the usual media speculation: Had she had a breakdown or retired? Was there ever going to be another album? Was something more sinister behind her inactivity? If the media perceived Bush as a recluse and someone who was very illusive and strange, the Bush that greeted Doyle in 2005 was a forty-seven-year-old mum who was dressed in brown shirt top, jeans, and as welcoming (if nervous) as ever.
“Around us, there is evidence of a very regular, family-shaped existence – toys and kiddie books scattered everywhere, a Sony widescreen with a DVD of Shackleton sitting below it”. It is, as Doyle writes, a “disarming environment in which to meet such a daunting figure”. One thing that many people do not realise about Bush is how normal she is. I feel there is this vision of her living in a Gothic mansion with jewels around her; this sense of her being otherworldly and superhuman. In the run-up to Aerial’s release, Bush and her guitarist partner, Danny McIntosh, found themselves shattered (after Bertie’s birth in 1998) and moving to a new house – they then spent months doing it up. Being Kate Bush, she was not going to hire a nanny or help, so she was attending to her motherly duties and demands of the house whilst slowly fermenting and constructing songs. Bush was having to adapt from a fourteen-hour working day that she would have undergone in years previous, to being in the studio far less frequently. If pre-2005 albums took a while to come along because of the time she spent in the studio getting songs right, it is understandable how time would have flown by when she had to juggle so many things after giving birth and moving home! Bush herself wondered whether an album would come out and if she could make it happen and, if one fabled story about EMI visiting her home – who came down and, when asked what she had produced, Bush took some cakes from the oven and presented them – is not true, there must have been some nervousness from the label about their huge star and her eighth studio album. Bush is rare as an artist, as she never took a penny in advances, and she did not play the label her works-in-progress before an album came out – one can imagine artists now having to present their music in a very different way now!
Bush was asked what it was like playing EMI the album for the first time: “Well, the first time they listened in the studio. I just think they were relieved that it wasn’t complete crap. So they’re thinking, ‘Phew, thank God for that’”. EMI’s chairman, Tony Wadsworth, was blown away when he heard the album and relieved that it was finished. One passage from that interview seems to epitomise the contrast between Kate Bush the artist and her as a normal person. MOJO observe how the music remains beguiling, unique and this balance of the mundane and ordinary (Bush is always interested in the everyday when it comes to her lyrics) and the simply magical. One domestic conversation between Kate Bush and Danny McIntosh caught my eye. “A clock somewhere strikes two, and the chipper, ever-attentive Danny McIntosh arrives with tea, pizza, avocado drizzled with balsamic vinegar and cream cake for afters, only to be fully admonished by his partner, who protests, “I can’t eat all that shit!”. Digging through the MOJO special and reading interviews like that from 2005 makes you wonder what she is doing now and what her daily life is like – even at a time like now, I can imagine it is a house filled with humour and great moments! I am going to end by taking from an interview from 2016 but, sticking with the interview from 2005, and there are a couple of things I want to quote before moving along. MOJO comment how Bush stares into the late-afternoon light one moment, before bursting into life as she presents Bertie’s favourite toy of the time: a disembodied hand (“like Thing from The Addams Family”) that “creeps its way across the carpet”. That seems to perfectly articulate the two sides to Kate Bush: the dreamer and always-thoughtful person who loves the simplicity of nature and the outside world, but someone who is intrigued by technology, new inventions and other people. Before moving on from this interview – and skipping ahead to 2011 -, and there was a question that I knew the answer to but it made me smile reading it in print…
It relates to Bush meeting the Queen for the first time – Bush was awarded a CBE in 2013, and it seemed to be a smoother meeting than the first time. When she was attended a music industry reception at Buckingham Palace, some say that she asked the Queen for an autograph. Bush grinned and confirmed: “Yes, I did!”. “I made a complete arsehole of myself. I’m ashamed to say that when I told Bertie that I was going to meet the Queen, he said, ‘Mummy, no, you’re not, you’ve got it wrong’, and I said, But I am So rather stupidly I thought I’d get her to sign my programme. She was very sweet…”. In terms of personal development and big shifts in Bush’s life, there were not any major changes between Aerial in 2005 and Director’s Cut arriving in 2011 – Bertie was older, and I am sure one or two big events had gone down in the Bush household! In musical terms, I guess one cannot easily compare the two albums. Director’s Cut was Bush reworking and rerecording songs from The Sensual World, and The Red Shoes – albums where she felt there were issues with production or many of the songs needed room to breathe and required some stripping down. I just want source from a MOJO interview from Keith Cameron, and highlight some interesting parts. At 8:35 a.m. – on the day of the interview – Bush rang and wondered whether it was a good time to conduct the second part of the interview. It was not, as Cameron explained, and he asked if they could re-arrange it for 9:15 a.m. Five minutes later, whilst Cameron was driving through South London, he was caught in a scrape with another vehicle and, moments before, pondered whether it was wise to delay Kate Bush – showing that she could literally drive men to distraction after all these years! Bush conducted that first interview in six years by phone – she did invite a couple of people into her home to interview then (including Mark Radcliffe and John Wilson for the BBC).
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for Director’s Cut in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
Bush did call MOJO back at 9:15 a.m. and she explained how, in the start of her career, she didn’t realise that she could say ‘no’. I think her enthusiasm and eagerness to promote her music and do as much as possible tipped the balance and, years later, she was resolved to promoting less and recording more: “And then suddenly I was being asked to do all this stuff, so I thought, Right I’d better do it! What I didn’t like was spending all my time promoting the thing and a very small amount of time being set aside for the creative process. That wasn’t me. I just put the balance back the way I wanted it”. MOJO were impressed that, whilst Bush was engaging in one aspect of music that she has never fully enjoyed, she was a fifty-two-year-old being a mother and trying to lead a normal life as possible. The humour of Bush showed. Cameron was asked whether he had heard the new album and, when he said he had, he confessed that the new version of Moments of Pleasure made him shed a tear – “Oh God, it’s not that bad is it?” was Bush’s retort. In the interview, Bush was asked everything from whether the death of her mother affected The Red Shoes (she said the songs had been written but “it was devastating, for all of us as a family”), to whether that album was originally conceived as being more stripped-back and she intended to tour it (“Yes, you’re right. And… it kind of just went away”). There is one more interview I want to briefly grab from but, in the Director’s Cut interview, Bush was asked whether she still worked with Del Palmer – her former long-term boyfriend, trusted and varied player, and her engineer since the Hounds of Love days. She confirmed she was working with him (and he also engineered the follow up, 50 Words for Snow), and she was asked whether he was sick of her by now: “Oh, I think so! It’s wonderful, because I’m working with someone I know so well and I’m very relaxed when I’m in those very early stages of the creative process”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for 50 Words for Snow in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
She explained how she is shy and feels very relaxed with Palmer – “in some ways, in the nicest possible way, it’s almost like he’s not there”. Del Palmer was there for 50 Words for Snow (his credit is ‘Recorded by Del Palmer’), and, actually, I wanted to go past that album and to the last big event involving Kate Bush: her 2014 Before the Dawn residency in Hammersmith. She spoke with Jim Irvin of MOJO about the release of the live album of that show in 2016. Irvin noted how Bush had refused face-to-face meetings and interviews since Aerial arrived – they were speaking with one another by phone. That is not entirely true. Bush invited to her home Ken Bruce, Mark Radcliffe and John Wilson (both for Director’s Cut, and 50 Words for Snow - you can hear her speak to Wilson about Director’s Cut here, and 50 Words for Snow here; I am not sure what happened to the Mark Radcliffe interviews. She spoke to him, in her home, about Aerial in 2005 and, strangely, there is a 2011 interview Bush conducted with BBC Radio 2’s Jamie Cullum that has also disappeared online!); so it was a rare event but she had opened her doors to people – she also spoke to Matt Everitt in the flesh for BBC Radio 6 Music in 2016 to similarly promote the live album. In the final passages, it sort of takes us back to the beginning and how, whilst Bush has released remarkable albums through her career and been consistently brilliant, her life had changed a lot since 1978. She was asked whether she knew things would get crazy after her debut album arrived: “No. You deal with stuff as it comes in, don’t you? It was such an intense time. But it was very exciting that it was being responded to in such an incredibly positive way”. I am going to complete my selective dig through the MOJO magazine special on Kate Bush in a minute but, before completing, there is an interesting couple of sections from that 2016 interview relating to the live album. Bush was asked what the audiences were like: “Every night they were fantastic. You couldn’t have wished for more appreciative audiences. There was a different energy coming off them every night, but they were all so receptive”. The reception Bush was afforded on the various nights shows how much people adore her and that her months of hard work (around about eighteen months or so from start to finish) paid off!
It was lucky that Bush made it to the stage at all! The Ninth Wave is performed in full during Before the Dawn, and part of it sees her immersed in water. She was filmed singing and floating in a twenty-foot water tank; she co-directed for hours at Shepperton Studios. The challenge was to create waves in the tank – as Bush played a woman lost at sea and it needed to look realistic – but not damage the vocal microphone in the process. Bush grew increasingly irritable, and there was quite a tense exchange between Bush and the technicians: “But it doesn’t look right, we need bigger waves”. “You can’t fucking have bigger fucking waves!” was Bush’s response, clearly aggravated about the increasing cold and uncomfortableness (she developed flu-like symptoms that night and was told by her doctor she had mild hypothermia and only to be in the water two hours the next day – Bush, as always, suffering for her art and dedication!). Bush remarked noted, in the show’s notes, that she truly questioned her sanity! The gamble and suffering paid off, and she made a triumphant return to the stage – the first big production since 1979’s The Tour of Life. That was in 2014 and, just over six years since that residency ended, we await her next move. I was really struck by the MOJO Collectors’ Series print of Kate Bush, as I learned new things and, more importantly, had affirmed my appreciation of her talent and how hard she has worked to get where she is! She is seen as a goddess-like figure and sex-symbol; others remark on her spectacular songs that still sound like nothing else, and others see her as a recluse and someone who hides away. I wanted to highlight both her openness and normality; the way she has tirelessly worked through the years and, despite all her success, she remains rooted and dedicated to home and family – if, at the start, it was to her parents and two brothers, Paddy and John, now it is her son and Danny McIntosh.
Although Bush’s second recording experience was with the KT Bush Band – the band she performed in pubs with prior to recording most of the album; in April 1977, they were invited to De Wolf Studios to record some demos (they did not appear on The Kick Inside; instead, musicians from established, more professional bands like Pilot were used instead) -, her first was in 1975 at the age of sixteen. Instead of sitting mock O-Levels, she was instead recording what was to be the final version of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Bush recalls how gutsy it was of her to sit in that studio and realise that she had achieved a long-held dream. Her parents would have wanted her to take her O-Levels and focus more on school but, as the MOJO feature quotes “I wanted to make music. When I look back at it, they (her parents) were really great about it. Because they probably saw I so driven that it was what I was going to do anyway”. Forty-five years after that fateful (if nerve-wracking!) first experience of a professional studio, and Kate Bush has become an icon and one of the most beloved artists ever! I would urge people to buy that MOJO edition, even if they have a passing interest in Kate Bush, as it is illuminating, informative and very revealing. One gets a bigger and better sense of an artist who, through the decades, has negotiated early critical dubiousness and misrepresentation, the demands of album releases, the addictive lure of technology, and the revelation of motherhood. From the first notes on The Kick Inside’s opening song, Moving, to the final notes (on Among Angels) of her most-recent studio album, 50 Words for Snow, she has beguiled and moved the world; inspired so many people and made an indelible mark on the fabric of music! Let’s hope that 50 Words for Snow was not the final chapter, as I don’t think the whole story has been told. The thing about Kate Bush is that she could release two albums in a year (as she did in 1978 and 2011), or she could suddenly announces that she is coming back to the stage (as she did in 2014). The surprise and unpredictability is why so many people love her so, and let’s hope that the enigmatic, ordinary, spellbinding and hugely important Kate Bush…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Victor Spinetti, Phil Lynott and Leo Nocentelli, circa 1979
NEVER changes.