FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
pretty soon, as I feel I have included most of the best print interviews Kate Bush has been involved in through the years. American audiences became aware of Kate Bush when her debut, The Kick Inside, was released in 1978. It hardly did anything there. A single like Wuthering Heights was not embraced or understood. Perhaps too out-there or strange for American tastes, maybe there was an idea Bush would break America with The Kick Inside. The fact the album was not successful there explains why her albums were not released in the U.S. Buyers could get them on import but, in terms of her discography, America got very little from Kate Bush. Perhaps seen as ‘too British’ for America, things started to change by 1984/1985. 1985’s Hounds of Love brought Bush’s music to new American audiences and fans. Though the album did not receive huge acclaim from critics there, it did sell well, and she did visit the U.S. to do promotional duties. The interview I wanted to include is from Pulse! (it was a tabloid magazine published by Tower Records which contained record reviews, interviews and advertising) in 1984. Chatting with Richard Laermer, Bush speaks about her records in America. This was a year before Hounds of Love came out. The Dreaming (1982) is a totally different album. I am surprised that it did pretty well in America. I have selected sections from the interview with Pulse! that are especially interesting:
“Only two of my records have actually been released in America," Kate notes from her studio in Great Britain. "I was really pleased that there were so many people trying to get hold of the albums on import."
This sentiment is from a 25-year old lady who began writing songs at age 11. She says, "I didn't think I was going to do it for a profession. It was fun, something I really enjoyed. I spent most of my time create scenarios for songs. At 16 I had gotten to the point where my songs were presentable. That was after five years of writing ballads and slow songs like 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes.'"
Kate started recording her songs at that young age with the help of close friend David Gilmour [actually they weren't and aren't "close friends"], lead singer of Pink Floyd. Gilmour was so impressed with his pal's burgeoning talent that when she was 16 he introduced Kate and her vast collection of music to EMI.
"I signed a recording contract at 16. The hardest thing," Kate admits modestly, "was choosing the songs." Having stockpiled much more than an album's worth of songs, she was able to choose from the cream of the crop.
"Wuthering Heights," the first single, was a huge it in several European countries. "The story in 'Wuthering Heights' had been bugging me for about a month," Kate recalls, pondering on the lives on Emily Bronte's doomed lovers. "At the time I was recording the album, I began to down my thoughts on Cathy and Heathcliff and their incredible relationship. I really enjoyed the energy between those two."
And so did single buyers in England, pushing Kate Bush to superstar status her first time out. She toured the continent and Japan - where The Kick Inside still reigns as a national favorite - and returned six months later to record Lionheart, a quickly-produced recording that Kate now things [sic: thinks] harshly about: "I had only a week after we got back from Japan to prepare for the album. I was lucky to get it together so quickly. But the songs seem to me, now, to be somewhat overproduced. I didn't put enough time into them." She gave more time, and thought, to her 1980 release, Never For Ever, her first self-produced effort which, surprisingly enough, sported her first released single ("Babooshka") in the states and a big selling cult single in several American cities (the import "Army Dreamers").
The U.S. record buyer, however, ignored Kate until '82 when the rocker LP The Dreaming came out stateside in large quantities and suddenly the anonymity of a singer from Kent, England was reversed. That albums' hard sound proved to be her American kick-off, and due to the newfound saleability of Kate Bush, EMI quickly followed The Dreaming with a 1983 EP featuring some of her best material from the pervious four releases (called Kate Bush). Available only in the United States and Canada, this limited edition, with Kate dramatically poised in brass armor, was EMI's intended mode of bringing U.S. attention to Britain's singer elite.
Strength was her one motive when commencing work on The Dreaming, she says, explaining how for the first time she relied "on the power of the music" rather than sultry tunes and serene lyrics prominent in her previous albums. And the power in Kate Bush's music was an evolutionary process that is traced in the Kate Bush EP, fusing the new Bush force with those beautifics utilized in the earlier records.
"I was trying, in The Dreaming, to get myself up to the point I knew I was capable of," kate says of the search for power. "the Dreaming was my emotional image and I am thankful that I had good people to help with the dynamics."
In The Dreaming, she lends a topical theme to many cuts. "Sat In Your Lap," a punk influenced homage to pop Brit culture circa 1982, shows off Kate's feelings on knowledge and education: "Knowledge is something sat in your lap/something that you never have," because, in the singer's eyes, "the more you realize, the more you need to learn." But other parts of the record present a more maudlin view of things: The crazed "Get Out Of My House" was inspired by the horrors in Steven Kings The Shining and utilized several overlapping tracks that simulate madness. Kate sings about a house that takes over, a house possessed by devilish innards.
"When I'm writing a particular song," she says excitedly, "I can feel a character so strongly that perhaps I'm feeling the same." Well aware that her songs provide listeners with some extreme characterizations, she finds it "terribly important ... to make the person I am writing about come alive. Unless I can somehow live the experience I don't feel that I've achieved what I want to as a writer."
Kate is busy these days putting the pre-studio finishing touches on her fifth record. "I've been writing material for my new album - the songs are almost complete now," she said. "I hope to start recording in a couple of months when I've finished writing and tightening up the lyrics." As for the direction the record's music will take, she hasn't decided yet. She will venture to the U.S. later this year to promote it but not to tour. "It's a shame, but for now I don't see the possibility of a tour," she says with a sigh. "We can't afford to do it the way I'd want to." The way she wants to do it is right. For now she will wait and see the reaction to her newest product, and in the meantime hope that her American success continues to grow. About America, Kate is glad that video has made it to the forefront of entertainment. Having produced a clip for each single to date, on of her problems in not catching on here, she is well aware, has been the lack of video venues. These days most musically inclined cable channels carry Kate's work, both past and present. (According to ABC's 20/20, Kate was one of the ground-breakers in video production - years before MTV.)
On the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' invasion, Kate said she only became "very interested in the Beatles about four years ago. I'd always liked their singles but only really started listening to their albums a little while ago. I think they are a great influence on any writer," she noted, "the quality of their work is something, I feel, every composer aspires to."
Specific songs have left their mark on Kate Bush: "So many records have left great impressions on me. It is always hard to just call them all to mind so quickly but to mention a few - "No. 9 Dream" by John Lennon: "I Am The Walrus" by The Beatles: "He's My Man" by Billie Holiday: "Best of Both Worlds" by Robert Palmer: "Really Good Time" by Roxy Music: "Tropical Hot Dog Night" by Captain Beefheart: "Montana" by Frank Zappa: music by Eberhard Weber, and "the Wall" by Pink Floyd (and pal David Gilmour)."
The first record this lady of music ever purchased was "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha" by Napoleon XIV. She was very young. Pondering the subject of when she got into music, said that, "I've always been into music. I was a child then and I think all children embrace music."
These days Kate finds she's too busy to get involved in pop culture. "Since I've been in the business I've had a lot less time to keep up with what's happening," she said regretfully. "I don't feel I have to 'keep up' as such, but I always love to hear good music and see new interesting bands."
But most of what she listens to these days is classical. "Very little contemporary - mostly old favorite records and Radio 4." Britain's quiet one on the dial”.
I love that last part where Bush talks about some of the music she listens to. It doesn’t surprise me that she was a big fan of BBC Radio 4 – though one might not have guessed by listening to The Dreaming! Though Bush has never received massive acclaim and acceptance in America, reading interviews where she was on the cusp of it is quite exciting! I don’t think she was every truly bothered about cracking America, though exposure in the country was definitely important. Perhaps now, as she was seen then, Kate Bush was a little too British…
TO resonate in America.