FEATURE:
Dreamtime
PHOTO CREDIT: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images
Going Beyond the Obvious: The Ultimate Kate Bush Interview Ambition
___________
MAYBE I have punted this out before…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
but, like all superfans of Kate Bush, an interview with her would be the ultimate dream! I am not sure whether there is another album coming along and what her plans are regarding promotion in the future. One hopes that there is going to be a follow-up to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. The likelihood of someone like me being able to score a prestigious interview is very slim indeed – in fact, I would say that it is virtually impossible! Rather than bury that dream or feel that it is not worth thinking about, I do often cast my mind to the scenario that would involve me speaking with Kate Bush. I am not sure how many interviews she has conducted since 1978. I would imagine we are talking triple-digits. It must have been exhausting when she first started out and having to adapt to the pressure and huge workload! I am going to drop a couple of interviews in (in video form) in this piece. There are a couple of print interviews that I really like. What I tend to find is that, when it comes to people interviewing her about an album, the same questions crop up. This is especially true for 50 Words for Snow. Maybe not quite as marked with interviews outside of the BBC; a lot of the BBC radio interviews comprised the same questions.
Whilst the interviewers had a lot of respect for Bush, I do wonder whether posing the same questions was the best idea when it came to eliciting information and something interesting. Of course, with an interview, you want to make sure that you are asking pertinent questions; not wandering too far from what she is promoting. Bush was generous with her time on her last album, so we did get to learn a few interesting things – beyond what she had to tell pretty much everyone who spoke with her. Lauren Laverne (BBC Radio 6 Music) got her to reveal the fact she (Bush) likes the film, Source Code, and is a fan of a good explosion. In other interviews, we learned how Bush was working on the album’s title track mere minutes before Stephen Fry came to record his vocal part – the 50 Words for Snow track is Fry (playing the part of Professor Joseph Yupik) reciting fifty made-up words for snow. I am going to bring in an interview Bush conducted to promote that album. Later, I want to quote from an interview that, I feel, should be considered by those who speak with Bush for any future albums. There were quite a few similarly-structured interviews for the 50 Words for Snow campaign. There were one or two that really caught my eye. I will wrap up by talking about how I would – if I was ever given such an incredible opportunity – approach an interview with Kate Bush.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow
For The Quietus, John Doran was invited to chat with Bush. What I like about this interview is the fact that Bush and Doran are quite warm and casual with one another. I feel Bush is very inviting and open when she is interviewed. One always gets something interesting and memorable. I feel quite a few people, for 50 Words for Snow, approached with unimaginative questions. This naturally resulted in identikit responses. I will not drop in the entire interview. There was a particular segment that I wanted to show people:
“I think that if I lived outside of London, maybe in the countryside where it doesn’t turn to a mixture of slush and hazardous black ice, I might like it more. Also, I’m very tall and for whatever reason I just fall over when it’s icy, I always have done. It’s very dangerous I think.
KB: [laughs] Are you a kind of glass half empty kind of guy?
My glass used to be completely dry. Now it’s half empty but I’m working on making it half full… No, I’m joking, of course I like snow, it’s simply marvelous stuff. But obviously there’s been a great thematic shift between Aerial and this album.
KB: Yeah.
So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it - it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?
KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.
I’ve only heard the album today so I can’t say I’m completely aware of every nuance but I have picked out a few narrative strands. Would it be fair enough to say that it starts with a birth and ends with a death?
KB: No, not at all. Not to my mind anyway. It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow.
Fair play. Now some of your fans may have been dismayed to read that there were only seven songs on the album but they should be reassured at this point that the album is 65 minutes long, which makes for fairly long tracks. How long did it take you to write these songs and in the course of writing them did you discard a lot of material?
KB: This has been quite an easy record to make actually and it’s been quite a quick process. And it’s been a lot of fun to make because the process was uninterrupted. What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it I went straight into making this so I was very much still in that focussed space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch and the freedom that comes with that.
I really like that interview! It would have been good to be a fly in the room – or listening into the phone conversation – and to have heard the chat first-hand. For me, it is the way Bush is very patient, polite and engaging – not that interviewers would do anything to incite ire!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
What I feel is missing from a lot of interviews is a bit of fun and something outside of the box. Lauren Laverne sort of touched on it when she asked Bush about any films or T.V. she had been watching (after and around the time of recording and releasing 50 Words for Snow). Maybe people feel hesitant to be that loose; afraid, perhaps, that they will offend Bush. I think she has an amazing sense of humour and would welcome some slight playfulness. She had to deal with quite a lot of ignorance and sexism in interviews early in her career (and a bit later, to be honest). Perhaps a reason why she was not always overly-keen on interviews was the way some questions deviated from music and focused on her looks or private life. There is a little of that in the Q interview from 1993. What I will say about that interview is that the cover for Q bore the quote: “Booze, fags, blokes and me”. That seems to be very tabloid and misrepresentative of what Bush was discussing or like – as thought she was very wild and had entered a phase where she was pretty heady! She was promoting The Red Shoes at the time. there are some really interesting questions that allows for more general conversation and some intriguing revelations. Reaching Out have the interview on their site and say the following:
“Although she does briefly respond to questions about drinking and smoking, she never uses any of the above language, making the quotation marks completely unfair. The interview, which appears below, is however not bad. The photos also shows what may or may not be a Bush-owned property; there is no explicit identification of the locale for the photos (the interview is described as having taken place in a dubbing studio). Certainly Kate herself is making new statements, ones which in some cases wholly contradict things she has said in dozens of earlier interviews; and the general tone she manages to transmit (in spite of the journalistic filter) is fascinatingly different from that which has characterized her speech heretofore. Enjoy”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993
“Would you make a good therapist?
"I really don't know. When I was little, I really wanted to be a psychiatrist. That's what I always said at school. I had this idea of helping people, I suppose, but I found the idea of people's inner psychology fascinating, particularly in my teens. Mind you, it's probably just as well I didn't become one. I would have driven all these people to madness. I'm better off just fiddling around in studios."
What newspapers and magazines do you read?
"I don't, really. I find them all slightly biased and angry in their own ways, and generally I prefer the radio or the television, especially where news is concerned. I know the television is biased too, but it doesn't seem as sort of characterised as the press. And magazines I don't read at all, I'm afraid. I did for a while and found them quite boring and slightly manipulative. I thought a lot of magazines were trying to -- or if not trying to, then ending up, making you feel inadequate. I didn't think a lot of healthy things were going on in them. I had friends who got magazines regularly and they were getting more and more concerned about them, more and more obsessed with the articles and the quizzes. It took me a long time to grow out of The Beano, though, so perhaps I'm just not grown up enough for magazines."
Could you manage on a croft in the Outer Hebrides?
"Yeah, I think I probably could. There'd come a point when I'd have to come up for air, but a lot of my ways would suit that kind of life quite well, particularly if you wanted to do some writing. You can quite handle a very introverted lifestyle, but when that's finished, it's nice to get out. Do something different. But I'd love to end up somewhere quiet in the country."
Maybe it is to do with the way journalism has changed or, as Bush was in her Thirties when that Q interview was conducted, perhaps people feel the questions need to be safer, more ‘mature’ and a little less personal. It is a shame there cannot be a mix. It would be good to see some quick-fire or random questions in the mix for new interviews. Perhaps one feels they need a closer relationship with Kate Bush before they can take such liberties. I don’t think it would be unprofessional to ask questions such as what is she binge-watching and what her favourite novels are. An exploration of how film and literature has influenced her through her career would be interesting. Perhaps a question around all the musicians and people she has worked with and, if she could compile a dream team in the studio for an imaginary album, who would she select. Broadcaster Geoff Lloyd – I may have mentioned this before – has interviewed Paul McCartney several times. Because Macca has been interviewed a fair bit and is asked broadly the same sort of questions, Lloyd thought he would mix it up for one interview and brought in a copy of The Sun. He got McCartney to guess the Dear Deidre (she is the in-house agony aunt who solves readers’ personal problems) answers. I am looking forward to a new Kate Bush album and having two questions answered: How many interviews will she conduct? Who is she going to speak with? I think interviewers can learn from the past and bring something fresh and a little offbeat to a discussion. If I had the chance to speak with Kate Bush, then I would splice in some album-specific questions (about the recording and various tracks), though I would also drop in some research and knowledge in order to provide a blend of fun questions and those that she has not been asked before. One usually only gets one shot with Bush, so I think a more memorable and less routine interview is the best tactic! Whoever she is talking with and whatever album she is being asked about, an interview featuring Kate Bush is…
ALWAYS a delight.