FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989 in a photo from The Sensual World sessions/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
1989: Tony Horkins (International Musician and Recording World)
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I may wrap up this particular…
Kate Bush series of features, but I love revisiting old interviews! I was struck by one I have not included before. 1989 was the year she released The Sensual World. One of her finest albums, it followed the genius Hounds of Love (1985). Her most mature and self-examining album to that date, the promotion around the album is fascinating. I am highlighting sections of an interview from Tony Horkins for International Musician and Recording World. A brilliant interview that dug deep into The Sensual World, you can read it here. There are some portion of the interview that I want to show:
“Sitting comfortably in the high tech surround of Abbey road studios, Kate Bush, that most English of English roses, is trying to define exactly what English music really is.
"I think lyrically there's a lot that defines English music, and I suppose a certain approach to sounds," she considers emotively. "There are very definite American approaches to sound - guitar sounds, approaches to songs, the Fender Rhodes; as soon as you hear that it's America. But to actually define African, or American."
Which may go some way to explain why her new album, The Sensual World, is so mixed in its influences and so far removed from anything we may immediately consider to be English. A swirling mass of eastern European rhythms, Bulgarian singing, Irish fiddling and that unique vocal and lyrical quality that belongs to Kate Bush. But then Kate Bush isn't the type to be influenced by day time radio; not for her hours spent tuned in to the inane ramblings of Gary Davies and co.
"I don't spend much time listening to radio, and when I do it tends to be Radio 4. I guess we spend so much time listening to music in a very sensitised way, in recreational terms, that you need relief for the ears. I tend to listen to more when I just finish an album, rather than during, which is stupid.
"A good example of this is that when I finished the last album, I heard this Bulgarian music. (Les Voix de Bulgare, the extraordinary close-harmony choir whose two Les Mystere albums were surprise hits for 4AD). I thought 'Shit, I wish I'd have heard this while I was working on the album.' I think it was good in one way because I had a lot of time to think about the possibility of doing something with them. The thing that would worry me a bit is that if you like something you are influenced by it, and I'd probably try and connect to other people's music of that time. it takes me such a long time to make an album that it would be drastically out of date."
This is, perhaps, something of an underestimate. It's been nearly four years since we had the opportunity to discuss her then current album, Hounds of Love. Surely she hasn't been working on The Sensual World since then?
"I was saying to Del (Palmer - boyfriend/ bass player/ programmer/ mixer) that I think my tapes wouldn't know what to do if they weren't left sitting around for years. I think they'd have a nervous breakdown - they go through a fermenting process. Like wine, or something. I don't do anything to the songs, I just sit and let the tapes mature.
"I think in real terms it's been about two and a half years, and it's been done in bits. We started and then took quite a few months off to do a few things at home, and also it was the only way I could cope with this album - to keep taking breaks. It's quite an intense process - especially Del and I working together so isolated. We had to take a lot of breaks to think about stuff. A lot of time with this album was spent thinking. Not actually doing, but just thinking."
Home is where the Art is
As with Hounds of Love, The Sensual World was recorded mainly in Kate's home studio, with orchestral parts added at Abbey Road, Irish extras in Windmill Lane, Dublin, and the Bulgarian women recorded at Angel studios. The result is as diverse as it is interesting, and on first listening much more complex than her other albums.
"Some of them are really bizarre - I worry about my sanity sometimes, really. All of the tracks have taken such completely different processes."
Including the opening track, also the first single, which didn't quite end up as Kate imagined it initially would.
"Now that was a really complicated process for a track to come together. It started off with a song - no words. I'd had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Blooms' speech at the end of Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del had done a Fairlight pattern, and I'd done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought God this is just ridiculous, just how well it's come together.
"We then approached the relevant people for permission to use the lyrics, and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried everything. So I thought if we're really getting nowhere with this, let's take a different approach to the song. I heard this piece of music which a fan sent in about two years earlier, and we put the tune in the choruses in place of what we had. So that went in, and all the lyrics I had to change.
"To try and keep the sense of the original words, but something that would be original, I came up with this idea of Molly Bloom stepping out of this speech into the real world. And in the book she's such a sensual woman - womanly, very physical, it just seemed that she would be completely taken by the fact that this 2D character could actually go around touching. So that's what it turned into. The fact that they didn't let me use the lyrics turned the song into something very different. It was such a complicated process, and really quite painful to actually let it go."
The Fairlight still plays a large part in the music making process for Kate, even though many others may have abandoned it for more contemporary, and cheaper sampling sources.
"I think it's a very good instrument still. It's just one of those things. Everyone I know is the same; we pull out the Fairlight and they go, 'Oh no sounds rubbish. Eventually you do find sounds that really work. I think the whole process of sampling instruments is becoming very boring, wading through sounds..
And she further proves her reluctance to purchase This Year's Model by raving about a recently acquired DX7.
"I was very impressed. Initially I thought I'd just use it for ideas, but we've used it quite a lot on the album. We blend it in with other stuff, and hopefully it doesn't sound too like a DX7. I use mainly pre-sets. I think it's amazing how different you can make pre-sets sound if you treat them differently and bung another sound with them. It takes on quite a different character."
One of the first tracks she wrote for the album was Love and Anger. Again, the track didn't exactly write itself.
"I couldn't get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to do. I just couldn't find out what the song was about, though the tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was the problem, because I'd already set some form of direction, but I couldn't follow through. I didn't know what I wanted to say at all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting, up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it's alright really - 'Don't worry old bean. Someone will come and help you out.'
"The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay, so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more difficult songs - everyone I asked to try and play something on this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people just couldn't come to terms with it. They'd ask me what it was about, but I didn't know because I hadn't written the lyrics. Dave was great - I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there, really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And John (Giblin) putting the bass on - that was very important. He was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually liked the song."
Sentiments which must have inspired the next track, Deeper Understanding.
"It's about someone being trapped in the city, in isolation at work, where they just spend all the time with this computer, actually really developing a relationship with it. Which a lot of people seem to do - they talk to it. So the idea is in sending off this programme for the lonely lost; they put it in and this sci-fi being comes out and says 'I know you're lost, but I'm here to help you, we love you.' This person doesn't have human contact any more, he's just kind of addicted to the machine. I suppose in subject matter terms I really do see it visually.
"So I had this thing and started to write it on the Yamaha piano at home - one of the old CP90s, which is still great. I asked Del for a rhythm, and he put down this very mechanical rhythm on Fairlight. I put DX7 over the top, John Giblin did the most beautiful bass - though it took a while. It always does when I work with John - the main problem is that he just makes me laugh so much."
Deeper Understanding is also the first track to feature the Trio Bulgarka.
"That song was sort of finished when I got involved with the Bulgarian singers. I just thought of all the people to represent a being that exudes divine love, it had to be the Bulgarian singers. The idea was to put them in the chorus where the computer was singing, so that they'd have this ethereal sound."
Track seven, Between A Man And A Woman, gets a simpler treatment.
"That was, let's get a groove going at the piano, and a pretty straightforward Fairlight pattern. Then we got the drummer in, and I thought that maybe it was taking on a slightly Sixties feel - not that it is. So we got Alan (Murphy, Level 42 guitarist) in to play guitar - who unfortunately wasn't credited - a printing error. He played some smashing guitar. Then I wanted to work with the cellist again, because I think the cello is such a beautiful instrument. I find it very male and female - not one or the other. He's actually the only player that I've ever written out music for. They're lucky if they get chord charts normally.
"We were just playing around with a groove. We actually had a second verse that was similar to the first, and I thought it was really boring. I hated it, so it sat around for about six months. So I took it into a completely different section which worked much better. Just having that little bit on the front worked much better. Quite often I have to put things aside and think about them if they just haven't worked. If you leave a little time, it's surprising how often you can come back and turn it into something."
The Write Stuff
Inevitably, some of them are set aside for good.
"On this album I probably wrote more than I have in ages, but some of them really weren't up to much. They needed so much work to get them into shape. It's just not worth the effort. And you tire of it really quickly. You hear it three or four times and think it's so boring. I think something's got to have a personality, almost. It doesn't take much. Maybe just a little bit that you think works, and then you develop the whole thing from there".
A marvellous interview from a time when Bush followed up her most successful album in Hounds of Love with a successor that, whilst very different, is a remarkable and hugely well-received album. In her thirties when it was released, we were hearing and seeing a new era for Bush. One where she was blossoming into a woman with different ambitions and priorities. The Sensual World is a terrific album that every Kate Bush fan needs to hear over and over. It was great finding out more about it…
IN this deep and revealing interview.