FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Selections from Three Great Promotional Interviews
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I may have used these…
as part of my Kate Bush Interview Archive series but, as her debut album The Kick Inside was completed in August 1977, I am using this opportunity to celebrate forty-five years since it was laid to tape. It would come out in February 1978, but the final song was recorded forty-five years ago this month. One of the most astonishing and original debut albums in music history, there was a massive amount of interest around Kate Bush. With the number one success of Wuthering Heights (her debut single) catapulting her into the public consciousness, Bush found herself traveling around the world performing and promoting. It must have bee tiring to undertake so much at a young age (she was still a teenager when the album came out!). Rather than drop in three entire interviews, I have chosen portions of three that are especially interesting. There is a mass of print, radio and T.V. interviews from 1978 where Bush was charged with promoting herself and her debut album. Always composed, professional and charming, it is incredibly mature and impressive of Bush to be able to not show any frayed nerves or fatigue! Below are portion of three interviews where the world wanted to know more about the stunning Kate Bush and her remarkable debut album, The Kick Inside.
The first, from New Musical Express in March 1978, was conducted by Steve Clarke. Kate Bush is very open and honest throughout the interview. I don’t think anyone in the media had met or experienced anyone like her before:
“The Kate Bush sitting opposite me bears scant resemblance to the doe-eyed female currently plastered all over London in poster form.
She looks out from the top of double-decker buses, peers at the weary commuter from in-between the tube ads for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Dalton's Weekly"--omnipresent, Kate Bush certainly is.
On the posters it's a coy, soft-focused Kate showing enough breast to--well, at least titillate the passing passengers. Face to face Kate Bush is an impish hippy girl who belies her much touted nineteen years.
Her debut "Top of the Pops" appearance gave rise to Kate being described as "a dark-haired Lyndsay De Paul," but she is neither doll-like nor petite, though hardly tall. Her faded jeans are mostly concealed under a pair of sheepskin-lined thigh-high reddish suede boots, and are in marked contrast to her very feminine fringed top.
Without much time to scurry home to the South East London house she shares with her two brothers to wash her carefully dishevelled hair for an appearance on BBC's "Tonight," Kate's in a hurry. Still, she remains charming and unflustered.
For a girl still in her teens, she's exceptionally self-possessed--especially since in recent weeks she's shot from nowhere to becoming a household name, courtesy of "Wuthering Heights", her first single. The song was inspired by Emily Bronte's romantic novel of the same name and is sung in a voice not unlike that of a newly-neutered cat letting the world know of his predicament.
To compound her mercurial success, her first album "The Kick Inside" is also high on the chart. Kate is amazed at the way things gone. "If you think of it in terms of people and not the money--'cause that's not relevant--it makes me feel very humble," she squeaks in her sing-song voice.
She was signed to EMI three years ago, given a 3,000-Pound advance and a four-year contract with options after the second and third years; i.e., if EMI wanted to drop Kate after either two or three years they could. Last year they re-signed her and it seems certain the company will retain her throughout this year too.
Amongst the credits on "The Kick Inside" is the Floyd's guitarist Dave Gilmour. It was, she says, largely because of Gilmour that she got a record deal. Kate had played piano since she was eleven, starting to write her own songs shortly after. A friend of the Bushes had offered to take some home-made tapes she'd recorded during her early teens round the record companies, but his endeavours were abortive--until he contacted Gilmour, an old friend from Cambridge.
Gilmour liked what he heard and offered to finance the recording of some professional demo tapes. It was also Gilmour who introduced Kate to arranger Andrew Powell (known for his work with Alan Parsons), who subsequently produced "The Kick Inside". The Gilmour-sponsored tapes received a warm welcome at EMI's A&R department. <This was after an earlier (second) demo tape, recorded at Gilmour's house, was submitted to EMI without success.>
Things couldn't have worked out more perfectly for the sixteen-year-old doctor's daughter. Fresh out of school with an armful of O levels, 3,000 Pounds in her bin and with no immediate pressures from EMI, Kate was free to pursue her ambition to dance. She applied to an ad in London's "Time Out" magazine and enrolled at Lindsay Kemp's mime school.
So why did EMI keep you under covers for so long?
"They were worried about me not being able to cope with things. And I was worried 'cause I didn't feel capable of coping with it either."
So Kate spent her days at Kemp's school with barely an interruption from her record company. "Oh, it was great," chirps Kate."I really got into the discipline. I had so much time and I could use it. For an artist that's such a delightful situation to be in.
"I came in to EMI on a friendly basis and that was good for me, because it meant that I could meet people there as people, and not as a big vulture business where they're all coming in and pulling your arm out. Also, I could learn about the business, which is so important, because it *is* a business."
The daily lessons with Kemp--50p a throw--were very informal. "He taught me that you can express with your body--and when your body is awake so is your mind. He'd put you into emotional situations, some of them very heavy. Like he'd say, 'Right, you're all now going to become sailors drowning, and there are waves curling up around you.' And everyone would just start screaming.
"Or maybe he'd turn you into a little piece of flame..."
Waiting for EMI to click its fingers did have its drawbacks, though. "Artistically, I was getting so frustrated at not being able to get my art to people."
Kate says that EMI did have a go at image-building and at persuading her to write more commercial songs ("Not so heavy--more hook lines"), but when Kate finally went into the studio last summer with half of Pilot and half of Cockney Rebel as her backing band, it was on her own terms. "Wuthering Heights" was originally scheduled for release last November, but was shelved at the very last moment because of--according to her--delays with artwork. By the time everything was right, the Christmas rush was on so Kate's debut was stalled a second time.
EMI had, however, already mailed out some copies of the single, one of which reached Capital Radio's Tony Myatt. Despite EMI's requests to the contrary, Myatt played the record before it was actually on sale. Ironically, Kate feels that Capital's championing "Wuthering Heights" is the key reason for its success.
So is it natural to sing that high, Kate?
"Actually, it is. I've always enjoyed reaching notes that I can't quite reach. A week later you'll be on top of that note and trying to reach the one above it.
"I always feel that you can continually expand your senses if you try. The voice is like an instrument. The reason I sang that song so high is 'cause I felt it called for it. The book has a mood of mystery and I wanted the song to reflect that."
That she sings in different voices on her album is not, claims Kate, due to an identity crisis--to evoke each song's particular mood she has to alter her pitch.
Kate insists that she isn't exploiting her sexuality: "That's a very obvious image. I suppose the poster is reasonably sexy just 'cause you can see my tits, but I think the vibe from the face is there. The main thing about a picture is that it should create a vibe. Often you get pictures of females showing their legs with a very plastic face. I think that poster projects a mood”.
The second interview I want to drop in here is from Melody Marker. Harry Doherty spoke with Kate Bush in June 1978. The first passage I have snipped concerns Bush’s determination when it came to single releases. We all know EMI wanted James and the Cold Gun to be the first single. She opted for Wuthering Heights and, as they say, the rest is history. There was contention when EMI considered what the second single should be. Bush also discussed working on her second album (Lionheart, 1978):
“EMI had wanted to go with another track, "James and the Cold Gun," a more traditional rock'n'roll song. But Kate was reluctant, just as they were with the new single, "The Man With the Child In His Eyes," which, musically, is a complete contrast to her first hit. The record company would have opted for a more obvious follow-up in "Them Heavy People."
"I so want "The Man With the Child In His Eyes" to do well. I'd like people to listen to it as a songwriting song, as opposed to something weird, which was the reaction to 'Wuthering Heights.' That's why it's important. If the next song had been similar, straight away I would have been labeled, and that's something I really don't want. As soon as you've got a label, you can't do anything. I prefer to take a risk."
The relationship with EMI has been good. Kate has been astonished that they've allowed her so much say. But she was very insistent that she should be involved in every facet of her career, to the point where, at such a young age, she had almost been self-managed, with help from friends and family.
"I've always had an attitude about managers. Unless they're really needed, they just confuse matters. They obviously have their own impressions of a direction and an image that is theirs, and surely it should come from within the actual structure rather than from outside. I often think that generally they're more of a hindrance than a help."
Ideally, she would like to exert control over every area to ensure that she is projected as she wants to be. Strangely, very strangely, the pressure and frightening newness of the music business hasn't upset her at all, and she reveals shyly that she somehow feels she has been through it all before. "I wonder if it has to do with the concept of time in some way, in that everything you do, you've done before." (Refer to "Strange Phenomena," on "The Kick Inside.")
For her, there is an unreal aspect to all that's happened. That she has had a number one single, a gold album, television appearances, interviews, attention . She has held a reasonable balance throughout and generally got through all the hub-bub as she would have liked. Disasters were her first television appearances in Germany and England, on Top of the Pops. "It was like watching myself...die. It was a bloody awful performance."
I remember watching with some shock when she appeared on Saturday Night at the Mill, hardly the most inspiring rock programme, and thinking those people didn't have a clue what she was about. To them she was a curvey little girl who contorted her figure erotically to a song they didn't give a damn about. Another weird programme to do was Tonight. Both, Kate points out, were at peak viewing time.
She doesn't know how ended up on them. They probably phoned EMI, but there was no way she would be averse to appearing on programmes like that.
"I was reaching an audience that was a little wider-spread, and that's incredible. That's what I'm really into. I'm into reaching more than the ordinary market because I think it's very...not snobby, but something similar, when you're choosing your public, and I think your public should choose you and you should get to as many people as you can, so that as many people as possible can choose you.
"I'm reaching people that have maybe had a totally different life from me and are well ahead of me in many standards, but yet they're accepting me. A lot of older people won't listen to pop music because they have a biased idea of what it is, and that's wrong because a lot of them would really get into some of the music that's around. It's not all punk, and if you can get music to them that they like, then you're achieving something. You're getting into people's homes who have been shut off from that sort of music for years. They're into their Bach...'Bach is wonderful, but I don't like that pop music.'
"Maybe they do, but they're never given the option. They're always given the music that people might think they like. But I think they're really into exploring."
She would, then, like to be more than just a young people's musician?
"I'd really like to think that there is no age barrier because that's a shame, and I'd like to think that there's a message in my music for everyone. That's the greatest reward I could get -- to get different people getting into different tracks.
"It really means a lot to think that I'm not just hitting on an area that may be just identified with me, that people are actually identifying with what the songs are about. I'm really not sure where my music is hitting, although I think it is mainly hitting younger people."
All of this involvement -- she'd also like to learn to produce -- mounts up. At times, the pressure must be unbearable, especially as all Kate's successes have come so fast. But no, she assures me again, the pressures don't come from the hits. She feels more pressure from the future, the fact that she has another album to do and there is so much to live up to.
"It's a great challenge. There's always something good in whatever pressure is around. There's an incredible challenge, and if you can do it and if you come out the other side and even if you lose, you've done it. I think that makes you stronger.
"The songs for the first album were written over a two-to-three year period, and now I've got a two-to-three month period for this one. It's ridiculous, and my admiration for people like David Bowie and Elton John, and Queen -- although I'm not into their music -- grows all the time. It's incredible how they do it. They do it all. They record and tour and promote.
"That's awesome to me. Incredibly so. I mean, I'm on a little level compared to that. It amazes me that they can keep their brains in a logical order without their speech getting all tangled because there's so much going on."
So what happens when you reach that situation? (There are plans to tour next year.)
"I don't know how I'll cope, but when you're in the situation it's very different. I would have thought it impossible to do what I'm doing now a few years ago, but now I'm here, it doesn't seem that amazing because, really, it's just doing your work on whichever level it is, and I'm really lucky for all the work I've been given."
But you've not had to struggle?
"Yeah, that's true, and it's a little frightening. There was only a struggle within myself. But even if your work is so important to you, it's not actually your life. It's only part of your life, so if your work goes, you're still a human being. You're still living. You can always get a job in Woolworth's or something.
"I suppose I would find it very hard to let go because for me it's the only thing that I'm here to do. I don't really know what else I could do that I would be particularly good at. I could take a typing course, loads of things, but I wouldn't actually feel that I'd be giving anything.
"I think you can kid yourself into destiny. I have never done another job. It's a little frightening, because it's the only thing I've really explored, but then again, so many things are similar. They all tie in. I really feel that what I'm doing is what everyone else is doing in their jobs.
"It's really sad that pressures are put on some musicians. It's essential for them to be human beings, because that's where all the creativity comes from, and if it's taken away from them and everybody starts kneeling and kissing their feet and that, they're gonna grow in the wrong areas”.
The final interview takes us to Trouser Press. They featured Kate Bush in July 1978. The Kick Inside had been out for five months. She was known around the world, but many only knew about Wuthering Heights and what everyone else was reporting. Many were curious about her upbringing and tastes. They correctly observed how Bush clearly had a lot of staying power and promise:
“Enough ranting. When Kate Bush sat down to talk, I was curious to know her roots.
Born in Kent in 1958, she said she'd started out taking violin lessons, but "couldn't get on with being taught it." So the rebellious 11-year-old began fooling around with the family piano, writing songs. That turned out much better.
"Every night for a couple of hours I'd sing and play. When I was 15 my family thought it would be a good idea to maybe meet some people in the music business and see if I could get some response from my songs... I think they were pleased to see I had something I could release myself in. They neither encouraged me or discouraged me, they just let me be myself, which is something I'll always thank them for."
Sounds like progressive parents to me. Enter Kate's brother, who "had a friend who'd been in the record business for a couple of years. He came around to listen to me. I put twenty to thirty of my songs on a tape and he'd take it to record companies. Of course there was no response; you wouldn't be able to hear a thing, just this little girl with a piano going 'yaaaa yaaaa' for hours on end... [The songs] weren't that good. They were OK, but..."
Usually the only musicians who will disparage themselves are the vets who have had the time to acquire sufficient self-confidence. I wondered how the artiste of the early days differed from the current one.
"I could sing in key but there was nothing there. It was awful noise, it was really something terrible. My tunes were more morbid and more negative. That was a lot of people's comment: they were too heavy. But then a lot of people are saying that about my current songs. The old ones were quite different musically, vocally, and lyrically. You're younger and you get into murders..."
Rejection was merely a small delay, though. Along came David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. "Dave was doing his guardian angel bit and scouting for talent. He'd already found a band called Unicorn in a pub and was helping them. He came along to see me and he was great, such a human, kind person - and genuine. He said, 'It looks as if the only way you can do it is to put at most three songs on a tape and we'll get them properly arranged.' He put up the money for me to do that, which is amazing. No way could I have afforded to do anything like that. EMI heard it and I got the contract."
Indeed, so good were the Gilmour demos cut in 1975 that two of them ended up unchanged on the LP. Remember that in '75 Kate Bush was 17.
The Kick Inside was produced by Andrew Powell in the summer of 1977, showcasing really hot-slick playing from some then Cockney Rebels and Pilots. The rest is chart history; chart history that would seem to have happened a little too quickly. In response to a question about future plans, Kate sounded weary: "I'm actually pretty heavily committed until late autumn. The trouble is that the records moved so quickly and I don't think anyone expected it. I found there are commitments already that are going on and on." Or, when asked about her reception here in the US: "The only people I can talk about are the people in the company and the interviewers. They're all great. I figured they would be anyway, because when you're talking to someone about themself you're usually nice." Jaundiced so early on?
The last three songs on Kick seem the most personal. "Room for the Life" comes across as a sort of "I Am Woman" glorifying childbirth. She feels women have a much stronger survival unit then men," since they can bear children, and thus should use their advantage to help men rather then play games with them. I don't really understand what she's talking about, but it can be dismissed as a Heavy Philosophical Matter, since she admitted to being in no hurry for a baby herself.
When we turned to spiritual matter, she seemed to be on firmer ground. "Strange Phenomena" suggest that she believes in Other forces.
"Oh yes, I do. The thing about us humans is that we consider ourselves it, that we know everything. I think we're abusing our power and are guided by things we don't know about that are much stronger then us. But you can't label them if you don't know what they are. Also, it tends to sound a bit trendy like 'the cosmic forces' and it's cruel to do that because most religions have been exploited. As long as they're not misinterpreted they're good because they give the individual something to hold onto."
A cynical view of faith for someone who regards herself as a believer. Later she would make a similar response when describing Gurdjieff as "the only religion I've been able to relate to" and then quickly ending her sketchy account with, "I don't really want to say much because I don't really have the knowledge to say it." At no time did she feel the need to justify herself to anyone else; she must get enough moral support from her own instincts.
The last song on the album is the title cut, which contains opaque lines like "Your sister I was born - you must lose me/Like an arrow shot into the killer storm." Que pasa, KB?
"That's inspired by an old traditional song called 'Lucy Wan.' It's about a young girl and her brother who fall desperately in love. It's an incredibly taboo thing. She becomes pregnant by her brother and it's completely against all morals. She doesn't want him to be hurt, she doesn't want her family to be ashamed or disgusted, so she kills herself. The song is a suicide note. She says to her brother, 'Don't worry. I'm doing it for you.'"
One of the best ways to look silly is to make predictions. Still, I suspect Kate Bush will have a lot of staying power. Her LP is so fully realized, and so distinctive that if her music progresses at all, she may well come to be one of those creative voices that everyone, pro and con, must take into account. Her unapologetic self-assurance never wanes and looks like the thing that will allow continued exploration
Musicians can reveal a lot about themselves when giving their opinion of the new wave, but Kate Bush did so intentionally. Professing an admiration for the Stranglers and Pistols, and the way the status quo had been shaken up, she went on to say:
"Maybe it's ironic, but I think punk has actually done a lot for me in England. People were waiting for something new to come out - something with feeling. If you've got something to tell people, you should lay it on them”.
Kate Bush is a fascinating artist who was thrust into the limelight and had to tackle so many different interviews and promotional duties. I was keen to include three interesting 1978 interviews published in promotion of The Kick Inside. That incredible debut is forty-five in February. I am running anniversary features to mark forty-five years since it was recorded. Although many interviews could see a future for Kate Bush, I am sure nobody could have any idea she would be hugely popular and talked about…
ALMOST forty-five years later!