FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
1989: Will Johnson (Pulse!)
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I have been writing…
quite a few Kate Bush features, because she has featured quite heavily on BBC radio and T.V. lately. Her music has always been popular and known but, because of this series of shows and spots dedicated to her, it is going to open it up to new people. I said I would end my series of Kate Bush interviews. There is one that I found that I want to include. I have looked through, and I don’t think I have included Bush’s talk with Will Johnson of Pulse! from 1989. It is a great interview from an American publication. At that point, Bush had been to America, but she had not visited it too often. The Sensual World was being publicised. It reached forty-three in the country, and it was a period where her work was becoming better known there. Of course, Hounds of Love (1985) helped that, but The Sensual World took things to a different level altogether. I love 1989 and Bush’s career. It was a time of change and transition. She was now in her thirties, and her music was changing. If albums like The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds of Love strayed away from the personal and romantic more, The Sensual World seems to be he most heartfelt and revealing album to that point – and perhaps the most revealing of her career. No wonder that so many people wanted to speak with Bush about it. I like this interview, as she interesting answers and revelations come about:
“But The Sensual World shows Kate Bush at her best. Innovative, novel, unique, but above all *different* -- she possesses a talent impossible to pigeonhole, a mystery very hard to solve. The title track commences to the sound of church bells, followed by those breathy, childlike Kate Bush vocals: "Mmh yes, Then I'd taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth/Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes/Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies/Off of Howth Head and into the flesh, mmh, yes/He said I was a flower of the mountain, yes/But now I've powers o'er a woman's body -- yes."
Once again, Bush's lyrics manage to caress those old erogenous zones; they sensually combine art with eroticism. The idea for the song came from Molly Bloom's snaking soliloquy (which fundamantally concerned sex and lust) at the end of James Joyce's epic "Ulysses."
"The original piece, right, was just the most beautiful piece of writing I've ever read," she enthuses in a soft voice slightly colored by a South London drawl. "It's like this never-ending sentence, this long train of thought, and the only thing that punctuates it is the word 'yes' and it very gradually accelerates. I just thought it was just one of the most sensual pieces ever written. When I came to write this album, I suddenly remembered this writing, and the original lyrics were from the book. I just picked it up and all the words fitted perfectly to the music. I couldn't believe that the two things would just come together.
"But when I applied for permission to use the words I was refused, so I was *extremely* disappointed," Bush continues. "Then I had to rewrite the words trying to keep the same sense of sound, but obviously I'm not James Joyce, so it was a question of keeping the same shape and creating a new story. So it gradually turned into Molly Bloom stepping out of her speech in the book and into the real world. In the book she's a very sensual woman, and it was the idea of her stepping out of this black-and-white world into the real world and being hit by the power of the sensuality of the world, the environment, the elements."
”And at first with the charm around him, mmh, yes/He loosened it so if it slipped between my breasts/He'd rescue it, mmh, yes/And the spark took life in my hand and, mmh, yes/But not yet, mmh, yes/Mmh, yes."
"A lot of people have said it's sexy," she continues. "That's fine, that's nice. The original piece was sexy, too; it had an incredible sensuality which I'd like to think this track has as well. I suppose it is walking the thin line a bit, but it's about the sensuality of the world and how it is so incredibly pleasurable to our senses if we open up to it. You know, just simple things, like sitting in the sun, just contact with nature. It's like, for most people, their holidays are the only time they get a real burst of the planet!"
The title track contains the usual Celtic influences that characterize so much of Bush's work, with an Irish contingent of Davey Spillane blowing the uillean pipes, Donal Lunny twanging away on the bouzouki and John Sheehan on the fiddle. Bush's elder brother Paddy is on whips. But what's her approach to songwriting -- each LP seems to be taking longer to produce, each more sophisticated as a result?
"You see," she says, "the thing is, I always want to do something different from the last record, and in some ways it's a question of putting space before the last project before you can even start. After the last album I just wanted to spend some time and just come down to earth again. I suppose this record took about two years in total to make; we took lots of breaks in between so the project actually felt like it had been going on longer, even though it's not been intense work. I found it very difficult to write some of the songs on the album -- some were very quick, but others were long and painful. I always find lyrics very hard, anyway, and the whole thing was very much a layering process, just sort of putting in all the different elements, putting the jigsaw together. It's not by choice it took so long; it's never fun being involved in a project that long, but I just couldn't do it any quicker. It's something that happens in phases, where you get times when nothing's happening -- and that's a good time to take a break, or else you're continually working on lyrics and stuff and you get a breakthrough. You might write a song and it comes very quickly, and you've maybe got lyrics and melodies for, say, another two, so you get musicians in and build on those tracks. Then you let them sit for a bit and go off and do something else. I think it's useful that you do 10 or 11 tracks on an album, so you can keep dotting round, so, even though you always end up getting sick of hearing them, you can at least keep diverting."
As her career progressed, Bush has gradually been able to gain more control over her music and output. Two things have been important here: firstly, the acquisition of her own recording studio somewhere in darkest Kent (southeast England), and secondly, the cementing of her relationship with longterm boyfriend/bassist/ engineer Del Palmer.
"Having the sort of creative freedom that I've now got," she explains, "having my own studio, taking the time to make albums, not putting something out 'cause there's pressure to, working very closely with Del as engineer, I just felt incredibly lucky to be in this kind of situation. It's a real privilege and I'd hate to abuse that. I think that the problem with writing songs is that you want to care about what you're doing, and sometimes the stuff you come up with is just so banal, you just have to really wipe through it. Get rid of all the shit, do you know what I mean? [laughs]. Hounds of Love was very much the main step, 'cause that was the first time we had our own studio, and I suppose the progression from that one to this is that we've upgraded the equipment. Also, on the last album, I was working with lots of different engineers who could only give me a certain amount of time, because they'd block-booked to someone else, and because I work so experimentally, I didn't want to block-book too far ahead or I wouldn't be ready for them. Working with Del, I've managed to get a bit closer again to the whole process. You know, if it's not working, then we can just go home. If I have an engineer in, it would be difficult to have that freedom and also to feel relaxed; there's a lot of time spent getting to know each other."
The Sensual World LP features 10 new Bush tracks, all written and produced by the enigmatic songstress, recorded by Del Palmer and mixed by Kevin Killen, whose most recent credits include Elvis Costello's Spike. ("Walking Straight Down the Middle," [sic] an atmospheric tale of the reluctance of human beings to face up to their fears that features some truly shrilling vocals by Bush, is only available on cassette and CD.) The first single, "Love and Anger," is probably the meatiest track on the LP. Throughout there's an African beat, the sound of Zulus raiding at dawn, interspersed by some slumbering fretless bass lines (courtesy of Eberhard Weber), and a "big" chorus orchestrated by the power chords of Pink Floyd alumnus Dave Gilmour and Bush bellowing as best she can. It took her a mere 18 months to piece together.
On "Heads We're Dancing," Bush warns the female of the alluring male: "They say that the devil is a charming man/And just like you I bet he can dance. .. A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform.. .. Hot down to the floor/But it couldn't be you/It couldn't be you/It's a picture of Hitler."
But it's the overall feeling of sensuality, of Bush's concept of the being and its relationship with the outside world, that underscores the entire album. In particular, it's the way in which the child comes to realize and experience his or her environment. The solo violin of the aforementioned Nigel Kennedy is accompanied by cello, Celtic harp, whistles, the mysterious Dr. Bush, and Kate's manic witch-like laughter on the eerie, "The Fog": "The day I learned to swim/He said, 'Just put your feet down child'. .. . The water is only waist high/I'll let go of you gently/Then you can swim wiht me." [sic]
"I do like the quiet life," she replies almost bashfully. "I do like having privacy; it's incredibly important to me, because I do end up feeling quite probed by the public side of what I have to do. I'm just quite a private person, really. You just end up feeling quite exposed; it's this vulnerability. After I've done the salesman bit, I like to be quiet and retreat, because that's where I write from. I'm a sort of quiet little person."
Which my explain why it's taken so long for this idiosyncratic yet compelling artist to break in the States. "Yes," she says perkily, "I've really had no success in America at all, apart from the Hounds of Love LP. That did quite well, and it was really exciting to think that there were people out there wanting it. But I've never seen it in terms of you make and album and then conquer the world. I must say it's never really worried me that I've not been big in America, but I'm with a new record company over there now, and I really feel good about the people -- they're lovely to talk to and to deal with. It's quite exciting for me. I just hope people out there will have the chance to know that the album's out. Then, if people want to hear it, they can. If they don't, well, that's absolutely fine.
"You know," she continues, "what I like about America is that there's a tremendous sort of hyper energy that I really like. Especially in New York -- there's a much stronger social setup, especially between artists. It's a very isolated setup here, because London's so spread out and everybody's off doing their own thing. You don't seem to bump into people the way you do over there; it's exciting to have that interchanging of ideas, just to talk to people who're going through similar things. It's real modern energy stuff. And also, I really like the positivity of the Americans. I mean here, although I love being here and I love the English, we're very hard on one another, very critical, whilst they have a wonderful willingness to give everyone a chance. We're really hard on people trying to get off the ground -- it's really unfair".
So much was to change after the release of The Sensual World. Bush’s personal and private life was impacted. She would endure loss. Her final album of the 1980s is one of her most enduring and finest. Containing classics like The Sensual World, and This Woman’s Work, it is the deeper cuts that really intrigue me. Kate Bush is fantastic in all interviews, but I do love the promotion from 1989. She is great in this interview. I wanted to highlight the incredible interview from Spin! Bush proved, as if there was any doubt, that she is…
A true treasure.