FEATURE:
Kate Bush's The Red Shoes at Thirty
The Interviews
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I am going to do a few features…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart
about Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 2nd November. Reaching number two in the U.K. and twenty-eight in the U.S., it was a commercial success. Even so, like some of Bush’s albums, it was not met with a great deal of acclaim. Maybe slightly more fondly regarded today, it is a shame that the awaited follow-up to 1989’s The Sensual World was seen as below-par. By 1993, Bush had lost her mother (the previous year) and ended a long-term relationship. You can tell and feel that she was tired and in need of a break. Some of that fatigue does show on one or two of the album tracks. I really like the album, although I do think that it is a bit top or middle-heavy. Maybe if it was sequenced and stripped back then it would hang together better. Bush did re-record some of the tracks from The Red Shoes on 2011’s Director’s Cut. I am interested whether AI would be able to take the original album and make it sound a little different production-wise. Barer and perhaps closer in atmosphere to something like The Sensual World. As it was the 1990s and the era of C.D.s and stuffing as much as you could onto them (so there was no wastage), it did mean there were a lot of over-long albums. A production sound on a fair few that was quite punchy and a little lacking in feel, depth and emotion. Regardless, I think we need to show The Red Shoes more respect as it heads towards its exciting thirtieth anniversary. I am going to start by collating a few of the promotional interviews did in 1993. In future features, I am going to talk about the singles on the album. I will then discuss Bush’s 1993 and the aftermath of The Red Shoes’ release.
In November 1993, Vox Magazine interviewed Bush about the new album. After four years and a different sound, there was a lot of curiosity and interest around her first (and only) albums of the 1990s. It is an insightful interview to read – not least when Bush response to the question as to what she thinks of feminism/if she considers herself a feminist:
“How much time have you spent working on The Red Shoes?
"Well, 1 haven't spent that long. It went on over a long period of time-about two years of solid work amongst three-and-a-half to four years."
Each album seems to take you longer to make than the last Is this because you are a true perfectionist?
"I think 'perfect' is... I have used that word in the past, and used it wrongly because, in a way, what you are trying to do is make something that is basically imperfect as best as you can in the time you've got with the knowledge you have"
You don't normally release material unless you're totally satisfied...
"That's right. That doesn't necessarilly mean'perfect', but it's to the best of my ability. I've tried to say what needed to be said through the songs, the right structure, the shape, the sounds, the vocal performance--that is, the best I could do at the time."
When you've worked hard for something, you obviously don't want somebody interfering with it. In your cuttings, you've been described as the shyest megalomaniac on the planet, so how do yout work out the balance between that and being an incredibly quiet, private person?
"I think it's quite true that most people are extreme contradictions. It's like this paradox that exists, and I think that on a lot of levels, I'm quiet and shy, and a quiet soul.
I like simple things in my life...I like gardening and things like that, but when it comes to my work, I am a creative megalomaniac again. I'm not after money or power but the creative power. I just love playing with ideas and watching them come together, or what you learn from something not coming together.
I'm fascinated by the whole creative process--I think you could probably say I was obsessed I'm not as bad as I used to be, I'm a little more balanced now."
What's calmed you down?
"Just life, I think... Life gets to you, doesn't it? I also think there's a part of me that's got fed up with working. I've worked so much that I'm starting to feel... I felt I needed to rebalance, which I think I did a bit, just to get a little bit more emphasis on me and my life."
Where did you get the idea of 'Rubberband Girl"?
"Well, it's playing with the idea of how putting up resistance... um... doesn't do any good, really. The whole thing is to sort of go with the flow."
What about the sexual content--'He can be a woman at heart, and not only women bleed?
"It's not really sexual, it's more to do with the whole idea of opening people up - not sexually, just revealing themselves. It's taking a man who is on the outside, very macho, and you open him up and he has this beautiful feminine heart."
Have you found many of those?
"I think I've seen a lot of them, yeah. I think there are a lot of men who are fantastically sensitive and gentle, and I think they are really scared to show it."
A father image often comes out in your work. Is that because you're particularly close to your father or does it merely represent somebody or something you respect?
"I think they're very archetypal images: the parents, the mother and the father... it's immediately symbolic of so many things. I'm very lucky to have had an extremely positive, loving and encouraging relationship with both my parents. And you know I feel very grateful... I feel very honoured, actually."
Who is the Douglas Fairbanks character in 'Moments Of Pleasure '?
'Ah... In a lot of ways that song, er.. well it's going back to that thing of paying homage to people who aren't with us any more. I was very lucky to get to meet Michael (Powell, the film-maker who directed the original The Red Shoes) in New York before he died, and he and his wife were extreme;y kind. I'd had few conversations with him and I'd been dying to meet him. As we came out of the lift, he was standing outside with his walking stick and he was pretending to be someone like Douglas Fairbanks. He was completely adorable and just the most beautiful spirit, and it was a very profound experience for me. It had quite an inspirational effect on a couple of the songs.
"There's a song called 'The Red Shoes'. It's not really to do with his film but rather the story from which he took his film. You have these red shoes that just want to dance and don't want to stop, and the story that I'm aware of is that there's this girl who goes to sleep in the fairy story and they can't work out why she's so tired. Every morning, she's more pale and tired, so they follow her one night and what's happening is these shoes... she's putting these shoes on at night before she goes to bed and they whisk her off to dance with the fairies."
Are you still as involved in dancing as you were?
"I've had a lot of periods off, unfortunately, because my music is so demanding and I went through a phase where I just had no desire to dance. The last couple of years, it really came back, and it's been very interesting working in an older body. Your brain seems better at dealing with certain kinds of information. And I think there's something about trying too hard which takes the dynamics out of everything.
I think I've become less conscious through dancing, because it's very confrontational in a positive way - standing in front of a mirror and looking at something that basically looks like a piece of you, and you've got to do something with it."
Does that mean looking like a piece of shit?
"It does at nine in the morning. When I started dancing again, a couple of years ago, I hadn't done anything for about three or four years and although I had the desire to dance again, I really didn't know if I had the energy, or whether I could be bothered to go through all that and my body being so sore. But I was aware that, although it was difficult for me, I always felt better after the classes than I did before. I'd get up grumpy, then after I'd feel really good."
Is it true you once planned to be a psychologist or psychiatrist?
"Yes I did. I really wanted to be a psychiatrist, I really did, but I knew I'd reached the point where I would never be able to do all the training. You have to train as a doctor, I think, and be good at chemistry, physics, etc. I was never any good at maths, I just knew I'd never make it."
Are there any parallels with what you do now?
"I've never really thought of it, but I suppose I really like the idea of helping people and that I was really fasdnated by people's minds and the way they work--I still am. I don't think I've ever got into people's minds, but I've always been interested in how people think.
People think so differently from each other, people come to completely different conclusions from seeing or hearing the same thing... Now, how do they do that, other than there's all these internal processes going on?
I think it's like anything in life--you can never be sure. Sometimes I think you have to put complete trust in your feelings: this doesn't feel right, so I won't do it; logic says I should bury my feelings and say no, so I won't.
Also, in my position, you can't be naive. The chances are, there will be people who will approach me whose intentions are not pure, they're after something which is not necessarily kindly. Again, I think the whole process of allowing people to misrepresent you puts you in an extremely dodgy situation.
If you show someone something that's very honest and revealing, what are they going to do? Are they going to show themselves or are they going to hit you in the face?”.
The penultimate interview is with Time Out. It is a bit more general. Although it does nod to the album, it is more of a catch up and overview of an artist now in her mid-thirties. Maybe a view of where she has come from and where she is now:
“Is she disingenuous? Almost certainly not. But then one of the privileges of eccentricity is perceived innocence. Bush doesn't have to be disingenuous, because no one would believe it of her, not even if she went on telly and announced formally to a choking Michael Aspel that really she never meant a word of it; and isn't it great, pop, the way you can do anything you like so long as there's demand! After all -- perhaps above all -- she embodies the homely Noel Streatfeild ideal of creativity as a distinguishing mark, as a personal brand, fizzing, black and indelible. In a world overstocked with Gemmas and Paddies and Susies and Kates, who you are is what you're good at. That's how the grown-ups tell you apart.
She pours tea and places herself on the edge of her chair. She is small, not minute, and erect. One booted leg crosses the other and bumps gently up and down. She cocks her head and waits. She is courteous, cool and suspicious.
My friend Catherine has never opened any post addressed to Kate Bush. There was, however, a letter that came addressed merely to 'Catherine '. So Catherine opened it. Inside was a lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff about dreams, and about how the writer was watching Catherine. So Catherine snorted, noted the postmark and forgot about it. Then another letter arrived, identically addressed, from the same postal region; then another, and another, each of them increasingly weird and disturbing. Sometimes three would arrive in a day. And it so happened that on the day that Catherine decided to go to the police, a letter arrived that included a reference to Catherine's poetry and music, neither of which are big with Catherine. Also, the letter included the appellation Kate.'
'It's so nice to talk about my work for once,' she says. By this she means she's glad we've started by talking about the great film director Michael Powell and his influence on her, which is signally manifest in the title track of her new album 'The Red Shoes'.
'The Red Shoes' is a ballet film made by Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1948, telling the story of a dancer who is torn between the demands of a great impresario, who can help her to become an artist of destiny, and those of her composer/husband, who can bring her happiness. The story elides an old fairy tale and a take on the power struggle that raged between the dancer Nijinsky and Diaghilev, first director of the Ballet Russe. Bush says the song evolved out of a feeling she had one day at the piano of music running away with itself. The image in her mind 'was like horses galloping and running away, with the horses turned into running feet, and then shoes galloping away with themselves'. Which corresponded, conveniently enough, with the key fairy-tale element in the Powell film: the red pumps worn by the tragic ballerina, which are imbued with a magic that carries their wearer off in a terrible outpouring of expressiveness.
Bush contacted Powell shortly before he died, 'to see whether he'd be interested in working with me. He was the most charming man, so charming. He wanted to hear my music, so I sent him some cassettes and we exchanged letters occasionally, and I got a chance to meet him not so long before he died. He left a really strong impression on me, as much as a person as for his work. He was just one of those very special spirits, almost magical in a way. Left me with a big influence.'
Which makes some kind of sense. Powell's super-rich three-strip Technicolor, his English-ness, his 'expressiveness', his interest in the shadows cast by daylight; even, you could argue, his thematic preoccupation with islands, solitary souls and the unconfined spirit; these are some of Bush's favourite things.
'His work is just so... so beautiful,' says Kate, in her tiniest voice.
Meaning what, exactly?
'Well, there's such heart in his films. The way he portrayed women... that was particularly good and very interesting. His women are strong and they're treated as people...'
That's one kind of beauty.
'The heart, I think, is the main beauty. This human quality he has. Although there's clever shots in his films, they're not really used for effect, to be clever. They're used for an emotional effect. I'd call that a human quality. Like vulnerability. Also, I like the emotional qualities of the characters. I suppose in one way they're very English ...'
To combine her interest in Powell with her lust for new directions, and perhaps to solve one or two promotional problems, Bush has directed a 40-minute film interpreting six songs from the excellent 'Red Shoes' album. It will be premiered at the London Film Festival.
'I'll be very interested to see what people make of it. To see whether they regard it as a long promo video or as a short film,' she says.
Where do your stories come from?
'Oh, all kinds of sources but generally they come down to people. People's ideas or works. Films, books, they all lead back to someone else's ideas, which in turn lead back to someone's else's ideas...'
I've always assumed you must be a bit of an Angela Carter fan.
'Um, no. I don't think I know her stuff.'
She wrote 'Company Of Wolves' and was big, I believe, on pomegranates, the predatory nature of nature, the heat of female sexuality; that sort of thing.
'Oh, yes.' Bush smiles, and her dimple disappears.
Other post addressed to Kate Bush arrived which went unopened. Then one day a letter came for the attention of Catherine Earnshaw. This being ambiguous, Catherine opened it just to make sure. Inside was a note from a Harley Street doctor indicating that Catherine was fit as a fiddle. This was good news. Unfortunately, Catherine had not been to see a Harley Street doctor. She hastily sent the letter on to Bush's record company, blushing at her daftness in not remembering immediately that Catherine Earnshaw is the name of the storm-tossed tragic heroine of 'Wuthering Heights '.
You're 35 and you've been doing this since you were a teenager. How have you changed?
'I think I've changed quite a lot. Essentially I'm still the same person but I suppose I've grown up a lot, and learned a lot.'
What's made you grow up the most?
'You get lots of disappointments. I'm not sure that they make you grow up but they make you question intentions.' She pauses. 'But life is what makes you grow up.'
That's a fantastically evasive answer.
'It is quite evasive but I think it's true.' Still no dimple. 'It's hard to say... when I was young I was very idealistic, and I don't really think I am any more. I think I'm more... realistic. I think it's good to change. I think I'd be unhappy if I didn't change. It would mean I hadn't learnt anything’”.
I am going to end with parts of an interview Q conducted. Again, there are more general questions rather than song/album-specific ones. Apart from a ludicrous ‘quote’ on the cover – making Bush sound like she was into booze, drink and blokes like a ladette! -, the interview is interesting and quite casual. Very different to the artist who released her first single aged nineteen, I guess people were curious to see how she had changed. What she was into now etc. The subject of film came up pretty quickly:
“Have you got any heroes or heroines?
"I'm a really big fan of the English director Michael Powell. I just had this phase of really being into old film directors. Like Hitchcock. His stories are just so clever. So lots of film directors are, well, not heroes but strongly admired. A hero suggests something inhuman to me. And my favourite people and those dearest to me are very human and have such weaknesses, and that's what makes them special. They're not larger than life or inaccessible. I like quiet people and their funny ways."
If you were casting yourself, what part would you be good at?
"God! What would I be good as? A learner driver. I do drive. It's not my driving I'm not happy with. I just feel that's how I go through life -- behind the wheel, pretending I know how to drive when in fact I'm only learning."
You wouldn't make a good Lady Macbeth?
"Lady Macbeth? (Laughs) No. To tell you the truth, I'm not that intrigued by acting. If someone offered me something really interesting, especially someone I admired, I'd do it because I'd be crazy not to. But I'm no actress. I don't have the talent or the temperament."
Do you cry at soppy films?
"Yeah, if it's the right thing, though not as much as I used. I used to be very emotionally based. I'm not so sure I am now. Things can still make me cry, though, particularly music. Like the first time I heard the Trio Bulgarka. It's just sound. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I wasn't the only one sitting there weeping. Music has that way, doesn't it? You just go."
Have you got into grunge yet?
"Err, no. I like a lot of diverse music, but nothing really wild. Nothing very odd. I don't watch The Sound of Music every night or anything...But what is unexpected these days? I like classical music, but I wish I was more eloquent with it. I hear things and think, 'That's beautiful,' but don't know what it is. As you get older, you do get more into instrumental music, don't you? It's as if as you get older you don't want people telling you what they think or what you've got to think or do. Also, those great composers really knew what they were doing. A lot of contemporary art is made by people who haven't got any talent. Art made by talentless people can sometimes really work, but it's not the same as real craft."
Do you worry about getting old?
"I don't actually worry about aging, but I am at a point when I'm older than I was and there's a few things I'd like to be doing with my life. I've spent a lot of time working and I'd like to catch up. Over the next few years I'd like to take some time off."
What particular catching up would you like to do?
"Oh, nothing very significant or particular. Nothing, really...just travel and have some holidays. It's silly that I haven't taken more breaks. I've spent a long time in the city and I love being by the sea, and I'm starting to pine for it. I'd like to put energy into stuff like that."
How self-centred are you?
"Quite a lot, probably. I must be because of my work. It's all to do with delving into the self. That's how humans function. You're relating stuff all the time to yourself. My work is very selfish. But it's very meaningful to me when I see a letter saying that somehow it's helped someone else. It's quite a selfish thing that I do. And I'm becoming more aware as I get older of wanting to be more, well, giving to others. Like making this film: it feels better that the group is larger and there's more interaction."
Quite apart from the Prince collaboration, how do you get the likes of Lenny Henry, Eric Clapton and Nigel Kennedy to play on your records?
"You just phone them up. It's that basic. The main worry is getting up the guts to do it. Some people are kind of mates, so you just hope that you won't end up embarrassing each other. But with the others, you just have to get up the nerve to call them."
Do you believe in the paranormal?
"Yes, I do."
Is that it?
(Smiling:) "Yes."
O.K. Do you like shopping?
"I used to like it a lot, but I find it difficult now. I don't have a lot of time. I always feel that I'm rushing in and out to get stuff. People help me get a lot of my shopping when I'm busy, so I'm a bit removed from it. But I used to love it."
Do you get stopped in the street?
"No, not really. Sometimes people will come up, but I don't generally get stopped in the street. People tend to just smile at you. But you may have your trousers on back to front. It may not be anything to do with fame”.
On 2nd November – though some sources say 1st November, so I am not 100% sure -, we mark thirty years of The Red Shoes. Things would soon change for Kate Bush. Between the album release and 2005’s Aerial, there were long spells of disengagement. No real new music or news if she would be back. Sort of similar to today in some ways. The twelve-year gap between albums then will be eclipsed at the end of this year. So long as Kate Bush is happy and well, fans will wait and see what arrives! With no anniversary release or anything special planned for The Red Shoes’ thirtieth anniversary, I felt compelled to write some features. This is a great album that…
WARRANTS more love.