FEATURE:
Twenty-First Century Girl
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
Kate Bush and a Change in Promotional Tact
_________
BRIEFLY returning to Aerial…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
and it reminds me of how promotion changed for Kate Bush. I guess this all goes back to the thing I hate most when it comes to anything related to Bush. How she is called reclusive. In fact, how she isa dubbed weird and mysterious. This secretive and selected human. I am going to mention this more in other features. We need to reframe how we see Kate Bush. This wonderfully open and giving artist, how can she be defined as ‘reclusive’?! What does that even mean?! I suppose a lack of live performances gave this impression that Bush was shunning the public and wanted to be firmly out of the spotlight. Instead, she was busy in studios and putting her music together! It was not as though she was out of the limelight through the 1990s. Even after The Red Shoes was released in 1993, Bush was still making music and was around. Spending time living a normal life, there was never this thing about her being reclusive and battening down the shutters! It is the normalness and everyday nature of Kate Bush that wrongfoots and bamboozles people. How could someone who came onto the scene with Wuthering Heights (1978) be anything other than this odd and relative human?! Right from the off, it was evident Kate Bush was not going to be more publicity hungry like many of her peers. She did not want fame; she rejected that term. I was listening to interviews around the time Aerial came out in 2005. On a few occasions, she was asked about this reclusive tag. In fact, in 2011 when she was promoting Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow, that word kept coming up. She definitely wasn’t and isn’t! Even to this day, she lives a normal life but does not need to be in the public eye in a rather forced way to make herself relevant.
I think something shifted from 1993. It was not only the intensity of promotion, but also the nature of it. I am going to dip my toes back into the fresh, inviting and warm waters of Aerial again very soon. A fascinating and very open promotional campaign that you would really not see much today. Many artists, when they are interviewed about albums, normally go to a restaurant, neutral venue or a studio. They want to stay away from their home, although you do get some artists who open their doors. When it comes to major artists, it is a bit hit and miss whether there are home interviews. Most tend to go out and about, and there are promotional photos too. Throw in all the social media side of things and it is very much about making an impression and getting your music and face out there. Kate Bush was not immune to this in 1993. The Red Shoes is a great album, though there was this combination of some slightly negative reviews and still this intensity of fascination. Whether Bush was being interviewed for Q (by Stuart Maconie) with a photo on the cover and a rather odd and weirdly-worded, false quote – “Booze, fags, blokes and me” –, or a somewhat cringe-inducing and very inappropriate interview by Michael Aspel for his talk show, you can see why things had to change! There was this air of seediness, sexism, misappropriation and fawning. Kate Bush either being painted as a sex symbol and asked about this or projected as this somewhat out-of-character rebel or something edgier. Perhaps an attempt to make her seem more relevant and cutting-edge in 1993. At a time when bands like Suede were coming through, did The Red Shoes seem as alluring and engaging as everything around it?!
The press from that time is quite odd. There are a couple of confrontational and uncomfortable interviews that leave you a bit cold. Bush didn’t do much T.V. and radio in 1993, though it was clear that the T.V. side of things would stop. Aerial was her first album where she did no T.V. promotion. There are publicity photos for the album but none of her during interviews so far as I can tell. She did some print bits, although it was mainly radio promotion. Rather than talk about the album itself, I wanted to chat more about the way promotional aspect shifted. Into the twenty-first century, it could have been so different. With the Internet a prevalent thing in many people’s lives, it did afford the opportunity of doing more print and blog interviews. I guess it was still sort of in its infancy. Social media was not really a thing. However, it was clear Bush was not going to enter the new century and repeat an exhausting pattern of the previous one. The notable changes with this new phase of her career was the location of promotion and the intensity. A 2001 interview at Harrod’s in London was a rare occasion of Bush being interviewed in public. However, it would be a few years later when she would engage in a more committed cycle of interviews. What we saw with Aerial was Bush was very willing to let people into her home. Whereas albums previous would see newspapers, magazines, radio stations and everyone else interview her at her home, random locations anywhere possible, Bush was more selective this time around. She was about to release a masterpiece and so she could afford to be picky. However, it was a big return after twelve years. She had to strike a balance between promoting the double album and not falling into old habits. Ones more dictated by EMI. She was still with the label then. I will end with Fish People and how setting up the label not only gave her more musical and creative control. There was also this sense that she did not have to do what was expected of her by a big label.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
It is obvious that the birth of Bertie, her son, in 1998 changed things. She wanted to keep closer to home. Not really bothered by what EMI wanted. As Graeme Thomson writes in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, people like Bob Mercer were not driving up to Reading to check in and get updates. Make her do anything she didn’t want to. The new century was a clean slate in terms of promotion. It is extreme that Bush was never seen during promotion. How to be invisible, indeed! She was heard and her words printed in magazines, newspapers and on websites. However, there was no lure or excitement about promotion. She would have had reservations about it. As such, she was very selective. Between Mark Radcliffe and John Wilson for BBC Radio, she covered a lot of ground. Giving very long interviews to them. People she listened to and trusted. People of similar ages. I don’t think any female interviewers (maybe less confrontation or a better interview she would have thought?!). It was a case of providing more time to fewer people. Definitely no T.V. or live chats. If she was going to promote albums in the twenty-first century, then it was going to be on her terms. She did not come back with music after resting and spending time with family to be burned out by the pressure and process once more! Because of this, there was no crappy Saturday morning T.V. show interviews or even many print inches. Maybe she felt she was misrepresented, misquoted and turned into somebody she wasn’t. Easier to guide the narrative, there were no photoshoots or any way we would see big-print quotes giving the wrong impression. Or even quoting things she never said! You could spend hours discussing all the interviews Bush did in the 1970s and 1980s. How they ranged from quire respectful to downright insulting, standoffish, misogynistic or hugely unprofessional.
When Aerial came along, she invited people to her house in Theale. As extraordinary as Kate Bush is, the interviews were set in this rather everyday and un-starry locale. It was less about aesthetics and traditional promotion as it was drilling down to the core and heart of the matter: the music itself. Something that continued into 2011 with two albums then - and promotion since then. Bush gave more interviews for 50 Words for Snow than Aerial I think, though she was still very much not playing the role of a traditional major artist. Perhaps she started to trust people more and did do press interviews. However, it was people she would have known about and had trust in. As such, I don’t think there is any issue of things being taken out of context or any awkward encounters. When writer Tom Doyle – whose book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, is a must-read – spent four hours in her company in 2005 for Aerial, there were no real challenges. He did give her his mobile number to call if she had any issues. She did call, though it was more to do with a minor change rather than any issue with the interview. Bush opening her home and hearth. But this was secure and safe. Maybe insecure about her body and looks, videos would feature her less and less. That notion of an artist showing their home to say they are normal and member of the real world. It was not an act or anything contrived in my mind. Instead, as she was a relatively new mother, she did not want or need to travel.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut
After nearly burning out in the 1990s, this was someone with a new lease and purpose in life. One that did not necessarily have to be all about music and her career. Between the kid’s DVDs, pizza, cream cakes and anything knocking about the Bush residence, we saw her through a new lens. What the twenty-first century also offered was the digitisation and computerisation of music. Bush was suspicious of it. Once a music video innovator, things had shifted in terms of technology and how videos were made. King of the Mountain was Bush shot from the waist up. Directed by the late Jimmy Murakami, she had a lot of input and say about the video, yet she was conscious about how she looked. However, as someone very natural and grounded, what was extraordinary about her promoting her albums this century was how ordinary things were. One of the curses of any artist coming back to the fore is the tabloid media. By 2011, when she was promoting Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow, perhaps there was less stock and titillation. Bush was in her fifties, so maybe a little less interesting to the scuzzy and lurid gaze of the filth rags. However, there was still this labelling of Kate Bush as reclusive and witch-like. People unable to distinguish the artist from the woman. People reading too much into the songs and assuming Kate Bush is being literal. This ignorance and myopia shared the media perception and still goes on now! In 2007, Bush did create some storm with security camera at her seaside Devonshire home. Trying to divert two footpaths that brought trespassers and members of the public into her garden. She wanted her privacy and very much valued her safety. New music and focus inevitably meant there were more eyes and unwelcomed obstacles her way. However, Kate Bush was very much willing to invite the media into her house. Very welcoming and hospitable, this was a dynamic that has continued to this day. I think there were a couple of 50 Words for Snow interviews where she was not at home, though she did do phone interviews from her landline and did not stray far from her family.
Detailed, deep and compelling interviews with some trustworthy and respectable people rather than this rotation of shorter interviews with anyone from anywhere. I could go into detail about the way Bush handled promotion in 2011 very differently to artists of her stature. The role (or lack of) from technology. It must have been trepidatious putting out new material after so long and considering how she was going to conduct publicity. That eschewing of photos, televised interviews and being very tactful and selective about images that went out. Maybe feeling overexposed and hugely objectified through her career, this was a woman with a young son and a new life. She was still so passionate about her music, through that idea of having to promote herself and be everywhere was gone. I think her setting up the record label Fish People was a major step. Cutting ties with EMI meant she could release albums how and when she wanted. Perhaps the last real tie to her previous incarnation. What now?! The post-Stranger Things Kate Bush has revisited her albums and lyrics book. She posts updates to her official website and gave an interview (from her home on the landline) for Woman’s Hour in 2022. I suspect, if anything new is coming (which Bush has hinted at recently), there will be a similar promotional feel to that of Aerial. After all, her latest studio album turns thirteen in a matter of days. It is an exciting time where Kate Bush is very much with us and engaging. Teasing new music into the bargain! However, after the 1990s, she changed how she engages with the press and promotes her work. Apart from thousands seeing her in the flesh for her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, this supposed ‘recluse’ has altered how she approaches interviews and getting an album out there. Not in terms of technology and modern practises. More to do with a healthier and more personally-led ethos that goes against what she went through in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. More modest and domestic than modern and starry, I think it has yielded some of her deepest and most compelling interviews. As such, you reapproach her later work and get so much from then. Bush not being misrepresented or misled in interviews. More questions about the music rather than odd tangents and personal stuff – though there was some of that in 2005 and 2011. All of this has led to a woman and artist who seems much…
HEALTHIER and happy.