FEATURE:
Someone Lost at Sea Hoping Someone in a Plane Will Find Them
IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1975
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love for various features this year. I will also come back to an idea I had a for a filmed version of the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave. Connected to The Ninth Wave is artwork. Specifically, I wanted to start this feature off by mentioning an event from 1994 where David Bowie was at the centre. It also connects to artwork by Kate Bush. Let’s untangle things a bit. Thanks to Tom Doyle and his excellent book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, for the inspiration. Kate Bush fans know that one of her music idols was David Bowie. On 8th January, the late icon would have turned seventy-eight. Two days later, it will be nine years since he died. He is in the minds of a lot of music fans. What an absence his death left. How important he was. For now, rather than mourn, I am using him as a jumping-off point. In 1994, there was a charity auction to raise money for War Child. David Bowie admired some artwork from Kate Bush. Bush had always wanted to meet David Bowie. She was in the audience, at the age of fourteen, for the final Ziggy Stardust gig on 3rd July, 1973. Someone who inspired her music and stage work, it is a tragedy that the two never worked together. I might explore this for another feature. Elements of David Bowie’s music in Bush’s work. How various albums, such as Lodger and Young Americans, can be detected in some of Kate Bush’s songs. Bush mentioned in an interview that Young Americans (1975) was her favourite Bowie album. Released the same year she recorded her first songs professionally, the timing makes sense. You can imagine a young Kate Bush listening to David Bowie (this article references a MOJO interview where Bush mentioned being struck by an iconic Bowie song (Starman): “Speaking to Mojo in 2007, Bush remembered being in the “bath, submerged by bubbles” the first time she heard Bowie’s music. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky,'” she quoted. “I thought it was such an interesting song and that he had a really unusual voice. Soon, I was to hear that track everywhere, and Bowie’s music became a part of my life”).
I will focus more on Kate Bush soon. David Bowie’s influence is important to keep mentioning. Last year, PROG published an article with quotes from Kate Bush through the years where she explored her love of David Bowie and why he was so special to her:
“Adding how the legendary vocalist soon became a favourite, rivalling her other heroes at the time, Bush added: "His picture found itself on my bedroom wall next to the sacred space reserved solely for my greatest love - Elton John".
"A fantastic songwriter with a voice to match, Bowie had everything. He was just the right amount of weird, obviously intelligent and, of course, very sexy."
Luckily for the Wuthering Heights singer, she managed to attend Bowie's final show as Ziggy Stardust, which took place on July 3, 1973, at London's Hammersmith Odeon.
Bush recalled: "Ziggy played guitar. And I was there to see his last show as Ziggy Stardust with The Spiders From Mars. The atmosphere was just so charged that at the end, when he cried, we all cried with him."
Speaking of the moment she got to meet him properly for the first time in real life, she wrote: "Working at Abbey Road studios some years later, I popped in to see a friend on another session....I was stopped in my tracks."
"Standing elegantly poised behind the console was David Bowie. He was lit from above and smoking a cigarette. He said, 'Hello Kate. "I froze on the spot and said, 'Er...Hello,' and then left the room, caught my breath outside the door and didn't dare to go back in again."
"We've met many times since then and I don’t have to leave the room any more....or do I?".
Following his death in 2016, Bush wrote a tribute in The Guardian, which read: "David Bowie had everything. He was intelligent, imaginative, brave, charismatic, cool, sexy and truly inspirational both visually and musically. He created such staggeringly brilliant work, yes, but so much of it and it was so good. There are great people who make great work but who else has left a mark like his? No one like him.
"I’m struck by how the whole country has been flung into mourning and shock. Shock, because someone who had already transcended into immortality could actually die. He was ours. Wonderfully eccentric in a way that only an Englishman could be”.
This provides context and background. I think about that occasion in the 1980s when Bush first met Bowie. She could only utter a few words and had to leave the room. Bowie, in the studio smoking and looking cool; Bush entering the room at Abbey Road Studios seeing one of her idols. Fast forward to 1994 when Bowie was on T.V. discussing some artwork by Kate Bush. Treated to a private viewing at the Flowers East gallery in Hackney, London. This was an exhibition of unique art from celebrities raising money for War Child. Included were works from Paul McCartney (a driftwood carving), Charlie Watts (a sketch of a hotel telephone) and Bowie himself (seventeen computer-generated prints). Bush’s, to my mind, only public artwork harked back to The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love. The seven-by-six-inch twin pieces were entitled Someone Lost at Sea Hoping Someone in a Plane Will Find Them and Someone in a Plane Hoping to Find Someone Lost at Sea. In the centre of these works of art was black velvet, which depicted the night sky. A red light was projected from a battery-powered diode. It sort of connects to the Boxes of Lost at Sea Hounds of Love reissue from 2023 (which has been nominated for a GRAMMY). Kate Bush had signed both at the back using a gold pen. Even if it was an embarrassing piece of television, just after eight the following morning, David Bowie and Brian Eno were filmed at the gallery for GMTV, where they were interviewed by Anthea Turner. The pieces of art were quite small, so Turner had a hard time reading the titles of each. David Bowie raised his eyebrows and had to read them. It was awkward viewing, through what remains is his appreciation of Kate Bush’s prowess and natural talent as an artist.
I am surprised there was not a collaboration between the two after that 1994 T.V. spot. A tragedy that Bowie and Bush did not step into the studio to record something together. One of music’s greatest what-if scenarios! Bowie told Anthea Turner how he would like the pieces even without Kate Bush’s name attached, as he felt they were lovely and romantic. He said he would bid for them. As Tom Doyle writes, the previous evening, a David Bowie fan, Neville Judd, waited outside the Flowers East gallery as Bush entered and enquired about the artwork she donated. She said they were about the sea…and about her. Once Bowie and Bush left the gallery, Judd was allowed in the gallery. He spotted filmmaker Nicholas Roeg – who cast Bowie in the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth – and there was a brief exchange. Roeg told Judd that one of them needed to buy Bush’s art. Judd did and spent £1,150 at the auction held at the Royal College of Art. Bowie was asked why he did not bid on the artwork. He said they were the loveliest things but something came up. I would love to know what prevented Bowie from owning a piece of Kate Bush history! Bush met Bowie several times. When he died in 2016, she mentioned Blackstar and how wonderful that album was. It was not a coincidence that, when she reissued her studio albums remastered in 2018, she included a very special song on a rarities collection, The Other Sides. Her 1975 recording of Humming – the same session where she recorded The Kick Inside’s The Saxophone Song and The Man with the Child in His Eyes -, which was a song about David Bowie, was finally released.
This 1994 love-fest for Kate Bush by David Bowie connects to her recent Christmas message. Where she talks about being at a Monet exhibition in London. It made me think about art and why Kate Bush did not continue. She has designed album covers and sketched the characters and storyboards for her Little Shrew (Snowflake) video. She has also no doubt enjoyed art exhibitions and been to many galleries through the years. I wonder why Kate Bush the musician did not also become Kate Bush the artist. Kate Bush has been hailed as the Queen of Art Pop more than once. Never the Queen of Pop Art. Or any other genre. I guess, as it is unlikely Bush will ever appear on one of her album covers again, that artwork will be a focal point for her next work. I do wonder if she will design it. I would like to think that Kate Bush’s love of artists such as Claude Monet might inspire her to pick up some oils, watercolours or chalk. Someone who loves gardening and knows how inspiring that can be, I’d like to think that she picks up a canvas and palette now and then. On Aerial’s second side, A Sky of Honey, there is a song on the suite called A Painter’s Link. Unfortunately, the 2005 original featured vocals from Rolf Harris. His voice was replaced by her son Albert’s when Aerial was reissued in 2018. It is clear that the influence of art and its importance was in her mind when she created this beautiful suite for Aerial. I would love to see more artwork from Kate Bush. Know who her favourite painters are. She is someone who I think could have had a future in various mediums. A great and varied actor. A novelist and a director (outside of music videos). Possibly a composer for film or T.V. scores (that possibility is still there). Kate Bush the artist has a good ring to it! Maybe something she does privately, I would be fascinated to know more about the artists who influence Kate Bush. Someone who I see as artist. Her music more as paintings than traditional songs. Over thirty years ago, David Bowie took a shine to two wonderful and charming pieces by Kate Bush. Has she been inspired since to produce more artwork for charity? Maybe something to look forward to from a woman who can…
DO almost anything!