FEATURE:
“They Really Aren’t Me Anymore”
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at Studio Two in Abbey Road, London on 5th October, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport
Dissecting Kate Bush’s ZigZag Interviews with Kris Needs
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THERE are a few more features…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the 1980 British Rock and Pop Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
that will be inspired by words from a recent edition of PROG. I am taking from pages 36-39. I have sourced interviews from ZigZag before where Kate Bush was interviewed. To coincide with the release of her third studio album, Never for Ever, in 1980, Bush was approached by future PROG writer, Kris Needs. Although some convincing needed to take place, Bush agreed to three separate interviews, which occurred at various intervals during the height of her success. For the new PROG, Kris Needs looked back at his encounters with Kate Bush. I am diving in and picking up on some of the observations and quotes. ZigZag was launched in 1969. The magazine was more used to seeing Punk figures and a slightly edgier type of artist, perhaps. In 1980, Bush appeared on the cover. She needed to be convinced this was not a stitch-up. Bush was understandably wary about photographers and magazines. Earlier in her career, she had engaged in photoshoots where she was persuaded to do unwise things or appear a certain way. Exploited a bit. Journalists skewing her words and portraying her in a very harsh way. However, Kris Needs understood that Bush was as engaging, unique and as important as any artist. Someone who deserved better treatment than she was getting from the music papers of the day. The ice was broken soon enough. Needs did get the green light to interview her. On Monday, 8th September, 1980, Never for Ever was released. Needs was scheduled to interview Kate Bush after the Daily Express. It was the Friday afternoon after Never for Ever was released. It was a memorable day. When he got to EMI’s Manchester Square offices in London, staff were popping champagne bottles. Corks flying n doubt! Why?!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at EMI’s offices in Manchester Square, London on 15th June, 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Rasic/Getty Images
Well, Bush went to number one! It was the first time a female artist had gone to number one on the U.K. charts with an album that was not a compilation. A record-setting achievement for the then-twenty-two-year-old. Remarkable! Naturally, Bush would have been more at ease than if the album has charted a lot lower. Never any fear that would happen! In an “emerald green top” smiling, Kate Bush was perched on a sofa in a side room. No wonder she was so happy given that incredible album achievement! Needs commended Bush on a maturity beyond her twenty-one years (she was twenty-two in September, 1980; perhaps he meant she was twenty-one when she completed the album). She was talking in her beautiful and distinct South London accent. Chatting for ninety minutes, Bush joked at one point it was like “two psychiatrists talking!”. Kris Needs must have been used to a different type of artist. Nobody with the same blend of characteristics. He outlines her “…bewitching mix of down-to-earth honesty and humour, steely determination and wide-eyed sense of wonder at her success, including coming in at No.1”. Bush revealed how she could not be believe she was at number one. She had to pinch herself! Such an important step and evolution for her, she noted how her first two albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart – were so far away. “They’re really not me anymore” she noted. Perhaps one of the most memorable things she said. Was she unhappy with those albums or recognising how far she had come in a couple of years?! Putting distance between where she was in 1980 and that busy 1978.
As Kris Needs notes, Bush was not unappreciative towards The Kick Inside and that debut success. She felt vindicated that “an album she spent a year conceiving and recording was a success”. Bush knew how her career would go now and how she would work. She told Needs that “When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain kind of sound. As a person, I’m changing all the time and the first album is very much like a diary of me at the time: I was into a very high range. The same with the second album. I feel like this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It’s like the first album on a new level. It’s very much under control”. That final word. I think it has a double meaning. Maybe Bush feeling more settled as an artist and her vocal is more honed and less dramatic. Also, as a producer on Never for Ever (with Jon Kelly), she had more say and control with regards her sound and vision. A coming-of-age album, Never for Ever followed the rushed Lionheart. As with her previous albums, there were clashes with EMI regarding singles released. They wanted Babooshka released as the first single. Understandable as it is clearly a song that would be a commercial access. Babooshka was the second single released. Bush wanted Breathing. A more political, heavy and perhaps more extraordinary song, Kris Needs told Kate Bush it was her creative peak to that point. This pleased Bush, who smiled and said she was pleased to hear it. Bush felt that it was the best thing that she ever produced. Her instincts were right, as Breathing reached sixteen in the U.K. and boasts one of her most memorable videos (directed by Keith MacMillan (a.k.a. Keef). That was released on 14th April, 1980; Babooshka on 27th June, 1980 (where it reached number five in the U.K.).
When Kris Needs first spoke with Kate Bush, she was twenty-two. He recalled how, during the “marathon conversations”, it felt as though Bush was “thinking aloud or working something out as her creative muse swum with new possibilities and pivotal moves like deciding between making a new album or doing another tour”. As her studio experience grew the answer was invariably making music. Bush in a place where she was making music truer and more real to her. Needs recalled how Bush came across as strong and focused. More ballsy than many of the male artists he interviewed! Bush said how easy it was to drown and be buried unless you state your presence. “Everyone has to fight and there are different ways of fighting”. She noted how she is trying to state her presence and wanted to do things as a “one-woman basis”. Working better as a single entity and then getting feedback from others, she knew in 1980 how the rest of her career should play out. That she was better producing and working alone. She would solo produce her next album, 1982’s The Dreaming. Even if Never for Ever was a step towards a musically truer version of herself, Bush did offer a caveat or caution: “…but it’s nowhere near to what I actually want”. Kris Needs asked whether success had sort of got in the way or stopped Bush from progressing her music. She answered how she was not aware of success when she is in the studio. It is only during promotional rounds she is conscious of it. “But the real pressures of success, I think, are something that comes from the inside…”. She did not want any of success’s pressure to take her down and get too much. Bush rightly stated how success is something people put onto you. She was going to be strong and not use it as a measure of something that defined her. Before moving on with the interview archives, PROG included a photo of the front and back of a sweatshirt that Kris Needs was given by Kate Bush. On the front was “It’s in the trees… It’s coming…”; the back has ‘Hounds of Love’ on it.
Kris Needs then moved to 1982’s The Dreaming. Producing solo with engineer Nick Launay engineering, percussion and a bigger drum sound was very much at the forefront. Tribal drums. The Fairlight CMI was experimenting with. A big decision why Bush built her own home studio for Hounds of Love was that huge studio bills were notched up when she recorded at Abbey Road, Townhouse and Advision. Given how Bush was not only producing solo but creating an album with more layers, sounds and experiments than Never for Ever, her routine was mainly work. Not sleeping as much as she should and with her diet taking a slide, the next time Kris Needs met her was very different to that initial meeting at Manchester Square where Bush was smiling widely. Now, as Needs writes, when he met Bush at the EMI offices, she was “less ebullient, somewhat drained and cautiously defiant about how the set would go down with fans”. Bush put her fans into two camps when explaining expectations around her fourth studio album. Those that knew her work understood how she does something different every time. She said that “a lot of people won’t like it”. If you were new to Kate Bush in 1982 or expecting an album with songs like Babooshka on them, then they were going to be in for a shock! That people wouldn’t understand. However, Bush stated how “the more I write the stuff, the less I worry about this stage, and the better it is”. Bush was conscious on second and third albums of what people would think. She would stop whilst writing a song and ponder that. Not so with The Dreaming. Bush was in a place where she wanted to be in 1982, so she would take the risk and potentially lose a few fans. Quite a brave risk for an artist who two years prior to The Dreaming came out had released a record-setting number one album.
Kris Needs was asked (by Bush) what he thought of the new album. He mentioned the new resonance in her voice, the “cinematic quality” and the “tiers of vocal overdubs”. Whilst giggling and absorbing Needs’s first impressions, she suddenly became animated. Proclaiming how this was the first album where she enjoyed listening to her voice. Maybe The Dreaming was a conscious effort to maybe make her voice grittier, deeper, more gravelled and masculine. Wanting to disassociate herself with that perception that she was squeaky-voiced and fairy-like. The Dreaming is an album with heavy percussion, dense layers and Bush taking her voice to new places. Hounds of Love, whilst not completely softening the palette, was a lighter and more accessible album. One with more nature and the open air. The Dreaming is quite dense, smoky and claustrophobic. Bush, in her words, put some balls into her voice. She had never written songs as long as the ones on The Dreaming. Bush was aware that a leap into experimentation and a whole new sound would cost fans. Making something that was more art than commercial music. The Dreaming entered the U.K. chart at number three and then dropped out of the chart. It sold 60,000 in comparison to The Kick Inside’s million-plus units. Quite a shift and gulf! After once more turning down an invitation to hit the road and tour with Fleetwood Mac, Bush spent three years working on her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love. That album would sell ten times more than The Dreaming in the first nine months of its release (Hounds of Love was released on 16th September, 1985). Kris Needs attended the premiere of Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985 with his flatmate, Youth (Martin Glover). He played on Hounds of Love and his bass can be heard on The Big Sky.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Del Palmer at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985 during the premiere of Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
The third interview between Kris Needs and Kate Bush occurred before Bush appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test on 8th October, 1985. Needs’s questions and interview was a lot less patronising than the one she was subjected to on The Old Grey Whistle Test! She was on the show talking about the single, Cloudbusting. Dressed in the same black jacket and lace blouse she would wear for the interview on The Old Grey Whistle Test, Bush gave longer answers to Kris Needs. Bush talked about Hounds of Love’s long gestation. It was the culmination and triumphant end to the first stage of her career. The stage that had been getting underway five years earlier when she first spoke with Kris Needs. Bush was not having to compromise or work with other producers. It meant that she could take more risks and work in her own way – and to her own timescales. She said that it could “seem like what you are doing is mad” How you need to be in control to get away with that sort of thing! Bush told how she didn’t have time to socialise because “Work just obsesses my life and everyone around be is dragged into it”. Whilst she liked the work and music, the exposure was perhaps not as welcome. She hated the idea of being this media-trained artist who grinned and announced an album was out! That vision of her on the side of a bus and everywhere. “I hate that! You have to laugh at it to survive”. Even though things were going well (Hounds of Love reached number one in the U.K.), Bush gave a thoughtful pause and said, “but it really is little me on the end, trying to keep up with it all”. In the new PROG recollection feature, Kris Needs ended the feature saying how after parting ways, he and Kate Bush swapped addresses and sent each other Christmas cards that year (1985). That Hounds of Love sweatshirt was dropped off by a motorbike courier. Very Kate Bush! Life took over and they lost touch. However, Kris Needs is happy that he spend some great time over five years with Bush. Someone who was this “beautifully driven and grounded artistic genius I spent those brief but magical afternoons with continued to stand her ground, see through her dreams and live happily ever after”. It is wonderful reading back those vivid memories and words from Kris Needs when he interviewed Kate Bush for ZigZag. From that happy first meeting when Bush’s Never for Ever hit number one to the more tired artist of 1982 when she had released The Dreaming; the final chat happened in 1985 when Kate Bush was at the…
PEAK of her powers.