FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in London on 29th September, 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky
1979: Danny Baker (NME)
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IT might seem strange…
that I am including one of the most disrespectful and dismissive interviews Kate Bush was subjected to for this edition of The Kate Bush Interview Archive. One reason I wanted to put it in here was that it as published in 1979. On 20th October, after Bush had completed The Tour of Life and was preparing Never for Ever. In terms of singles that had come out to this point, we had Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child in His Eyes from The Kick Inside. Hammer Horror and Wow had been released from Lionheart (also 1978). The public perception differed from that of critics. Whilst Bush was popular and her singles and albums sold well, there was this critical perception that she was weird. A hippy. A witch perhaps. Misogynistic and sexist, that view did not really shift until years later. I guess she always had some rough interviews regardless of the album she was promoting. The disrespect and patronising attitudes was probably at its peak in 1978 and 1979. Danny Baker wrote for NME and interviewed Kate Bush. Probably one of the worst hatchet jobs of that year, it is testament to Kate Bush’s professional, maturity – neither of which Danny Baker displays! – and calm that she professionally got through the interviews. I hope she has forgotten this experience. I wanted to highlight it because it shows the sort of attitudes and words levied at her in 1979. Only twenty-one when this interview was published, it must have been crushing and angering reading something like this. Thanks to this amazing website for providing the text to an interview that is a travesty and shitsh*w. It is a chance to see how amazingly dignified Kate Bush always has been. 1979 was also an interesting year.
She has completed The Tour of Life. Thinking about her third studio album, I guess Bush would have been excited to be in this position where she could talk about past work but also look ahead. Not to blame anyone for agreeing to the interview. I suppose EMI were keen for Bush to be as exposed and out there as possible. For the first few years of her career, she was subjected to some awful and rather tense interviews. I have included most of the NME interview here:
“NME had been after a KB interview for a while but, so I'd learned on leaving the office, her management were less than obliging. Me? Well, the truth is that I had no opinions about Kate at all. I knew the singles, but I really couldn't find it in me to go any deeper, to check out her roots (he said, nicking in this piece's most contrived gag). I still don't...such was our meeting.
Hey Kate. Do you feel obliged to sing like that these days?
"What? You mean..."
Y'know, like you could age the nation's glassblowers.
"Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I don't feel obliged--that is me. See, like in a recording studio, when it's all dark and there's just you and a couple of guys at the desk, well, you get really so involved that to actually plan it becomes out of the question. It just flows that way. As a writer I just try to express an idea. I can't possibly think of old songs of mine because they're past now, and quite honestly I don't like them anymore."
Doing Wuthering Heights must've been murder then.
"Well, I was still promoting that up until 18 months after I'd had it released. Abroad I was still promoting it on TV, where I was able to do it backwards and (she mimes it whilst picking her nose nonchalantly)...just weird." Have you still got people around you who'll tell you something's rubbish?
"My brother Jay, who's been with me since I was writing stuff that really embarasses me--he'd let me know for sure... Yeah, there's a few I can really trust."
She smiles again and I was warm to her. Mind you, she speaks my language, so I could be sympathetic because she's one of the South London rock mafia. I ask her what it's like to be paraded in the Sun and suchlike as the Sex Goddess of POP!
"Hmmm. You see, you do a very straight interview with these people, without ever mentioning sex, but of course that's the only angle they write it from when you read it. That kind of freaks me out, because the public tend to believe it..."
Asking a few more questions, I begin to realise that this isn't the kind of stuff that weekloads of Gasbags <The NME letters page> are made of. I'm searching for a key probe, but with Kate Bush--well, there's not likely to be anything that will cause the twelve-inch banner-headline stuff, is there now? I recall Charlie Murray's less than enthusiastic review of her Palladium shows, which were apparently crammed with lame attempts to "widen" the audience's artistic horizons--y'know, lots of people dressed as violins and carrots an' that. CSM reckons it was one of the most condescending gigs in the history of music. Kate had read the review, but she didn't break down.
"Just tell me one thing," she said in normal tones. "I mean, was he actually at the show that night?"
Yeah, sure. I remember he told me he'd spent a week there one Tuesday.
"Oh, well, in that case that's just his opinion and he's entitled to it."
We all smiled again, and Kate asked me if I'd seen Alien. I wondered if she got out much herself.
"Well, I don't get out to parties often. I have this thing about wasting time..."
Oh really? Which thing is that?
"You know, I nag at myself all the time for being a waster. I think, 'Gosh, you could be creating the world or something.'"
Well, that certainly seems a worthwhile thing to do, all right, although it has in fact been done before. Y'see, occasionally Kate allows the poet and all-round Tyrannosaurus Rex dreamer to slip out, a sucker for Lord of the Rings. For a start I have cut about a hundred "wows" and "amazings" from her speech. She talks at length about how important she feels it is to be "creating" all the time, and when I asked her if she looked to the news for any song inspiration I got this curious answer:
"Well, whenever I see the news, it's always the same depressing things. War's hostages and people's arms hanging off with all the tendons hanging out, you know. So I tend not to watch it much. I prefer to go and see a movie or something, where it's all put much more poetically. People getting their heads blown off in slow motion, very beautifully."
She grins broadly again. Kate is an artist through and through, seeing the world as a crazy canvas on which to skip. Her outrageous charm covers the fact that we are in the midst of a hippy uprising of the most devious sorts. I approach her on the question of being a woman in pop music once more. How do her workmates treat her?
"Well, when I started, I felt really conscious of being female amongst all these fellows. But these days I feel like one of the lads."
That doesn't sound very healthy.
"Oh, yeah, it is. When I'm working, it's really important for me to get on with it in that way. But at the same time, I sense that they're very respectful, because they make me aware of being a woman, and will lay off the dirty jokes and that..."
Incredible. Do you find men in awe of you?
"Socially? Well, I find that--with people that I haven't seen for a couple of years, because they won't treat me as a human being. And people in the street will ask for autographs and also won't treat you as human, but...ah...sometimes I get really scared. Sometimes when I'm going to the supermarket to get the coffee and cat litter, I get freaked out and see all these people staring, and you turn around and there's like forty people all looking at you...and when you go around the corner, they're all following you! You start freaking out like a trapped animal.
"However, I don't notice guys doing it on a personal level. Maybe some will keep their distance, but that may be because they don't get off on me.
"You see, when I first got started, I thought that I'd better watch out for these rip-off artists and stick with old friends. But it's amazing that since I've been in the business, I've made many more real friends, especially on a working basis. I find that I can get so involved with a guy working with me--and usually on a platonic level, which is great! That's so special, like these two minds linked on this one project. And that is a very beautiful thing that I'd never have experienced if I had not been in this business.
"And what's more, I'll keep these friends for life, because not only do they care for you, but they give me information and their teachings. What more could I ask for?"
Do you think there's a danger of becoming detached inside music?
"Probably. I don't read newspapers, and I've said I don't watch the news. I love books, but I don't read much.
"What I do is I get people to read to me, and I put the stories in my head."
A bit like a hat, I suppose.
"And films. I watch an awful lot of TV films."
Do you think you might be avoiding real life?
"Well, no, because I think that all these heavy issues--equality among blacks and whites, etc.--have all been done before, and if you do it now, it has to be very cleverly handled. It all gets too negative and cliched. So I find that, working with fantasy, I can handle the same issues, perhaps, but in a more positive way."
Don't you think that albums can make you feel and think sometimes without er...pussyfooting? I remember the first time I heard The Clash, and...
"Oh, yeah, some of these new bands are amazing. They're just springing up. The Police are just amazing..."
Here, listen, I think you've got the picture. Kate Bush, to meet, is a happy, charming woman that can totally win your heart. But afterwards on tape, when she's not there and you actually listen to all this, well...golly gosh. Don't lose sleep, old mates, it's just pop music-folk and the games they spin. Wow”.
It is a bit of a car crash interview. Danny Baker is truly to blame. I have never really respected him that much. An example of snobbish and dismissive attitude towards an oriignal female artist, I think Baker should have stuck to Punk artists and not really been assigned someone more interesting and intelligent. He was out of his depth! As one of the final examples for The Kate Bush Interview Archive, I was keen to both explore how some corners of the press approached Kate Bush and perceived her. Also, in terms of how Kate Bush reacted to stupid or insulting questions, she was so strong and professional. I am not sure other artists would have handled situations so well. Proof if ever it was needed that Kate Bush is…
A supreme human.