FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Tour of Life
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
The Interview Experience
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FOR many of my…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005
Kate Bush features, I am exploring various books that offer great insight and fascinating chapters. I am going back to Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. I have talked about Kate Bush being interviewed before. How it was an important part of her career, though she grew wary of them. Not the best experiences for her necessarily. One would imagine that she would engage less with interviews as her career progressed. I mean, that is relatively true when you think of all the interviews she gave between 1978 and 1980. However, Bush is certainly not averse to the media. She knows that she needs to be involved with interviews. I think the sheer excess and saturation that was the promotional haul of her early career maybe enforces and influenced a more detached or homebound aesthetic. Someone now who will rarely conduct interviews away from her home. She is perfectly comfortable bringing people in to her home for interviews. I do like how Bush can remain active and visible but also not see the need to trapse into radio studios, onto T.V. sets and do the sort of press that other artists. It must be fascinating for those interviewing her. I think a richer and more interesting experience than in years previous. More time has passed so Bush has put more stuff out into the world. She can look ahead to future work but also provide detail and discussion about her previous albums. For those enamoured of Kate Bush and who work in the media, securing an interview is a dream. It is one shared by so many people (me included).
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the Q Awards on 29th October, 2001
For anyone luck enough to interview Kate Bush, it differs greatly to other artists and how they will do things. Coming into Kate Bush’s home. Unless they are phone interviews, you get to come into the Bush household and there is this distinct atmosphere and mood. More personal and warmer than a hotel room or studio. It might be more dauting to be on her turf. However, as an excellent host and very warm, Bush never makes people feel unwelcome or nervous. She knows it is a big deal. Returning to the Tom Doyle book, he is someone who has spent hours in Kate Bush’s company. On a couple of separate occasions, he has spoken with Kate Bush. The first time was in 2005 when Bush released her eighth studio album, Aerial. The settings of Kate Bush’s interviews in the twenty-first century have been interesting. In 2001, ahead of her picking the Classic Songwriter award at the Q ceremony, Bush was interviewed at Harrod’s. Visible and public but also in this sort of neutral setting, the experience was not always great. The setting in this case perhaps a little visible and exposed. You can understand why Bush has preferred to be at home. Not being filmed for interviews. The fact people can photograph her in public. The lazy recluse tags still get applied to her. Bush seen as this media-shy and hidden figure. It is not that she wants to be left alone and project this secretive image. Having been in the spotlight and public eye for decades, Kate Bush has earned the right to conduct interviews on her own terms. In 2005, after a twelve-year period of no studio albums (1993’s The Red Shoes started a period of dormancy, though Bush was writing and creating during that time), there was understandable excitement about a new album. I know those that interviewed who got to listen to Aerial ahead of speaking with Bush did so in a small room where the album and console was pretty much bolted to the floor. So they could not copy or share the album. Practically signing documents that they would not breathe a word of what they heard.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
It is exciting that Tom Doyle was originally meant to interview Kate Bush at Abbey Road Studios. That would have been amazing! I kind of think there should be a modern-day interview there. Maybe something filmed. A high-profile fan or writer speaking with Kate Bush about her career so far in the historic Studio 2 of Abbey Road – where she spent many happy days. I do hope that she does do an interview at Abbey Road. Tom Doyle was then told his interview would take place at Bush’s home. He was not given an address. Instead, he was picked up by a driver and taken up the M4 towards Reading. The diver told Doyle that he recognised him. In the sense the driver had Bush in the back of the car recently and heard her on the phone apparently discussing her interview with Doyle. Joking that maybe she should put a bag over his head, there was this cross of a hostage taking and someone being led into a wonderful surprise. The car pulls up and you appear before a set of gates. Bush does not live in the same house that she did in 2005. However, things are going to be similar in terms of the secrecy and being picked up. Quite a cool and luxurious way of going to interview Kate Bush! Maybe Bush would not answer the door. However, she lives with her husband Danny McIntosh, so he might greet guests. Bush walking in all smiles and laughter. One reason why I wanted to publish this feature was to dispel myths – that are still perpetuated to this day – about how Bush lives and what her home is like. Dressed in comfy clothes and appearing quite casual, maybe people have this impression of her being quite serious. Maybe thinking there is going to be something eccentric in the way she dressed. Instead, her home – as it was in 2005 – has rooms with antiques. A lot of space. Rather than a modest family home, Bush now lives in larger properties. The one Tom Doyle was in was a Georgian mill house. The recording studio a mere short walk across her garden. Quite an idyllic and restful place to conduct an interview. As Bush is among family and is on her own patch as it were, she did not have to worry about beating traffic and having to stress about outside factors. When she does eventually release another studio album, one can imagine a select few people will be invited to her home. The rest will conduct interviews over the phone. Even if the living room might have changed dynamic since 2005, there are going to be similarities. An ordinary studio home. Not the gothic mansion the press thinks she resides in! Her son Albert was born in 1998. A young child in 2005, now he is someone who is vastly well-educated and well-travelled. His presence not as obvious in the Bush household today. However, in 2005, there were DVDs and toys around. I can envisage her living room now still having a lot of films stacked up. Bush favouring physical media and vintage speakers rather than too many gizmos and gadgets.
To start any interview, as was evident in 2005, there are some nerves and reservations about the interview experience. Twenty years later, maybe Bush has changed her approach. All of her recent interviews have been done over the phone. I wonder when the last time was she welcomed someone into her home for an interview. I guess in 2011 when she was promoting 50 Words for Snow. Tom Doyle did mention how, before his first interview with Kate Bush, he gave her his mobile number. It meant that she could have a say about anything she was uncomfortable with. The two could have a dialogue. Bush did call a couple of days or so after they met to change a few trivial details. Doyle explained how that first meeting and subsequent phone calls with her revealed the real Kate Bush. Rather than the caricature that still exists in the media, Bush was this warm, gently controlling, self-critical and pomposity-spiking woman who was very natural, real and ordinary. Someone whose music maybe painted a version of reality that is actually more heightened or fictional. See Kate Bush today and she would be gardening, working around the house and going about her business. The whole interview experience does seem wonderful. Bush had a landline and is unlikely to be speaking to people online. The in-person interview at her home seems like she is greeting a friend. Rather than everyone being on the clock and there having to be this buffer – Danny McIntosh pottering about but never looking large -, there is an intimacy and directness that is rare in this age. This real unearthing who Kate Bush really is. How there is so much misperception and lazy labelling from the press. Also, rather than a new album being met with a rotation of cut-and-paste interviews where she is ferried around, Bush can be more selective about who she speaks with and where it happens. At her home under her roof. That is really important, exciting and accessible. Her home quite modest and grand at the same time. Small wonder so many people dream of an interview with Kate Bush! Some lucky few might get their dreams realised….
ONE day soon.