CLASSIC POP PRESENTS

KATE BUSH 4OTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

KATE BUSH 4OTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

THIS WOMAN'S WORK

09
CL ASSIC POP
PRESENTS
K ATE BUSH
9 772399 751009 PRICE £6.99

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 KATE BUSH
WELCOME
WHOEVER IT ACTUALLY WAS THAT
AUTHORED THAT NOW RATHER HACKNEYED
MAXIM THAT “WRITING ABOUT MUSIC IS LIKE
DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE” COULD
QUITE POSSIBLY HAVE HAD KATE BUSH AT
THE FOREFRONT OF HER OR HIS MIND.
09
MANY SUPPOSEDLY EXPERT COMMENTATORS
COULDN’T MAKE HEAD

T
NOR TAIL OF THIS his teenager was Beyond Wuthering Heights,
different, for sure. Bush has continued her course
WILDLY OSTENTATIOUS Not only had the into uncharted waters, delivering
SORCERESS WHEN 19-year old defied some of the most enchanted –
all expectations by snatching and enchanting – pop music the
SHE LANDED WITH the top chart spot with her first world has had the pleasure to
HER WONDERFUL, YET attempt, but she was also the receive… albeit for the most part
ENTIRELY UNCLASSIFIABLE, first female artist to do so with hidden from sight. Nonetheless,
her own material. It may seem whether in full view or nestled
DEBUT SINGLE staggering that such a feat had in the comfort of her seclusion,
WUTHERING HEIGHTS – taken so long, but it’s gratifying Bush has successfully navigated
AND NONE COULD HAVE that it was an artist such as Kate the unforgiving tides of fame
who finally achieved it. EMI with poise, eloquence, and an
PREDICTED ITS GRACEFUL didn’t even want to choose the often bullish professionalism.
UPWARD TRAJECTORY, song: she had had to force her More importantly, she has
DESADDLING THE MIGHTY hand right from the starting line. delighted our ears and eyes
But for those looking for simple with idiosyncratic songs and
ABBA FROM THE TOP OF pigeonholes, there were no real performances that touch the
THE UK CHART… clues as to where this strange, soul, occasionally tickle the ribs,
beguiling sound could have and that face subjects that many
come from. Of course, it didn’t would fear to tackle – often, in
matter; Kate was the origin. fact, approaching those subjects
Some short-sighted onlookers from some powerfully unique
spotted a cheap laugh in her angles. No less than 40 years
flamboyant mimes and octave- on, uncovering what makes Kate
hopping soprano, but others Bush tick is, it turns out, still a
noticed something else. Kate fool’s errand… but we can but
Bush was one of those very, try. Enjoy the issue!
very rare artists capable of
summoning something entirely
Rik Flynn Editor
their own – and her name would
go on to be dropped by many
others seeking the credibility
that, for her, was so hard-won.

T H E C O N T R I B U T O R S
Julie Burns Ian Wade Paul Lester Ian Peel
began her is a freelance has been both is a freelance
career writing writer, sub-editor Features Editor journalist
for Smash Hits, and PR who of Melody and industry
Chartbeat, achieved a Maker and consultant,
and Sounds. lifetime ambition Deputy Editor specialising in
Since then she has variously to write for Smash Hits back in of Uncut. Since 2007 he has international and catalogue
worked at BBC TV, Radio 4 and 1998 and has since worked for freelanced for The Guardian, marketing. He devised Classic
ITV, and has freelanced for The The Quietus, The Guardian, The The Sunday Times, The Pop magazine in 2011 and
Mail on Sunday, Sun Woman, Sunday Times, BBC Music, Time Independent, MOJO, Classic Long Live Vinyl in 2016 and is
Vintage Rock and Classic Pop. Out and many more. Rock and Classic Pop. the Editor-at-Large of both titles.

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 Cover image © Getty

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EDITOR
Rik Flynn
ART EDITOR
Alex Duce
alex.duce@anthem-publishing.com
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Rick Batey
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Jenny Cook

8
jenny.cook@anthem-publishing.com
MANAGING EDITOR
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steve.harnell@anthem-publishing.com
FOUNDING EDITOR/EDITOR AT LARGE
Ian Peel
ian.peel@anthem-publishing.com
HEAD OF MARKETING
AND PRODUCTION

24
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MANAGING DIRECTOR
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Tel +44 (0)20 37879001
LICENSING ENQUIRIES D E C A D E S
Regina Erak
THE EARLY YEARS 8
Tel +44 (0)7753 811 622 Surrounded by a supportive, musical family,
regina.erak@globalworks.co.uk a teenage Kate was given time to flourish
before she landed with an unexpected
triumph. Here was a young artist with a
All content copyright Anthem Publishing Ltd 2017, all rights reserved. While we make talent that exhibited something tantalising,
every effort to ensure that the factual content of Classic Pop magazine is correct, we cannot something entirely new…
take any responsibility nor be held accountable for any factual errors printed. Please make every
effort to check quoted prices and product specifications with manufacturers prior to purchase. THE EARLY EIGHTIES 30
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or resold without Both Kate’s debut album The Kick Inside and
prior consent of Anthem Publishing Ltd. Classic Pop magazine recognises all copyrights its speedy follow-up Lionheart showed an
contained within the issue. Where possible, we acknowledge the copyright holder.
unflinching desire to push boundaries. Bush
planted seeds that were destined to bloom
into many wondrous directions
THE LATE EIGHTIES 44
The period in which Kate truly took control,
and one which was all the better for it, with a
30
smash hit collaboration, her biggest single to
date, a selection of jaw-dropping videos, plus
two albums that showcased an artist more
than willing to lead the charge
THE NINETIES 58
A new decade, and Kate was forced to
take stock after tragedy, break-ups and
bereavement knocked the wind from her
sails. She emerged from her time away armed
with a new album and a characteristically
challenging companion film
THE NOUGHTIES TO TODAY 68
Kate might have mostly disappeared from the
public gaze, but fans couldn’t have guessed
what magic was afoot behind the scenes – a
new double album and news of an astonishing
return to the stage

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 Follow us

@ClassicPopMag

58
82
44
68
KATE BUSH
CONTENTS

FEATURES
POP ART 6
HOUNDS OF LOVE 56
Combining pop appeal with pure artistry, this
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GALLERY 98
Six images from the singer’s life, from a waif
Kate’s theatrical tendencies are evident in was surely Bush’s masterpiece in jeans to some of those knockout costumes
everything she does, and her broad portfolio THE RED SHOES 66 COLLABORATIONS 104
of sleeve art is no exception It was packed with famous names, but live Bush’s work with others is a fascinating
THE KICK INSIDE 22 shows never emerged, and troubles began – and still partly unheard – story
The child prodigy finally on record – with the AERIAL 80 INTERVIEW: SEÁN TWOMEY 112
inside story from one of the album’s players It had been ‘the great hiatus’, but this 2005 On Kate Bush News and HomeGround mag
THE TOUR OF LIFE 24 album was a delicate return to form BOOKS 118
It was a show like no other: Bush’s 1979 tour BEFORE THE DAWN 82 Photographer Guido Harari’s amazing work –
left an indelible impression on all who saw it When the first shows in over 30 years were plus the very best Bush books you can buy
ARCHIVE INTERVIEW 28 announced, fans pinched themselves – and KATE’S STORYTELLING 124
It’s 1979 and Kate is in the North of England, flooded in from all around the world Some of the meanings behind her music
telling the press about life and Lionheart TOP 40 86 LONG LIVE VINYL 128
NEVER FOR EVER 42 From obscurities to soundtrack cuts to oft- The essential guide to Kate on record
With new sonic and lyrical depths, the third overlooked album tracks to those perennial CLASSIC POP MOMENT 130
album showed an artist now fully in charge faves, we bravely pick the Best of Bush Friends in and out of music

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 6

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 From stylised illustrations to classic
portraiture, Kate Bush’s album covers
have constantly taken new paths.
Finding images to match this music
must be no easy task – but as Bush has
long been a woman firmly in control of
all aspects of her craft, we can be sure
that what we see is what she wants…

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S

ROLLING THE
BALL TO ME
KATE BUSH IS ONE OF POP’S MOST GROUNDBREAKING PERFORMERS.
HER SONGWRITING, HER ECLECTICISM, HER THEATRICAL FLAIR AND
HER UNIQUE VOICE INSPIRED A GENERATION OF SONGWRITERS AND
PERFORMERS, FROM TORI AMOS TO BJÖRK TO FLORENCE + THE MACHINE.
THROUGH HELP AND HARD WORK, THE YOUNG GIRL FROM KENT AVOIDED
THE TRAPS THAT BEFALL MANY MUSICAL PRODIGIES…
I A N R A V E N D A L E

ate Bush was born on 30 July, 1958, and hear her play the piano in one of the rooms of this

K
brought up in her family’s farmhouse in big house the Bushes had. I introduced Del Palmer
East Wickham in Kent. It was a creative – to everyone.” (Palmer went on to have a long-term
and supportive – environment. Her elder relationship with Kate from the late Seventies to the
brothers Paddy and John were involved in early Nineties, and also engineered and played
the local folk scene; bass on many of her albums.)
her father Robert, a doctor Young Kate’s talents were
by profession, played the not kept in the dark. The
piano. Kate began learning “I HEARD KATE AROUND family got in touch with Ricky
piano at 11, and also played Hopper, a university friend
the organ and, early on, the 1971 OR ’72… SHE PLAYED of John Bush’s. He’d worked
violin. With encouragement ONE OF HER SONGS ON for Transatlantic Records, and
from her parents and brothers had industry contacts. Kate’s
PIANO. I COULDN’T MAKE
it seemed inevitable that Kate demos at this point were very
would take her interest in HEAD OR TAIL OF WHAT basic; she was only 14, and
music further, and she began SHE WAS DOING. IT WAS hadn’t yet found her own
writing her own songs at a style. “My tapes were more
startlingly young age.
COMPLEX STUFF. SHE WAS morbid and more negative.
Guitarist Brian Bath – who IN A DIFFERENT AREA They were too heavy,” she
would later play with Kate in COMPLETELY” later said. “The old songs
their pub rock group and join were quite different musically,
her on her 1979 tour – was vocally and lyrically. You’re
close to her brother Paddy, younger and you get into
and heard his friend’s little sister demonstrating murders.” Of these early songs, only The Man With
her skills very early on. “Kate was around, and The Child In His Eyes and Need Your Loving (re-
I heard her play piano. She’s six years younger named Passing Through The Air) would survive.
than me… when I first met, she was 12! A tiny little Nothing came of Hopper’s initial attempts at
thing… I’d be jamming with Paddy and she’d run drumming up interest in Kate. However, another
into the room. With a bit of luck you might get to of his university friends was Pink Floyd’s

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CPP09.Upto78.print.indd 9
POP_UP Kate spoke of her family background in a 1978 promo cassette. “I think life is all about
how you see things. I was born into a family of very observant people. They’re very aware of people’s

9
motivations and why they do things. I think I’m very lucky because a lot of that has rubbed off on me”
© Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty
London, 26th September 1978
family’s home in East Wickham,
A star in waiting: Kate Bush at her

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S

Kate with mother Hannah

and brothers Paddy and
John at their home in East
Wickham, September 1978
© Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/
Hulton Archive/Getty

David Gilmour. The pair had become Despite the Floyd connection nothing
reacquainted at Hopper’s wedding, and came of either session in the short term,
Ricky sent the guitarist a copy of Kate’s possibly because Bush’s songs were quite
demo. Wanting to give something back unlike what was happening in pop music
to new artists trying to make it in the at the time. Kate turned her focus back to
POP_UP At the time of The Kick Inside Kate revealed her favourite singers: Billie Holiday, David Bowie

music industry, Gilmour listened to the school, sat her ‘O’ Levels, passed 10 of
own”) and Joan Armatrading (“special”). She also admitted to listening to rather a lot of Steely Dan

tape. It interested him enough to arrange them, and started studying for ‘A’ Levels.
(“an incredible songwriter”), Bryan Ferry (“an important writer”), Joni Mitchell (“she stands on her

to meet Kate and watch her perform. Gilmour, however, was still committed
He drove down to the Bush residence to getting the young songwriter a deal.
and, without Kate knowing, listened to In June 1975 he contacted producer/
her playing some arranger Andrew
of her songs on Powell, who writes
the family piano. on his site: “David
She was then told “DAVID GILMOUR Gilmour invited
that David had me for lunch at
been in the next INTRODUCED ME TO KATE the Pink Floyd’s
room listening – OR CATHY, AS SHE WAS office in Bond
and she played THEN KNOWN. SHE WAS A Street, London.
again, this time in When I arrived
front of him. In the VERY QUIET, BUT OBVIOUSLY he introduced me
early Seventies, THOUGHTFUL YOUNG GIRL. to Kate Bush – or
Gilmour was one Cathy, as she was
I WAS IMPRESSED BY HER
of the biggest rock then known. She
stars in the world, VIVID MUSICAL AND LYRICAL was a very quiet,
and, as Bush later IMAGINATION” but obviously
admitted : “I was thoughtful, young
absolutely terrified girl. He played
and was trembling me some of her
like a leaf! He came along to see me songs, and I was impressed by her vivid
and he was great, such a human, kind musical and lyrical imagination.
person. And genuine!” “We talked about which songs to do. I
Shortly after her 15th birthday David took a tape away, and we had a further
invited Kate along to his home studio to discussion a few days later: we agreed
record some of her songs with him plus on three songs, and David handed the
the bass player and drummer from the project over to me. I booked some time at
band Unicorn. The plan was to get Kate AIR London Studios in Oxford Circus with
a publishing deal, and a tape was also the renowned Geoff Emerick as engineer
recorded with just her and a piano. (who, to my great embarrassment,

10

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 Kate in June 1978 – a shot
taken by Koh Hasebe, the
Japanese photographer who
snapped The Beatles, Hendrix,
the Stones and many others

© Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S
wasn’t credited on The Kick Inside), and
booked Barry de Souza on drums, Bruce
Lynch on bass, and Alan Parker and Paul
Keogh on guitars. Kate would play piano
(although I played piano and electric
piano on The Saxophone Song). We had
another session a few days later with
the orchestra playing on The Saxophone
Song and The Man With The Child In His
Eyes – Kate played piano and sang live
with the orchestra. If she was nervous,
it didn’t show – I still think it’s one of the
best vocals I have heard.”
The Man With The Child In His Eyes
and The Saxophone Song both appeared
on 1978’s The Kick Inside, Kate’s debut
LIONHEART –
BATTLE OF THE
BUSH BANDS
To capitalise on the success of Wuthering Heights
and The Kick Inside, EMI were keen to get Kate
back into the studio as soon as possible for
album #2. She wanted to use The KT Bush Band
for the album, which she hadn’t been able to do
for The Kick Inside. Says Brian Bath: “We’d built
a studio at her parents’ farm and we did demos
for the whole album. We went out to Nice to
record at a studio in the mountains called Super
Bear. We presented the songs the best we could.
We went for it but it didn’t quite work out.”
Bath attributes a lot of this to problems with
producer Andrew Powell, although Brian and
Bush Band bass player Del Palmer are on Wow,
with Palmer also appearing on Kashka From
Baghdad and Hammer Horror.
Following the recordings with the KT Bush
Band, Powell decided to use the players from
the first album and got in touch. Says David
Paton: “I remember getting the call to go and
record at Super Bear. We actually met the KT
Bush Band when we arrived. Happily there was
no animosity or bad feeling. They had their
suitcases and were leaving. We had our suitcases
as we were arriving. There were all really nice,
especially Del Palmer. Being another bass player,
we could talk together!”
The KT Bush Band – here seen at the
Rose Of Lee in Lewisham in 1977 –
gave Kate invaluable live experience,
but getting on her records would prove
to be a challenge Photo courtesy of Victor King
12
CPP09.Upto78.print.indd 12
album, with Gilmour (who paid for the
session) credited as ‘executive producer’.
Humming, the third track, has never
been released. Speaking in 1987, David
Gilmour elaborated: “Kate had about
50 songs, and I choose three.” Referring
to Powell, Gilmour continued: “I had a
friend who’s an arranger/producer take
her into the studio and record the songs
as masters… not demos.”
Geoff Emerick mixed the three
songs and Gilmour took the tape to
Bob Mercer, the general manager of
EMI’s pop division. This time David’s
perseverance paid off, and after much
negotiating the label signed her in July
1976, shortly before her 18th birthday.
The label and Kate’s parents both felt that
she needed time to grow and develop.
EMI gave her a four-year contract, with
the option to terminate it at the end of
the second and third years if they felt she
hadn’t developed the way they hoped.
WAITING TO FLY
After Kate had been signed to EMI,
she used the £3000 advance they’d
given her (topped up by £500 from
EMI Publishing) along with a small
inheritance from an aunt to leave school
before her ‘A’ Levels and devote all of
her time to her career. She moved into
a property in Lewisham that her father
Robert owned that also housed Paddy
and John, with each Bush sibling having
showed her nipples. The photo appeared on the front of buses and the poster became the year’s best-seller
their own flat. Kate took dance lessons
POP_UP To emphasise Kate’s love of dance, EMI photographer Gered Mankowitz put her in a pink and
green leotard for her first official promo shoot. With Kate’s approval, EMI choose a bra-less close-up that
from Robin Kovak at the Dance Centre
in Covent Garden and Arlene Phillips,
choreographer for stage musicals and
the Hot Gossip TV dance group. She
also had some mime schooling, firstly
with Adam Darius and then with Lindsay
Kemp, who had famously coached David
Bowie. Bush also visited vocal coach
Gordon Farrell for half an hour each
week to practice her scales.
Kate was grateful for EMI’s softly-softly
approach: “The company’s decision not
to release any product was based on the
long term. The freedom was good. I was
under no pressure to record or write.”
A full six months before The Kick
Inside was recorded, the February 1977
edition of EMI’s in-house magazine
Music Talk carried the first-ever article
about Bush and quotes Nick Mobbs,
EMI’s Head of A&R, saying: “Kate has
always been a very long-term project.
To promote a 15 or 16 year-old girl as
a real musical talent is not always the
easiest task, and by giving her time we
feel certain her music will become even
more exceptional… Kate was signed in
the knowledge that releases may not be
immediate, but we have a belief in her
potential and are anxious to give her a
chance to blossom even more.”
David Gilmour would later dispute this
interpretation of events. “They [EMI]
19/01/2018 09:30
 A tanned but pensive
Bush is captured in
the Italian sunshine,
January 1978
© Angelo Deligio/Mondadori/Getty

“WE BOOKED SOME TIME

AT AIR STUDIOS IN OXFORD
CIRCUS AND KATE PLAYED
PIANO AND SANG LIVE
WITH THE ORCHESTRA.
IF SHE WAS NERVOUS,
IT DIDN’T SHOW – I STILL
THINK IT’S ONE OF THE BEST
VOCALS I’VE HEARD”

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S

In a hotel in Tokyo, June

1978. Search the web and
you’ll find adverts Kate
made for Seiko at this
time – her only product
endorsement ever
© Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty

“PADDY WANTED TO PUT

ON A PERFORMANCE AT
WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY
AND ASKED ME TO PUT
A BAND TOGETHER. KATE
DIDN’T SING, BUT DANCED
IN THIS WOOLLY SKIN-TIGHT
OUTFIT WITH A KIND OF
TRUMPET THING ON IT”

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 sound really good!’ They’d put her with
this producer and that producer and still

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: hadn’t got anything. I said, ‘Why don’t
you go back to the guy I put her with
originally? He’s really good!’ They said

THE EARLY VIDEOS they didn’t like him very much!”

Still, EMI acted on Gilmour’s
suggestion and Andrew Powell was
hired to produce and arrange Kate’s first
WITH HER MIME AND DANCE SKILLS, DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES, album. Concludes Gilmour: “They spent
two years pissing around with the wrong
SAUCER EYES AND QUIRKY INVENTIVENESS, KATE WAS ONE OF THE
producers and claimed they were waiting
FIRST STARS OF THE VIDEO AGE. FROM 1978 TO 1980 HER PROMOS for her to mature. That’s all bullshit.”
USED DIRECTOR ‘KEEF’, THE PHOTOGRAPHER/SLEEVE DESIGNER WHO Colin Miles, the A&R man at EMI’s
BEGAN HIS CAREER IN THE SIXTIES AND WENT ON TO WORK WITH Harvest Records at the time, confirms
that the label was uncertain as to how to
BOWIE, BLONDIE, QUO, CULTURE CLUB AND MOTÖRHEAD…
proceed with Kate: “A lot of people at
WUTHERING HEIGHTS EMI heard her voice, which was unique
by any standards, and were far from
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1978
convinced. Nobody really knew what to
Version 1 of Wuthering Heights was shot in a studio, with Kate in a
do with her.”
floor-length white dress demonstrating that those dance and mime
Kate was an accomplished piano
lessons had been money well spent. Lip-synching for all she’s worth,
Bush cartwheels, hugs herself and presses her hands against an player but wasn’t experienced as a
imaginary wall, all to basic slow-mo effects. Version 2 has Kate in a performer, as Brian Bath explains: “I
long red dress gyrating around in a deserted wood trying not to look too bonkers. This is the vid that inspired the don’t think she’d performed at all. Not
annual Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, where every 15th July thousands of would-be Bushes get together, put on with a live band, anyway.” Bush’s first
scarlet frocks, and mimic their heroine. youtu.be/BW3gKKiTvjs public appearance was as a dancer
rather than a singer, as Bath elaborates:
THE MAN WITH THE CHILD IN HIS EYES “Paddy graduated from a musical
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1978 instrument technology course. He wanted
The Man With The Child In His Eyes starts with an extreme soft-focus to put a performance on at Whitechapel
close up of Kate’s face and then pulls out to reveal her in the foetal Art Gallery and asked me to put a band
position on the floor, clad in a glittering semi see-through body suit. together. So I got [drummer] Vic King
As Kate tells it, she was rehearsing some moves when “my brother Jay and old friend of mine, Barry Sherlock,
came in and saw me sitting there said ‘Why don’t you just keep it like on bass. That was where we first did the
that?’” It’s simplicity personified but, as always, Bush’s performance nails it. youtu.be/NAj8suae3WY
‘two basses’ thing that we stepped up for
HAMMER HORROR the Tour Of Life. Kate didn’t sing there,
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1978
but danced in this woolly skin-tight outfit
with a kind of trumpet thing on it… like
Hammer Horror discovers Kate in vampy mode, spot-lit alone on stage
Yellow Submarine’s Blue Meanies! God
in a low-cut black dress, delivering much face-pulling as she dances and
prances her way through the song. Then she’s joined by a rather scarily knows where that came from!”
hooded male dancer with only his forearms exposed, transforming her
into a four-handed creature from a nightmare. A white chair appears, LIVE IN LEWISHAM
then the dancer again – but this time who is the aggressor, and who is the victim? youtu.be/XR4KnfcgLm0 To gain vital performing experience,
Kate put together The KT Bush Band with
WOW Brian, Vic King and Del Palmer, with
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1979 Paddy helping out. The KT Bush Band
The original Wow video shows Bush in a long purple dress, with plenty worked out arrangements for some of
of close-ups of her wild eyes and sensual mouth. She playfully taps her Kate’s originals, and these were slotted
bottom for the “he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline” line – a racy gesture between covers such as Sweet Soul
that possibly limited the video’s television exposure. A second version Music, Come Together, Honky Tonk
was later made for The Whole Story with footage taken from the Tour Women, Satisfaction, No Woman No
Of Life concerts, cutting to Kate in a different outfit every couple of seconds. youtu.be/ZyuxXWxKSTg Cry and Shame Shame. The band hit the
local circuit, with their main gig being at
the Rose Of Lee pub (now known as Dirty
South) in Lewisham. Brian was chosen to
were putting her with various producers. deal with the money.
They didn’t want to use the guy that I Bush was hardly a conventional pub
originally used [Powell] for some reason. musician, as Brian points out. “I’d heard
I think the delay was more about them Kate at the farmhouse around 1971 or
thinking she didn’t have enough good ’72. Paddy had invited me over. Kate
songs… and their producers not getting played one of her songs on piano and
the right things out of them because they I tried to play along on guitar. I was a
were the wrong people. rock guitarist and I heard her playing all
“Eventually EMI came back to me this complex stuff. I was into all sorts of
and said; ‘It’s OK, David. Admit it – you music and learned as many complicated
sold us a dud here! You conned us by things as I could, but when I heard Kate
making the only song that was any good I couldn’t make head nor tail of what she
[The Man With The Child In His Eyes] was doing! It was difficult to keep up

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S

with her because she was in a different going to use what we did, or just those
area completely. It did quite shock me arrangements. You may do four or five
that someone was so different!” versions of a song, before you decide.
On his site Del Palmer goes into Especially in those days.”
further detail about The KT Bush Band Kate originally wanted The KT Bush
and Kate’s performing apprenticeship. Band to play on the Kick sessions but
“Right from the beginning we were was overruled by Powell. Explains David
doing embryonic versions of songs which Paton, who played bass on most of the
would appear on Kate’s first album,” he tracks: “Andrew Powell decided that they
says. Adds Brian: “We did a demo as didn’t have enough studio experience to
the KT Bush Band merit playing on
with Vic, Del, what everybody
Paddy, me and knew was going
Kate at De Lane “ANDREW POWELL DECIDED to be a huge
Lea in Regents album. Andrew
Street on 5th April
THE KT BUSH BAND DIDN’T had worked with
1977. We did HAVE ENOUGH EXPERIENCE us in the past
James And The TO MERIT PLAYING ON and knew that
Cold Gun and Oh there’s nothing
To Be In Love.” WHAT EVERYONE KNEW like experience to
Continues Del: WOULD BE A HUGE ALBUM. get things going
“We had a stage HE WANTED EXPERIENCED quickly.
presentation “I can’t be
which would later MUSICIANS, AS A LOT OF too judgemental
form the basis PRODUCERS DO” because the songs
for the Tour Of on Lionheart that
Life in 1979. I they did play
recall we did a on are perfectly
presentation gig for EMI at a London club fine. Andrew just wanted experienced
called The White Elephant. This was so musicians, as a lot of producers do!”
they could see how she was progressing Kate was a quick learner and paid
as a performer. We did a short set of attention to everything that was going
her songs and EMI loved it. However, on in the studio with the result being that
it proved to be the end of the KT Bush by Never Forever, her third album, she
Band as shortly after Kate went into the was able to co-produce with engineer
studio to record her first album.” Jon Kelly who had worked on Kick and
POP_UP EMI wanted James And The Cold Gun as the first single, upsetting Kate, who greatly preferred

Lionheart. From then Bush was able to

MOVING ON UP produce all of her own albums solo.
Wuthering Heights. At a meeting with executive Bob Mercer, she burst into tears. The situation was

The recordings for The Kick Inside took For Kate and her associates,
saved by EMI’s Terry Walker, who came in, said he loved the album, and supported her choice

place in July and August 1977. Kate
had been contracted to EMI since 1976,
leading Brian Bath to speculate on
the reasoning behind the De Lane Lea
recordings. “It must have been one of
the sessions leading up to the album.
Or maybe we were being considered
for it? I don’t know… whether they were
everything seemed to happen very, very
quickly after Wuthering Heights, as
Brian Bath describes. “We knew when
it was coming out. I say ‘we’ because
it still felt like a group then. I remember
going round the house and Kate saying
it was going to be played on the radio
that night. The first play! We were

TOY PISTOLS AND DRY ICE

Even when she was playing mere pub gigs fronting
The KT Bush Band, Kate wasn’t going to just stand
there… and she quickly developed theatrical routines
to some of her songs. For James And The Cold Gun
she’d perform a quick-change into a raincoat and hat
and would appear toting a toy gun. At the climax of the
song she’d jump off the stage (if there was one) and
‘shoot’ selected members of the audience – a routine
she’d later take up several notches to great effect for
the Tour Of Life.
Cowgirl costumes, robes and other outfits seldom
seen on the Seventies pub rock circuit also made
appearances at the band’s shows – as did dry ice…
when Kate and company could get away with it. They
did so once at a July 1977 gig at the Half Moon in
Putney in front of a pub full of drunken Scottish
football supporters who’d travelled down for the game
against England the following afternoon and were
more interested in ogling Kate than listening to the
music. The dry ice set off the fire alarm, much to the
bemusement of the happy football fans.
The KT Bush Band was mainly a vehicle for Kate
to gain experience of performing in front of a live
audience, and the project only lasted three months.
Other gigs included The Black Cat in Catford, The
Target in Harlow, The Great Northern Hotel, and the
Tottenham Hotspurs Supporters Club… where an irate
Kate was mistaken for the stripper.

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 Catherine “Kate” Bush
pictured, suitably enough,
in St. Katharine Docks,
London, in 1978
© George Wilkes/Hulton Archive/Getty

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 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S
Another shot of Kate Bush
from the Evening Standard
photoshoot at home in East
Wickham, 1978
© Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/
Hulton Archive/Getty
all sitting around the radio like it was
an electric fire! There was something
very eerie about the single. There was
a different quality about it. Some weird
thing going on up in the heavens…”
Wuthering Heights hit No. 1 in
February 1978, aided by a basic
but effective video and numerous TV
appearances worldwide. One of these
took place in Japan on the 18th of June
1978 at the 7th Tokyo Musical Festival
in the Budokan. Kate received the Silver
Award and performed Moving live,
backed by an orchestra conducted by
Andrew Powell.
THE RETURN OF THE KT BUSH BAND
Original KT Bush Band members guitarist Brian Bath
and drummer Vic King reformed the group a few years
ago – without Kate or Del Palmer. “Vic asked me three
times,” says Brian. “We got together in a studio and
I thought, ‘This isn’t going to be any good at all.’ But
when we started playing those songs, I felt great.”
The number one task for the band was always going
to be replacing Kate Bush. Says Brian: “It took a year
to find Jody May. When she left, we lost a year. Then
Sallie-Anne Hurst got in touch. She’s a powerhouse…
incredible. The KT Bush Band isn’t a tribute act. After
all, how can you be a tribute when you have two
original members?”
18
CPP09.Upto78.print.indd 18
“THE MUSIC MIGHT HAVE
HAD ITS ROOTS IN FOLK
BUT IT WAS MUCH MORE
ADVANCED THAN THAT.
IT WAS NEW AND FRESH
AND ORIGINAL AND
ACCOMPLISHED. IT WAS
DIFFICULT TO GET THAT THIS
WAS AN 18 YEAR-OLD GIRL”
Brian is also a songwriter and has recently produced
an album based around his childhood. “I was brought
up in Peckham so I’ve written about my memories from
eight years old onwards. I wrote about the things that
really stood out when I was young and made demos
at home, playing everything myself and using drum
machines. I’d given the guys in the KT Bush Band my
demos for Peckham Boys which they liked and said
“Why don’t we do that?” That turned into the next
project. I used the KT Bush Band to record my songs!”
● Peckham Boys is available from http://www.
brianbath.com/portfolio/peckham-boys-album-cd/
Kate had become – almost overnight
– the most happening pop act around.
EMI’s uncertainty about what to do with
her was instantaneously washed away,
even though she was far from being a
traditional pop singer and very different
to anything else that was going on in the
mainstream of the time.
Certainly, her influences were far
removed from those of the average
teenager. Brian Bath: “She was listening
to the records that her brothers were
listening to – English folky stuff and
The Incredible String Band.” David
Paton agrees: ”It struck me that the
music might have its roots in folk… but
it was much more advanced than that!
It sounded new and fresh and original
and accomplished. It was difficult to get
that this was an 18 year-old girl who’d
composed all those advanced lyrics and
chord sequences. It was a real pleasure,
a joy, something to get my teeth into.”
Andrew Powell was enrolled again to
produce Lionheart, which was recorded
at Super Bear in Nice. At Kate’s request,
initial sessions used the KT Bush Band.
David Paton and Ian Bairnson along
with Cockney Rebel’s drummer Stuart
Elliott and keyboard player Duncan
Mackay were then brought in, and
the KT musicians returned to the UK. “I
didn’t hear any of the songs until we
got into the studio,” recalls Paton. “We
got to hear what the other band had
done.” Some ideas from the initial
19/01/2018 15:19
CPP09.Upto78.print.indd 19
© Angelo Deligio/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty
from Italy in 1978
A rare summery shot

19
POP_UP Kate’s Italian sojourns in 1978 provided a highly surreal lip-synch
performance of Wuthering Heights – flanked, improbably, by gladiators – at Verona’s
cavernous Roman amphitheatre. See www.dailymotion.com/video/x26371f

19/01/2018 09:32
 T H E E A R L Y Y E A R S

For Kate, 1978 had been

an exhausting whirlwind of
recording and promotion – and
1979 would give no relief
© Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty
beyond even those of, say, Dusty Springfield. For her vocal on Wow she sang
POP_UP In the studio Kate was capable of displaying levels of perfectionism

the song four or five times an hour, 10 hours a day, for a week

recordings were taken up, as David down to earth. She never wanted special The subsequent sessions went smoothly
describes: “If there was something that privileges. That was one of the qualities without major hiccups, says Paton:
Kate wanted she’d say, ‘I want you to that everybody really likes about her. “We’d do one or two backing tracks in
play that line’. But most of the time it was There was no ‘I’m a star!’ She never a day. It probably took about 10 days.
‘You just play what you want to play’. acted like that, ever.” We’d experiment a bit, trying different
It was great to express myself and get tempos and drum grooves. We’d routine
an acknowledgement from Kate: ‘Ooh, the song over and over. Then Andrew
I like that!’ She did that a lot. She’d would say, ‘Kate, let’s do a take on that.’
let you know just by eye contact or “SHE WAS THE FIRST ONE We’d go into the control room and have
whatever that it was good. A lot of that TO ASK IF WE WANTED a discussion and then do it again until
went on as we were playing.” A CUP OF TEA… THEN we reached the perfect take. Usually
In the nine months between the Kick a really good drum take, because
Inside and Lionheart sessions Kate Bush SHE’D GO AWAY INTO THE anything else can be overdubbed.”
had become a major star, but something KITCHEN AND MAKE IT! Wuthering Heights had been a major
– her background, her character, her international hit, and The Man With
career’s slow gestation – meant it didn’t
SHE WAS VERY DOWN TO The Child In His Eyes won Kate an Ivor
go to her head. Remembers David: EARTH. THERE WAS NO ‘I’M Novello Award for Outstanding British
“When we arrived at Super Bear she A STAR’. SHE NEVER ACTED Lyric. By now, everyone in the UK knew
was the first one to ask if we wanted who she was. All the same, Kate had yet
a cup of tea. Then she’d go away into
LIKE THAT, EVER” to embark on a major concert tour – but
the kitchen and make it! She was very that was about to change.

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 C L A S S I C

ALBUM
THE KICK INSIDE
FOR KATE BUSH, HER DEBUT ALBUM CHANGED EVERYTHING. IT
BECAME THE NINTH-LARGEST SELLING LP OF 1978, WENT PLATINUM,
AND INCLUDED WUTHERING HEIGHTS – THE FIRST SELF-COMPOSED
SONG BY A FEMALE VOCALIST TO TOP THE UK SINGLES CHARTS…
I A N R A V E N D A L E

roduced and arranged the musicians. Powell would With the recording finished, As we’ve seen, Kate had

P by Andrew Powell,
The Kick Inside is Kate
Bush making her mark
as a singer-songwriter
quite unlike any other. The
Man With The Child In His
Eyes (about men’s capacity
to retain an inner simplicity
throughout their lives) and The
Saxophone Song (a fan letter
to the instrument) are taken
from the 1975 session that
was executive-produced by
Bush’s patron David Gilmour,
but the majority of the album
was recorded in July and
August 1977.
Lyrically and musically,
the album covers a very
wide spectrum. Kate name-
checks philosopher and
mystic George Gurdjieff as
well as thanking Gilmour
for all the help he’d giving
her by “rolling the ball to
me” in Them Heavy People.
Strange Phenomena tackles
premonition, while Feel It
explores sexuality. Brother-
sister incest leading to suicide
makes up the subject matter
of the song The Kick Inside,
while other left-field topics are
liberally sprinkled throughout
the rest of the album.
At the start of the recording
sessions Bush would play the
songs through to familiarise
let the players have basic
chord sheets for reference,
and they would play along
as arrangements developed.
Recording normally started
at midday; everyone would
work through until six o’clock,
take a meal break, and then
start again, often working
until early the next morning.
“She never tired of playing the songs through.
Each time we played them, the songs would
develop a little bit more. We were given a lot of
freedom to express ourselves and she seemed to
like everything we played” – David Paton
TRACKLISTING
SIDE ONE
Moving
The Saxophone Song
Strange Phenomena
Kite
The Man With The Child
In His Eyes
Wuthering Heights
the session moved from AIR’s
Studio Two (for Kate and the
session players, including the
two Edinburgh musicians,
bassist David Paton and
guitarist Ian Bairnson) and
Studio One (for the string
section) to Studio Three
for mixing by Powell and
engineer Jon Kelly.
SIDE TWO
James And The Cold Gun
Feel It
Oh To Be In Love
L’Amour Looks Something
Like You
Them Heavy People
Room For The Life
The Kick Inside
wanted her own KT Bush
Band to play on the Kick
sessions, but was overruled
by Powell, who felt these
sessions required players with
a greater level of red-light
experience. Like Bush, David
Paton and Ian Bairnson were
signed at the time to EMI,
which may have influenced
the producer’s decision, as
Paton acknowledges: “I think
EMI probably picked us as
well [as Powell].”
There’s no doubt that the
musicians-for-hire did a fine
job. It’s impossible to know
how the members of the KT
Bush Band felt about the
situation, but they all certainly
had the utmost respect for
Kate’s unique talent and
understood that, at this stage,
there was a huge amount
riding on her debut and that it
was probably wise to take a
long-term view.
Kate Bush was 19 years
old when she recorded The
Kick Inside, and she had only
a limited amount of major
studio recording experience.
Understandably, she was
slightly apprehensive. Paton:
“She wasn’t lacking in
confidence because she knew
she was really good. But she
was in awe of the musicians

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 T H E K I C K I N S I D E C L A S S I C A L B U M

THE PLAYERS
RELEASED
17 February 1978
LABEL EMI
PRODUCED BY
Andrew Powell
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
David Gilmour (tracks 2, 5)
ENGINEERS
Geoff Emerick (tracks 2,5),
Jon Kelly
ASSISTANT
ENGINEER
Jon Walls
RECORDED AT
Air Studios, London,
June 1975 (tracks 2, 5),
July-August 1977
PERSONNEL
Kate Bush – piano,
keyboards, vocals,
background vocals
ADDITIONAL
MUSICIANS
Ian Bairnson –
guitar, background
vocals, bass, beer bottles;
David Paton – bass, acoustic
guitar, background vocals; Stuart
Elliott – drums, percussion; Duncan
Mackay – organ, synthesiser, electric
piano, clavinet; Andrew Powell –
synthesiser, keyboards, bass, electric
piano, celesta, beer bottles; Morris
Pert – percussion, boobam; Paddy
Bush – mandolin, vocals; David
Katz – orchestra contractor. On The
Saxophone Song only: Alan Skidmore
– saxophone, Paul Keogh – guitar,
Alan Parker – guitar, Bruce Lynch –
bass, Barry De Souza – drums

she was working with. She “She played that complicated

kept saying ‘It’s fantastic to be
working with you guys!’
“There was a great respect
of each other musically and
we got on with the job. She
never tired of playing the
songs through. Each time we
played them, the songs would
develop a little bit more. We
were given a lot of freedom
to express ourselves and she
seemed to like everything we
played. Once we got through
the initial recording of the first
song, it was very relaxed.”
The first single and standout
track from the album was
Wuthering Heights, inspired
by a TV adaptation rather
than Emily Brontë’s novel,
which at that point Kate hadn’t
actually read. David Paton:
piano part at the same time
as she was singing. I didn’t
play bass on that; Andrew
Powell is also a bass player
and I think he, sneakily, knew
it was going to be a single
and he wanted to play on it.
He used my Rickenbacker,
and I played 12-string guitar.”
Paton and Bairnson also
sang backing vocals. “It was
a lot of fun!” says David,
adding: “Usually you’ll do the
backing tracks within the first
10-14 days. If it’s the bass
I’m playing that’s the end of
the session for me. But here,
because there was some
guitar and vocal overdubs, I
was back in the studio. I think
it was just Ian and I, Andrew
and Kate doing overdubs.”
KATE’S PILOT EPISODE
Amongst the players that Andrew Powell recruited for The Kick Inside was
guitarist Ian Bairnson (who plays the famous solo on Wuthering Heights) and
bass player David Paton; both had been in Pilot, who’d had hits in the mid-
Seventies with Magic and January, and both had then gone on to session work
with the Alan Parsons Project. Paton explains how they’d got the Bush job:
“We’d brought Andrew Powell in to arrange the strings on Magic, and he rang
up and asked if Ian and I would do the Kate Bush album he was producing. The
session work snowballed and we didn’t have any time to do Pilot!”
The duo were more than a little impressed by Bush and her songs, as
Paton relates: “We were knocked out. Sometimes you do sessions that don’t
get anywhere, so when you work with someone that really does have a lot of
talent, it springs out. I don’t think we were given any demos… we arrived in
the studio with a blank canvas. She recognised us from Pilot – I know she felt
intimidated by us and was nervous, but gave a flawless performance.”
David Paton went on to work with such names as Elton John, Camel, Fish
and Rick Wakeman, while Ian Bairnson wrote for Bucks Fizz and played with
Joe Cocker, Mick Fleetwood, Neil Diamond and many others.

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 Kate takes the applause
after the 15th date of
the Tour Of Life at the
London Palladium

© Peter Still/Redferns/Getty

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 T H E T O U R O F L I F E

A MATTER OF
LIFE AND DEATH
THE 1979 TOUR – LATER DUBBED THE TOUR OF LIFE – WAS SPECTACULAR
AND INTENSIVELY PLANNED. THOUGH TOUCHED BY TRAGEDY, IT WOULD
LEAVE AN INDELIBLE IMPRESSION ON THE LUCKY CONCERT-GOERS…
I A N R A V E N D A L E

onsidered by many to be Kate Bush’s pièce go to Kevin or Ben… both great musicians. Paddy had

C
de résistance and for 34 years her only series mandolins and I had a mandolin as well, along with an
of concerts, the Tour Of Life ran from 2 April acoustic, a 12-string and an electric guitar.”
to 14 May 1979, playing across the UK and Dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst had
the rest of Europe. With songs drawn from performed with Kate on many TV appearances and they
The Kick Inside and Lionheart albums, the were enlisted for the tour, with Hurst also contributing
29 concerts employed every technique the artist could backing vocals. Bush would usually rehearse with the
muster: mime, dance, magic (from illusionist Simon dancers in the morning at the Covent Garden dance
Drake), poetry (written by John Bush), two dozen studios and then go to Wood Wharf in the afternoon
costume changes, pyrotechnics, to work with the band. Later,
back-projection (an innovation in the production moved to a
1979) and set dance pieces. soundstage at Shepperton
Most tours of the time were MOST TOURS OF THE TIME Studios where the dancers and
underwritten by an artist’s record musicians worked together for the
label. EMI were unwilling to fully WERE UNDERWRITTEN BY first time. “The rehearsals went
bankroll such an unusual venture AN ARTIST’S RECORD LABEL. on for two or three months,” says
and so Kate partially funded the EMI WERE UNWILLING TO Brian. “The most difficult thing
tour herself, apparently losing was trying to learn the parts.
money; still, this gave her more FULLY BANKROLL SUCH AN Kate was there a lot.”
control over everything that went UNUSUAL VENTURE, SO As the show was to be two and
on. Included in her seven-piece a half hours long, with 29 shows
band were bass player Del
KATE PARTIALLY FUNDED taking place over six weeks,
Palmer and guitarist Brian Bath, IT HERSELF, APPARENTLY Kate needed to be extremely
both veterans of the KT Bush LOSING MONEY fit; the lengthy dance and vocal
Band; Paddy Bush would play a rehearsals were as much about
range of traditional instruments, building up her stamina as testing
Kevin McAlea and Ben Barson out musical routines. Finally, the
manned the keyboards, Preston Hayman was behind the full troupe transferred to London’s Rainbow Theatre for
kit, Alan Murphy played second guitar, and Liz Pearson two full weeks of dress rehearsals.
and Glenys Groves took charge of backing vocals. As a warm-up, a slightly truncated show was
“We rehearsed at Wood Wharf Studios in arranged at the Poole Arts Centre on 2 April. “We
Greenwich,” recalls Brian Bath. “Kate was there almost must have been nervous,” confesses Brian, “but the
every day but she did have other jobs to do, so I’d excitement overtook any kind of nerves. The buzz was
generally be the bandleader and we’d do the track, brilliant… everyone was so up for it.”
sometimes with me singing. Initially we didn’t have the The Kate Bush tour had undergone a level of
backing vocalists, just the basic band. There was a lot preparation far beyond most late Seventies rock
of changing of instruments. The acoustic guitars might productions. One innovation came about because

25

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 T H E T O U R O F L I F E

“SHE HAD SO MANY

COSTUME CHANGES, AND
SOME OF THEM HAPPENED
A LIGHT GOES OUT
IN SECONDS. SOMETIMES Dorset’s Poole Arts Centre found itself hosting a slightly rushed to hospital and put on a life support machine.
WHEN SHE LEFT THE trimmed-down warm-up show on 2 April 1979 before When the awful news reached the hotel, a decision
the then-unnamed Bush tour hit the road proper at had to be swiftly made as to whether the tour should
STAGE SHE’D GO PAST ME, Liverpool Empire the following night. be cancelled. Without any firm news on Duffield’s
ABSOLUTELY THRASHED! I’D The two-hour show was a success, and performers condition, it was decided that he would have wanted
and crew adjourned to the hotel to celebrate all their the tour to continue… and it did.
ASK IF SHE WAS OKAY AND preparatory work having paid off. Lighting designer Bill Duffield sadly died a week after his accident,
SHE’D GO ‘URGHHH’” Bill Duffield remained at the venue to inspect the stage and a benefit concert – a third Hammersmith Odeon
area to make sure nothing had been left behind. A show on 12 May – was added to raise money for his
floor panel had inadvertently been left open, and as he family. In addition to Kate and her band, the special
crossed the darkened stage he fell through and landed concert included appearances by two other artists Bill
Kate was going to be dancing throughout on the concrete floor 17 feet below. Duffield was had worked for… Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley.
the show: she needed a microphone
attached to a special headset. There was
one problem: in 1979, these weren’t
widely available. “The one Kate wore
was a piece of genius – it was made
from a coat hanger,” laughs Brian. “We
had loads of them all over the place
because they kept breaking down.”
The show began with the sound of
whale cries; next, a large shadow of
an arm-waving figure was silhouetted
against a long net curtain. The curtain
rose to reveal Kate at the bottom of a
ramp, and the band struck up Moving
from the Kick album.
While many rock performances
leave room for differing levels of
spontaneity, audience participation and
communication between the artist and
the crowd, the Tour Of Life was a very
calculated and precise piece of theatre.
Aside from one or two occasions, when
© Redferns/Getty

Kate had vocal troubles and several

songs had to be cut, the set list was
fixed. There was very little interplay with
the audience apart from the occasional
“Thanks”. Neither Kick nor Lionheart
were concept albums, but the theme-free
show was choreographed as one. To
give the audience respite from everything
that was going on, Bush took to the
piano for Feel It, The Kick Inside, and The
Man With The Child In His Eyes.
As with every other aspect of the tour,
Bush wasn’t going to hold back on the
costume changes. “Even when The KT
Bush Band played the Rose Of Lee, Kate
used to change costumes,” remembers
Brian Bath. “The theatricals was the thing
she wanted to do. In the Tour Of Life
she had so many changes… there were
racks of clothes. Some of the changes
happened in seconds. The costumes
had special fastenings. Sometimes when
she left the stage she’d go past me…
there was nothing left of her. She was
absolutely thrashed! I’d ask if she was
OK and she’d go ‘Urghhh…’”
The show itself was broken down
into three sections. Act one featured
songs from Kick, plus the unreleased
Egypt and Violin with Simon Drake as
a berserk fiddler who plays faster and back. “It was very theatrical – each
faster until clouds of smoke come out song was done as a set piece,” Vickers
of his instrument; act two spotlighted reported. “I recall Kate having problems
Lionheart, and the final segment drew with her head mic, and when she sang
from both albums. “The show was very Wow she could only spin one arm as she
well organised,” confirms Brian. “There had to use a hand-held one instead.
was some dialogue that her brother John “In a quiet moment early on, a member
had written that was almost hypnotic. of the audience stood up and shouted,
There were instrumental passages, and ‘We love you, Kate!’, which got a big
interludes in between some of the songs. cheer, and she said a quiet ‘Thank you’.
There was all this stuff going on… Kate She didn’t talk between songs, which
didn’t have a lot of rest periods.” made it all seem even more magical, but
After 16 UK shows the tour took four at the end she came back onto the stage
days off and then started up again in tears and thanked everybody, ending
in Sweden, moving on to Denmark, with ‘I’ll never forget tonight’.”
Germany, the Netherlands and France Stephen Allenby from Cramlington
before returning to the UK and the in Northumberland caught the tour
Hammersmith Odeon. Speaking to the at the Sunderland Empire, an ornate
BBC’s Alison Daye in 2014, David theatre dating back to Victorian times
Vickers from Frodsham in Cheshire talked and chosen specifically by Bush for its
about being at the first ‘official’ show of classic grandeur. “Nobody knew what
the tour at the Liverpool Empire. He’d to expect,” he emphasised. “I’d never
queued up for half a day three months seen anything like it. She was so unusual,
before the gig and had managed to bag her voice so different, and the costume
a seat in the stalls, six or seven rows changes were so theatrical.”

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Scenes from the tour,
including the womb-
like red satin egg (top)
and the murderous
THE SET LIST character of James And
The Cold Gun (left)
● Moving Most of the press were just as fulsome
● Saxophone Song
in their praise. The Guardian described
● Room For The Life
the show as “very impressive”, while The
● Them Heavy People
● The Man With The Child In His Eyes
Daily Telegraph said it was “a dazzling
● Egypt
testimony to a remarkable talent”. The
● L'Amour Looks Something Like You cynical music inkies were equally taken.
● Violin Record Mirror described it as “the
● The Kick Inside ultimate rock and roll extravaganza…
with dancers whose main mission in life
● In The Warm Room appeared to be hurtling amazing Kate
● Fullhouse from one end of the multi-tiered, strobe-
● Strange Phenomena
lit stage to the other”. Sounds reported
● Hammer Horror
that the show was “so finely realised, it’s
● Kashka From Baghdad
● Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake
beyond criticism”, and Melody Maker
maintained that “she and the band were
● Wow nothing short of immaculate”.
● Coffee Homeground One dissenting critique came from
● Symphony In Blue the NME’s Charles Shaar Murray,
● Feel It saying that Kate was “a lightweight
● Kite talent with one good song [Wuthering
● James And The Cold Gun Heights] to her credit”. For the climax
– centred around James And The Cold
ENCORE Gun – she dressed up in cowboy togs
● Oh England My Lionheart
● Wuthering Heights
and methodically shot Gray and the
two dancers, complete with fake blood,
CPP09.TourOfLife.print.indd 27
1979 DATES
●2 APRIL Arts Centre, Poole
●3 APRIL Empire, Liverpool
● 4 APRIL Hippodrome, Birmingham
● 5 APRIL Hippodrome, Birmingham
● 6 APRIL New Theatre, Oxford
● 7 APRIL Gaumont, Southampton
● 9 APRIL Hippodrome, Bristol
● 10 APRIL Apollo Theatre, Manchester
● 11 APRIL Apollo Theatre, Manchester
● 12 APRIL Empire Theatre,
Sunderland
● 13 APRIL Usher Hall, Edinburgh
● 16 APRIL Palladium, London
● 17 APRIL Palladium, London
● 18 APRIL Palladium, London
● 19 APRIL Palladium, London
● 20 APRIL Palladium, London
● 24 APRIL Konserthuset,
Stockholm (Sweden)
● 26 APRIL Falkoner Theatre,
Copenhagen (Denmark)
● 28 APRIL Congress Centrum,
Hamburg (Germany)
● 29 APRIL Theater Carré,
Amsterdam (Netherlands)
● 2 MAY Liederhalle, Stuttgart (Germany)
● 3 MAY Circus Krone, Munich (Germany)
● 6 MAY Théâtre des Champs-Elysées,
Paris (France)
● 7 MAY Mercatorhalle, Duisburg (Germany)
● 8 MAY Rosengarten, Mannheim (Germany)
● 10 MAY Jahrhunderthalle,
Frankfurt (Germany)
● 12 MAY Hammersmith Odeon,
London: Bill Duffield family benefit
● 13 MAY Hammersmith Odeon,
London
● 14 MAY Hammersmith Odeon,
London
rimshots and dry ice, before retreating
to the stylised womb at the back of the
stage, firing at the audience. It was the
first time that she played directly to the
crowd, and the emotion expressed was
hatred. “The trouble is, she’s completely
entranced with the idea of her own
stardom and the concept of presenting
an almost superhuman facade,” Murray
complained, before addressing Bush
directly: “Sure, what you do takes talent,
but it ain’t the kind of talent I respect.”
The tour left fans eager for more, and
as a compromise the singer released
1981’s Live At Hammersmith Odeon
video, which cut the show’s running
time of two-and-a-half hours down to a
disappointing 52 minutes. Yet Kate Bush
was now more interested in recording
Never For Ever, her next album, a
co-production with engineer Jon Kelly,
than she was in playing live. She had
demonstrated she could mount a show
unlike anything else; now she wanted to
prove herself as a record producer.
27
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 F R O M T H E A R C H I V E

IT’S MARCH 1979, AND KATE BUSH IS SITTING IN A HOTEL ROOM IN

GATESHEAD WHILE ON THE PROMO TRAIL FOR HER SECOND ALBUM
LIONHEART, WILLING TO FIELD QUERIES ABOUT GROWING UP,
HER CAREER… AND THAT CONTROVERSIAL PHOTOGRAPH
I A N R A V E N D A L E

ate Bush is an intriguing mixture: a slightly naïve view childhood and write about it objectively while being
young woman with a fearless original talent, relatively young? “You have to be objective to a certain
determined to follow her own artistic path. extent, but you have to draw off your own subjectivity or
Her parents actively fostered creativity in their emotions in order to get the proper aspect. If you’re being
children, and she grew up surrounded by music. strictly objective about something like a love relationship,
“My parents were worried about me not having it would come across very coldly. You have to apply your
a steady career,” she admits. “I tried to think of something emotions and pain to that situation to get it across in a
I wanted to do besides music, and the nearest thing was convincing way.
psychiatry, but I knew I’d never make it! Still, once they “I don’t really write about childhood that much… there’s
realised how much I was into music it didn’t really matter a couple of songs. It’s such an important stage in life, and
what they wanted me to do, because this was what I was it’s where everyone normally gets screwed up! It’s the
going to do! They were very understanding. I’ve always hardest part of most people’s lives. I love children and it’s
been sure about wanting to go into such a shame that so many have to
singing as a career.” go through so much rubbish.”
Famously signed to EMI at 17, It did appear that early in her
the story was that the label gave her “IT’S NOT A MATTER OF ME career Kate was being promoted
£3000 to “go away and develop” –
a piece of folklore that Kate is keen
BEING PROMOTED AS A SEX as a sex object, with Gered
Mankowitz’s ‘leotard’ shot being
to correct. “That isn’t exactly what OBJECT – IT’S A MATTER OF one of the stand-out images of
happened. We had a contract and HOW I PROJECT MYSELF. 1978. She views it differently: “It’s
that happened to be the advance not a matter of me being promoted
money that I got. I was very young,
PEOPLE WILL SAY IT IF THEY as a sex object – it’s a matter of
and neither me or EMI felt I was WANT TO ANYWAY. AS how I project myself. People will say
ready for it. So I carried on training, LONG AS I’M APPRECIATED it if they want to anyway, if I was
dancing, singing and doing some clad in a nun’s costume or nothing
pub gigs. It wasn’t that they sent me AS A MUSICIAN, THEN at all! As long as I’m appreciated as
away to develop, really!” THAT’S OKAY” a musician, then that’s okay.”
Success happened quickly: Bush Although, of course, sex does
was just 19 at the time of Wuthering play a part in some of her songs.
Heights. Has it been very difficult to “Yes. I think there’s so much music
handle her new-found stardom? “It’s something I don’t think around where people are blatantly talking about sex. It’s
I’m aware of. There are pressures, but they come up and a very open subject. I don’t think it’s particularly shocking!
down. You just cope with them.” Most recent songwriters’ lyrics are very intimate.”
As well as her striking voice, Bush’s dancing has also While not directly about sex, Wow, Kate’s current single
caused a stir. Does her choreography come easily, or did does touch on the subject, as she explains: “It’s talking
she have to work hard at it? “A certain amount of it comes about show business, saying there are so many terrible
naturally. The feeling is natural, but you have to work at things in the business that you hear about, like people
the technique for years. I’ve only done three years!” Does trying to rip you off, and actresses sleeping their way to the
she still feel like a beginner? “Very much! I’m not anywhere top. But even though there is all this stuff, you can’t destroy
near a dancer’s technical standard.” that magic, that incredible rush and feeling that you get
Several of Kate’s early songs, like The Man With The when you’re up there on the stage, when you’re doing that
Child In His Eyes, were about childhood. Is it possible to ‘thing’. It’s amazing!”

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 © Mike Prior/Redferns/Getty

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

METHOD
AND MADNESS
AFTER TWO DECENT-SELLING ALBUMS AND FOUR CHARTING SINGLES,
SOME ARTISTS MIGHT HAVE TAKEN THEIR HANDS OFF THE WHEEL.
NOT KATE BUSH, WHOSE NEXT TWO PROJECTS, NEVER FOR EVER AND THE
DREAMING, REVEALED AN ARTIST GROWING STEADILY MORE SELF-RELIANT
AND INCREASINGLY INTENT ON STEERING HER SHIP TOWARDS DEEPER
AND MORE CHALLENGING WATERS…
P A U L L E S T E R

ate Bush, who once described herself as Grosvenor House Hotel she was presented with the

K
“the shyest megalomaniac you’re ever award for Best Female Vocalist.
likely to meet”, may only have released But for Bush the work was its own reward. And
two albums in the first half of the Eighties, in January 1980 she entered Studio Two at Abbey
but their influence was enormous and Road to begin the six-month recording sessions
pervasive. Whereas that would complete her
her two previous Seventies third album, Never For
albums, The Kick Inside Ever, which she had begun
and Lionheart, presented IF THE KICK INSIDE AND creating demos for (of Blow
her as still something of a Away, Egypt, Violin and The
novelty-cum-curio, albeit a LIONHEART PRESENTED Wedding List) the previous
waywardly talented one, BUSH AS SOMETHING OF A summer at AIR Studios.
the new decade saw Bush This would mark her
NOVELTY-CUM-CURIO, THE
finally being taken seriously second foray into production,
as a supremely self-contained NEW DECADE SAW HER following 1979’s On Stage
singer, songwriter, musician BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS EP (a live recording of four
and producer.
She began the first few
A SELF-CONTAINED SINGER, Tour Of Life songs), and she
would be aided by Lionheart
months of the first year of SONGWRITER, MUSICIAN engineer, Jon Kelly. The
the decade being given a AND PRODUCER co-production held immense
multitude of accolades. She significance for her. “I felt
was voted Best Female Artist so very scared sometimes
in the Record Mirror poll, because of the responsibility,”
Best Female Singer in the NME and Best Female she admitted. “But it’s as if I’m beginning again.”
Singer in Sounds. She won Top Female Artist in She added: “I’m free in lots of ways and I’m getting
the Music Week Annual Awards at the Dorchester more free, more artistic control.”
Hotel, Top Female Singer at the British Rock and Pop Recording was interrupted every now and then
Awards (later the BPI Awards) at the Café Royal, – by further recording stints. Bush made a cameo
while at the Capital Radio Awards ceremony at the appearance on the self-titled third album

Opposite page: it’s 1980, and Bush faces the camera and
the new decade at EMI in Manchester Square, London –
the site of the famous ‘stairwell’ Beatles shots
© Brian Rasic/Getty

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CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 31
POP_UP Dance and mime were not the only movement skills Bush
studied: she also took karate in her youth and was given the nickname

31
‘Ee-ee’ because of the squeaky sound she made while practicing

19/01/2018 09:21
 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

Bob Geldof and

Paul McCartney
squash in on Kate
at The British Rock
and Pop Awards,
February 1980
© Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

(sometimes referred to as “Melt”) by is the blinding flash that is far more Kate performs
the like-minded Peter Gabriel. She dazzling than any light on earth…” Over Babooshka in
'repressed/
contributed backing vocals to two a rousing, tumultuous backing, including liberated' dual
tracks: Games Without Frontiers and John Giblin’s fretless bass, a Greek personality
No Self Control, both issued as singles. chorus pleads to be told how mankind costume for a Dr.
Hook Television
It was during these sessions that she will survive without clean air (“What
Special in 1980
saw Gabriel experiment with rhythm are we going to do without?”) as Bush
boxes and the new-fangled, soon-to-be creates a gruesomely pretty picture of
omnipresent piece of Eighties kit, the asphyxiation and slow death through
Fairlight CMI digital synthesiser. She also radiation sickness: “Chips of plutonium/
broke off from Are twinkling in
recording her own every lung.”
album to duet on She described
the track You (The “BREATHING IS THE Breathing as her
Game Part III), “little symphony”,
from the Unknown
BEST THING I’VE EVER proclaiming it
wrote a song for her: a little ditty entitled Bird In Hand, concerning

Soldier LP, with PRODUCED. THE SONG her finest work

POP_UP Ex-Pistol John Lydon is so enamoured with Bush that he

British maverick SAYS SOMETHING REAL FOR to date. “It’s the

singer-songwriter best thing I've
Roy Harper. ME; MANY OF THE OTHERS ever produced,”
the illegal exportation of parrots from South America

Harper returned HAVEN’T QUITE GOT TO THE she decided.

the favour by LEVEL THAT I WOULD LIKE “The song says
lending backing something real
vocals of his own THEM TO REACH, THOUGH for me, whereas
to Breathing, THEY’RE TRYING TO” many of the others
the first track the haven’t quite got
outside world to the level that I
heard from Bush’s would like them to
third album. Breathing is the deceptively reach, though they're trying to.”
chilled – actually quite chilling – vision of She added that the air of apocalyptic
a nuclear armageddon from the point of dread was informed mainly by a
view of a foetus. The lyrics also refer to documentary she had seen about the
the unborn baby absorbing nicotine from effects of nuclear war, while the tone of
the mother’s cigarettes. the song was inspired by Pink Floyd’s
Recorded over a week, the song The Wall, thereby further cementing the
features a male broadcaster warning of idea of Bush as a displaced prog artist
the effects of an atomic bomb, explaining who happened to be working – and
that “the calling card of a nuclear bomb succeeding – in the pop arena.

32

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 © David Redfern/Redferns/Getty

33

CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 33 19/01/2018 13:08

 The Babooshka costume was
inspired by a cover illustration
by Chris Achilleos for a
1978 fantasy novel rather
marvellously entitled Raven,
Swordmistress Of Chaos
© REX/Shutterstock

34

CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 34 23/01/2018 14:39

 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

It’s the Melody Maker Awards in 1980, and

Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford of Genesis
flank Kate, voted Best Female Singer
© Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty

On April 11, 1980, Breathing do… That’s why I found it fascinating.”

received its debut on the BBC Radio 1 The song ended with a sample of glass
programme Round Table. The reviewers, smashing, one of the earliest examples of
not surprisingly, were stunned. The single the Fairlight CMI in full effect.
may only have reached No. 16, but Babooshka was the song Bush’s
its impact was far-reaching. The song’s record company, EMI, wanted as the
controversial video – featuring Bush in album’s lead-off single, but the artist
a womb-like bubble, climaxing with a insisted on Breathing. In this instance,
bomb blast and humankind struggling for their instincts were proved right when
oxygen – earned Babooshka fared
two showings on considerably
Top Of The Pops. better than its
It served notice BABOOSHKA WAS ABOUT predecessor,
that Bush was an A WIFE TESTING HER becoming Bush’s
artist of fearsome second top five
was the NME article headed Where Are They Now?, published

musical gifts, and HUSBAND BY PRETENDING hit in the UK,

POP_UP The press have often got Bush wrong. Most striking

a unique voice TO BE ANOTHER WOMAN. and her highest-

with much to say. ranking single
“I’M SURE I HEARD ABOUT
just prior to the release of the Hounds Of Love album

A week later, she since 1978’s

appeared on the IT ON SOME TV SERIES debut Wuthering
BBC’s Nationwide YEARS AGO. IT’S AN Heights (it also
to be interviewed
about her “protest”
EXTRAORDINARY THING FOR reached No.
2 in Australia
anthem. SOMEONE TO DO” and sold over
The second single half a million in
couldn’t have been France).
more different, The third
certainly in terms of lyrical content. single from Never For Ever repeated
Babooshka was about a wife testing her the exact chart position of Breathing –
husband by pretending to be another No. 16. It, too, was a protest song, or
woman, and the whole enterprise rather a cry of anguish from a mother,
backfiring. “I’m sure I heard about it on consumed with guilt, grieving for her
some TV series years ago, when I was young adult son who was killed on
a kid, one of these period things that military manoeuvres. The mournful, waltz-
the BBC do,” Bush claimed. “I think it’s time Army Dreamers (issued just after
an extraordinary thing for someone to the album came out, in September

35

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

’80) was sung by Bush in an Irish wordless stream of babble-talk predictive All We Ever Look For (Bush: “About
accent, at this, the height of the troubles of Cocteau Twins. Blow Away (For Bill) how we seek something, but in the wrong
in Northern Ireland – some outraged – “a comfort for the fear of dying, and way, or at wrong times, so it is never
listeners believed it could be interpreted for those of us who believe that music found”) was a quirky, quixotic assortment
as sympathising with the IRA. is perhaps an exception to the Never of Fairlight sounds and trad instruments
In May ’80, the Kate Bush Club held For Ever rule”, in Bush’s words – was a including the Japanese koto. Egypt, a
its first convention at London’s Empire curious blend of prog and mainstream/ typical example of Bush’s florid artistry,
Ball Room in Leicester Square, with Bush accessible pop-rock. Her voice fluttering sounded as much like Genesis, or
herself in attendance. Ever-prolific, she between octaves, it memorialised her certainly Peter Gabriel, as it did anyone
started putting down early ideas for lighting director Bill Duffield, killed in contemporary: in a way it was a mix of
what would be her fourth album, The an accident at Poole Arts Centre during the two, the credits including members
Dreaming. As for her long-awaited (by her 1979 tour, and referenced other of The Alan Parsons Project as well as
her fast-moving standards) third LP, Never musicians who died during the previous Richard Burgess and John L Waters (soon
For Ever, it was finally ready for release decade: Minnie Riperton, Keith Moon, to form synthpop outfit Landscape) on
that same month, although it didn’t hit the Sandy Denny, Sid Vicious, Marc Bolan Fairlight programming. The Wedding
shops until September. (plus one earlier casualty, Buddy Holly). List – a revenge song complete with dire
Bush spoke about the 10 tracks.
Overall, she claimed they concerned Bush pictured in
“human communication and its 1983 on the verge of
difficulties”. The title alluded to conflicting a new level of hard-
won freedom in her
emotions, good and bad, which pass, as
musical career
she declared: “We must tell our hearts
that it is ‘never for ever’, and be happy
that it's like that.”
Babooshka – about “futile situations:
the way in which we often ruin things for
ourselves” – confirmed Bush as the most
singular female voice in mainstream pop,
certainly until Björk and Liz Fraser turned
up, even if some critics still positioned
her alongside MOR/daytime light
entertainment types such as Barbara
Dickson and Elaine Page, less
idiosyncratic than hammily mannered
and melodramatic. Delius (Song Of
Summer) portrayed the final years in
the life of English composer Frederick
Delius, and was a beguiling three-
minute trifle, Bush’s singing a virtually

“CHOOSING SOUNDS
IS SO LIKE TRYING TO BE
PSYCHIC, SEEING INTO
THE FUTURE, LOOKING
IN THE CRYSTAL BALL OF
ARRANGEMENTS. EVERY
TIME A MUSICAL VISION
COMES TRUE, IT’S LIKE
HAVING MY FEET TICKLED”

© Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

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CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 36 19/01/2018 09:21

 warning (“I’m going to fill your head
with lead”) – evinced Bush’s sectional
approach to songcraft, with attendant
tempo changes reminiscent of art-rock
doyens 10cc. Violin (“for all the mad
fiddlers”) had a punky attack and the
urgency of prime early Roxy Music,
Bush’s voice a panoply of tics and
Tourette’s shrieks. Bush may have had
a reputation for being overly decorous
and whimsical, but she was resolutely
determined to “go there”: The Infant
Kiss was a lullaby about a governess
consumed with adult feelings for her
young male charge (who is himself
possessed by the spirit of a grown man).
Army Dreamers and Breathing closed the
album, a triumph of melodic songwriting,
creative arranging, vivid lyricism and
gentle experimentation.
“Choosing sounds is so like trying to
be psychic, seeing into the future, looking
in the crystal ball of arrangements,
‘scattering a little bit of stardust’, to quote
the immortal words of The Troggs,” Bush
said. “Every time a musical vision comes
true, it’s like having my feet tickled.
When it works, it helps me to feel a
bit braver. It doesn’t always work, but
experiments are never wasted; they will
always find a place sometime.
“I never really felt like a producer,” she
continued. “I just felt closer to my loves
– felt good, free, although a little raw,
and sometimes paranoia would pop up.
When working with emotion, which is
what music is, it can be so unpredictable
– the human element, that fire.”
In the wake of the record’s release,
Bush went on an album signing
tour around the UK (in London,
the queue to meet her stretched
over 100 yards along Oxford
Street). On September
16, Never For Ever
CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 37
THE GIRL IN THE BUBBLE:
THE VIDEOS 1980-1981
AS BUSH’S WORK WITH KEEF MACMILLAN DREW TO A CLOSE WITH
WHAT SHE CONSIDERED HER MOST IMAGINATIVE AND SUCCESSFUL
VISUAL PROMO TO DATE, SHE EMBARKED ON SEVERAL SHORT-LIVED
COLLABORATIONS WITH OTHER DIRECTORS. AS FOR TAKING CHARGE
OF HER OWN VIDEOS, THAT WAS STILL TO COME…
BREATHING
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1980
The video features Bush in a plastic womb, portraying an unborn
baby – albeit one fully made-up, with luscious, cascading brown locks
– trying to get out. Towards the end, Bush as “the baby” appears to
come towards the sun, then there is a scene involving several characters
dressed in white hooded hazardous materials outfits, followed by a
blinding flash – a nuclear explosion – after which the characters emerge from wading waist-deep through a river
and finally gather to sit, bemused, in a wood. youtu.be/VzlofSthVwc
BABOOSHKA
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1980
The Babooshka video shows Bush beside a double bass, the instrument
symbolising the husband in this song about suspicion and betrayal. In
her role as the embittered wife Bush is wearing a black bodysuit and a
veil, but this changes into a rather more extravagant Russian-looking
costume that presents her as a quasi-mythological, almost warlike and
definitely Amazonian alter ego, the titular Babooshka, who brandishes a sword in a decidedly aggressive manner.
The costume was based on an illustration by Chris Achilleos. youtu.be/6xckBwPdo1c
ARMY DREAMERS
KEITH ‘KEEF’ MACMILLAN, 1980
Shot in September 1980, Bush’s final video with director Keef opens
with a closeup of the singer, dressed in dark green military camouflage,
holding a white-haired child, who runs off and then returns in combat
uniform, a grown-up young soldier. She blinks in synchronisation with
the song’s sampled gun cocks. Bush and other soldiers pass through
woodland, amid explosions. As the song proceeds, Bush reaches out for the young soldier, but he disappears.
Finally, she is blown up. “For me that's the closest that I’ve got to a little bit of film,” she said, delighted with the
end results. “I’m very pleased with that one, artistically.” youtu.be/QOZDKlpybZE
SAT IN YOUR LAP
BRIAN WISEMAN, 1981
This video was filmed over two days with Bush in full “interpretive
dance” mode, evincing her days under the stewardship of mime legend
Lindsay Kemp. She flounces around on a parquet floor in a white tutu
flanked by two harlequins, or a robe and a dunce’s cap, while either
rollerskating or being carried around on the shoulders of a man-goat.
“Out of the harness and into the light of a timeless tunnel, as a little magician’s box springs to life and the room is
filled with laser and skaters,” mused Kate. Why not, indeed. youtu.be/-4csr6pLZLg
THERE GOES A TENNER
PAUL HENRY, 1981
Bush here is dressed all in black, with some similarly black-clad
henchmen, with dirt on her face to denote someone disguising
themselves because they are on a “blag”, a bungled bank robbery. The
fearful and paranoid perpetrator’s accent is both cockney and posh,
like something out of The Sweeney, or an old Ealing comedy. Halfway
through the video there is an explosion, after which banknotes fly through the air. The robbery goes awry and the
protagonist winds up in prison, having accrued an odd kind of celebrity: “a star in strange ways”. Strangeways…
geddit? Director Paul Henry would also helm The Dreaming. youtu.be/lxVcrFTzZMs
37
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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

SAT IN YOUR LAP WAS A

BOLD DEPARTURE. OVER
A TUMULT OF PIANO,
PERCUSSION AND BRASS,
BUSH’S VOICE VEERED FROM
STACCATO TO SCREAMING,
MAKING THE PURSUIT OF
KNOWLEDGE SOUND LIKE
AN ORGIASTIC FIT

The airbrushed Bush of 1980,

all spandex and legwarmers,
was gone – but would this new,
experimental phase finish her as
a commercial entity?
© Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

CPP09.Early80s.print.indd 38 19/01/2018 09:21

 KEY RECORDINGS –
THE DREAMING
Bush’s third album Never For Ever was a co-production between her and Jon Kelly;
her fourth, however, saw her take total control. The Dreaming was a feat of solipsist
self-indulgence – in a good way – as she tested the limits of the new technology at
her disposal, notably the Fairlight CMI.
Described as a maximalist paradise, The Dreaming employed not just the latest
equipment but also a variety of exotic and/or unusual (folk) instrumentation,
including mandolins, uilleann pipes and didgeridoos. Bush brought her pop
sensibility to bear on an array of unexpected time signatures, rich textures,
samples, vocals loops and idiosyncratic polyrhythms. The songs explored subjects
as varied as the dark side of one’s character (Leave It Open), the pursuit of
knowledge (Sat In Your Lap), armed crime (There Goes A Tenner), the Vietnam
war (Pull Out The Pin), the plight of Aborigines (The Dreaming) and the life of
an escapologist (Houdini) while Get Out Of My House was based on the novel
The Shining by Stephen King.
Lyrically broad, sonically weird, The Dreaming repositioned Bush in the
postpunk vanguard alongside the likes of Siouxsie & The Banshees, or as the
eccentric aunt of the new pop kids. As soon as Sat In Your Lap kicks in, you can hear the
technology gap between the album and its predecessor, the stabs of Fairlight orchestration
redolent of Art Of Noise. There Goes A Tenner’s “sense of adventure, is changing to danger” But whatever she sings, Bush brings a whole heap of her
almost reads like a mission statement, the music straddling the pre-punk prog and quirky own personality, to the point where her every fragment of music is immediately
new wave eras (David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Geoff Downes of Buggles both played on recognisable as her. She is sui generis, her music utterly Kate Bush-ish, as are the legions
this album). Pull Out The Pin is at once leftfield and luvvie-ish: Bush still bore traces of the of artists, male and female, who emerged in her wake. The Cocteau Twins were children of
mannered and theatrical, and this song is crying out for the West End musical treatment. Bush, ditto Björk. Prince was a huge Bush fan – and indeed got to work with her on 1993’s
Houdini, too, is quite am-dram, and Night Of The Swallow is equal parts Diamanda Galas The Red Shoes – as is Big Boi of rap innovators OutKast. “This is one of the first Kate Bush
and Elaine Page, with Celtic flavours to balance the modern production and sampladelic albums I was introduced to when I was in the sixth grade,” he said of The Dreaming. “It’s
tints. Leave It Open evades easy melodic analysis, Bush’s voice put through a warping kind of a dark album. Man, her vocal range is incredible. And the music. She killed it.”
“phaser” effect, the drums big and gated. All The Love is, like many of the songs here, Bush put it more simply: The Dreaming was her ”I’ve gone mad album”. Other artists
more of a character study than a confessional. should be this possessed, this manic, this “insane”.

entered the charts at pole position,
making her the first British solo female to
reach No. 1 in the album charts.
Bush promoted the album in Europe,
then returned to London to continue
writing and producing demos for the
next album. She was voted Best Female
Singer in the Melody Maker poll for the
third consecutive year. In November, she
released the non-album single, piano
ballad December Will Be Magic Again.
She also duetted on a cover of a Roy
Harper song, Another Day, with Peter
Gabriel, for a projected single, and the
pair penned a B-side, Ibiza, although
neither were released.
In January 1981, Bush was voted Best
Female Artist for the third consecutive
year in Capital Radio’s listeners’ poll.
The following month, she won the Best
Female Singer category in Sounds’
annual poll. In March, she made demos
for her next album, and in May she
entered Townhouse Studio with Hugh
Padgham as engineer to begin recording
The Dreaming. Backing tracks were laid
down throughout May and June.
Our first exposure to The Dreaming
was the single Sat In Your Lap, a bold
departure even for the adventurous
Bush. Journalist Simon Reynolds called
it “an avant-pop stampede of pounding
percussion and deranged shrieks, a
sister-pop song to Public Image Ltd’s
Flowers Of Romance” (indeed, John
Lydon has always been a huge Kate Bush
fan). Over a tumult of piano, percussion
Kate in a still from the Paul Henry-directed video
for The Dreaming, August 1982. “The song had to
roll around in mud and dirt,” she explained
© Rob Assenberg
and brass, Bush’s voice veered from
staccato to screaming, making the pursuit
of knowledge sound like a orgiastic fit.
The Guardian later hailed Sat In Your Lap
“without doubt one of the oddest, most
singular recordings ever to appear in the
upper reaches of the UK singles chart” –
it peaked at No. 11.
In July, Bush went into Abbey Road
studios with Haydn Bendall as engineer
to complete the backing tracks for The
Dreaming, while August saw her start
overdubbing at Odyssey Studios with
Paul Hardiman as engineer, a process
that took several months. It wasn’t until
January 1982 that she completed the
final overdubs at Advision (a studio
synonymous with prog musicians,
from Yes to ELP to Gentle Giant) in a
session that would last for three months.
Finally, in March ’82 the overdubs were
finished, leaving just final mixing to
complete. After more than 16 months
of arduous work and perfectionist craft,
The Dreaming was, by May of that year,
ready, and yet for marketing reasons its
release was put back till September.
In the interim, in July ’82 Bush replaced
David Bowie in a Royal Rock Gala
before HRH The Prince of Wales in

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S
aid of The Prince’s Trust. She performed
The Wedding List live, backed by Pete
Townshend and Midge Ure on guitars,
Japan’s Mick Karn on bass, Procul
Harum’s Gary Brooker on keyboards and
Phil Collins on drums.
That same month, the title track of
The Dreaming was issued as a single.
Another leap into the musical unknown, it
featured children’s entertainer Rolf Harris
on didgeridoo and bird impersonator
Percy Edwards providing sheep noises
while Bush did her best Australian
accent on this song about the destruction
of Aboriginal homelands by white
Australians in their quest for weapons-
grade uranium. Given its content and
stylistic waywardness, it was hardly a
shock that Radio 1 didn’t exactly hammer
the song, and its chart position was, as a
result, a lowly No. 48.
40
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With Midge Ure at the
Prince’s Trust gala in
1982, where a wardrobe
malfunction failed to
dent a memorable full-
band performance
© REX/Shutterstock
The Dreaming album was released
to similar bafflement in September
’82. Some claimed it was an act of
career sabotage/suicide, a radical
step too far, while more sympathetic
listeners saw its experiments with
rhythm and technology as an index of
possibilities for pop’s sampling-based
future. Neil Tennant, two years from
becoming a Pet Shop Boy, described
the album in Smash Hits as “very weird.
She’s obviously trying to become less
commercial.” Melody Maker’s critic
found it “initially bewildering and not a
little preposterous”, urging: “Try to hang
on through the twisted overkill and the
historic fits and there’s much reward.”
Nevertheless, The Dreaming charted at
No. 3, even if it did drop out faster than
its three predecessors. And intriguingly,
it fared well in the States, entering the
THE DREAMING CHARTED AT
NO. 3 AND, INTRIGUINGLY,
FARED WELL IN THE STATES.
“THE SONGS WERE VERY
DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING
I’D EVER WRITTEN BEFORE.
THEY WERE MUCH MORE
RHYTHMIC, A COMPLETELY
NEW SIDE TO MY MUSIC”
Billboard Top 200, the first of her albums
to do so. It helped Bush accrue a cult
following, positioning her as a sort of UK
arthouse version of Laurie Anderson.
“The songs were very different from
anything I’d ever written before,” she
allowed in a fanzine interview. “They
were much more rhythmic, and in a
way, a completely new side to my music.
I was using different instruments, and
everything was changing; and I felt that
really the best thing to do would be to
make it completely different.
“There were a lot of things I wanted to
experiment with… I particularly wanted
to play around with my voices because
there are a lot of different backing vocals
and things like that,” she furthered,
explaining the use of complex vocal
loops and unorthodox instrumentation.
“So the different textures were important
to me. I wanted to try and create pictures
with the sounds by using effects.”
There Goes A Tenner became the
third single lifted off The Dreaming in
November ’82 in the UK. A song about
a bungled bank robbery, it fared even
worse than its predecessor, stalling
outside the Top 75 for the first time in her
career, peaking at No. 93. Elsewhere,
Suspended In Gaffa was the track chosen
as the third single from the album. It was
jaunty enough to reach the Top 10 across
Europe and in Australia.
Bush spent 1983 overseeing the
construction of her very own 48-track
studio in a barn at her home in Wickham
Farm in Welling, allowing her to begin,
in January 1984, writing and demoing
tracks for her fifth album, The Hounds Of
Love. In June, she began overdubbing
and mixing, a process that would take
six pleasantly gruelling months.
“Work obsesses me and everyone
around me is dragged into it,” she
said, summing up her modus operandi,
and her love of her all-consuming craft.
“It’s very important for me not to get
so sucked into it. To hold some kind of
lightness about it. It’s terrible, really, I
sometimes think I might as well just be
a brain and a big pair of ears on legs,
stuck in front of a mixing desk.”
19/01/2018 09:22
 C L A S S I C

ALBUM
NEVER FOR EVER
KATE BUSH’S STARTLING AND EMOTIONAL THIRD ALBUM WAS ABOUT
FREEDOM, TELLING STORIES, TRANSIENCE, AND ALSO ALL ABOUT
TAKING CONTROL OF HER OWN SOUND THANKS TO MUSICAL
FRIENDS AND THE SOUND-MUNCHING, WAVEFORM-CRUNCHING
TECHNOLOGICAL WONDER THEY CALLED THE FAIRLIGHT…
P A U L L E S T E R

ate Bush’s third album after all I am only little, a move me, thank you, you are There was always room

K was a transitional
release that saw her
taking the reins in the
studio, with a little
help from engineer Jon Kelly.
She remembered moving
into Abbey Road’s Studio
2 – “the land of The Beatles,
tea, smiles and sticky buns”
– where she used a notepad
with a page for each song
on which she would write
requirements for instruments,
effects, harmonies and so
on, which she would list and
tick off as appropriate. “It
helps my memory, and keeps
some kind of logical working
order,” she said.
“The responsibility as a
producer was something I felt
a great deal,” she added.
Not that it was all hard work:
one of the main problems,
apparently, was that she and
the musicians were simply
“having too much fun”,
working in the studio until the
early hours.
The mixture of play and
discipline paid dividends:
“All was completed with
care and tender hearts,”
Bush emphasised. “I really
deeply appreciated the
understanding and respect
from all the musicians, and
female, and an unlikely
producer! But as I squirmed
and contorted my way
through explanations of
visuals and audials, they
stood patient, calm and
open, and not one uttered,
‘You weirdo!’, unless in jest.
“Without everyone – and
the Fairlight – it would never
have been the same. You
“I really deeply appreciated the understanding
and respect from all the musicians. As I squirmed
and contorted my way through explanations of
visuals and audials, they stood patient, and not
one uttered ‘You weirdo!’, unless in jest”
TRACKLISTING
SIDE ONE
Babooshka
Delius
Blow Away
All We Ever Look For
Egypt
inspiration,” she concluded.
Engineer Kelly had
equally fond memories of
the sessions. “We made
this a real home record for
Kate,” he said. The studio,
he recalled, was filled with
flowers, plants and friends.
Bush’s tipples of choice were
ciggies and chocolate, with
a side order of Courvoisier.
SIDE TWO
The Wedding List
Violin
The Infant Kiss
Night Scented Stock
Army Dreamers
Breathing
for frivolity, but it often fed
into the work – such as
the occasion glasses were
smashed on the stairs and,
via the Fairlight, became
a tuned sound effect on
Babooshka.
Whatever the methods,
they worked. Babooshka was
at once froufrou and fierce,
segueing into the fragrant
Delius. Blow Away was a
poignant recollection of a
colleague and friend. All We
Ever Look For featured koto
plucks beside the modernism
of the Fairlight, the track
retaining a whimsical feel.
At this point, it still wasn’t
clear the extent to which Bush
was accepted as an original
or seen as a mere novelty.
She had yet to be anointed
a genius by the music press;
she was wilful, for sure, and
mercurial, as goofy as she
was gifted, still the character
worthy of affectionate parody
by Pamela Stephenson on
Not The Nine O’Clock News.
But through the florid artistry
of Egypt, the madly shifting
tempos of The Wedding
List and the demented
discordance of Violin, you
could sense attitudes towards
her shifting. The Infant Kiss

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 N E V E R F O R E V E R C L A S S I C A L B U M

THE PLAYERS
RELEASED
7 September 1980
LABEL EMI
PRODUCED BY
Kate Bush, Jon Kelly
ENGINEER
Jon Kelly
ASSISTANT
ENGINEER
Jon Jacobs
RECORDED AT
September 1979 – May 1980
at Abbey Road Studios and
AIR Studios, London
PERSONNEL
Kate Bush – piano, keyboards,
vocals, Fairlight, Yamaha CS-80
(1, 4), arranger, producer
ADDITIONAL
MUSICIANS
Ian Bairnson – bass, vocals (2);
Brian Bath – electric guitar (1, 6, 7,
10), acoustic (3, 4, 9), BVs (6, 9);
Alan Murphy – electric guitar (1, 2,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10), acoustic (4), bass (9);
Paddy Bush – harmonica (6), mandolin
(9), balalaika (1), sitar (2), BVs (1,
2, 4, 5, 6, 9), koto (4), banshee (7),
saw (6), Strumento De Porco (5); Kevin
Burke – violin (7); Adam Skeaping – viola,
arrangements (8); Joseph Skeaping – lironi,
arrangements (8); Duncan Mackay –
Fairlight (4, 9); Max Middleton – Minimoog
(5), Fender Rhodes (1, 3, 5, 6, 10), string
arrangements (3, 6); Larry Fast – Prophet
5 (10); Mike Moran – Prophet 5 (5); John
L Walters & Richard James Burgess –
Fairlight programming; Del Palmer – bass
(3, 5, 6, 7); John Giblin – bass (1, 11);
Stuart Elliot – drums (1, 10), bodhran
(9); Preston Heyman – percussion (2,
3, 5), drums (3, 5, 6, 7), BVs (4, 6);
Morris Pert – percussion (4, 10); Gary
Hurst – BVs (1, 4); Andrew Bryant
– BVs (4); Roy Harper – BVs (11);
Martyn Ford Orchestra – strings (3, 6)

was gently audacious, Night

Scented Stock 52 seconds of
hymnal bliss, Army Dreamers
and Breathing both a new
kind of protest anthem.
The thrill that Bush felt in
taking charge of virtually
every chirrup and shriek
was palpable. “The freedom
you feel when you’re in
control of your own music is
fantastic,” she said. “As soon
as you get your hands on the
production, it becomes your
baby. That’s really exciting,
because you do everything
for your own child.”
THE SLEEVE
The front cover image of Never For Ever was painted by artist
Nick Price, an advertising and children’s book illustrator who
had previously provided the cover art for Bush’s 1979 Tour Of
Life program. It features a cartoon Kate, windswept on top of
a hill, an array of fantastical creatures flying out from under
her windblown skirt. Bush described the cover as “an intricate
journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people
and things with our desires and problems. These black and white
thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop
into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it’s for you to bring
them to life.”
She was rather less poetic discussing the multitude of cuddly
animals and monsters emanating from her skirt with Phil
Sutcliffe of Sounds. “A lot of people think it’s hilarious that all
the ideas are coming out from under my skirt,” she said. “But
the good and bad things pour out of me in the form of music.
It’s terrible, it comes out like diarrhoea! And it’s to hint that so
much of it comes from a sexual need, from inside me, though it
could also be from my stomach, my side… excretions. We had
to be careful with the title because of all that, there was my skirt
blowing about, but there couldn’t be anything about ‘wind’ in it
or that would make the whole album one big fart.”

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 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S

HER SENSUAL
WORLD
THE HALF-DECADE THAT GAVE US KATE BUSH’S FIFTH AND SIXTH ALBUMS
WOULD DISPLAY A TRULY FULLY-FORMED ARTIST WITH A FAR LIGHTER YET
MORE COMPLEX TOUCH: IT WOULD BEGIN WITH A WHOPPING GREAT
HIT AND CULMINATE WITH UNEQUIVOCAL STATESIDE APPROVAL. THIS,
HOWEVER, WAS AN INTENSE BLIZZARD OF WORK THAT WAS PERHAPS
PREPARING US FOR A LONG, LONG RETREAT…
M A R K B E A U M O N T

’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name, her three-year absence, but the gated motorik beats

“
I
but no-one wants you when you lose.” and cyborg hums of Running Up That Hill had
The rest was pandemonium. June 28, 1987, marked an instant rebirth, a return to the forefront
and as he murmured the last words of the first of left-field art-pop after a walkabout in its Afro-noir
verse of Don’t Give Up, Peter Gabriel paused fringes. It was a career trajectory that mirrored
on the Earls Court’s stage Gabriel’s: shifting from
and turned to face a set of early works steeped in very
steps at the back, where a British whimsy to a period
spotlight lit up his surprise KATE BUSH HAD RETURNED of experiments with the
guest singer. Bushmania darker edges of world music,
ensued. Like The Beatles at FROM THE WILDERNESS A before finally incorporating
Shea Stadium, you couldn’t WOMAN IN FULL CONTROL both, with an added dash of
hear Kate Bush sing the bohemian pop, into a mature
OF HER ART – HER VOICE
chorus beneath the roar of mainstream third phase.
the crowd, and with good GROWN RICHER, HER And there was Bush’s fresh
reason. Those of us lucky AESTHETIC MORE ASSURED allure. She was no longer
enough to be present were the pre-Raphaelite teenage
fully versed in Bush’s legend.
– AND FINALLY REAPING THE prancer of Wuthering
We knew this was her first RESPECT AND SUCCESS HER Heights, the classical wisp
non-charity gig appearance TALENT DESERVED prone to bouts of doe-eyed,
for eight years, and might chintzy silliness. She had
easily have suspected it returned from the wilderness
would be her last for another a woman in full control of her
15. The scent of history filled the rafters. art – her voice grown richer, her new Gatsby-era
There was an added frisson of rarity to it, too; in aesthetic more assured – and finally reaping the full
1987 Kate Bush was back from a brink and driving respect and success her talent deserved.
the cultural conversation once more. Her under- The Hounds Of Love album was a surprise cultural
rated ‘uncommercial experiment’ with 1982’s The whirlwind, particularly considering that half of it
Dreaming had made her seem a spent force during was a folk rock song cycle about being stranded at

A new dawn: few would have predicted that Bush

would bounce back with an album that combined
startling originality with chart-busting potential
© Guido Harari

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 45

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 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S

DRAMATIC LICENSE:
THE VIDEOS 1985-1989
KATE BUSH’S VIDEO OUTPUT IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE DECADE
TOOK ON NEW, DEEPER TWISTS AS SHE BEGAN TO PAY ALMOST AS
MUCH ATTENTION TO STORYBOARDING THESE ALMOST MINI-FILMS
AS SHE DID OVERDUBBING HER INCREASINGLY SUBTLE AND COMPLEX
MUSIC. SHE ALSO MINED THE THEATRICAL, CINEMATIC AND COMEDIC
WORLDS FOR SOME UNLIKELY AND VERY SKILLED TALENT…

RUNNING UP THAT HILL

(A DEAL WITH GOD)
DAVID GARFATH, 1985
Frustrated that dance was being reduced to a trivial art form in music
videos, Bush set out to make a serious, classical performance video for
her big comeback single. Recruiting choreographer Diane Grey and
interpretive dancer Michael Hervieu, she performed an archer-themed
routine in a Japanese hakama, only to find her views on the dumbing down of dance in pop culture proved right.
MTV decided not to screen the clip, instead using footage of Kate performing the song on Wogan. “They liked the
idea of people singing songs,” Paddy Bush claimed. youtu.be/wp43OdtAAkM

HOUNDS OF LOVE
KATE BUSH, 1986
In thrall to the imagery and styles of the Thirties throughout the Hounds
Of Love era, Bush based the title track’s video – set between the wars,
with Kate becoming romantically embroiled with a shadowy espionage
agent elegantly played by dancer/choreographer Gow Hunter, who
sadly died in 2011 – on The 39 Steps, a classic 1935 British thriller
directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her dedication to the aesthetic was so thorough that she even convinced Hitchcock to
walk slowly across one shot as a nod to the cameos he made in all of his films. youtu.be/VerK4zwMRQw

CLOUDBUSTING
JULIAN DOYLE, 1985
Originally conceived between Kate and Terry Gilliam as a short film, the
Cloudbusting video roped in Donald Sutherland to play William Reich
building a cloudbuster with his son Peter (played by Bush) and getting
arrested for his trouble. With the help of Julie Christie’s hairdresser, sea – considered to this day her greatest
Kate tracked Sutherland down to a hotel room to personally ask him to achievement, it topped a million sales
appear in the film. Sutherland was very nearly blown off the screen by the cloudbuster itself, though; designed by and posited Bush among the top tier of
the people behind the xenomorph in Alien, the huge, trumpet-like beast was far bigger than Reich’s machines, but British music legends.
exuded a magical antiquity that gave Bush’s song extra sepia sparkle. youtu.be/pllRW9wETzw
So when Kate walked onto the Earl’s
Court stage and sighed “don’t give up,
THE SENSUAL WORLD
we’re proud of who you are” in June
PETER RICHARDSON, 1989
1987, the crowd didn’t drown out a
Having featured Hugh Laurie and Dawn French in the video for lost pop treasure, they drowned out a
Experiment IV – banned by Top Of The Pops for being “too violent” to
reclusive phenomenon. We were twenty
be shown before the watershed – Bush continued her association with
comic actors by selecting Comic Strip alumni Peter Richardson to direct thousand hounds of love, howling at a
the evocative video for The Sensual World. Featuring Kate clad in a once-in-a-lifetime sighting of our errant
medieval dress striding boldly through a forest that was by turns icy and aflame, it was both one of her simplest mistress. As for Kate, she must’ve felt her
and most striking visual achievements. youtu.be/h1DDndY0FLI deal with God had finally paid off.

THIS WOMAN’S WORK IT’S IN THE TREES

JOHN ALEXANDER, 1989 For two years, the Hounds… gathered
Probably the most successful of Bush’s narrative videos thanks to a on the leafy outskirts of the Bush estate.
tour de force performance from Tim McInnerny (who achieved comic Not quite in the trees, but in a barn,
fame as Lord Percy Percy and Captain Darling in Blackadder), the This where Kate had built her own 48-track
Woman’s Work film traced the thoughts and memories of a distraught studio over the summer of 1983 (“the
husband pacing a hospital waiting room, awaiting news of his wife after best decision I ever made” she’d later
she collapsed over dinner. Deeply moving and left with an agonisingly inconclusive ending, This Woman’s Work did claim), in “a kind of limbo” following
for dramatic music promos what Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) did for dance. youtu.be/iEHqPCA_lzQ
the disappointing sales and reception
granted The Dreaming. “It took me four
or five months to be able even to write

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again,” she told the Daily Mail in 1985.
“It’s very difficult when you've been
working for years, doing one album
after another. You need fresh things to
stimulate you. I decided to take a bit of
the summer out and spend time with my
boyfriend [band member Del Palmer]
and with my family and friends, just
relaxing. Not being Kate Bush the singer;
just being myself."
From January 1984, Bush began
piecing together tracks using her state-of-
the-art set-up – banks of synths, LinnDrum
machines and the Fairlight CMI sampler
which had been a revelation for her
songwriting. “Discovering the Fairlight
gave me a whole new writing tool, as
well as an arranging tool,” she told
Option magazine in 1990, “…like the
difference between writing a song on
a piano or on a guitar. With a Fairlight
you’ve got everything: a tremendous
range of things. It completely opened
me up to sounds and textures, and I
could experiment with these in a way I
could never have done without it.”
CPP09.Late80s.print.REV (still needs new pic).indd 47
Rather than re-record the demos
she worked on with Palmer and her
team of engineers, she built on them,
enhancing and over-dubbing for a year,
adding samples of movie dialogue and
Georgian chorales in pursuit of a brave
and singular vision; to satisfy both her
melodic pop leaning and her craving for
experimentation. Taking cues from David
Bowie’s Low and from Gabriel, who
RATHER THAN RE-RECORD
THE HOUNDS OF LOVE
DEMOS, SHE BUILT ON
THEM IN PURSUIT OF A
BRAVE AND SINGULAR
VISION: TO SATISFY BOTH
HER MELODIC POP LEANING
AND CRAVING FOR
EXPERIMENTATION
Bush at the Hounds
Of Love launch at the
London Planetarium,
September 9 1985
© Dave Hogan/Getty
oversaw the 22-minute multi-segment
concept track Supper’s Ready which
dominated side two of Genesis’ 1972
album Foxtrot, she planned Hounds Of
Love as an album very much of two sides.
The first side, entitled ‘Hounds Of Love’,
would consist of five chart-pummelling
pop hits to revive her saleability, please
her label and reanimate her faltering
audience. The second side, entitled ‘The
Ninth Wave’ after a line in Tennyson’s
poem Idylls Of The King, would be
a seven-track narrative song-cycle
following the thoughts, fears and
memories of “a person who is alone in
the water for the night. It’s about their
past, present and future coming to keep
them awake, to stop them drowning,
to stop them going to sleep until the
morning comes.”
Both halves were torrential successes.
On the August 5 release of Running
Up That Hill Bush scored her biggest hit
of the Eighties, reaching No. 3 in the
UK and cracking the US Top 30 for the
first time since 1978. A lucky turn
47
22/01/2018 09:11
 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S
© David Crump / Associated Newspapers/REX/Shutterstock

for her label EMI, who had originally

wanted Cloudbusting to be the album’s Above: Kate with Lenny
lead single and had only approved Henry – and Spitting
Image – doing her bit
Running Up That Hill on the condition for Comic Relief, 23
that its original title was changed. “For October 1986
me it is still called Deal With God,” Bush
told Radio One in 1992, “but we were
told that if we kept this title that it would
not be played in any of the religious
countries, Italy wouldn’t play it, France
wouldn’t play it, and Australia wouldn’t
play it! Ireland wouldn’t play it, and that
generally we might get it blacked purely
because it had God in the title.”
EMI had a point in that the song has
been widely misunderstood as Bush
yearning for goddess status, to swap
places with the almighty. “I was trying
POP_UP Kate often struggled with interviewers’ lists of negative questions.

to say that, really, a man and a woman

Example: “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?” “Losing my

can’t understand each other because we

are a man and a woman,” she clarified
in 1992, “and if we could actually swap
I Ching card,” she replied smartly, “and Killing Joke splitting up”

each other’s roles, be in each other’s

place for a while, I think we’d both be
very surprised! I think it would lead to a
greater understanding. The only way I
could think it could be done was either...
you know, I thought a deal with the devil.
And I thought, ‘Well, no, why not a deal
with God?’, because in a way the whole
idea is so much more powerful.”
More earthly and feral, but boasting
no less cultural bite, was the title track,
unleashed with a flurry of afrobeat drums
and a sample from a seance scene from
1957 British horror film Night Of The
Demon – Maurice Denham babbling “it’s
in the trees! It’s coming!” Another Top 20
hit, Hounds Of Love has come to define
Bush’s more elemental Eighties prime,
with its choir of Katehounds adding
sweet melodic yelps to her taut, cello-led
flight from romance’s hunt pack.

48 © Chris Taylor/Photoshot

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 “I WAS TRYING TO SAY THAT
A MAN AND A WOMAN
CAN’T UNDERSTAND EACH
OTHER, AND IF WE COULD
ACTUALLY SWAP EACH
OTHER’S ROLES, BE IN EACH
OTHER’S PLACE FOR A
WHILE, I THINK WE’D BOTH
BE VERY SURPRISED!”

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 A shot from the Guido Harari sessions
for The Sensual World, 1989
© Guido Harari

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 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S

THE SECRET POLICEMAN’S THIRD BALL

It was the policeman’s biggest secret. Tucked away amid
a starry line-up including Duran Duran, Lou Reed, Peter
Gabriel and Mark Knopfler, Kate Bush stalked onto the
glitzy London Palladium stage during the four-day run of
The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in March 1987 and cooed
her way through Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),
its first ever performance outside of a TV studio, and its last
for 27 years.
It was quite the coup for The Secret Policeman’s Ball,
the Amnesty International benefit series launched in the
mid-Seventies by John Cleese and Amnesty which would

© Dave Wainwright/REX/Shutterstock
go on to inspire the Eighties wave of multi-performer
benefit events including Live Aid and Comic Relief. After
a six-year break from the celebrated comedy-led original
run which saw the Monty Python crew team up with Peter
Cook, Rowan Atkinson and the rising ranks of alternative Gilmour and Bush
comedians, the 1987 comeback expanded to four days power through
Running Up That Hill at
to accommodate the glut of musicians that had flocked to
the London Palladium,
support Amnesty during the intervening years. March 1987
Two nights of comedy saw the cream of Eighties wit
grace the Palladium stage – Stephen Fry and Hugh
Laurie, Ben Elton, the Spitting Image puppets, French the legends. Her appearance made top billing, and while more primal and quasi-religious, emerging with the melodic
and Saunders, Lenny Henry and more. The two nights of the footage seems far less artful and more dated than her rush of Save A Prayer or Victim Of Love but also the import
music, meanwhile, featured Eighties pop sensations such as precise visual eye otherwise allowed during the Hounds Of of Voices Of Freedom and Biko.
Erasure, Nik Kershaw and Duran Duran rub shoulders with Love campaign – with all the headless guitars, chandelier Befitting her step into the league of the musical
the elder statesmen of charity rock. earrings and magnificent mullets it couldn’t have looked timeless, she and Gilmour went on to cover The Beatles’ Let
Somewhere between the two sat Kate, enjoying more of the era with ‘Loadsamoney’ on slap bass – the It Be, and left the stage to the sort of rapturous applause
her second flush of mainstream stardom alongside the song itself transcended its era. Lush and resounding, it that she’d soon turn her back on… but at least the Eighties
Kershaws and Vince Clarkes but also sharing the enigma of connected the sharp-edged Eighties sheen to something princess did go to the Ball.

Having flung its shoes into the lake, the Released on September 16, 1985,
‘Hounds Of Love’ suite took to the skies. Hounds Of Love was previewed with an
Out to capture the dream-like possibilities album launch at the London Planetarium.
of youth, The Big Sky pointed at the It was hailed in many quarters as a
patterns in clouds with a febrile pop star-grasping triumph. “With traces of
euphoria, while Cloudbusting, inspired classical, operatic, tribal and twisted pop
by Peter Reich’s 1973 autobiography A styles, Kate creates music that observes
Book Of Dreams, no boundaries
POP_UP The origin of ‘The Ninth Wave’ lay in a lyric-writing spell by the sea

would come off the ship and be stuck in the water... like sensory deprivation”
near Dublin circa 1984. Bush was also thinking of war films, “where people

told the story of of musical

William Reich, structure or inner
who invented a expression,”
machine to create
THE 26 MINUTES OF ‘THE noted Spin, while
rain. It too would NINTH WAVE’ SUITE TOOK NME concluded:
make the Top 20, IN DARK CELTIC JIGS, “Our Kate’s a
making Side 1 of genius, the rarest
Hounds Of Love
BACKWARDS ELECTRO- solo artist this
a hotbed of hits. SHINTO, MONASTIC CHOIRS country’s ever
‘The Ninth Wave’ AND DEMONIC DISCO produced. She
side, meanwhile, makes sceptics
would cement TUNES. IT WAS AS SHIFTING dance to her tune.
Bush’s reputation AND EVOCATIVE AS THE The company’s
as an avant garde OCEAN IT WAS LOST IN daughter has
conceptualist in truly screwed
the Bowie and the system and
Floyd moulds. produced the best
These 26 minutes took in dark Celtic album of the year doing it.”
jigs, backwards electro-shinto, stretches These days, Hounds Of Love is ranked
of oceanic piano, monastic choirs and in the upper echelons of most Best
demonic disco tunes. As shifting and Albums Ever lists; in 1985 it was succour
evocative as the ocean it was lost in, the enough for a resurgent Bush that the
suite would endure, eventually becoming record tilted Madonna’s Like A Virgin
the centre-piece of her 2014 live from the top of the UK album charts. At
comeback Before The Dawn. the Brit Awards in 1986 she was

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 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S
showered with nominations: Best Female
Artist, Best Single, Best Album, Best
Producer. Duetting on Peter Gabriel’s
Don’t Give Up gave her another Top
10 hit that same year and she instantly
became the guest singer of choice for
anyone that could convince her onto
their records, from Big Country to Go
West and Midge Ure. Comic Relief even
managed to tease her from self-imposed
seclusion to sing a Bontempi lounge
ballad with Rowan Atkinson, playing his
bored and disgusted lover. “Do I love
you? Do I want you? Would I give my
life to you if I could?” Rowan serenaded
her. “Do birds fly? Do fish swim? And do
bears sha-la-la-la… in the woods?”
In the video for Cloudbusting it had
been Donald Sutherland playing William
Reich aiming his weather-changing
trumpet at the clouds. In the promo clip
for Experiment IV – recorded as an
additional track for Kate’s November
1986 singles collection The Whole
Story – the stars were comedians Dawn
French and Hugh Laurie, but this time
the machines were far more sinister.
“They told us what they wanted was a
sound that could kill someone,” Kate
sang, telling of a group of musicians
and scientists ordered by the military to
concoct a musical WMD. And this was
16 years before Crazy Frog. Spooky.
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© Dave Hogan/Getty
The Whole Story comprised 11 singles Above: Kate at the British
and the new song, which made the Top Phonograph Awards with
Peter Gabriel, Neil Tennant,
30 in the same week as Don’t Give The Bangles, Paul Simon,
Up. The Whole Story would become the Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler
most successful release of Bush’s career, and more, 1987
going four times platinum in the UK and
earning her the 1987 Brit Award for
Best Female Solo Artist. It added up to
enough success and acclaim to allow
Bush to retreat back into the safety of her
studio for several more years, emerging
only to appear with Gabriel at Earl’s
Court, sing on the Ferry Aid charity cover
of The Beatles’ Let It Be and perform just
one of her own Hounds Of Love songs
live. In March 1987 she joined David
Gilmour at the London Palladium for The
Secret Policeman’s Third Ball, a charity
event in aid of Amnesty International, to
perform Running Up That Hill. It would
be the last time she’d sing the song in
public for 27 years. Kate was about
to drift away into a whole new, very
sensual world.
STEPPING OUT OF THE PAGE
“He said I was the flower of the mountain,
yes, but now I’ve power o’er a woman’s
body, hmmm yes.” It takes a certain
breed of literate pop artist to read the
final section of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a
wedge of solid text consisting of eight
gigantic stream-of-consciousness
22/01/2018 09:12
 THE WHOLE STORY WOULD
BECOME THE MOST
SUCCESSFUL RELEASE OF
BUSH’S CAREER, GOING
FOUR TIMES PLATINUM, AND
IT ALLOWED HER TO RETREAT
BACK INTO THE SAFETY OF
HER STUDIO FOR SEVERAL
MORE YEARS

Bush, a fetching hat

and a parquet floor,
in London, 1985
© Guido Harari

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 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S
Harari captures an
unguarded moment
at a shoot in
London, 1989
© Guido Harari
‘sentences’, and realise it fits precisely
over the lead single from their new
album. And it takes a rarer talent still to
weave it into arguably the most lustrous
and seductive pop song of the decade.
Enter, sweeping gracefully through
the trees in a velvet gown, The Sensual
World. A song-poem rewritten from
Joyce’s mammoth Molly Bloom soliloquy
– Bush couldn’t get permission to use the
original text from the novel – it marked
a further maturing of Bush’s art and
aesthetic. The stage school spikiness
and hard-elbowed edge of her earlier
material had been soothed away,
replaced by suggestive whispers like the
flick of bedsheets and an enthralling twirl
of innocence and experience: imagining
Molly stepping from the pages of Joyce’s
novel and embracing the real world’s
tangible pleasures, the lyric spoke
of kisses and cleavage, of sensuous
and romantic acquiescence, while the
uilleann pipes spun a Celtic fairy-tale
reel and Kate trilled “hmmm yes” like a
Disney princess. Pop music would rarely
get more intoxicating.
This blown-kiss of a song ushered
in another new era for Bush, an even
gentler, measured, and, yes, sensual
period. “You’re all grown up now,” her
father said on the haunting The Fog
and Kate entered her thirties with poise
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THE STAGE SCHOOL
SPIKINESS AND HARD-
ELBOWED EDGE OF HER
EARLIER MATERIAL HAD BEEN
SOOTHED AWAY, REPLACED
BY SUGGESTIVE WHISPERS
AND AN ENTHRALLING
TWIRL OF INNOCENCE
AND EXPERIENCE
and maturity; the album sleeve of The
Sensual World had her half-hidden by a
white rose and the record opened with
church bells, reflecting the grandeur to
come. With Michael Kamen arranging
the strings, Nigel Kennedy playing
violin and David Gilmour contributing
silken guitar lines, this was a stately yet
warmly pastoral record exploring the
tangled web of modern relationships –
between man and woman, parent and
child, even human and technology. A
Deeper Understanding’s lustrous tale of
someone becoming close friends with
a computer programme called Voice
Console predicted our screenage future:
“more and more people are having less
contact with human beings,” Kate told
Radio One. “We spend all day with
machines; all night with machines... This
is the idea of someone who spends…
an obsessive amount of time with their
computer. People really build up heavy
relationships with their computers!” A
ludicrous idea, right Siri?
With its Trio Bulgarka backing vocals,
touches of world music and Celtic folk,
its elastic Mercy Street basslines and
its stark climax with the staggering This
Woman’s Work, The Sensual World was
almost a soft sister-piece to So, but Bush’s
playful side still poked through. Heads
We’re Dancing had her tripping 1939’s
light fantastic with a handsome stranger
only to discover, during one of the most
shameful possible walks of shame, that
she’d been dancing all night with Hitler.
On reflection, she decides, not a keeper.
Released in America on Columbia
after EMI US forgot to renew her contract,
The Sensual World would become Bush’s
biggest Stateside hit and cap her most
sonically satisfying era. It would feel over
the coming years that Bush had fulfilled
her creative ambitions with Hounds Of
Love and The Sensual World, creating
unique musical landscapes that only she
could inhabit, map and contour. For the
next two decades, however, she’d retreat
into it, and lose herself.
22/01/2018 09:13
 C L A S S I C

ALBUM
HOUNDS OF LOVE
IN 1985, THE RUMOURS WERE RIFE: KATE BUSH HAD GONE
BONKERS, GONE TO EARTH, OR SIMPLY QUIT THE MUSIC BUSINESS.
IN FACT, SHE WAS HOLED UP IN HER NEW, STATE-OF-THE-ART HOME
STUDIO, CAREFULLY ASSEMBLING HER MASTERPIECE…
M A R K L I N D O R E S

t’s hard to imagine that pattern and synths, it set compromise, I’d be cutting The song became Bush’s

I there was a time in the

mid-Eighties when Kate
Bush was perceived to
be languishing in the pop
wasteland, but in July 1985
the NME ran an article asking
where Bush had disappeared
to. It had been three years
since The Dreaming, and
there were rumours that
she’d gone mad, developed
an addiction to junk food,
or retired from the music
industry. In fact, in September
of that year, she unleashed
what would become her
defining opus, Hounds Of
Love, on the world.
During a sojourn to Dublin,
Bush penned some of the
lyrics and began to realise
a concept for the record –
weather patterns and water.
She separated the album
into two halves: ‘Hounds Of
Love’ and ‘The Ninth Wave’,
a suite of seven songs that
would take up all of Side 2
and document the ebbing
consciousness of a drowning
woman in terrifying detail.
The public’s first taste of
the album came in August
1985 when Bush appeared
on Wogan to premiere
Running Up That Hill.
With a multi-layered vocal
over a sparse, tribal drum
itself apart from everything
else around at the time. Her
fanbase was captivated by
the lyrical meaning – about
the differences between the
sexes and how they lead
to misunderstanding in
relationships. The problem,
of course, was the original
A Deal With God title: EMI
said no. “I felt that if I didn’t
Hounds Of Love struck the perfect balance in
fulfilling both the artist and her fanbase, giving
Bush her second No. 1 album. It spent June and
July 1985 embroiled in a tug-of-war with Like A
Virgin and remained in the charts for over a year
TRACKLISTING
SIDE ONE
Running Up That Hill (A
Deal With God)
Hounds Of Love
The Big Sky
Mother Stands For Comfort
Cloudbusting
my own throat,” admitted
Bush. “I’d just spent two or
three years making an album
and, if I was stubborn, we
weren’t going to get this
record played on the radio.
So I had to be grown-up
about it and we changed the
title to Running Up That Hill.
But it’s something I’ve always
regretted doing.”
SIDE TWO
And Dream Of Sheep
Under Ice
Waking The Witch
Watching You Without Me
Jig Of Life
Hello Earth
The Morning Fog
biggest hit since Wuthering
Heights seven years earlier,
reaching No. 3 in the UK
and opening up the prospect
of commercial viability in the
US. Its success was the perfect
launchpad for Bush’s fifth
album, which followed on
16 September 1985.
The record was released
to unanimous praise, with
critics hailing its mergence
of the technological with the
traditional, encompassing
sounds and influences that
would accentuate every
nuance of the sublime
songwriting at the heart
of the album but never
overshadow it. Unlike The
Dreaming, Hounds Of Love
struck a perfect balance in
fulfilling both the artist and
her fanbase, giving Bush her
second UK No. 1 album. It
spent June and July of 1985
embroiled in a tug-of-war with
Madonna’s Like A Virgin for
the top spot, and remained
in the charts for over a year,
making it Bush’s best-selling
album to date.
Although Side 1 (‘Hounds
Of Love’) comprised some
remarkable, cutting-edge,
intelligent pop songs (and
kept EMI satisfied by
producing a string of hit

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 H O U N D S O F L O V E C L A S S I C A L B U M

THE PLAYERS
RELEASED
16 September 1985
LABEL EMI
PRODUCED BY
Kate Bush
ENGINEERS
Del Palmer, Haydn Bendall, Brian
Tench, Paul Hardiman, Nigel Walker,
James Guthrie. Assistant: Pearce Dunne
RECORDED AT
Wickham Farm Home Studio
PERSONNEL
Kate Bush – vocals, Fairlight, piano
ADDITIONAL
MUSICIANS
Alan Murphy – guitar (1, 3, 8);
Del Palmer – bass (1, 10), BVs
(5), Fairlight bass (8); Paddy
Bush – violins (10), balalaika
(1), BVs (5), didgeridoo (3), BVs
( 7), fujara (12); Stuart Elliott –
drums (1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11);
Charlie Morgan – drums (2, 3,
5, 8, 10); John Williams – guitar
(12); Jonathan Williams – cello
(2); Youth – bass (3); Eberhard
Weber – bass (4, 11, 12);
Danny Thompson – double bass
(9); Morris Pert – percussion
(3); Dave Lawson & Medici
Sextet – strings (5); Dónal
Lunny – bouzouki (6, 10, 11);
John Sheahan – whistles (6);
Kevin McAlea – synth (8, 12);
Liam O’Flynn – pipes (10, 11);
Richard Hickox Singers (11);
Brian Bath – BVs (5), guitar (11);
John Carder Bush – BVs (5),
narration (10); Michael Berkeley
– vocal arrangements (11)

singles in Cloudbusting, the

title track and The Big Sky),
it was Side 2, ‘The Ninth
Wave’, that marked Bush
out as an artist truly at the
pinnacle of her creativity.
Given the graphic description
and visuality of the music,
awash with references to the
cinema, art and literature (the
title track was contrived from
the 1957 horror movie Night
Of The Demon; Cloudbusting
was based on A Book Of
Dreams; the conceptual opus
‘The Ninth Wave’ was named
after Tennyson’s poem The
Idylls Of The King and based
on a surrealist painting called
The Hogsmith Ophelia, which
depicts a doll drowning in the
sea), it was widely expected
that Bush would embark on
her first tour in six years to
promote the album. Her Tour
Of Life in 1979 had been
a great success, comprising
elements of music, fashion,
art and dance, but Bush had
found it exhausting and chose
not to repeat the process
(a phobia of flying and the
trauma brought about by
the death of Bill Duffield, a
lighting director working on
the show, were rumoured
to have contributed to her
decision). Instead, excited
by the advent of videos, she
decided that these would be
the perfect medium to present
visual representations of the
songs. “I loved working with
video because I originally
envisioned some of the songs
as short films,” she said.
Almost three decades after
Hounds Of Love’s release,
the album is still regarded
as a masterpiece, regularly
earning a spot on ‘Best Of’
lists. Its influence is also
evident in the work of artists
such as Björk, Tori Amos, Bat
For Lashes, Goldfrapp and
Florence + The Machine.
As for Bush herself, she
remains fiercely proud of
Hounds Of Love and has only
good memories of making
the record. “At the time, it
was such a lot of work,” she
concedes. “The lyrics, trying
to piece the whole thing
together. But I did love it,
and everyone who worked
on it was wonderful. In some
ways, it was the happiest I’ve
ever been when writing and
making an album.
“I know there’s a theory that
goes around that you must
suffer for your art – you know,
‘It’s not real art unless you
suffer’. But I don’t believe this
because, in some ways, this
was the most complete work
that I’ve done; in some ways,
it’s the best, and I was the
happiest I’d been.”

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 Bush in the early Nineties:
this would prove to be a
period of many drastic
changes, but she would
emerge stronger than ever
© Chris Taylor / Retna UK

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 T H E 1 9 9 0 s

CROSSING
THE LINE
IN A DECADE THAT SAW HER BESET BY BEREAVEMENTS, A BREAK-UP
AND LIVING UP TO HER OWN IMPOSSIBLY HIGH STANDARDS, KATE’S
PERSONAL PROBLEMS TOOK THEIR TOLL ON HER CREATIVE OUTPUT,
LEADING HER TO SERIOUS DELIBERATION AS TO WHETHER SHE
WOULD CONTINUE TO MAKE MUSIC AT ALL…
M A R K L I N D O R E S

s rave, rap and grunge rose to prominence Next, rumours began that Kate was collaborating

A
in the early Nineties, whispers began with another renowned male superstar after she
to circulate as to whether the ever- had been spotted backstage on Prince’s Nude Tour.
experimental Ms Bush would in any way Though neither of the notoriously private artists
be influenced by current musical trends, or commented on the speculation, the inclusion of a
if she would remain thank-you to Kate in the liner
infamously ambivalent to notes of Prince’s Diamonds
what was happening outside & Pearls in 1991 was taken
of her creative cocoon. “I’VE BEEN VERY AFFECTED by some as confirmation that
Aside from This Woman’s
Work, a boxset which
BY THESE PAST TWO YEARS. he would be working on her
album, given that she didn’t
compiled almost everything THEY’VE BEEN INCREDIBLY appear on his.
she had released to date, INTENSE YEARS FOR ME. I An unexpected
fans were teased with appearance on a dance
oddities that revealed little
FEEL I’VE LEARNT A LOT AND anthem was Kate’s next
about her coming musical I THINK MY NEXT ALBUM appearance in the Top 10
direction. In terms of new IS GOING TO BE VERY the following year when
output, the first to materialise dance act Utah Saints
was the soundtrack to DIFFERENT. I HOPE PEOPLE sampled Cloudbusting for
a Comic Strip Presents FEEL IT‘S WORTH THE WAIT“ their track Something Good.
episode, GLC: The Carnage “We hadn’t a clue how
Continues, and a reggae- Kate would react when we
infused cover of Rocket Man sent her a tape of the track.
for the Elton John and Bernie Taupin tribute album, Especially since we’d nicked the strings and drums
Two Rooms. “Because I was such a big fan of Elton’s of Cloudbusting as well as the vocals,“ recalled
when I was little, I was knocked out to be asked,“ the band’s Jez Willis. “We didn’t want people to
Kate said. “When I was starting to write songs, he think we were taking the piss… we wanted it to
was the only songwriter I knew of that played the sound cool rather than quirky. We never actually
piano and sang, so he was very much my idol.“ spoke to her but she must have been cool with

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 T H E 1 9 9 0 s

Kate outside the Top Of The

Pops studio, 16 November
1994: her performance of And
So Is Love would be her final
appearance on the show
© Paul Camilleri

the song as she even agreed to sell us
a 30-second clip of the video. The only
trouble was, we had to edit Donald
Sutherland out. If we’d kept him in, it
would have cost us an arm and a leg.“
As speculation continued to gather
about the album, work ground to a
halt as Kate was beset by a number of
tragedies in her personal life. She was
devastated by the deaths of two of her
close friends,
would also mention him in 1993’s Moments Of Pleasure, “playing his guitar refrain”
paid tribute to her friend Alan Murphy with a guitar placed on an empty chair. She
POP_UP In both the official Rocket Man video and her Wogan appearance, Kate
evident on the album. “I haven’t been
able to write about any of it,” she
admitted. “Nevertheless, the experience
is in there. It’s something I couldn’t
possibly express in music, and yet it is
being expressed through very subliminal
things, like the quality of some of the
performances. I couldn’t work for months,
I couldn’t go near the whole process.
I had no desire to start… no desire to
work at all.

long-term guitarist “Usually, I

Alan Murphy can pull myself
and dancer “USUALLY I CAN PULL through things
Gary Hurst. like feeling low or
Her relationship MYSELF THROUGH having problems
with producer/ FEELING LOW OR HAVING by working, but
sound engineer PROBLEMS BY WORKING, it depends on
Del Palmer the trauma, it
ended after 15 BUT IT DEPENDS ON THE depends how
years and, most TRAUMA, IT DEPENDS HOW heartbroken
significantly, you are,’ she
HEARTBROKEN YOU ARE.
Kate’s mother continued.
Hannah died. I’VE BEEN AT POINTS WHERE “I’ve been at
“I’ve been very I JUST COULDN’T WORK“ points where
affected by these I just couldn’t
last two years,“ work. I couldn’t
she told Radio 1. possibly sing – it
“They’ve been incredibly intense years was beyond me, it just hurt too much.
for me. Maybe not on a work level, but a Sometimes you have to allow a bit of
lot has happened to me. I feel I’ve learnt time to come between you and the
a lot and, yes, I think my next album is experience in order to even touch it. It
going to be quite different. I hope people was a terrible shock for all of us. Really,
feel it’s worth the wait.” I’m so grateful that we had so much
Describing her mother’s death as time together. I had an incredibly good
feeling like “the end of the world”, Kate relationship with her, as did all my
said that although she didn’t directly family. I often think how awful it must be
reference it, its impact on her was still for people who don’t really get on

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 Phil Dent captures a smiling Kate
in 1992, the year dance duo Utah
Saints sampled Cloudbusting for
their hit Something Good
© Phil Dent/Redferns

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 T H E 1 9 9 0 s

with their parents, or don’t know them 1993. Following two months later, on
– to lose them and be so bereft after 2nd November, The Red Shoes proved to
having had nothing.“ be by far Kate’s most collaborative effort
to date, with guest appearances from
NO ILLUSIONS Prince, Lenny Henry, Eric Clapton, Jeff
In June 1993, as she readied The Red Beck and Bulgarian group Trio Bulgarka.
Shoes for release, Kate appeared on Largely eschewing the studio trickery
Michael Aspel’s chat show to begin and intricate arrangements of some of
her dreaded promotional campaign for her previous work, it had a more ‘live
the album. Before delivering a stunning band’ feel. “I don’t feel I’m starting off
rendition of Moments Of Pleasure, a where I left off [with the last album],”
visibly nervous Kate came across as Kate said. “I don’t want to basically
cagey during her interview. Reluctant to be making one long record. I want
reveal much about the record, her only them all to have a different personality,
concessions were that comedian Lenny a different place. Otherwise, it’s not
Henry, a fellow guest on the show, sang interesting for me creatively – you’re
on the album, and to acknowledge the just doing the same thing, singing the
partial influence of Michael Powell, same song all the time… to me, that’s not
director of the 1948 film The Red Shoes. challenging. You've done that one, why
Rubberband Girl was released as the do that again? Of course, I am a human
first single from the album in September being and am going to have themes
that keep recurring. I actually like the
idea of having these revisited themes but
maybe in a slightly different way. That’s
something that a lot of artists do. Painters
have done it a lot. Monet used to paint
the same scene maybe five or six times.
But each one would be slightly different,
and I think that’s very interesting.“
The album reached No. 2 in the UK
and became her biggest success to
date in the US, where it reached No.
28. She was also nominated in the Best
British Female category at the Brits (she
lost to Annie Lennox, who was going
through her imperial phase with the Diva
album). Although her plan had initially
been to tour for the first time since 1979,
her emotional fragility at having failed
to properly process her feelings over
her personal losses put paid to touring
plans, and instead she threw herself into

Kate appeared on Aspel & Company

in June 1993 to promote her new
album The Red Shoes. This lip-synched
performance of Moments Of Pleasure
followed a brief interview alongside
Lenny Henry and Victoria Wood
© ITV/REX/Shutterstock
previously of bands Bandit and The Quick. Danny played guitar on six Red
Shoes tracks and went on to contribute to Aerial and 50 Words For Snow
POP_UP It was in 1992 that Kate met future partner Danny McIntosh,

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 THE LINE, THE CROSS
& THE CURVE
Although Kate’s intention throughout the writing and recording of The Red Shoes
album had always been to take it on the road, as the album neared completion and
she found herself emotionally exhausted following a series of personal setbacks,
she was forced to accept that a planned tour would be too much. Instead, it was
decided to present the album together with a film. However, with Bush taking on the
multiple roles of writer, director and star, the project turned out to be much more
stressful than she had anticipated…
“Because I’d already finished the album, it meant it had to work around
something that had already been written,“ Kate said in an interview with Johnny
Walker. “It wasn’t a conceptual album, it was a collection of individual songs…
so it wasn’t an ideal way to make a film. Each song has its own story, a build-up
and a conclusion, so it was very challenging to take half a dozen songs and
create stories within stories.“
As Kate had met with director Michael Powell in New York to discuss a
collaboration shortly before his death and had been influenced by his 1948 film The
Red Shoes to the extent she named her album after it, his film and the original story by
Hans Christian Anderson proved an inspiration for her film too. The concept of The Red
Shoes was the catalyst for dance being so prominent in the film. “I was aware that clips The finished film gathered only lukewarm reviews from the critics, and its star
would be pulled from the film as videos for the singles, so I thought it would be good for admitted she wasn’t satisfied either. Claiming to be happy with just four minutes of the
continuity to use dance as the basis of the story,“ Bush explained. film, Kate admitted she found the process “physically demanding“. Though she had
At 45 minutes in length, The Line, The Cross & The Curve was too short to receive a emerged from the project creatively unfulfilled, she was ultimately glad she had done it
general release in cinemas and instead toured with a live dance performance for limited and was grateful for the experience she had gained. “It gave me a push and a sense of
screenings before later receiving a VHS release. self-discipline, and to have completed it was very rewarding,“ she decided.

working on a film which incorporated six

songs from the album.
The Line, The Cross & The Curve
premiered at the London Film Festival
on 13th November 1993 and was
introduced by Kate, who thanked the cast
and crew that had worked alongside her
on the project. As well as writing and
directing the film, Bush appeared as a
performer who puts on a pair of magical
slippers and is forced to seek help in
breaking their spell to stop the shoes
dancing on their own. Released on VHS
the following year, The Line, The Cross
& The Curve was by no means a critical,
commercial nor a personal success.
“I shouldn’t have done it,“ she later
admitted. “I was so tired. I let down
people like Miranda Richardson,
who worked so hard on it. I had the
opportunity to do something really
interesting and I completely blew it.
Ideally I would have had more time, but
I didn’t think of it until after I’d finished
“I SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE the album. But the people were great. It
IT. I WAS SO TIRED. I HAD was humbling having all these specialists
THE OPPORTUNITY TO working on something I’d thought up. It
was quite brave of me in some ways.“
DO SOMETHING REALLY
INTERESTING AND I BLEW IT. BEAT THE RETREAT
As the videos for all of the singles from
IDEALLY, I’D HAVE HAD MORE The Red Shoes were taken from The Line,
TIME. BUT THE PEOPLE WERE The Cross & The Curve, it meant that,
GREAT. IT WAS QUITE BRAVE with the exception of a Top Of The Pops
performance of And So Is Love, Kate
OF ME, IN SOME WAYS“ could once again back away from

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 BOUNCING BACK:
THE VIDEOS 1990-1999
HER MINI-MOVIE PROJECT MAY HAVE BEEN A FAILURE IN KATE BUSH’S
EYES, YET FROM TODAY’S PERSPECTIVE IT’S HARD TO DENY THAT
THE FOUR PROMO FILMS IT BIRTHED ARE INTRIGUING, DRAMATIC,
BEAUTIFULLY LIT, AND SHARE A CERTAIN, SPECIAL ATMOSPHERE…

RUBBERBAND GIRL
KATE BUSH, 1993
The first video from The Red Shoes, the Rubberband Girl video takes
place as the opening scene of The Line, The Cross & The Curve and sees
Kate enter a rehearsal room where her band are waiting and breaks
into some contemporary dance with a male partner. The video was
deemed too simple for the US and an alternative was shot, with Kate
performing the track in a handful of different outfits/scenarios; the main part was in a studio, with sunglasses, and
there was a stylised black and white scene with Kate and her dance partner. youtu.be/85wZw1O83aE

AND SO IS LOVE
KATE BUSH, 1994
Chronologically, And So Is Love continues from Rubberband Girl in The
Line, The Cross & The Curve and sees Kate alone in a dark room with
just a candle. After the first verse, a bird flies in through the window,
which Kate manages to free. The bird is followed by a mouse, which
dies in Kate’s hands. She tenderly kisses it “goodnight“ and places it
knew Kate had given birth to her son in 1998 until friend Peter Gabriel
POP_UP Despite denying her “elusive“ and “mysterious“ tags, no-one

on a velvet blanket. As standalone pieces, it has to be said that the videos make little sense when seen outside the
context of the – already definitely abstract – film. youtu.be/qxrwE6Hc9UA

THE RED SHOES

inadvertently revealed the fact during an interview in 2003

KATE BUSH, 1994

Having just acquired the red shoes of the album’s title from a
mysterious dancer played by Miranda Richardson, Kate breaks into
a performance of the song with Richardson, where they incorporate
song, dance, and mime before the shoes reveal themselves to contain
magic powers and transport Kate to an alternative land where she is
transformed from a dowdy person to a glamorous showgirl. Drawing a line, cross and curve on cards, they are
explained to represent your path, your heart and your smile. youtu.be/rbbPPy_bNM4

MOMENTS OF PLEASURE
KATE BUSH, 1993
A simple video so as not to distract from the astounding beauty of the
song, Moments Of Pleasure focuses on a simple shot of Kate, dressed
in a sequin-encrusted black and red ballgown, rotating slowly and Bush pictured after the
premiere of her film
lip-syncing to the track, as the backdrop changes to reflect the song’s
The Line, The Cross and
lyric-from snowstorms to skyscrapers. As the video reaches its climax, The Curve: the short
Kate is reunited with actors from the film, reflecting a belief and hope of being reunited with the lost loved ones was aired as part of the
that inspired the song. youtu.be/ZyuxXWxKSTg London Film Festival
© Paul Camilleri

the spotlight almost immediately after the drug addiction were likely the reasons sense of injustice about that because I
album’s release. “I was actually viewed for her “disappearance“, Kate admitted just work. I fight, really, to live what I
in quite a negative light at that point, to just feeling emotionally wrought over consider to be an extremely normal life,
even more so than after The Dreaming, having not properly grieved about the and I think that has integrity and value.
where I was viewed as some kind of losses she had gone through. “I don’t want to start sounding
nutter,“ Kate later told Q magazine. “It In an interview with The Guardian, she pompous, but it would be easier for
dissipated my energy severely and threw expressed annoyance with her portrayal me to live a life of making money and
me into a state of severe exhaustion – I in the press. “I don’t think I’m a weirdo playing the game of being famous,
was just worn down.“ at all, I’m not reclusive, but just try to because it is quite hard to just keep
While her withdrawal from public live a normal life rather than live the life working for years and years on
appearances lead to the tabloid press of someone in the industry,” she said. something that you don’t even know if
wheeling out their usual speculation that “If I was weird, than I suppose maybe it it’s going to be any good at the end of
a weight gain, nervous breakdown or would upset me more. I just have a great it, you know what I mean? And also, I

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don’t want to be self-promotional. There’s
no way I can go out after something’s
said and say “I’m not weird! I’m not
weird” because then I’m being forced to
be somebody who’s playing the part of
being a famous person. I don’t think of
myself as a personality, so a long time
ago I made a decision that I would only
do publicity in connection with my work.
To do an interview when I have no work
out doesn’t make any sense.“
As the media jumped to their own
conclusions about Kate’s elusiveness, she
CPP09.90s.print.indd 65
later admitted the extent to which she
had been affected by her disappointment
in The Red Shoes and The Line, The
Cross & The Curve. As the pressure
she had been feeling about her work
subsided, she finally felt able to tackle
her feelings pertaining to her losses.
“I needed to stop working because
there were a lot of things I wanted to
look at in my life. I was exhausted on
every level,“ she said. “When I finished
[The Red Shoes], I really didn’t want to
go straight back in and make another
T H E 1 9 9 0 s
“I NEEDED TO STOP
WORKING BECAUSE THERE
WERE A LOT OF THINGS I
WANTED TO LOOK AT IN
MY LIFE. I THOUGHT I’D
TAKE A YEAR OUT – AND
THEN I DECIDED IT WAS
SOMETHING I WANTED TO
STAY WITH A BIT LONGER“
record. I thought I’d take a year out, then
after about a year I decided really that
it was just something I wanted to kind of
stay with a bit longer.
“I suppose since I was about 17 or 18,
I’d gone and made a record, promoted
it, and gone straight back in to do the
next one. And because there are these
big gaps between them, there’s the
impression that I’m not doing anything.
But with a lot of those records, I was
working on them for a long time and
it’s quite an intense process. It got to the
point, at the end of the last one, where
I just thought I don’t want to just go
straight in and do another one. I want to
take a break, and do some other stuff.”
That “other stuff“ included her buying
a flat in central London and living there
temporarily while she “watched terrible
TV programmes and slept a lot“. In this
time she was occasionally spotted at the
theatre or having dinner with friends –
all typically low-key. After a two-year
period, Kate began to feel inspired again
and began writing for her next album.
After feeling she had the impetus of
her next record (she had written King Of
The Mountain, An Architect’s Dream and
Sunset), she was forced to abandon work
after discovering she was pregnant. She
gave birth to her son Bertie in 1998.
“Having the baby was enormous,“
Kate later told Radio 1. “Although I
hadn’t always wanted children, I had
for a long time. People say that magic
doesn’t exist but I look at Bertie, think
I gave birth to him and I know magic
does exist. He is his own human being,
but my role is to try and guide him and
give him a really good time. I’m very
proud of him and I get so much joy out of
being with him. It’s totally incomparable
with anything else. I don’t want to miss a
minute of him. It’s so much fun, by far the
best thing I’ve ever done.“
Revelling in family life with Bertie and
partner Danny McIntosh, Kate ended
the decade that had begun with so
much heartache in a state of elation.
Re-energised, re-inspired and ready to
embark on her next venture, this woman’s
work was far from over.
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FEELING THE PRESSURE OF FOLLOWING UP SOME OF HER BEST
WORK AND ALSO BESET BY PERSONAL PROBLEMS, KATE FOUND THE
RED SHOES A DIFFICULT AND DEEPLY UNFULFILLING RECORD TO MAKE.
SURE, IT SOLD PLENTY… BUT THAT WASN’T THE POINT. WOULD SHE
FIND THE INNER STRENGTH TO MAKE ANOTHER RECORD AT ALL?
t’s hard to pinpoint
I where the problems
began with regards to
The Red Shoes, Kate’s
seventh album. Was it
the change of direction that
people found jarring? Or the
fact that people’s hopes were
so remarkably high following
on from a series of albums
that were considered to be
her creative peaks? Or was
it the fact that it simply didn’t
quite live up to expectations
following the rather lengthy
wait for its release?
Whatever the reason,
when the album was
launched on 1st November
1993 it was met with a
lukewarm reception. It also
proved to be a polarising
project for Kate’s legions of
ardent acolytes. While some
fans embraced the shift from
the complex studio-based
soundscapes that had come
to define her recent output to
a more organic “live” sound,
many were disappointed in
her new direction.
“Oddly enough, the idea
of this album was to get it
recorded quickly and get
out on to the road with it,”
explained bassist and sound
engineer Del Palmer. “It
didn’t work out that way, but
66
CPP09.ClassicAlbum_RedShoes.print.indd 66
C L A S S I C
ALBUM
THE RED SHOES
M A R K L I N D O R E S
the idea did influence the when she had sketches she Although work had begun
way it was put together.”
As had always been the
case since she built her own
home studio, the genesis
of the tracks came from
Kate’s time alone there,
was certain she wanted to
proceed with. In a departure
from the past, where band
members had all recorded
parts individually, the Red
Shoes sessions were unique
on the album in 1990, a
period of instability in Kate’s
life ensued in which she
suffered a series of tragedies
and bereavements, with the
death of her mother leaving
experimenting with ideas in that the songs were her utterly devastated and
before Del and the musicians recorded as an ensemble, unable to work for a year.
received a call to join her ready for possible live shows. After regrouping to continue
work, her pain was still so
raw that she didn’t feel able
The Red Shoes proved to be a polarising project to reference it directly, though
lyrics such as Moments Of
for Kate’s legions of ardent acolytes. “Oddly Pleasure’s “Just being alive/
enough, the idea of the album was to get it It can really hurt/ And these
recorded quickly and get out on the road with it,” moments given/ Are a gift
from time/Just let us try/ To
said Del Palmer. “It didn’t work out that way” give these moments back/ To
those we love/ To those who
will survive” went some way
towards indicating the depth
of her emotional turmoil.
TRACKLISTING Other highlights were
largely served upfront: the
bouncy (no pun intended)
SIDE ONE SIDE TWO pop/rock of Rubberband
Rubberband Girl The Red Shoes Girl, the Celtic-infused title
track, the sensual And So Is
And So Is Love Top Of The City
Love and atmospheric Top
Eat The Music Constellation Of The Heart
Of The City are all strong
Moments Of Pleasure Big Stripey Lie songs. Peaking at No. 2 in
The Song Of Solomon Why Should I Love You? the UK album charts, the
Lily You’re The One record became Kate’s most
successful US album and
spawned five singles as well
as the problematic The Line,
The Cross & The Curve.
23/01/2018 09:23
 T H E R E D S H O E S C L A S S I C A L B U M

THE PLAYERS
RELEASED
2 November 1993
LABEL EMI/COLUMBIA (US)
PRODUCED BY
Kate Bush
ENGINEER
Haydn Bendall
RECORDED AT
Abbey Road, Paisley Park
PERSONNEL
Kate Bush – vocals, keyboards,
piano, Rhodes, bass and guitar
(10), arranger, composer, producer
ADDITIONAL
MUSICIANS
Jeff Beck – guitar (12); Gary
Brooker – Hammond (2, 9, 12);
Paddy Bush – vocals (3, 7, 9),
whistle (7), mandola (7), valiha
(3), singing bowls (6), fujara (6),
musical bow (7); Eric Clapton –
guitar (2); Ian Cooper – mastering;
Gaumont d’Olivera – bass (7),
drums (10), percussion (10); Stuart
Elliott – drums (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8,
9, 11, 12), percussion (1, 3, 5,
7); John Giblin – bass (1-3, 6,
8, 9, 12); Lenny Henry – vocals
(11); Nigel Hitchcock – baritone
(1), tenor sax (1, 3, 9, 11);
Michael Kamen – orchestration; Nigel
Kennedy – violin (8, 10); Lily – narrator
(6); Danny McIntosh – guitar (1, 5-9);
Charlie Morgan – percussion (5); Del
Palmer – Fairlight, engineer, mixing;
Prince – keys (11), guitar (11), bass
(11), vocals (11), arranger (11); J
Neil Sidwell – trombone (1, 3, 9,
11); Steve Sidwell – trumpet (1,
3, 9, 11), flugelhorn (11); Paul
Spong – trumpet (1, 3, 9, 11; Trio
Bulgarka – vocals (5, 11, 12);
Colin Lloyd Tucker – vocals (7, 9);
Justin Vali – valiha (3, 7), kabosy
(3), vocals (3)

Echoing her fans’ mixed

feelings, Kate later admitted
to being disappointed
with both the film project
and The Red Shoes album
itself, claiming that the best
songs had been somewhat
mislaid in the sheer volume
of material (a point which
she chose to emphasise by
reworking no less than seven
of the tracks on her Director’s
Cut album in 2011). Spent
by this draining experience,
Kate would take a lengthy
hiatus from presenting any
new music, waiting 12 years
to release her next album.
GUEST LIST
With its roster of famous names, The Red Shoes is an anomaly in Kate’s discography. Though the project featured a
generous array of luminaries including Prince, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Nigel Kennedy, Procul Harem’s Gary Brooker, Bulgarian
vocal group Trio Bulgarka, Lenny Henry and Michael Kamen, all the performers managed to add their talents to the record
without detracting from it being a quintessential Kate album. Kate later said in an interview that, being devastated by the death
of long-term guitarist Alan Murphy, she felt more comfortable using guest musicians rather than enlist a permanent replacement.
Mind you, not all the lead guitar on the record was by Danny McIntosh or some ’60s blues legend; Big Stripey Lie featured Kate
herself, coolly manipulating a Fender Stratocaster and a screaming Marshall stack – after just a few days on the instrument.
The only track that threatened to deviate from being a ‘Kate’ song was the Prince collaboration Why Should I Love You? In
typical style, The Purple One had used Bush’s vocal and built a completely new multi-layered arrangement around it. Del Palmer
reported that Kate puzzled for months over the result: “It was simply crazy, all this stuff… there was no relation, no sense,” he
told Fachblatt magazine. He and Bush rebuilt the song from scratch, chopping up the vocal, constructing new verses, re-recording
drums. “It didn’t quite work but it’s still a very interesting mish-mash song,” concluded Palmer.

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 Trevor Leighton's 2014 promo
shot accompanied the major
announcement that Kate would be
returning to the stage for 22 dates
at Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo
© Trevor Leighton

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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

A BRAND
NEW DAWN
THE LENGTHY PAUSES BETWEEN PROJECTS WERE ALMOST SUFFOCATING,
BUT WHILE THE PACE MAY HAVE SLOWED, KATE BUSH’S
IMAGINATION WAS STILL SOARING. THE 21ST CENTURY HAS YIELDED
SOME OF HER MOST INTERESTING WORK TO DATE, PLUS THE
MOST UNEXPECTED GIFT OF ALL – A RETURN TO THE LIVE STAGE FOR
A RECORD-BREAKING RESIDENCY IN LONDON…
M A R K E L L I O T

he silence was deafening. Kate Bush’s magazine awarded her with its prestigious Classic

T
retreat into a domestic life that had Songwriter Award. When Midge Ure introduced her
gathered pace years earlier seemed a win to a standing ovation at the 12th annual event,
permanent state of affairs at the start of the it was a rare public appearance for the artist. “I
new millennium. The birth of her son Bertie am actually making an album,” she told the crowd,
in 1998 naturally “but it’s just taking longer
consumed much of her focus than I thought and I’m having
and there was a sense that a really great time with my
the rough and tumble of the KATE BUSH WAS NOW son.” She dedicated the
music business – an industry win to her father, who she
that she had rarely felt
BECOMING INCREASINGLY said would always find time
entirely at ease with – was DISTANT FROM THE to listen to her work when
moving ahead without her, CAMERAS, BUT WHILE THE she first started writing as a
increasingly self-absorbed young girl. No doubt it was
by the devastating impact POPULAR PRESS OFTEN that sort of parental nurturing
of digital technology on its PAINTED HER AS AN that in part drove her
financial structures. If the ECCENTRIC LONER HER decision to distance herself
door had been left ajar, it from a working life that had
was clear that Bush was in PEERS CONTINUED TO inevitably required periodic
no likelihood of banging on it CELEBRATE HER LEGACY compromise – a position she
again any time soon. felt increasingly unable to
Kate Bush was now accommodate.
becoming increasingly distant To everyone’s shock, Bush
from the cameras and the promotional merry-go- followed this rare public appearance with something
round that was considered necessary to maintain almost unthinkable at the time: a momentary
a profile in the music business. While the popular return to the live stage. On 18 January 2002,
press now often painted her as an eccentric loner, she joined David Gilmour for a performance of
her peers continued to celebrate her remarkable Comfortably Numb at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
legacy and influence on their work, and in 2001 Q If the collaboration appeared to begin hesitantly

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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

(there was nothing of the occasion to single suite called A Sky Of Honey.
showcase the way Bush first appeared Critics clamoured their approval of
at the microphone), her haunting vocals the deeply personal collection, with its
ultimately offered the depth and gravity ambitious lyrics scaling grand themes
the moment deserved. It was her first live of flight and the more mundane but
performance since the pair had played beautiful detail of domestic life that
her Running Up That Hill at The Secret dominated much of Bush’s time with son
Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987. Bertie (Albert Jack) and husband Danny
Just seven months after that Royal McIntosh in Berkshire. Aerial entered and
Festival Hall date, she was back in the peaked in the UK charts at No. 3 and
spotlight again did fair business
to receive an worldwide,
Ivor Novello; including a No.
this time for an CRITICS CLAMOURED THEIR 48 peak in the
Outstanding USA. In the UK,
APPROVAL OF THE DEEPLY
Contribution To the set would
British Music By PERSONAL AERIAL, WITH ITS eventually go
A Songwriter. AMBITIOUS LYRICS SCALING platinum at
On receiving 300,000, and
the award at the
GRAND THEMES OF FLIGHT globally it has
Grosvenor House AND MORE MUNDANE sold just north
Hotel, she said: BUT BEAUTIFUL DETAILS of 1.1 million
“It’s so special copies. Awards
to be thought of OF DOMESTIC LIFE THAT season saw Aerial
as a songwriter. DOMINATED BUSH’S TIME often shortlisted
This means so for Album Of The
much to me. I’ll Year, but it failed
really treasure it.” to win anything
If her fans thought this was going to be of significance. In many ways, the set
the imminent launchpad for the long- was everything her fans had expected
awaited new album, their hopes were to – ambitious, dramatic and nuanced,

POP_UP A frenzy of speculation that Kate was going to appear at the Olympic Games erupted when Amazon released
a version of the Running Up That Hill rework a few days too early. The track was quickly taken down and Bush – like the
be dashed. What followed was another but out of step with contemporary pop

rest of us – praised the gala’s imaginative treatment of her work from the sofa. “They put on a brilliant show,” she said
long silence… but it was, finally, broken. culture. The high commercial watermark
of Hounds Of Love was unlikely to be
DAWN IS COMING matched anytime again soon.
When Aerial was announced in August The commission for the film The Golden
2005, speculation reached fever Compass – the first in what was hoped
pitch. The November 7 release date would be a series of movies adapted
(a day later in the US) was to be her from the books of Philip Pullman – may
first shipment to music stores in 12 seem surprising given the commercial
long years. The news was significant demands usually expected of songs
enough for her beleaguered label EMI to created to support would-be blockbusters,
announce the news to its shareholders, however leftfield the source material.
but in truth not even the magic of the Lyra was in fact a compositional triumph,
enigmatic singer-songwriter would prove but did little to significantly promote the
able to save its sinking business model. film, which was ultimately considered a
That September, the set’s only single failure at the international box office. The
King Of The Mountain received its first song was titled and referenced by the
radio play and the melodic track, later story’s lead character and was used over
issued on CD and 7” picture disc in the the film’s closing credits. Bush recorded
UK, became a big hit, returning Bush to the stand-alone release in her own
the Top 10 for the first time in nearly 20 studio and it featured the voices of the
years. Featuring artwork by her son, the Magdalen College Choir from Oxford.
song referenced the death of Elvis and The fast-shifting structural changes in
the film Citizen Kane and was supported the music and communications industry
by an atmospheric video. The B-side would inevitably have an impact on Bush
was a rather surprising cover of Marvin and in March 2011, her long-running fan
Gaye’s Sexual Healing, recorded years club adapted its own model to a digital-
earlier. It set the album up nicely and the first platform. Behind the scenes, changes
No. 4 chart peak of the Bush-produced to her ongoing relationship with the EMI
track perhaps begs the question why no label led to the creation of Fish People, a
further cuts were issued. new division of the parent company and
When Aerial was released, the double- one that was entirely of her own creation.
album’s artwork once more failed to It’s perhaps ironic then that the first
feature the artist, instead showcasing release that May would be Director’s
the themes of sky and birdsong that Cut, significant reworkings of material
permeated the seven individual tracks that had appeared on The Red Shoes
and nine compositions that would and The Sensual World, both issued in
become later formally segued into a gentler times for the parent company.

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 Sting and Kate at the
Ivor Novello Awards in 2002.
“It’s so special to be thought
of as a songwriter… I’ll really
treasure this,” she said
© Dave Benett/Getty

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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

Although Bush was keen to make clear the success of King Of The Mountain
that this was very much a new project, and fell short of the UK Top 75. It was a
the revisionist nature of the exercise sign of just how much the industry had
raised eyebrows amongst many who had shifted in the years since her last major
cherished the original source material release. Despite this, the Director’s Cut
– but the work was worthy, and added collection peaked a place higher than
new depth and warmth to much-loved Aerial in the UK, but it swiftly fell off the
songs such as This chart, with sales
Woman’s Work. estimated at the
“It’s something 100,000-mark, a
I’d wanted to do “IT WAS THE IDEA OF third of what its
for a few years,” predecessor had
TAKING TRACKS AND
Bush told Mark achieved.
Radcliffe. “It was SEEING IF I COULD MAKE It’s clear that
the idea of taking THEM SOUND THE WAY these statistics
tracks and seeing meant little to the
if I could make
I’D MAKE THEM NOW. I’M singer-songwriter,
them sound the UNHAPPY WITH EVERYTHING who was as ever
way I’d make I’VE DONE, TO SOME compelled to focus
them now. I’m on the creative
unhappy with EXTENT – IT’S PART OF THE goals she felt
everything I’ve HUMAN CONDITION” drawn to. It wasn’t
done to some a provocative
extent – it’s part gesture and would
of the human in any case soon
condition. I wanted to strip those songs create a commercial maelstrom entirely
out so there was more space.” on Bush’s own terms. “The creative
The sometimes-brittle digital recording process is so elusive,” she pondered that
techniques of the originals were replaced year. “So much of it is tied into instinct.
by a richer, denser analogue approach Divine intervention is part of the process,
that was first showcased with the set’s but so much of it is personal and so
first single Deeper Understanding. It had difficult to talk about.”
first appeared on The Sensual World as
its sixth track and opener to Side 2. But A WINTER’S TALE
despite strong support from Radio Two, In the meantime as further evidence of
the single (promoted by a video featuring her individual approach to marketing
Robbie Coltrane but, this time, without protocols, 2011 saw – incredibly – a
the song’s composer) failed to replicate second album; this time made of

Yet another theatrical

publicity photo, this
time in jester's ruff,
issued in support of
her 2011 Director's
Cut album

Arriving for “Music Day

At The Palace” in 2005,
where Bush and such stars
as Eric Clapton and Brian
May were royally thanked
for their contributions to
British music
© Pool Photograph/Corbis/Getty

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 THE HALL OF
FAME GAME
The revelation that, no, Kate Bush still hasn’t
been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
will come a surprise to many. True enough, she
was finally added to the nominees list for the
2018 ceremony, due to take place in Cleveland
this April… but there was never a guarantee
she would make the final cut. That decision
lay with the voters, who are naturally largely
Americans, and it was clear the odds were
stacked against her.
To be eligible for nomination, an individual
artist or band must have released its first
commercial recording at least 25 years prior to
the year of induction, which means the 2018
nominees had to release their first official
recording no later than 1992. Nine of the Class
of 2018 nominees were first-timers to the
list. This year, Rage Against The Machine and
Radiohead were nominated in their first year of
eligibility, but Kate Bush’s entry was firmly filed
under the ‘About Time’ header.
Early indicators showed that the odds of
getting the honour were stacked against her.
Bush has, of course, had only limited commercial
success Stateside, and voters over there tend
to like their acts to fall neatly into clearly
delineated musical categories such as “rock”
or “soul”. The UK’s beloved singer-songwriter
cannot be defined so simply.
But back in her homeland, Bush remains one
of the most celebrated and awarded artists of all
time, even if her nominations outweigh her wins
by some margin. To date, she had been put up
for an impressive 13 Brit Awards, but has only
won once (in 1987). In the US, the American
equivalent – the Grammys – nominated her
three times (two for video performances), but
she has never won.
Does Kate herself care about the paucity of
gongs? Probably not too much, but it’s telling
that she does make the effort to go and receive
her awards in person whenever she wins them.
When she picked up the Editor’s Award from
the London Evening Standard in 2014 for her
live shows, she was clearly excited and humbled
to have been selected. In 2012, on receiving
her South Bank award, she admitted to being
nervous, but still made it to the stage. Of course,
she is not blind to the promotional opportunities
these events offer her projects, but it’s unlikely
she’d support them so regularly if it were for
that reason alone.
Established in 1983 by the founder of Atlantic
Records, the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is a
curious blend of physical institution (you can
visit it in Cleveland, Ohio) and a widely-regarded
badge of honour, with the inductee shortlist
being drawn up by a small but highly influential
group of industry veterans before the public get
the chance to select their picks. With the 2018
pick failing to select her, one can only hope she
appears again. When the invitation does finally
arrive, it won’t be before time.

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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

all-new material. Comprising seven

songs – including two that clock in at
more than 10 minutes – 50 Words
“YOU HOPE AUDIENCES
For Snow was about as leftfield a WILL LIKE WHAT YOU’RE
traditional festive album as you can DOING BUT, MY GOD, IT
imagine, but drew near-universal praise
for its soaring ambition. Wild Man was
WAS EVERY NIGHT – THESE
lifted as a single and hit the market in PEOPLE WERE THERE,
October of that year, but failed to make DRIVING US ON, FILLING US
any major impact. Not so the album,
which peaked at No. 5 in the UK and WITH ENERGY. THEY MADE
saw Bush nominated for a Brit and an US FEEL IT WAS SOMETHING
Ivor Novello. The gentle, reflective piece REALLY SPECIAL”
actually won in its category at the South
Bank Sky Arts Award the following
year, beating even Adele and sparking
a rare Kate Bush public appearance. This stunning winter portrait came
50 Words For Snow featured along with the news of the 2011 album
50 Words For Snow. Vegetarian Bush
collaborations with Elton John and made sure to reassure animal lovers
Stephen Fry and seemed a more that the fur worn here was synthetic
organic piece of work compared to
what had appeared before. One
song even retains a dud note at its
introduction that Bush was persuaded to
keep on tape as a way of drawing the
listener in. Sparse, jazzy piano lent the
album a hazy, reflective tone, perhaps
similar to that dozy state of half-being
that you feel when you’ve spent too
long in front of an open fire. With some
five-star reviews, it was a triumphant
statement of artistry that remains her last
studio project to date. “It started off as
a wintry piece, which I’d had in mind
for a while, but it soon honed down to
being about snow,” Bush told the BBC’s
Radio 4. “I was trying to explore the
POP_UP For an artist so unique, Kate Bush has secured a scattering of covers of her work. In 2003,

idea of taking a longer structure for a

Placebo, Jorn Lande and Chromatics have also released treatments of the song in the 21st Century
Dutch band Within Temptation landed a Top 10 hit in their homeland with Running Up That Hill.

song, so that the story-telling process

would unfold over a longer period of
time. It’s not an album of pop songs.”
The piece with Elton John, Snowed
In At Wheeler Street, was a revelation.
“He hadn’t heard the song before he
arrived at the studio,” Bush said. “He
told me he’d just turn up and do it. I
was so blown away that he would trust
me like that. It made me quite nervous,
but he told me he loved it.” It was yet
another insight into the refreshing lack
of ego that characterises Bush and
goes some way to explaining the huge
respect she is afforded. “People are
always going on at me about how
long it takes me to make an album and
now I’ve just made two in a year,” she
added chirpily. “It’s great!”

TALK OF THE TOWN

After such a busy year, one would have
expected another long stretch of silence.
In fact, 2012 was the opposite: a high-
profile year, albeit one lacking any new
material or much in the way of public
appearances. Bush had inevitably
been approached about whether she
would be interested in performing at
that year’s Olympic Games, being
held in London. She passed on the

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 75

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 Experiencing a bizarre
mixture of excitement and
unreality, gig-goers gather
outside the venue ahead of
the run’s second performance
on August 27, 2014. Below:
fans show their dedication
©Oli Scarff/Getty
opportunity, but signed off on a remix of
Running Up That Hill, featuring freshly
recorded vocals. The new lower range
of Bush’s voice blended round the classic
track beautifully and it was featured
in the closing ceremony and included
in the official soundtrack album. Re-
entering the UK charts, the song peaked
at a respectable No. 6. Those who
said Bush’s high-charting days had
passed had to eat humble pie, even
though it was with one of her greatest
hits. And her position as a national
treasure became official when she was
awarded the CBE in the Queen’s list of
the following year. Though the ceremony
at Windsor Castle was largely conducted
out of the public eye, Bush dedicated
the honour to “family, friends and fellow
musicians and everyone who has been
such an important part of it all”.
76
CPP09.2000s.print.indd 76
FAR REMOVED FROM A
CLASSIC ROCK CONCERT, IT
WAS A SOARING CREATIVE
TRIUMPH FOR THE ARTIST
WHO ADMITTED THAT LIVE
WORK TERRIFIED HER. IT
WAS AS SIGNIFICANT AN
EVENT AS A MUSIC SHOW
COULD HOPE TO ACHIEVE
In 2014 the unthinkable happened.
An announcement went up on Bush’s
website that she would be returning to
live performing with a short residency
at London’s Hammersmith (Eventim)
Apollo. The building would play host to
15 nights, but details were clouded in
secrecy and speculation. What was in
no doubt was the level of demand.
The performances, which took place
across August, September and October,
were far removed from a classic rock
concert. No material predated Hounds
Of Love, and the magnificent The Ninth
Wave (from the 1985 album) and
A Sky Of Honey (from Aerial) were
played out as musical theatre. It was a
soaring creative triumph for the artist
who admitted that live work terrified
her. The dates were sell-outs, but what
was remarkable was the respect the
audience afforded their idol. Requests for
cameras to be put away were honoured,
and little slipped out on social media. It
was as significant an event as a music
show could ever hope to achieve.
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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

DEEPER INTO STORIES –

THE VIDEOS 2000-PRESENT
KATE BUSH HAS NEVER BEEN ONE TO FOLLOW THE TYPICAL
PROMOTIONAL TRAIL, AND AS AS THE ARTIST SLOWLY FADES FROM
THE FOREGROUND IN HER VISUAL WORK HER NARRATIVES BECOME, IF
ANYTHING, STRANGER, STRONGER AND MORE POIGNANT…

KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

JIMMY MURAKAMI, 2005
This 2005 release is the last of the traditional promotional films Kate
Bush has produced and the final to clearly feature the singer-songwriter
(a scenario likely to continue, given her reluctance to issue any footage
from her triumphant 2014 live shows). The haunting sepia tone of the
opening scenes yields to a richer colour palette as the narrative dances
– literally – around the legacy of Elvis and his death. Highly individual and yet collectively poignant, Bush’s unique
ability to pitch abstract themes in the context of the highly personal here lies testament to her position as one of the
medium’s true innovators. youtu.be/F8xk_AkeP5c

DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
KATE BUSH, 2011
Taking a position behind the cameras, Bush’s Robbie Coltrane-starring
video for the Director’s Cut single drew on the themes of the false,
dangerous comforts of our digital age. Realising that her work
would secure little support from traditional promotional platforms,
Bush focused instead on creating something more demanding – and
repeated viewings of this powerful 2011 clip certainly help hammer home its point. Like Experiment IV a couple of
decades earlier, its disturbing message lingers in many ways longer in this medium and its ambition helped secure
notable cameos from Noel Fielding and actress Frances Barber. youtu.be/nzqF_gBpS84

WILD MAN
BRANDT ANIMATION, 2011
Created to support a segment of 50 Words For Snow’s only single, Wild
Man offers tantalising glimpses of the singer-songwriter but draws back
from placing her centre-stage. The song’s looping, hypnotic melody
matches the sepia tone of the clip perfectly, and its haunting winter
vistas offer an icy backdrop to one of the album’s standout tracks. It
was one of four clips produced for the project and was created by Finn and Patrick of Brandt Animation from 18
different scenes. More than three minutes’ worth of material were finished for this truncated clip, which takes just
over two and a half minutes to tell its story. youtu.be/uhh1KbeKr4M

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 2 0 0 0 – P R E S E N T

“What a privilege!”: Kate

Bush accepts the Editor's
Award for Before The Dawn
from Sir Ian McKellen at the
London Evening Standard
Theatre Awards, 2014
© David M Benett/Getty

Her son Bertie, billed as creative
advisor, joined Bush on stage, as did
keyboard player Kevin McAlea, who had included on the album and the deluxe
played on her tour back in 1979. Critics
raved about Before The Dawn and the
surge in sales it generated saw many of
Bush’s albums re-enter the charts; on one
week, eight found a berth in the UK Top
40, establishing a new record.
One song – Never Be Mine – didn’t
make the final running order, but was
editions included lavish notes and details
about the production. The album went
gold in the UK and peaked at No. 4.
In 2011, Bush bemoaned the perilous
state of the music industry. “Many of us
fear the death of the album as an art
“an undisputed triumph” (Q magazine); “an extraordinary mix of magical ideas” (Evening Standard);

Calls for a tour were rejected and, form,” she said. “I love albums and the
POP_UP In an engulfing wave of appreciation, Before The Dawn received extraordinary reviews:

although a couple of dates were worst-case scenario is that people won’t

filmed, no visual be able to afford
“she sounds flatly incredible” (The Guardian); “magnificently uncompromising” (Time Out)

recording has to make what they

been released. want to make.”
In November “IT WAS AN More than half a
2016, Fish People
EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE decade on, that
vision is perhaps
issued a three-disc
soundtrack. PUTTING THE SHOW no less troubling,
“It was an TOGETHER, A LOT OF FUN… but there is one
extraordinary certainty: Kate
experience putting
I NEVER EXPECTED THE Bush will prove
the show together. OVERWHELMING RESPONSE an exception to
It was a huge OF THE AUDIENCES. THEY whatever rule
amount of work, is established
a lot of fun and ARE THERE IN EVERY BEAT OF about how artists
an enormous THE RECORDED MUSIC” behave and what
privilege to they create.
work with such She has
an incredibly uniquely forged a
talented team,“ said Bush, explaining the career that gives her space to surprise.
collection. “This is the audio document. During promotion for 50 Words For
I hope that this can stand alone as a Snow, she said she wanted to make
piece of music in its own right and that more music and hinted of new ideas,
it can be enjoyed by people who knew but remained coy about what direction
nothing about the shows as well as those they would take. The world is still waiting
who were there. I never expected the but, when the time comes, we can be
overwhelming response of the audiences, assured it will follow her unique path and
every night filling the show with life and she can be confident that there will be
excitement. They are there in every beat many happy to follow her wherever she
of the recorded music. Even when you might lead them. It’s already been an
can't hear them, you can feel them.” incredible journey.

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 Kate attends the South Bank Sky
Arts Awards at the Dorchester
Hotel in London, 1 May 2012
© Richard Young/REX/Shutterstock

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 C L A S S I C

ALBUM
AERIAL
THEY SAY THAT TIMING IS EVERYTHING, AND IF THE LONG, SUSPENSEFUL BUILD AHEAD
OF DOUBLE-ALBUM AERIAL CREATED FEVERISH ANTICIPATION, THEN ITS MELLOW,
NUANCED CHARM ENDED UP FEELING ENTIRELY OF THE MOMENT. CRITICAL AND
COMMERCIAL ACCLAIM GREETED THIS AMBITIOUS BUT STILL-SUBTLE RECORD THAT
MANY SAY IS THE SINGER-SONGWRITER’S STRONGEST OF THIS CENTURY…
M A R K E L L I O T

f initial critique of and rock permeating the first record: a haunting piano “The song is really about the

I Kate Bush’s eighth

album focused almost
entirely on the time it
had taken to arrive,
the gentle charm of the
singer-songwriter’s only
release. If King Of The
Mountain was Bush at her
most structured, creating
one of her most outstanding
singles, then A Coral Room
was surely the highlight of the
ballad inspired by the death
of her mother and featuring
Michael Wood. It’s believed
Bush resisted the idea of
including it on Aerial at first,
fearing it was too personal.
passing of time,” she said.
“I always remember hearing
years ago this thing about
a sort of Zen approach to
life where you would hold
something in your hand,
double-set to date was soon knowing that at some point it
to win everyone over. For would break.”
many, its first and most ‘A Sky Of Honey’ was a suite of nine pieces. ‘A Sky Of Honey’ was a
surprising revelation was suite of nine pieces – three
When the record was issued on iTunes in 2010, essentially bridging acts –
that it was all so personal,
largely drawing inspiration the material was fused into one continual track, telling the story of a languid
from the sometimes intense referencing Bush’s insistence that her albums summer day. Birdsong
detail of Bush’s domestic permeated the collection,
life. While little was likely
were best appreciated in defined settings and the now disgraced
autobiographical, Mrs Rolf Harris lent didgeridoo
Bartolozzi subverted the duties and vocal support to
mundane rhythm of the An Architect’s Dream and
laundry into something far The Painter’s Link. Other
richer and infinitely more
sinister. It’s indicative of the
TRACKLISTING collaborators included Peter
Erskine, Lol Creme and
record’s soaring lyrical flair. Gary Brooker from Procol
‘A Sea Of Honey’ collected DISC ONE – A SEA DISC TWO – A SKY Harum. In what would prove
seven songs on the first OF HONEY OF HONEY to be one of his final pieces
disc. These tracks shared King Of The Mountain Prelude of work, Michael Kamen
a perspective, perhaps, assembled the London
π Prologue
but were created as stand- Metropolitan Orchestra at
alone pieces. The most Bertie An Architect’s Dream the Abbey Road Studios to
revealing, Bertie, was a Mrs Bartolozzi The Painter’s Link arrange the strings. When
tender celebration of Bush’s How To Be Invisible Sunset Aerial was issued on iTunes
young son, while Joanni was Joanni Aerial Tal in 2010, the material was
based on the story of Joan of A Coral Room Somewhere In Between fused into one continual
Arc. As ever, Bush’s musical track – referencing Bush’s
Nocturn
palette was incredibly varied insistence that her albums
and hard to categorise, with Aerial were best appreciated in
echoes of reggae, flamenco defined sittings.

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 A E R I A L C L A S S I C A L B U M

THE PLAYERS
RELEASED
November 2005
LABEL EMI
PRODUCED BY
Kate Bush
ENGINEERS
Del Palmer, Simon Rhodes,
Chris Bolsher; mastering by
James Guthrie
RECORDED AT
Abbey Road, Wickham Farm
PERSONNEL
Kate Bush – piano/keyboards;
Peter Erskine, Stuart Elliott, Steve
Sanger – drums; Eberhard
Weber, John Giblin, Del Palmer
– bass; Bosco D’Oliveira –
percussion; Danny McIntosh
– guitar; Gary Brooker
– Hammond organ and
backing vocals; Rolf Harris
– didgeridoo; Lol Creme,
Paddy Bush – added vocals
ADDITIONAL
MUSICIANS
Michael Wood, Albert
McIntosh – vocals;
Chris Hall – accordion;
Richard Campbell, Susan Pell
– viol; Eligio Quinteiro, Robin
Jeffrey– guitar and percussion;
Bill Dunne – string arrangement;
Michael Kamen – orchestral
arrangement; the London
Metropolitan Orchestra

WHAT TOOK
AERIAL SO LONG?
When Kate Bush hesitantly returned to Aerial’s limited promotional
merry-go-round, she admitted the gap between 1993’s The Red
Shoes and 2005’s release had felt like a long time. Of course, in
reality, she’d been busy: making a film, giving birth, raising her
son without a typical rich-but-busy rock personage’s recourse to
nannies and housekeepers and the like, moving house to Berkshire, about the overwhelming
building a new studio there. Meeting Tom Doyle for The Guardian, she response it had received.
acknowledged that she had been slightly concerned about product, too.
With strong sales around the
“Oh yeah,” she sighed. “I mean, there were so many times I thought,
I’ll have the album finished this year, definitely, we’ll get it out this year. Aerial went platinum in world, it is comfortably her
Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I’m never gonna do this. If I the UK in just four weeks, most successful record of this
could make albums quicker, I’d be on a roll, wouldn’t I? Everything just seems to and the many critical century – a sign, perhaps,
take so much time. I don’t know why. Time... evaporates.” nominations it would receive of the falling demand for
Luckily, her record label was hugely, perhaps uniquely, understanding: EMI demonstrate how warm the physical units, but still a
chairman Tony Wadsworth would visit Bush’s recently-built home studio in the record’s reception really worthy reward for a project
hope of hearing some tantalising snippets of new material, but would go back was. Bush was thrilled at its that took inspiration from tiny
to London having heard precisely zilch. “We’d just chat and then he’d go away success, thanking her fans details and developed them
again,” Bush said. “We ended up just laughing about it, really.” in a personalised letter, into something far greater
saying she was excited than the sum of their parts.

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 Kate Bush on stage at The
Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith,
London, 26 August 2014
© Noble & Bright/REX/Shutterstock

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 B E F O R E
THE APOLLO
MISSION
IT WAS THE NEWS THAT FANS HAD BEEN PRAYING FOR: KATE BUSH
WAS TO PLAY LIVE ONCE MORE. AND SHE WOULD DO IT IN THE VENUE
IN WHICH SHE LAST PERFORMED, OVER 30 YEARS EARLIER…
M A R K
f the thousands of words
O
written about Kate Bush’s
record-breaking run at the
Hammersmith (Eventim)
Apollo in 2014, there is one
universal theme: the tremendous
anticipation that preceded each of the
22 performances and the sense from
all the lucky ticket-holders that this was
something truly special. As opening night
approached, a thick shroud of secrecy
hung over the season, with feverish
speculation about which songs were to
be included and how the set would be
performed. In classic Bush tradition, few
accurately predicted what was coming,
and all the endless guesswork proved
largely wide of the mark. It all added
up to an intoxicating brew of genuine
showmanship – so authentic and distinct
from the intensive efforts that create the
hype so essential for many of today’s
more transient superstars.
It all started suddenly back in March
2014 when a bleak Friday was
illuminated by the brightest of news. It
seemed the gently swirling rumours had
substance: Bush was going back on the
stage and the faithful who had registered
to her site would get first access. The
choice of venue was perfect – London's
Hammersmith Apollo was where she’d
concluded her only previous tour back
in 1979, and it offered scale but not
impenetrable depth for what the singer-
songwriter hoped would be a unique,
personal and moving presentation as
CPP09.BeforetheDawn.print.indd 83
T H E D A W N
E L L I O T
far removed from modern-day stadium
shows as could be imagined. The
following week, tickets went on sale
to the fans before being offered to the
wider public. Inevitably, all the seats
were gone in minutes, resulting in seven
extra dates being added to the original
announcement of only 15.
This modest capacity was never going
to truly satisfy demand, but the limited
nature of the release added a heightened
sense of occasion. With expectation
running at ridiculous levels, Bush threw
herself into the tasks required to bring
her vision to life. Her wish to stage
The Ninth Wave from 1985’s Hounds
Of Love would see her immersed in a
flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to
create film sequences for the show; she
drew in collaboration from novelist David
Mitchell, and asked the artistic director
from the RSC, Adrian Noble, to help
shape the overall work.
“I’d started to feel like I wouldn’t do
shows again,” Bush admitted to the
BBC’ Radio 6. The surprise turn of events
can in part be traced back to the rapid
turnaround of her previous two albums;
“I really wanted to do something that
wasn’t going to involve sitting in the
studio for a couple of years. It felt like the
right time, although it was something I
really had to seriously build up to.”
Simon Drake, her choreographer on
the 1979 tour, had suggested more than
a decade earlier that she should consider
a limited run at a venue like London’s
83
19/01/2018 09:13
 B E F O R E T H E
© Noble & Bright/REX/Shutterstock
Royal Festival Hall, and she replied that
she didn’t think anyone cared about the
idea any more. Nothing could have been
further from the truth.
So if she harboured any doubts about
the dates themselves, the narrative heart
of the project was determined; alongside
The Ninth Wave, Bush was set on
staging an interpretation of Aerial’s A
Sky Of Honey, which would dominate
the second half. “I knew I wanted to start
with a bunch of songs that would seem
as if it was a straight concert that would
then slip into The Ninth Wave,” she said.
Those opening songs were culled from
her later work, beginning with Lily from
The Red Shoes and reaching a climax
with 2005’s King Of The Mountain.
It appears the decision not to include
anything from her earliest work had
come naturally. “I knew the two narrative
pieces were going to be the main part
of the show, so that only left a few songs
at the beginning,” said Bush. “I wanted
to do an uptempo rhythmic set, so there
were obvious songs that had to go in
there … and it felt like picking the songs
that would have that kind of impact.”
Running Up That Hill, she felt, was an
essential component, but plans evolved
as rehearsals continued, with some songs
ejected from an encore list to trim the
project’s lengthy running time.
“It was a huge amount of work and
I started it about 14 months before the
show. It was very full-on,” she admitted.
A crucial early hire was lighting designer
Mark Henderson, who would drench
the production with his typical flair.
Bush admits she drove her band mad by
taking frequent breaks from rehearsals
84
CPP09.BeforetheDawn.print.indd 84
D A W N
THE PRICE IS RIGHT?
With such a limited run, tickets to the London shows
were always going to sell out fast. In fact, the singer-
songwriter was overwhelmed by the response, and
the initial 15 dates soon became 22. Fans that had
registered on her website before the announcement
about the dates was made were given a unique access
code to get their hands on tickets ahead of the general
public, but capacity was never going to truly match
demand, and the inevitable escalation of prices began
as soon as the run had sold out.
In March, when the tickets (limited to four per
person) went on sale, prices ranged from almost £50 to
almost three times that amount, depending on where
the seats were placed. Reportedly sold out in under
30 minutes, the original allocation was overtaken by
secondary ticketing sites that soon had them on sale
for anywhere between £350 and £1000. There was,
however, a catch: there was a strict ID operation in
place, and this passed some of the sellers – and buyers
– by in their rush to secure a seat or a quick profit. The
photo ID checks meant that some of those sellers could
to spend time sitting in the theatre stalls
to assess the stage presentation as her
audience would see it; she knew they
would be expecting a spectacular piece.
No less important was her band:
Omar Hakim on drums, David Rhodes on
guitar, plus John Giblin, Jon Carin and
Kevin McAlea (who had been with her
for the 1979 tour). They would add the
crucial support for the theatrical construct
that would bring her ideas to life. She
“THE THRILL OF HAVING THE
AUDIENCE THERE EVERY
NIGHT IS DIFFICULT TO
EXPRESS… THERE WAS THIS
POWERFUL, WELCOMING
PRESENCE. I WAS TERRIFIED
BUT TOWARDS THE END
I WAS JUST STARTING TO
ENJOY PARTS OF IT”
knew The Ninth Wave demanded an
approach left-field enough to match
the suite’s meandering imagination.
Choosing to represent the literal
experience of the character on film, she
decided that her dream sequences, so
central to the piece, would be played out
on stage. Bush admitted that the image
of a person lost at sea is a terrifying
one. “There are a lot of psychological
connections with water and emotions,”
she said in 2016.
later be seen actually accompanying buyers through
the doors of the venue.
Outside the Hammersmith theatre, touts could be
spotted offering a place for about £200 on some nights
and many early shows were besieged by fans who
turned up on the off-chance of securing last-minute
entry. It’s an issue that vexes every touring artist, and
successive UK governments have failed to establish a
solution that limits the scam of exorbitant resale prices
without damaging the minority who use the service to
legitimately offload tickets they then can’t use.
“I’m completely overwhelmed by the response to
the shows,” said Kate Bush as her own website crashed
under the demand. Ticketmaster, meanwhile, claimed
the interest had been “phenomenal”, with more than
65,000 visitors on its site that day looking for spares.
The person who paid the most amount of money for
a seat may never be identified, but with many fans
travelling in from all across the globe, there’s no
doubt it was an expensive commitment for most. Few,
however, were complaining.
The technical demands were certainly
huge. Bush was determined to achieve
a feel and look more like theatre than
a rock concert: for this reason, a fixed
residency was crucial. But despite
lengthy preparations and the fixed site,
the schedule was tight and things were
changing right up until opening night.
“Of course once you start performing it,
that’s where it really all starts to begin,”
Bush said. “It starts to walk along on
its own two feet. There’s a sense of
continuing, evolving process. That’s the
whole thrill of the live experience.”
Though opening night proved a
triumph, Bush admits she never really
got over her fears. “I was nervous every
night as a performer, but I had complete
faith in everybody on the stage and in
the team. I felt there was this embracing
of everybody to make this happen.
“The most difficult thing for me was to
be continually in the now. I tend to race
ahead in my mind – I’m always thinking
about situations and running them
through. Once we started, I had to be
absolutely in that moment. I think people
who are more practised at live work can
allow their mind to wander off and then
come back, but I was terrified that if my
mind wandered I wouldn’t remember
where I was. I had to really fix myself
and it was hard to do that.”
More performances helped, but it’s
clear how challenging the run was to
prove, despite the crowds egging Bush
on. “The thrill of having the audience
there every night in such an incredible
way is very difficult to express,” she says.
“There were slightly different energies
each night, but there was this powerful,
23/01/2018 16:34
 © Noble & Bright/REX/Shutterstock
welcoming presence … I was so terrified
most nights, but towards the end [of the
run], I was just starting to relax enough to
enjoy parts of it.”
One of the triumphs of the season
was the near-total suppression of the
audience’s use of social media. Little
material escaped the theatre after Bush
made a personal plea for fans to keep
their devices hidden from view. There
is no doubt that the careful staging,
intricate details, atmospheric lighting and
filmed inserts would have been ruined
by a sea of phones, and it says much
about the integrity of the audience that
her wishes were met. The decision not
to release any of the filmed footage (two
dates were recorded halfway through the
run) inevitably bathes that restraint in a
different light now, but there’s no doubt it
adds to the project’s mystique.
“I wanted the feeling to be one of
intimacy,” says Bush. “In a smaller venue
like that, it would have been so intrusive.
I really wanted them to be there; not on
the other end of a camera. I thought it
was worth asking and I was surprised at
the number that respected it.”
CPP09.BeforetheDawn.print.indd 85
If she had any regrets about not
heading out on the road sooner, they
were well guarded. “Had I done it
before, then perhaps the same level of
material wouldn’t have existed,” she told
the BBC’s Matt Everitt. “I was up there as
somebody who had lived their life up to
that point. It would have been a different
show, but I’m glad I did this. It was an
incredible experience… It was very
moving feeling the response from those
audiences… I’m really pleased we all got
up there and did that.”
With the run a complete sell-out and
reviews almost universally positive –
although Bush avoided reading them
– the season passed very quickly;
indeed, to the artist, the experience
took on a dream-like quality soon after
it was over. When challenged about the
filmed footage, she admitted to feeling
conflicted about its future. “We didn’t
want the cameras on-stage. I think that
music is an important art form and I think
the live album is more representative of
what the show was than a DVD would
be,” she said when promoting the
concert’s eventual audio presentation.
Bush’s insistence
on limited shows
and the large
production budget
kept any profits
low. This was a
labour of love
She knew the decision to ditch the
visual recording, for now, would prove
to be controversial. “I am hoping that
people won’t be disappointed,” she said.
“[The album] holds the energy of that
room and the incredible audience and
it allows your imagination to wander in
what I think is a much more real way.”
It was another striking example of the
maverick spirit that had characterised
her career to date, and she remains
unrepentant: “I’m not saying that we
won’t ever do anything with it, but there
are absolutely no plans.”
Before The Dawn was an indisputable
triumph that delivered almost everything
everyone could have wanted. The odd
omission raised an eyebrow – no This
Woman’s Work? – but ultimately Bush
delivered something that fully justified
the wait. The show lingered long in the
imagination once the curtain fell and,
given the lack of visual recording to
date, that’s the place where its architect
is happiest for it to rest. No one would
confidently bet that it could never happen
again… but it’s probably sensible that we
all avoid holding our breath.
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 TOP 4O G R E A T E S T

KATE BUSH
TRACKS
A TIME, A PLACE, A SPECIAL MEANING: THERE ARE SURELY FEW
THINGS MORE PERSONAL THAN THE SONGS WE HOLD MOST
DEAR. SELECTING THE 40 FINEST KATE BUSH SONGS IS ONE
OF THE TRICKIEST TASKS TO HAVE FACED THE CLASSIC POP
TEAM – BUT WE’VE TRIED OUR VERY BEST. DO YOU AGREE?
I A N W A D E

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 T O P 4 0 K A T E B U S H

4O
KEN
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1990
Few people would expect to find a
Kate Bush deep cut on the soundtrack
to GLC: The Carnage Continues, a 1990
Comic Strip Presents… TV episode about
Ken Livingstone and the Greater London
Council, but Kate had a long history of
working with comedians. The Shaft-
referencing Ken was released with other
tracks from the soundtrack as the B-side to
Love And Anger. You’ll find it on YouTube.
39
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1992
This was Kate’s contribution to
another Comic Strip Presents…
concoction, a tale of avian revenge entitled
Wild Turkey. The first of two festive
offerings in this list, Home For Christmas is
often overlooked due to its relative
unavailability in comparison to December
Will Be Magic Again. It was released as
the B-side to Moments Of Pleasure, and
Kate’s kindly now popped it on Spotify too.
38
SUSPENDED IN GAFFA
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1982
Gaffa/gaffer is, of course, the
infamously tough and sticky black
tape widely brandished in the theatre and
rock industries. Mysterious and yet deeply
autobiographical, Suspended In Gaffa
seems to touch upon the subjects of God,
of feelings of powerlessness and of the
difficulty of proving one’s own worth. It was
released as single across Europe and
Australia, but not in the UK.

“Ne T’enfuis
Pas sees Bush
envisioning herself
as a slowly stalking
37
NE T’ENFUIS PAS
RECORD LABEL EMI
36
NIGHT OF THE SWALLOW
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1982 RELEASED 1982
cat and her lover as With French lyrics by Patrick Released as a single from The
Jeaneau and Vivienne Chandler, Ne Dreaming only in Ireland due mainly
a bird; whatever is T’enfuis Pas (Don’t Run Away) sees Bush to the musical presence of members from
about to happen, it envisioning herself as a slowly stalking cat
and her lover as a bird; whatever is about
the popular traditional-based Irish acts
Planxty and The Chieftains, Night Of The
seems highly likely to happen, it seems highly likely that
feathers will fly. Released as the B-side to
Swallow tells the tale of a lover pleading
with her smuggler boyfriend for him not to
that feathers will fly“ There Goes A Tenner, the song’s title was go out on another job; however, he gets a
misspelt on the label as Ne T’en Fuis Pas, bit uppity and tells her not to tie him down.
which means nothing at all. The clots. It became an Irish No. 12 in 1983.

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 K A T E B U S H T O P 4 0

“Eat The Music,

was a hypnotic,
hi-life inflected song
on the subject of
embracing honesty
in relationships, and
it was enlivened by
a video crammed
full of squashy fruit“

35
MOVING
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1978
A tribute to her dance teacher Lindsay
Kemp, The Kick Inside’s opener
Moving was only released as a single in
Japan – and Wuthering Heights, rather
incredibly, was relegated to the B-side.
Sadly, in that country it did only modest
business despite Kate having performed the
song at the Tokyo Music Festival in front of
a TV audience of 35 million. Maybe the
whale sound at the start put them off.
34
LOVE AND ANGER
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1989
The first song written but the last one
completed two years later for The
Sensual World, Kate struggled with Love
And Anger’s subject: “This is about who
you can or cannot confide in when there’s
something you can’t talk about. Who did I
have in the lyrics? Was it sister or mother? I
can’t remember.” David Gilmour’s solo
apparently helped, and it made the album
– and also reached No. 38 in 1990.

33
THE RED SHOES
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1994
This song about enchanted ballet
slippers from the album of the same
name – and the key track from her film The
Line, The Cross And The Curve, which
co-starred Miranda Richardson with
choreography from Kemp – saw Kate
venture into dance remixes, with a second
CD single release featuring a clanking
10-minute remix entitled Shoedance that
sadly failed to ignite any dancefloors.
32
THE DREAMING
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1982
Originally entitled The Abo Song,
this Aboriginal-themed tune about
sacred ground being used for uranium
mining is probably more problematic these
days because of the presence of
disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris on
digeridoo, denying it much airplay. It only
managed to get to No. 48 when Kate
chose to make a comeback with it in
1982, after a career gap of 18 months.
31
EAT THE MUSIC
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1991
This hypnotic, hi-life inflected song on
the subject of embracing honesty in
relationships was enlivened by a video
crammed full of squashy fruit. It was
released in the states on Columbia as the
lead-off from The Red Shoes (everywhere
else went with Rubberband Girl). A few
copies were pressed by EMI in the UK but
were later recalled before it was finally
released across Europe in 1994.

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 T O P 4 0 K A T E B U S H

3O
RUBBERBAND GIRL
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1993
According to Kate, Rubberband Girl
was her least favourite track on The
Red Shoes. This fact hardly boded well
when the song was released as the very
first single from the album in 1993, but it hit
the Top 12 regardless. “I had considered
taking it off, to be honest, because it didn’t
feel quite as interesting as the other tracks.
It’s just a silly pop song, really,” she
revealed to Mojo in 2011.
29
AND SO IS LOVE
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1994
Released as a single in 1994, And
So Is Love also saw Kate return to the
spotlight of the Top Of The Pops studio for
the first time since 1985. Keen-eared Bush
fans will be aware that there are two
versions of the song: the album version from
1993, and the version from Director’s Cut
in 2011, on which the key lyric “But now
we see that life is sad” is tellingly changed
to “But now we see that life is sweet”.
28
THEM HEAVY PEOPLE (LIVE)
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1979
Them Heavy People was the lead
track from Kate’s On Stage EP, which
climbed to No. 10 in the autumn of 1979.
The disc carried four numbers recorded at
the Hammersmith Odeon on 13 May 1979
from her sole tour to date. She did release
a whole live ‘album’ on video from the tour,
but those versions of these songs differed
somewhat, despite claiming to be recorded
on the same day.

27
THE BIG SKY
“There Goes A
Tenner was the
tale of a bungled
26
THERE GOES A TENNER
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1986
bank robbery seen RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1982
Released as the fourth and final single
from Hounds Of Love, The Big Sky
through the eyes A tale of a bungled bank robbery,
seen through the eyes of a paranoid
reflects on the simpler things one used to do of a paranoid perpetrator who starts freaking out at the
when younger. According to Kate’s size of the heist he’s become involved with,
newsletter in 1985, it’s about “someone perpetrator, and it’s There Goes A Tenner was a one-off single
sitting looking at the sky, watching the which has been pretty much been erased
clouds change... I think we forget these been pretty much from history due to the lack of interest in it
pleasures as adults. We feel silly about
what we used to do naturally.” It marked
erased from history“ at the time. Even the sound of Kate virtually
inventing Blur with her Mockney accent
Kate’s first foray into video directing. wasn’t enough to push it past No. 93.

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 K A T E B U S H T O P 4 0

“If you cover

records, you should
try and make them
different. It’s like
remaking movies:
you’ve got to try and
give it something
that makes it worth
re-releasing”

25
BE KIND TO MY MISTAKES
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1987
Originally written for the soundtrack
of the 1986 Nic Roeg-directed movie
Castaway (hence the appearance of
hellraising actor Oliver Reed, who is heard
muttering the title). While the song exists in
various versions, the original soundtrack
version was released as a single in
Germany with the Brian Eno track
Chemistry on the flip; a remix also pops up
as the B-side to This Woman’s Work.
24
THE MAN I LOVE
RECORD LABEL MERCURY
RELEASED 1994
Written in 1927, this classic tune was
dropped from the stage show Lady Be
Good until heiress and face-about-town
Lady Mountbatten fell in love with it; soon,
dance bands began covering the song and
it became hugely popular. Kate Bush
recorded her version in 1994 for the album
The Glory Of Gershwin, which also
featured Cher, Peter Gabriel and Robert
Palmer, plus Larry Adler on harmonica.

23
EXPERIMENT IV
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1986
Recorded as a new track for her hits
collection The Whole Story,
Experiment IV was about a secret military
plan to develop a sound, a black noise,
that could kill people. The video, directed
by Kate and starring Gary Oldman, Dawn
French and Hugh Laurie, was banned by
Top Of The Pops for being too violent. She
did, however, perform it live on Wogan
with violinist Nigel Kennedy.
22
ROCKET MAN
RECORD LABEL MERCURY
RELEASED 1991
Lifelong fan Kate was asked to
contribute to an album of covers of
Elton John and Bernie Taupin songs. “If
you cover records, you should try and
make them different,” the singer mused.
“It’s like remaking movies: you’ve got to
try and give it something that makes it
worth re-releasing. And the reggae
treatment just seemed to happen, really.”
Her version reached No. 12 in 1991.
21
HAMMER HORROR
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1979
From her second album, Lionheart.
The song is not, as many first thought,
about Hammer films, but about an actor
replacing a friend who died portraying The
Hunchback of Notre Dame. “It was inspired
by seeing James Cagney playing the part of
Lon Chaney playing the hunchback – he
was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather
like Chinese boxes, and that’s what I was
trying to create,” confirmed Bush.

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 T O P 4 0 K A T E B U S H

KATE CURIOS
For a 40-year career, there isn’t much more
languishing hidden in the crates as regards rare
Bush singles. You could go down the completist
route by collecting tracks where she sang backing
vocals, on songs which include Peter Gabriel’s
Games Without Frontiers, Big Country’s The
Seer, Midge Ure’s Sister And Brother, Go West’s
The King Is Dead, and Prince’s My Computer.
Or there’s the oddballs, such as her version of
Women Of Ireland on the Common Ground:
Voices Of Modern Irish Music album from 1996,
or as featured on the 1992 soundtrack to the

1985 film Brazil – restored after being left out
of the original movie – singing Sam Lowry’s 1st
Dream/ Brazil, and not forgetting her guest turn
Kimiad on Alan Stivell’s 1993 album Again. Then
there are the covers that Kate didn’t release as
singles but cropped up as B-sides and elsewhere,
such as Candle In The Wind and Marvin Gaye’s
Sexual Healing.
As regards key cover versions of Kate’s own
songs, the key pick of those would be by Placebo
(Running Up That Hill), Maxwell (This Woman’s
Work), Pat Benatar (Wuthering Heights), The
Futureheads (Hounds Of Love), and Patrick
Wolf (Army Dreamers)… or maybe you could
summon your bravery to listen to Hue & Cry’s
take on The Man With The Child In His Eyes.
2O
DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
RECORD LABEL FISH PEOPLE
RELEASED 2011
Kate’s original 1989 version
foreseeing the possibilities of
becoming too involved with technology
– “You can get your shopping from the
Ceefax!” – seemed prescient at the time, so
when it was released in a new version
ahead of Director’s Cut, it took on a new
relevance. The video featured her son as
the voice of the computer, plus comedians
Robbie Coltrane and Noel Fielding.
19
AND DREAM OF SHEEP (LIVE)
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 2016
And Dream Of Sheep began The
Ninth Wave suite on the Hounds Of
Love album in 1985. It’s a song about
being “left alone in the water for the night”;
Bush recreated the song for her shows in
2014, recording and filming a video in a
tank at Pinewood Studios and using the
results in the Hammersmith shows. A ‘live’
version was released in 2016 ahead of the
Before The Dawn album release.

18
LYRA
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 2007
Recorded for the film The Golden
Compass, this one-off crept out at the
end of 2007. The short notice of the
commission – which also stipulated that the
song should reference the lead character,
Lyra Belacqua – meant Kate ended up
writing and recording it in 10 days. The
Magdalen College Oxford Choir recorded
their parts to an early demo, and the song
can be found on the original soundtrack.
17
WILD MAN
RECORD LABEL FISH PEOPLE
RELEASED 2011
From 50 Words For Snow, Wild Man
sees Kate referring to the various
names the Yeti is known by, but as she
explained to The Quietus in 2011, “I don’t
refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it
is meant to be an empathetic view of a
creature of great mystery, really.” With an
accompanying short film, it was released as
a download only, but some rare promos
were pressed; they go for silly money.
16
ARMY DREAMERS
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1980
This No. 16 hit from 1980 gives
voice to a grieving mother mourning
the waste of her young son, who is killed
while serving in the army. Though the song
contained Irish accents, it wasn’t specifically
about that conflict: “I’m not slagging off the
Army, it’s just so sad that there are kids who
have no O-levels and nothing to do but
become soldiers, and it’s not really what
they want. That’s what frightens me.”

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15
BREATHING
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1980
Songs from the point of view of a
foetus had yet to be a thing until Kate
came along with her Pink Floyd-inspired
number Breathing in 1980. Based around
the threat/aftermath of a nuclear event –
there’s a spoken-word description of bomb
fallout on the album version – there’s a
possibility that breathing in nicotine was the
least of the unborn’s worries. John Giblin
supplied the superbly melodic bass.
12
BABOOSHKA
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1980
A wife tries to test her husband’s
loyalty, and becomes the ‘Babooshka’
in the title, although babooshka actually
translates as ‘grandmother’, which could
prove awkward. It was a series of
coincidences – an opera, the name of a
friend’s cat – that prompted Kate to stick
with it. She performed it on a Dr Hook TV
special and created a character with
dual-sided make-up to ram the point home.
CPP09.Top40.print.indd 93
14
KING OF THE MOUNTAIN
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 2005
Written a good decade before its
eventual release as part of Aerial,
King Of The Mountain – her first single in
12 years – wonders if Elvis is still out there,
somewhere living normally, having been
subjected to such intense fame during his
career. It also referenced parallels between
Presley and Citizen Kane, hence ‘Rosebud’.
Her biggest hit in over 20 years, it went to
No. 4 in the autumn of 2005.
11
HOUNDS OF LOVE
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1985
A song about people’s fear of falling
in love, encouraging them to throw
off their worries and take the plunge. As
Kate advises, “Maybe being involved isn’t
as horrific as your imagination can build it
up to being – perhaps these baying hounds
are really friendly.” It was covered by the
Futureheads in 2005; Kate left a message
for them on the phone at their studio, but
they were too terrified to phone her back.
K A T E B U S H T O P 4 0
13
DON’T GIVE UP
RECORD LABEL VIRGIN
RELEASED 1986
Peter Gabriel had written Don’t Give
Up with Dolly Parton in mind for the
female part. Unfortunately she didn’t fancy
it, so he asked previous backing vocalist
Kate (she had sung on Games Without
Frontiers) to step in. Bush wasn’t sure about
her first vocal, so she went back to
Gabriel’s house to re-record it. The duo
sang it live on one occasion, at Earl’s Court
in 1987. It reached No. 9 in late 1986.
1O
DECEMBER WILL
BE MAGIC AGAIN
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1980
December Will Be Magic Again was
premiered (in its “bongo version”) as
part of Christmas Snowtime Special, a BBC
compilation of pop appearances from the
likes of Abba, Boney M and Leo Sayer, on
December 22nd, 1979. Bush then
performed it as part of her own TV special
on the 29th, and it was released as a
one-off single in November 1980.
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 T O P 4 0 K A T E B U S H
9
THE SENSUAL WORLD
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1989
After hearing a rendition of the
closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s
Ulysses, Kate was inspired to write a song
using chunks of it, assuming the copyright
was public domain. After a year of attempts
to obtain permission to use it, she settled on
rewriting the words. Kate said at the time,
“It turned into a pastiche, and that’s why
the character, Molly Bloom, steps into the
real world and becomes one of us.”
7
WOW
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1979
Wow and its video of a whirling Bush
became ripe for parody from the
comics of the day. “It was sparked off when
I sat down to try and write a Pink Floyd
song, something spacey; I’m not surprised
no-one has picked that up, it’s not really
recognisable as that, in the same way as
people haven’t noticed that Kite is a Bob
Marley song, and Don’t Push Your Foot On
The Heartbrake is a Patti Smith song.”
94
CPP09.Top40.print.indd 94
“It was a theory I
had that I observed
in most of the men
I know… the fact
that they are just
little boys inside and
how wonderful it is
that they manage to
retain this magic”
8
CLOUDBUSTING
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1985
Peter Reich’s The Book Of Dreams is
about his relationship with his
psychologist/philosopher father Wilhelm
Reich, inventor of a ‘life energy force’
called orgone, who was pilloried for his
beliefs in the 1950s. “The book is full of
imagery of an innocent child and yet it’s
being written by a sad adult, which gives
it a kind of personal intimacy and magic
that is quite extraordinary,” said Bush.
6
THIS WOMAN’S WORK
RECORD LABEL EMI
5
THE MAN WITH THE CHILD
IN HIS EYES
RELEASED 1989 RECORD LABEL EMI
This song first appeared on the RELEASED 1978
soundtrack to John Hughes’ 1988 film Famously written when she was 13,
She’s Having A Baby. Hughes sent Kate and recorded at 16 under the
clips of an emotional flashback sequence; guidance of David Gilmour in front of an
written quickly as she watched the rushes, it orchestra that scared her. Kate explained
became the first song completed for The the song: “It was a theory that I had had
Sensual World, where a re-edited version for a while that I just observed in most of
would end up a year later. It’s been a hit in the men that I know: the fact that they just
1989 (reaching No. 25), 2008 (76) and are little boys inside and how wonderful it
as a Director’s Cut version, 2012 (63). is that they manage to retain this magic.”
19/01/2018 09:26
 K A T E B U S H T O P 4 0

4
SAT IN YOUR LAP
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1981
A song about knowledge: “The more
you learn, the more ignorant you
realise you are and that you get over one
wall to find an even bigger one.” It was a
rowdier departure from the singles released
so far, more percussive and synth based,
with a vocal that Kate imagined being sung
high on a hill on a windy day. Originally a
single in June 1981, it became part of The
Dreaming album in 1982.
3
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1978
Where it all began. It’s hard now to
imagine the impact that this had
when released as Kate’s first single in
January 1978, having been held back so
as not to compete with Mull Of Kintyre.
There is only the one version, and Bush
irked some fans slightly when she re-did the
vocal for The Whole Story in 1986. It was,
astonishingly, the first UK No. 1 single
written and performed by a female artist.
2
MOMENTS OF PLEASURE
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1993
Written about her mother, specifically
the line “to those we love, to those
who will survive”, Moments Of Pleasure has
shapeshifted over the years from the version
on The Red Shoes to the one on Director’s
Cut, where she removed the chorus and
created more of a narrative. Both are
capable of reducing even the hardest heart
into a sobbing wreck. Released as a single
in November 1993, it reached No. 26.

1
RUNNING UP THAT HILL (A DEAL WITH GOD)
RECORD LABEL EMI
RELEASED 1985
Why have we put Running Up That Hill at the very top
of our list? In fairness, any of our top five could argue
its case for the top slot. For us, however, this is not just a
song that enjoys near-iconic status, but it also marked a key
moment in Bush’s musical timeline, where she started to slow
down and take more control of her career after a near-frantic
four albums in five years. Written in 1983 as the first song
for Hounds Of Love, it would also be the oldest song in her
setlist at the Before The Dawn shows.
It marks almost a rebirth for Kate and signposts the journey
her music would take in the subsequent three decades, with
a foundation on theories of love and relationships. “It is very
much about the power of love, and the strength created
between two people when they’re very much in love,” she
allowed, “but the strength can also be threatening, violent,
dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving.”
Bush herself refers to the song using the original title of
A Deal With God, but EMI weren’t wild about a song with
“God” in the title, as they feared it wouldn’t go down well
in certain territories around the world. Kate relented on this
selling album, something Cloudbusting, with all its charms,
occasion, although the full title is on the album. EMI also
wanted Cloudbusting to be the first single, as it was more might not have pulled off as well. It was revisited in 2012 as
suited to the Bush work they’d released before. The artist put part of the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, when a
her foot down firmly there, thankfully. Hitting No. 3 in 1985, reswizzled version – with Kate singing a fresh vocal over the
it opened the way for Hounds Of Love to become her biggest- original 12-inch mix – and reached a creditable No. 6.

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 © Getty Images

Getty Images

CLASSIC

B A C K E A S T
June 1978, and Kate takes a rare moment out of her hectic promotional
schedule to relax backstage in Tokyo while on the Japanese trip intended
to crack one of the world’s most lucrative pop markets. While in Japan,
Kate appeared on several TV shows – including, bizarrely, performing
Moving at a singing competition during the 7th annual Tokyo Music
Festival, watched by an estimated audience of approximately 35 million.
She was, eventually, beaten – by no less a singer than Al Green, the soul
legend of Let’s Stay Together fame…

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 © Alamy

Getty Images

CLASSIC

P R I Z E D
M E L O D Y
Kate and Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldof celebrate
their success at the Melody Maker Reader’s Poll Awards on
28th November 1979. Bush took home the award for Best
Female Singer (for the second year running) as well as the
Brightest Hope award. In the same year she also claimed
a prestigious Ivor Novello award for Outstanding British
Lyric for The Man With The Child in His Eyes. The next time
she snagged an Ivor Novello would be in 2002 – for an
Outstanding Contribution to British Music

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 Alamy
©Images
Getty
CLASSIC

B E A R F R U I T
Bush pictured wearing the infamous ‘fruit dress’ she
donned for publicity shots in support of the calypso-edged
Eat The Music, the lead single from The Red Shoes album
in the US; she also wore this elaborate creation in the
single for the video. In the UK, Rubberband Girl was
ultimately chosen as a more suitable first release instead,
meaning anyone lucky enough to pick up one of the ultra-
rare withdrawn 7” or promotional CD UK singles is in the
money – one 7” sold last year for well over £2000!

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 © Getty Images

CLASSIC

P I A N O F O R T E
Kate sits behind the piano onstage at the Falkoner Teateret in
Copenhagen on 26 April, 1979, close to the end of The Tour Of Life. The
tour ran for over a month and consisted of 24 shows, with songs chosen
from both her The Kick Inside and Lionheart albums. “It was a fantastic
show,” said photographer Jørgen Angel. “Half concert, half theatre –
great for a photographer. We had no idea it would be her only tour. I am
happy to have witnessed it. What a performer.” During the tour, Bush was
the first artist ever to use a wireless microphone on a headset onstage

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 © PhotoShot/Avalon
Getty Images

CLASSIC

A F T E R A
F A S H I O N
Kate stands radiant in Chinese-Dutch fashion visionary
Fong Leng’s ornate ‘Gaudi coat’ during a Seventies studio
session with top international music photographer Claude
Vanheye. Known for her experimental approach to
fashion and styling, Bush has sported some memorable
outfits over the years, from simple sparkly body-stockings
and beautifully-decorated leotards to oversized flowing
dresses and nymph-inspired glamour – and, of course,
her unforgettable warrior-woman Babooshka get-up

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 © Getty Images

Getty Images

CLASSIC

R E C O R D
B R E A K E R
Kate poses for Angelo Deligio during a promotional shoot in 1980, the
year of the release of her third studio album Never For Ever. This more
experimental collection was the first co-produced by the singer, as well as
being her first No. 1 album – and the first for a British female artist – no
doubt aided by top five single Babooshka. The album made use of several
newfangled and very expensive technologies, such as the innovative
Fairlight CMI digital synthesiser, which had to be hired in

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 C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
INTO ANOTHER
MOMENT
“WITH A KISS I PASS THE KEY, AND FEEL YOUR TOUCH TEASING AND
REVEALING…” FOR SOMEONE WHO’S SEEN AS AN ISOLATIONIST, CLASSIC
POP ARGUES THAT SOME OF KATE BUSH’S MOST TREASURED WORK AND
PERFORMANCES HAVE COME FROM COLLABORATIONS…
I A N
et’s start at the top. Don’t Give Up with Peter
L
Gabriel is Kate Bush’s biggest-selling, most-moving
and career-defining collaboration. Inspired by a
book of photographs of Depression-era America
entitled In This Proud Land, Gabriel wrote the
song for his 1986 magnum opus, So.
Don’t Give Up barely charted in the US but it became
a Top 10 hit in the UK and, perhaps more than any
other song in either Kate or Peter’s canon, it has become
a musical lifeline to many people.
Not least Elton John, who once
said it helped him out of a
downward spiral into drugs.
“When I took drugs, in the
worst period when I was perfectly
aware of where I was slipping,”
Elton said in 2001, “one song
helped me resist: Don’t Give Up
by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.
I was listening to it and I was
continuing to repeat aloud: “I will
not let go, I will not throw in the
sponge”. The problem was that
I did not know how to abandon
the hole into which I was hurled.
Then I understood; I would have
to ask for help: to say “I need help.” I will never forget
that track from the album So. Every time that I allowed
the situation to beat down, every time that I thought that
this life was not worth anything, I put on Don’t Give Up
and I convinced myself, yes, it is worth the pain. Still
now I cry, when I feel it.”
Don’t Give Up wasn’t just a collaboration in song, the
pair’s performance in Godley & Creme’s accompanying
video was equally iconic. In fact, when Rolling Stone
rounded up their ’20 Best Dramatic Duets of All Time’
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CPP09.Collaborations.print.indd 104
P E E L
in 2014, it was the video rather than the song that they
focused on. “If ever there was a video that perfectly
captured the intent of a song, it’s the clip for Don’t Give
Up,” it declared, “which simply features Gabriel and
Bush in an embrace for dear life, a camera panning
around their singing visages. There’s an insular, intimate
feeling to this song of struggle and hope... Bush and
Gabriel are so completely in sync their yearning gentility
enveloping one another with hug-like strength.”
But this most famous
collaboration, for both artists,
wasn’t the first time they had
appeared together on record. On
Gabriel’s third self-titled album –
aka Melt – from 1980 you can
hear Kate take a tiny cameo on
Games Without Frontiers. She’s
also on backing vocals – much
more noticeably – on Frontiers’
follow-up single, No Self Control.
It was at those studio sessions
that Kate first met Melt’s engineer,
Hugh Padgham. Padgham
was on the cusp of a sonic
breakthrough, developing the
infamous – much aped – gated
drum sound that’s all over the album’s opening track,
Intruder, and which he went on to use to greatest effect
on Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight. Between those two
tracks he set to work with Kate, engineering three songs
on The Dreaming.
“I met Hugh when I sang some backing vocals for
Peter Gabriel,” Kate explained when The Dreaming
was first released, “and I was very impressed with the
sounds and the creative atmosphere. He’s worked with
The Police, Genesis and XTC, to mention a few.
23/01/2018 15:09
 Some of Kate’s recorded
works with others are
indelibly famous, while
others have never been
heard apart from on
scratchy bootlegs

THE LATE GUITARIST ALAN

MURPHY WORKED WITH
KATE ON THE TOUR OF LIFE
AND PLAYED ON ALL KATE
BUSH’S ALBUMS UNTIL THE
‘GRAND HIATUS’: NEVER
FOR EVER, THE DREAMING,
HOUNDS OF LOVE AND THE
SENSUAL WORLD

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 C O L L A B O R A T I O N S

ANOTHER DAY
“By far my most treasured Kate Bush collaboration is
Another Day,” says Ian Peel, Classic Pop magazine’s
original founder and now Editor-at-Large. “A cover
version of an obscure song by Roy Harper, it was
performed as a duet with Peter Gabriel on Kate’s 1979
Christmas TV special.”
The song was originally recorded at Abbey Road for
Harper’s 1970 album Flat Baroque And Berserk, The
Guardian reported in their ‘Old Songs’ series, calling
it “one of the most poignant and beautiful songs, a
regretful ode to a lost love encountered once again, full
of thwarted possibilities that the singer acknowledges
but refuses to grasp.”
“But it’s when these lyrics are dramatised by Bush
and Gabriel, as the two parting lovers,” Peel explains,
“that the emotion really comes home.” Their very first
exchange is as telling as any. Gabriel: “The kettle’s on,
the sun has gone, another day/ She offers me Tibetan
tea on a flower tray...” Bush: “I loved you a long time
ago, you know/ Where the wind’s own forget-me-nots
blow/ But I just couldn’t let myself go/ Not knowing
what on earth there was to know....”
Unbelievably, the song has never been laid down
in a recording studio or released. “I first heard it on
a bootleg cassette of rare Peter Gabriel bought in the
early Nineties,” Ian remembers. “The sound quality
was terrible: it was at least a third-generation cassette
copy of an off-air TV recording. But the emotion and
the drama were immediate, and have stayed with me
ever since.”

“Hugh worked on Sat In Your Lap, Get “The track would have had the wrong
Out Of My House and Leave It Open. He feel with a keyboard instrument. All
was a lot of fun to work with and as the he had to work to was the drum track,
first engineer on the album, he started and I tried to hum and point patterns
it off in a very out. Everything
productive and he came up with
positive way.” sounded great...
It wasn’t just we spent the day
Hugh Padgham building up the
who became guitars, then built
a major ’sonic’ vocals, Fairlight,
collaborator. Kate sequencers over
was also quick to the top. Thanks for
name-check three that, Al.”
other engineers, One of the other
Nick Launay key collaborators
(“who worked on The Ninth
on Houdini, All Wave was
The Love, There the orchestral
Goes A Tenner, composer Michael
The Dreaming and Kamen. Best
Suspended In Gaffa... the majority of known as a Hollywood soundtrack artist
those backing tracks were recorded with for a string of Eighties action flicks, Below: Bush, with ukulele,
performing Rocket Man on
Nick at The Townhouse”), Haydn Bendall when he connected with Kate he’d just the Wogan show with her
and Paul Hardiman for their work on that worked with Terry Gilliam – whom Kate silent Alan Murphy tribute
LP. “All of them were very important and has acknowledged many times as a in the background
all played major parts in how the album key visual influence – on the soundtrack
has ended up sounding,” she said on the
album’s release.
From two of Kate’s most lauded
collaborators, let’s take a jump over
to one of her unsung heroes. The late
guitarist Alan Murphy first worked with
Kate on the Lionheart-era concerts, The
Tour Of Life, and went on to play on
all her albums until the ’grand hiatus’:
Never For Ever, The Dreaming, Hounds
Of Love and The Sensual World. Of
these, their most important collaboration
is easily Under Ice, the opening chapter
of The Ninth Wave. The chopping,
repeating, threatening cello-like strokes
that underpin the whole song would not
be there were it not for Alan.
“The song was written through a
guitarist, Alan Murphy,” Kate explained
when Hounds Of Love was released.

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to Brazil. Of Hello Earth, “this track
features orchestral arrangements by
Michael Kamen,” Kate explained at
the time. “It was wonderful working
with Michael. He’s a very receptive
person to work with, and the orchestral
arrangements that he did for the tracks
I felt were very atmospheric. It was
wonderful for me to watch the layers of
this song go on one by one.”
VERY ATMOSPHERIC. IT WAS
As for Alan Murphy, his swansong –
and his most moving collaboration with
Kate Bush – was Rocket Man. But by
the time this song was released as part
of Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs
CPP09.Collaborations.print.indd 107
The late composer and arranger
Michael Kamen worked with
Pink Floyd, Queen, Bowie,
Eurythmics, Bryan Ferry,
Coldplay, The Cranberries, and
dozens of others
© Ted Thai/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty
of Elton John & Bernie Taupin and was
a hit single in its own right, Alan had
“MICHAEL IS A VERY passed away. “This is one of the last
RECEPTIVE PERSON tracks that he did with us,” she told
TO WORK WITH, Radio 1 at the time, “and it’s particularly
nice for me to feel that it’s not only
AND HIS ORCHESTRAL keeping him alive, but I know he would
ARRANGEMENTS WERE be really thrilled to know that Rocket
Man was doing so well. It’s nice for all
of us that loved Al to know that he can
WONDERFUL TO WATCH be a part of this now...”
THE LAYERS OF THE SONG A mutual friend and collaborator
of Kate and Alan Murphy’s throws up
GO ON ONE BY ONE” another unsung collaborator. One of
Kate’s fellow mime students in her
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23/01/2018 15:10
 WHEN KATE STAGED HER
CONCERT IN MEMORY OF
BILL DUFFIELD, PETER GABRIEL
– WITH STEVE HARLEY
ON BACKING VOCALS –
PERFORMED A KATE SONG
WITH A PERSONAL TWIST:
THE WOMAN WITH
THE CHILD IN HER EYES

early days was a singer by the name of

© Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

Zaine Griff; you can hear Kate on his

second album, 1982’s Figures, singing
on a track called Flowers which was
dedicated to their mime teacher, Lindsay
Kemp. “It’s a really lovely song,” Kate
once said of Flowers. “Zaine and I met
years ago at Lindsay’s classes, and as
Lindsay was such a powerful influence
on us both – as he is on anyone who is
captured by his strong magic – it was a
real pleasure to be a part of something
dedicated to him.”
The path of Alan Murphy leads to
another interesting Kate collab. Between
Lionheart and his last main job as Level
42’s post-Boon Gould guitarist, Alan
was a driving force of Go West. Search
YouTube for the group’s first appearance
performing Don’t Look Down on The Tube
in 1985 and then contrast it with The
King Is Dead from the Dancing On The Zaine Griff, who recorded a
Couch tour film a few years later and you song with Kate in 1981. The
singer went on to work with
Bowie and Numan and is still
108 making albums to this day

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 C O L L A B O R A T I O N S

Roy Harper, who

recorded two of his
songs with Kate and
provided backing vocals
on her classic Breathing
© Getty

Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush
and Steve Harley on stage
at the Bill Duffield benefit
concert at the Hammersmith
Odeon, May 12th 1979
© Peter Still/Redferns/Getty
can see how much the group transformed
and developed – and Alan’s guitar
work with it – in a very short space of
time. And it was on studio recordings
of The King Is Dead that Alan added an
extra measure of gravitas into the Go
West equation, by bringing in Kate for
sympathetic, esoteric backing vocals.
By far the most frustrating thing about
Kate Bush as a recording artist is how
little attention has been paid to her back
catalogue. There’s ’taking care of the
catalogue’ (and she’s certainly been able
to do that at different times, not least
with Director’s Cut) and there’s ’outright
ignoring it altogether’. Other artists with
a far less rich and extensive discography
have worked on countless box sets,
compilations and put their house in
order for the CD age, the Blu-ray age
and every new format as it emerges to
give it the best platform possible. This
will probably come in time; but in the
meantime, we have to look to the fans,
the bootleggers and their own unofficial
releases for curation of Kate Bush’s back
catalogue. You’ll have to go to eBay
to pick up the appropriately-entitled
Collaborations 14-track compilation, on
the appropriately-
and shadily-
named Twilight
Records. This
very unofficial
CD came out
in 1988 and
kicks off with the
A-side and B-side
of something
truly obscure
(which we can
be pretty certain
will be omitted
if and when
there’s ever an
official Kate Bush
collaborations release). Sing Children
Sing by Lesley Duncan was released on
the singer-songwriter’s debut album in
1971 but was re-recorded and reissued
in aid of the first annual UNESCO
International Year Of The Child in 1979.
And, on backing vocals, there was
quite an array of talent – not only Kate
Bush but brother Paddy, alongside Pete
Townshend, Phil Lynott and Joe Brown.
Tracks 3 and 4 on Collaborations
are two rare Peter Gabriel pieces, both
special one-off live performances. The
first, Another Day, was performed for
Kate’s 1979 Christmas TV special. More
of that in our separate boxout alongside
this feature.
The second is a terrible recording in
terms of sound quality but momentous
in terms of historical importance. When
Kate staged a
concert in memory
of her friend, the
lighting engineer
Bill Duffield – who
had tragically
died while
preparing for one
of her concerts –
both Peter Gabriel
and Steve Harley
took to the stage
to support her.
With Harley on
backing vocals,
Peter performed
one of Kate’s best-
loved songs, with his own personal twist:
The Woman With The Child In Her Eyes.
The King Is Dead follows, Kate’s
aforementioned guest star session for
Go West. And the CD also has a very
rare live rendition of Don’t Give Up.
But a rather more rare and curious
collaboration is track six, Once, in which
Kate lends vocals (and David Gilmour
lends guitar) to the title track from Roy
Harper’s sixteenth album from 1990.
Who is exactly is Roy Harper? There’s
only one answer to this, thanks to
Alexis Petridis who in 2011 wrote

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 C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
for The Guardian that “It’s a legal
requirement when writing about Harper
to mention (a) Led Zeppelin’s fond 1970
tribute Hats Off to (Roy) Harper, (b)
Paul McCartney’s cameo role on his
1977 album Bullinamingvase, (c) Kate
Bush’s relentless cheerleading for him,
and (d) his guest appearance singing
Have A Cigar on Pink Floyd’s Wish
You Were Here.” Once also featured
David Gilmour on guest guitar, and he
collaborates with Kate again on track
eight, a live rendition of The Beatles’ Let
It Be. This was recorded at The Secret
Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987 (at which
the pair also performed Running Up
That Hill). And speaking of Let It Be,
Kate can also be heard on Ferry Aid’s
charity rendition of the song, which was
released back in March 1987.
SAMPLE-OLOGY
There’s a raft of Kate Bush-related collaborations, most
of them unwitting from the artist’s point of view – the
many dance tracks that have sampled her voice and
music over the years. And none of these worked to
greater effect than the seminal rave tune Something
Good by Utah Saints from 1992, which was based
around the “I just know that something good is gonna
happen” line from Cloudbusting.
In 2014 FACT magazine was responsible for a great
article, ‘Coming Up That Hill’, subtitled ‘five killer
Kate Bush-sampling tracks from rave history’. “The
lion’s share of Bush samples,” they explained, “belong
to rave. As Simon Reynolds mentions in Generation
Ecstasy, Bush was, like Liz Fraser, a particular go-to for
rave producers looking for some just-add-water Instant
Ethereal for their rollers.”
Their Top Five? Loopzone’s Les Enfants Du Paradis
from 1990 which sampled Night Scented Stock from
Never For Ever; the Wow referencing of Rum & Slack’s
Slaves from ’91; The Prodigy’s Hyperspeed (G-Force
Part 2) from ’92 which took in parts of Hello Earth
from Hounds Of Love; 1993’s Wuthering Heights by
The Good, 2Bad and Hugly and – top of the list – Ellis
Dee’s Big Up Your Chest white label from 1994: “It’s
Wow again, but this time being used exactly as it
should be: cooking away underneath willowy, fleet-
footed d’n’b in a Metalheadz mould.”
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CPP09.Collaborations.print.indd 110
Our bootleg compilation then takes in
a couple of known quantities. The afore-
mentioned Flowers on which Kate duets
with Zaine Griff and then You (The Game
Part III), another track recorded with Roy
Harper and released on his 1980 album
The Unknown Soldier.
Next up, Do Bears... a song written
by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson
which Kate performed with Rowan at
a very early Comic Relief charity concert
at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1986.
And while it’s funny and certainly
a curio, the best recording to seek out
is actually the other song Kate performed
that night: a simple and delicate
piano/vocal rendition of Breathing.
You’ll find that on the official album
and cassette souvenir of the night, titled
Utterly Utterly Live At The Shaftesbury
Theatre: Comic Relief.
Track 12 on the Collaborations
bootleg is The Seer, from Big Country’s
1986 album of the same name. And
while it would be easy to pigeonhole
this as another backing vocals session,
to fans it’s much more than that and a
highlight of her collaborative ventures.
The excellent Kate Bush News.com calls
it “one of the best ever examples of Kate
supplying backing vocals on another
artist’s recordings” with one fan, Colin
Kelly, posting to their blog that “I’ve
always considered her work on The
Seer as more than just ’backing
vocals’ – it’s more ’featured’ status
since her vocals are so obvious
throughout the song. This is one
of my favourite collaborations. She
sounds amazing.”
The penultimate track on our eBay
CD is an oddball – a cover version of
The Kick Inside from Julie Covington’s
eponymous 1978 album. Kate’s not on it,
as far as we can tell, although she was
a friend of Covington’s at the time. So
that’s one to park for another time (and
another Kate Bush special!) tracking all
the great cover versions of her work.
The final track points to another
offshoot tangent of creativity. This
Woman’s Work closes the set
in its original version, from the
John Hughes film She’s Having A
Baby. This is the first and perhaps
definitive take of the song, which
was later edited down for inclusion
on The Sensual World (and edited
further for release as a single). And
that additional creativity? The song is
a reminder that, one day, there needs
to be an investigation, book or even
documentary tracing Kate’s audio/visual
collaborations with directors and actors
– all of which are as important and
compelling as those with musicians.
23/01/2018 15:14
 Kate Bush on stage at
The Secret Policeman’s
Third Ball in aid of
Amnesty International
at the London
Palladium, March 1987
© Dave Hogan/Getty

SOME COLLABORATIONS
ARE UNWITTING FROM THE
ARTIST’S POINT OF VIEW –
THE MANY DANCE TRACKS
THAT HAVE SAMPLED HER
VOICE AND MUSIC, SUCH
AS THE SEMINAL RAVE TUNE
SOMETHING GOOD BY
UTAH SAINTS

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 K A T E B U S H N E W S

KATE CLUB
SEÁN TWOMEY HAS BEEN
RUNNING THE KATE BUSH NEWS
& INFORMATION WEBSITE SINCE
1998. IN 2011 THE SITE TEAMED
UP WITH HOMEGROUND
MAGAZINE, A FANZINE FIRST
PUBLISHED NEARLY 30 YEARS
EARLIER, TO BECOME THE
ESSENTIAL ONLINE PLATFORM
FOR ALL THINGS KATE…
D A V I D B U R K E

Can you remember your

Q reaction when you heard Kate
Bush for the first time?
I was only a very small boy at the time
A Wuthering Heights came out, and
the “white dress” video was constantly
present. Her high-pitched register and
swooping arm moves were unlike
anything else on telly at the time. Her
uniqueness was lost on my young ears
back then, though. I thought she was
some kind of spooky witch!

What was it about her music

Q that made you a devotee?
I became completely fascinated by
A her music at around the age of 16.
At the time I’d mostly listened to Eighties
indie bands and typical angsty teenage
fare. Her music seemed to come from
somewhere completely different. It
became a guide for me of sorts into
so many other areas of music, art,
books – it threw open the windows of
possibility. It was utterly refreshing
and exhilarating… life-changing.

At what point did your

Q casual fandom evolve
into something more?

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 Seán’s www.katebushnews.com site, roost of HomeGround magazine, is a vast repository of Kate
info, with a biography, audio, videos, many special features and a very active fan forum
Over the course of a year I
A voraciously bought all the albums,
pored over the lyrics and acquired some
books and things… anything I could lay
my hands on. I think it was only when I
subscribed to HomeGround magazine
that I discovered the strong community of
fans that existed out there and the huge
respect they felt for Kate and her work.
In the pre-internet era, where
Q could a Kate Bush follower find
out about their heroine?
You could pick up some published
A biographies, and occasional music
magazine articles, but fanzines were
really the main focal point for Kate Bush
fans in the Eighties and early Nineties.
As she wasn’t touring, fans often had to
create their own events to get together
CPP09.SeanTwomey.print.indd 113
and share their love of the music. Kate
also ran an active fanclub in her earlier
career which issued regular colour
magazines and allowed fans to get in
“MOST SITES WERE
INTENSELY WORSHIPFUL,
WITHOUT GIVING ANY
SENSE THAT SHE WAS A
CONTEMPORARY ARTIST.
SO I LAUNCHED THE SITE IN
1998 AND IT’S STILL GOING
AFTER 20 YEARS, WHICH IS
CRAZY TO THINK ABOUT”
touch with each other. She wrote a lot
about her creative process in those pages
– an invaluable archive to this day.
How did Kate Bush News come
Q about in the first place?
Around 1997 I wanted to have a go
A at building a music site, and Kate
seemed the obvious choice of topic. At
that time most sites about Kate were
picture galleries and intensely worshipful,
without giving any sense that she was
still very much a contemporary and,
increasingly, influential artist. So I
launched it in January 1998 and it’s still
going after almost 20 years, which is
crazy to think about. Of course, people
thought I was crazy doing a news site in
the middle of what turned out to be her
epic 12-year gap between albums!
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23/01/2018 09:59

It would be another seven years before
Aerial arrived. There was no shortage of
Kate-related things to report about.
Q What were your objectives
when you started the site?
A I wanted it to be very factual and up-
to-date, and to reflect the respect and
sincerity that the editors of HomeGround
magazine brought to everything they did.
I suppose I loved the idea of presenting
Kate as a normal, everyday person, who
happened to make extraordinary music.
The notion that she was this ethereal,
reclusive goddess was so endemic in the
press at that time – I thought it took away
from her triumphant artistic achievements.
Where do you get your
Q information on Kate?
Luckily, when your site takes off and
A becomes a success, you find you
have to dig less and less. I get so many
emails containing useful information and
links to articles and such. Our site forum
has been a treasure trove of information
as well. With the proliferation of social
media there is now more information
floating around about Kate’s work than
ever before.
Have you encountered any
Q particular superfans while
running the site?
A Absolutely! I’m nowhere near as big
an authority on Kate Bush as some
folks out there. Some serious aficionados
I know have formidable collections and
are happy to share detailed information
about them online.
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What was behind the decision
Q for Kate Bush News to join
forces with HomeGround?
Ah, well, that was part of my sneaky
A plan to drag them kicking and
screaming into the online Kate Bush
world, and to establish a permanent
home for them outside of printed
magazines. They liked what I was doing
with the Kate Bush News site, and so it
became a natural fit.
You met Kate once – where and
Q when was that?
It was a very brief encounter but,
A extraordinarily for me, it took place in
the kitchen of East Wickham Farm where
she grew up in Kent. I had become
friendly with Kate’s brother, Paddy,
through the site. So it was a giddy dream
to be invited to his 50th birthday at the
farm – an unforgettable night of music
with the Bush family and their friends.
“I LOVED THE IDEA OF
PRESENTING KATE AS A
NORMAL PERSON WHO
HAPPENED TO MAKE
EXTRAORDINARY MUSIC.
THE NOTION THAT SHE WAS
THIS RECLUSIVE GODDESS
TOOK AWAY FROM HER
ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS”
Did you happen to have a
Q conversation with her?
She was a busy mum that evening
A with her young son, so I just had a
friendly quick hello and we shook hands,
big smiles. I felt suddenly intrusive, so I
casually excused myself and sprinted out
to the party marquee in the garden. I’d
be lying if I said I wasn’t hyperventilating
for a while! I did later read Kate’s story
of meeting her hero Bowie in Abbey
Road and her reaction was very similar
to mine – so that made me feel better
about the whole thing.
How familiar is she with Kate
Q Bush News?
She’s aware of it, I’ve been told, and
A I’ve been led to believe she approves
of it, but honestly, it’s nothing she would
bother with and I doubt she looks at it.
It’s a resource for fans, but I do try to
maintain it in such a way that Kate or her
family won’t read anything gossipy or
disrespectful on there.
Kate’s family have been
Q advocates of the site – how
have they shown their support?
A I’ve had friendly contact and
encounters with Kate’s wonderful
brothers, Paddy Bush and John Carder
Bush, over the years. They are both
highly accomplished artists in their own
right. I feature their work regularly. Del
Palmer is now quite active online and
has been very supportive also.
How did Kate Bush News
Q become the first source
anywhere in the world to
announce details of Kate’s Aerial
album in 2005?
I’m still chuffed about that! A contact
A with EMI suggested that we could
release the news that morning at 10am.
Kate was preparing her very first official
site for launch, but it wasn’t quite ready
for the announcement. The reaction was
of course phenomenal.
23/01/2018 09:59

Kate Bush News –
with HomeGround’s
exhaustive audio
archive – is available
for all devices, and
the new podcasts are
essential listening too
Can you tell us something
Q that only a superfan would
know about Kate?
I think maybe one of the things that
A her long-time fans know about Kate
is just how incredibly nice she is. Her
politeness and genuine warmth with
people shines through, and there are
countless stories over the years of small
acts of kindness and genuine concern
that show how thoughtful she is.
What are some of the most
Q significant things you have
learned about Kate since you’ve
been running Kate Bush News?
When I was a teenager I definitely put
A Kate on a pedestal, the typical “we’re
not worthy” routine. From doing the site
and listening to what she has had to say
when interviewed, I quickly appreciated
just how down-to-earth and completely
disinterested with being famous Kate is.
She quite rightly finds the whole idea of
fame and celebrity ridiculous.
Q In what ways has her music
enhanced your life?
A I have found that no matter what the
situation is, there’s a track by Kate I
can turn to. If I need a dose of positive
contemplation, A Sky Of Honey fits
the bill. If I have a stressful meeting
CPP09.SeanTwomey.print.indd 115
looming, Rocket’s Tail is the perfect shot
of adrenalin. If I just need to blow the
cobwebs away, anything on Hounds Of
Love does the trick. And a restorative
song like Among Angels can certainly
save you money on therapy sessions!
Q How much of an influence
would you say she has exerted
on other artists in any medium?
Massive. All through the Nineties, the
A music press talked about her influence
on other female artists for the most part,
specifically those deemed to be “quirky”
or “eccentric” in some way. The years
have demonstrated her influence in far
broader terms – Prince, John Lydon, Big
Boi from Outkast, Tricky, St Vincent, Björk
and even the late Tupac Shakur are some
of the acts that have been vocal fans of
Kate’s. Coldplay, with Speed Of Sound,
K A T E B U S H N E W S
“FROM LISTENING TO
WHAT SHE’S HAD TO SAY,
I QUICKLY APPRECIATED
JUST HOW COMPLETELY
DISINTERESTED WITH BEING
FAMOUS KATE IS. SHE
QUITE RIGHTLY FINDS THE
WHOLE IDEA OF FAME AND
CELEBRITY RIDICULOUS”
admitted that they had been listening to
Running Up That Hill and were trying to
recreate the drums and chords on it.
You’ve also started a Kate Bush
Q Fan podcast…
We have a nice mix of interviews,
A chats with fans, reviews and features
on particular songs and albums. Chatting
about Kate in this medium makes me
realise just how much information on her
music I’ve absorbed over the years.
How do you see Kate Bush
Q News developing in the future?
I’m going to keep podcasting, and
A maybe even video podcasting if
I can figure it out! Fans really like to
hear dedicated and hopefully engaging
content about something kind of niche
that they cherish.
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23/01/2018 09:59
 C O M P E T I T I O N
WIN!
A SIGNED COPY
OF GUIDO HARARI’S
EXQUISITE KATE BUSH
PHOTOBOOK
ate Bush is a photographer’s
K
dream – particularly when
the person behind the camera
enjoys privileged, trusted access
to the woman herself. Like many
other musical greats, from Lou
Reed to BB King, Kate clearly holds a
huge amount of respect for the talents of
visionary Italian lensman Guido Harari.
“I love to work with Guido,” said Kate.
“He makes you feel special without ever
saying anything. I think of him as an
artist as well as a photographer.”
Kate’s interests were first piqued thanks
to Guido’s exemplary work with her
legendary dance tutor Lindsay Kemp
and, as a result, Harari went on to enjoy
a unique and highly creative period
working as Kate’s official photographer
for over a decade, between 1982 and
1993. Now, Guido’s productive tenure
with Bush has culminated in his stunning
new limited edition book, The Kate
Inside, a sumptuous tribute to Bush’s
incredible talent and a beautiful conduit
for her one-of-a-kind aesthetic – published
by Wall Of Sound Gallery.
116
CPP08.Comp.print.indd 116
In this luxurious 240-page hardbound
tome, Guido’s commentary guides us
through over 300 photos from his Kate
Bush archives. On top of a wealth of
classic images of Kate there are also rare
outtakes, contact sheets, never-before-
seen shots and much more – most notably
including intimate test Polaroids and
personal notes written by Kate herself.
Guido has generously donated a signed
copy of his book – one of only 1500
copies worldwide – for a very lucky
Classic Pop reader to get their hands on.
Simply answer the following question and
follow the instructions!
Q Which song did Kate dedicate to
her mentor Lindsay Kemp?
A Kashka from Baghdad
B Moving
C Delius
For more information on Guido
Harari and his work please visit
www.wallofsoundgallery.com
TERMS & CONDITIONS
To be in with a chance of winning the
prizes, simply email your answers to
steve.harnell@anthem-publishing.com,
or visit www.classicpopmag.com and click
on ‘competitions’, click on the relevant
question and fill in your answer and
email. By entering your details, you will
automatically be added to the Classic Pop
magazine email newsletter mailing lists,
keeping you informed of news, special
offers and promotions via email. We never
pass on customer email addresses to other
companies. You may unsubscribe from these
messages at any time. The prizes are not
transferable, nor can they be redeemed for
vouchers or money. No-one from Anthem
Publishing or companies affiliated with
any of the competitions is allowed to enter.
Only one entrant per person. The judge’s
decision is final. Visit www.classicpopmag.
com for more competitions not featured in
the magazine and keep checking in on the
website for more great prizes to win! The
closing date for the competition on this page
is 31 April 2018
23/01/2018 08:51
 WIN 1 X SIGNED
COPY OF THE
KATE INSIDE
CPP08.Comp.print.indd 117 23/01/2018 08:51

B O O K S
CHANGING
WITH THE
LIGHT
GUIDO HARARI’S BOOK OF REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS
GATHERS SOME OF THE SINGER’S MOST STRIKING
MOMENTS. PLUS, ON PAGE 122, WE ROUND UP 10 OF THE
MOST ESSENTIAL REFERENCE WORKS FOR FANS…
J U L I E
ver the years, renowned
O
photographer Guido Harari
has worked with a myriad of
major rock artists, from Leonard
Cohen to Tom Waits to Lou
Reed and Laurie Anderson,
but one of his greatest career highlights
was being offered the role of official
photographer to Kate Bush. His images
of the ever-changing artist – now the
subject of stunning photo-journal The
Kate Inside (a signed copy of which is
being given away on page 116), span
publicity photos for 1985’s Hounds Of
Love and The Sensual World through to
rare exclusives taken on the set of 1993’s
little-seen short musical film The Line, The
Cross & The Curve…
How did working with dancer
Q and choreographer Lindsay
Kemp provide a doorway to
collaborating with Kate?
Lindsay was a sensation in Italy in
A the late Seventies, the epitome of
rock theatre. I did a shoot for an Italian
fashion magazine and he loved the
photos so much that he proposed doing
a book together. When I first met Kate
in 1982, she was in Italy, promoting
The Dreaming. Totally enthralled by
my Lindsay book draft, she accepted
to be photographed – in her astronaut
gear and with her two dancers – after
a TV performance, back at her hotel.
It all suddenly turned into theatre and
performance – and ever so wildly!
118
CPP09.Books.print.indd 118
Harari and Bush were
often looking to do
something new, whether
through costume, lighting
or post-production
© Guido Harari
B U R N S
How did the creative process
Q
develop between you?
For her official promotional photos
A for Hounds Of Love in 1985, Kate
wanted something different. I had thought
a lot about how to approach it, as I felt
she had explored all significant avenues
with Gered Mankowitz over the first two
albums, while her brother John Carder
Bush had started developing more
conceptual photographs for her record
covers. After stopping live performances,
Kate had focused a lot on her videos,
each of them intensely connecting with
the songs. Where would I fit in and what
could we achieve together? Kate took me
aback, as she had no fixed ideas at this
point. Here was the challenge: to capture
the “real” Kate Bush with no mask and
no persona. Tricky!
How was working with Kate
Q on a personal level?
I was a huge fan of Kate, though
A never star-struck by her. She was softly
spoken, quite literally the warmest person
I had ever had the pleasure of meeting:
fame and kindness in the same person. I
was also aware – as Terry Gilliam once
put it – that as much as she was the
sweetest person on the planet, she was
absolute steel inside. I knew Kate was
totally focused on her music, and most
of her social life revolved around the
people she would work with. Also, her
father had been handling her business
affairs for quite a while, her brother
22/01/2018 14:21
 “KATE WAS SOFTLY SPOKEN,
LITERALLY THE WARMEST
PERSON I HAD EVER HAD
THE PLEASURE OF MEETING.
I WAS ALSO AWARE THAT
AS MUCH AS SHE WAS THE
SWEETEST PERSON ON THE
PLANET, SHE WAS ABSOLUTE
STEEL INSIDE”

119

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 This remarkable ‘figurehead
underwater’ shot by Guido
Harari for The Sensual World
required Bush to re-pose each
time. It came at the end of a
mammoth 15-hour session
© Guido Harari

120

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 B O O K S

The Deluxe Edition of The Kate Inside – signed by Harari and Lindsay Kemp, with a special art print
and eight never-before-seen Polaroids, as seen above – is limited to just 350 out of 1500 copies

John was in charge of her record covers, Polaroid, “Guido, aren’t you feeling a
and her other brother, Paddy, was a bit tired?” That was her sweet way of
musician who would play on her records. signalling the shoot was over!
To be admitted into Kate’s inner circle
was a big honour and meant total trust. Why do you think you were so
She looked for authenticity. When I Q
successful in capturing her?
asked whom to use for hair and makeup, I have no idea! She probably felt I
she mentioned the name of a very trendy A
captured her in a very natural way.
make-up artist. I said, “Let’s get him I did not try to turn her once more into
then”, and she commented, “But I heard an icon. She looked special even at her
he’s a terrible most vulnerable
man. I’d rather in front of the
have less genius camera. Kate is
and work with
“WE WORKED NON-STOP. a photographer’s
nice people!” That THE SHOOTS FOR HOUNDS dream: her face
was a big lesson. OF LOVE AND THE SENSUAL and her presence
are timeless. She
How might WORLD LASTED 12 TO 15 had the glamour
Q a typical HOURS. I DON’T REMEMBER of a Hollywood
session go? LUNCH BREAKS OR ANY star, as well as
We both felt in the irresistible
A a very special CONVERSATION. WE WERE charm of the girl
comfort zone TOTALLY FOCUSSED ON next door… very
working, creating much like Marilyn
and deciding to
THE PROCESS” Monroe. Classic.
‘play’ together.
Photographing Today, which
her felt so natural and hassle-free. I Q
shoots stand
had never felt so much trust, so much out for you the most, and why?
openness and telepathy with an artist Kate always sent me very sweet
before… It was always a one-to-one A
notes of appreciation after every
affair: no managers, no record company shoot. She would also call me on the
people, no PR’s around. In the studio it landline – there were no emails or cell
was just Kate and me, plus her lovely phones then! She loved our photos,
makeup artist and my assistant. It never and I was overjoyed. My favourites are
felt like work, though we would work from The Sensual World. It’s a sequence
non-stop. The shoots for Hounds Of Love of underwater-style photos, the result
and The Sensual World lasted 12 to 15 of multiple exposures. When she saw
hours. I don’t remember lunch breaks or the results, she got very excited. I also
any conversation. Kate and I were totally enjoyed the reportage on the set of
focused on the process. For Hounds 1993’s The Line, The Cross & The Curve,
Of Love we started at 8am. After a full when she was still only 25. First of all,
day of work, at 1.30am I remember Lindsay Kemp was there for a lead role,
her whispering over the millionth test so my whole story with Kate turned full

121

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 B O O K S

THE CHRONICLES
OF KATE BUSH
SHE’S BEEN THE SUBJECT OF MUCH
FASCINATION, MYSTIQUE, AND COUNTLESS
STORIES OVER THE YEARS. BUT AS WE
KNOW, BUSH HAS NEVER BEEN ONE FOR
THE LIMELIGHT, AND SHE PROBABLY WON’T
BE WRITING HER MEMOIRS ANYTIME SOON.
SO HOW TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR
FAVOURITE FEMALE STAR? WELCOME TO OUR
TOP 10 BOOKS COVERING EVERYTHING
© Riccardo Piccirillo 2015 KATE-RELATED. FROM FABULOUS PHOTO-
JOURNALS TO THE BEST BIOGS, UNIQUE FAN
ANTHOLOGIES TO COLLECTING AND CURIOS,
THEY MAKE THE GREATEST KEEPSAKES…

circle. I asked what she wanted me to do and she said,

“Please just do what you did with Lindsay”, referring to
my Lindsay book. Those images had stayed with her all
those years, and now finally was the chance to explore
new ground together. Considering she wasn’t performing
live, this was the closest to being on tour with her,
shooting candids backstage and performance photos.
It’s amazing that such revealing reportage remained
unseen until I published it in The Kate Inside… Actually, I
wished to get Kate involved – commenting on the photos
with captions and anecdotes. But it wasn’t meant to be. THE KATE INSIDE BY A BOOK OF DREAMS
Happily, however, she didn’t stop the project. GUIDO HARARI PETER REICH
(WALL OF SOUND (JOHN BLAKE, 2015)
Didn't she ‘disappear’ shortly afterwards…? EDITIONS/2016) First released in 1974, then
QA Yes. Kate was disappointed with the film, and the This photo celebration
was published due to fan
out of print for years, it’s great
that this critically acclaimed –
reactions at the London Film Festival. Then she lost
her mother and a few musician friends. It was a period of clamour for more on the back and Kate-acclaimed – modern
of Harari’s initial London classic is back. Not about the
grief and loss. One day in 1998, she called me to tell me
exhibition and catalogue. songstress as such, but worth
she had become a mother. And then I never heard from Guido first met Kate touring serious mention: considering
her again. If you ask fans, many of those images Kate in Italy; impressed by his it “inspirational” and
and I created back then seem to capture her personality ‘natural’ book of Lindsay Kemp “magical”, it motivated Bush
very well. She is all pure light in every single frame. candids, she chose him as to write the 1985 barnstormer
her official photographer from Cloudbusting. “And it’s a
Overall, how would you describe your 1982-’93. An exciting edit of very unusual, beautiful book,
Q decade of working with Kate? some 300 exclusive images, its
focus lies not so much on the
written by this man through
the eyes of himself when he
As a dream come true. To have that unlimited access
A with an artist at the top of her game as Kate was ‘hero’ or main promo shots,
but rather in being faithful to
was a child, looking at his
father, and the relationship
in the Eighties was a privilege. I would love to have
the nature of the work taken at between them,” she said.
challenged ourselves a bit more, experimenting with new the time. As Harari explained, It’s an incredible account by
ideas, yet I was glad to work with her in a reassuring his book concept “would the son of the visionary, yet
kind of way. I felt she needed consistency for once… not present the photos in the controversial, persecuted
getting swept away again in some artsy-fartsy dimension. sequence they were taken, so Austrian psychoanalyst
I couldn’t help but agree with her and move on. you can see when she’s posing Wilhelm Reich, who died
and when she’s not”. It opens in jail when Peter was just
Finally, how would you sum up Kate Bush as an authentic window onto 13. A tribute to both his
Q a cultural icon? the world of Bush, from great
intimate reportage (napping
father and to life’s mysteries
– their unexplained shared
Kate has explored many uncharted territories, showing
A the way to generations of women artists in terms of
backstage, hair in curlers), to
photoshopped
experiences, flying saucers
to ‘cloudbuster’
musical adventurousness and lyrical content. She was, psychedelic rainmakers –
and still is, one of the bravest. She also kept very private, portrait, Klimt- it’s quirky and
concentrating on her art – and paying a price for it – like close-ups, profound. Read it,
when she went off-radar for 12 bloody long years! The and gorgeous then enjoy Kate’s
success of her 22 sold-out concerts in 2014 is the best gothic ‘double- composition all
proof that she is indeed a very powerful cultural icon. Kate’ takes. the more.

122

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 CATHY
JOHN CARDER BUSH
(SPHERE, 2014)
It’s always intriguing to
see performers before they
butterfly into becoming
famous. This volume of
childhood photos is both
startling and charming. Here’s
Kate, aged eight, around
her rustic Kent homestead,
presciently captured
(apparently for no reason
other than fun) by her elder
brother and artistic confidante
John, a talented photographer
and writer. Elegant, enigmatic
and atmospheric, his winsome
work comes with poetic notes.
“If ever the roots of an artist
were revealed in their youthful
manner, it’s here: surrounded
by hippy music, adopting
dress-up characteristics with
alacrity and already staring,
haunted, into the distance,
she’s a natural performer in
search of a stage,” praised
The Independent. First
published in
1986, it’s now
a rebound
deluxe edition
guaranteed
to delight the
diehards.
KATE BUSH – THE
BIOGRAPHY
ROB JOVANOVIC
(PORTRAIT/PIATKUS, 2005)
As Bush is not one to readily
agree to interviews, any
biographer has their work
cut out. From the outset,
Jovanovic’s resources were
restricted, as once more, she
declined to go on record.
“This volume isn’t trying to find
any closeted skeletons,” the
author prefaces; instead, it’s
“a detailed look at her life and
career”. Ending with 2005’s
Aerial, these 14 chapters
are at their best detailing the
early years: from growing
up on an idyllic farm playing
the harmonium in the barn
(as you do), via the Gilmour
connection to dance work
with Lindsay Kemp in London,
and her creative evolution.
Containing some original
contributions, it’s by no means
in-depth on the personal
front, yet still manages to
(respectfully) span milestones
such as her
mother’s death
and the Del
Palmer break-up.
An overview
perhaps for those
new to Kate.
CPP09.Books.print.indd 123
KATE – INSIDE THE
RAINBOW
JOHN CARDER BUSH
(SPHERE, 2015)
Continuing where Cathy left
off, this big, beautiful photo-
bio makes a stunning sequel. It
covers the arc of Kate’s career,
majoring on the Eighties and
Nineties, with notably less pics
post-1994, and concluding in
2011. From never-before-seen
to behind the scenes, we get
outtakes from classic album
shoots, video sets and studio
stills, including The Dreaming
and Hounds Of Love, Running
Up That Hill to The Red Shoes
and Director’s Cut sessions.
Kate’s influences clearly shine
through, while her brother’s
reminiscences give insight
into their artistic decisions.
There are also essays on their
shared childhood and early
days of success. “For me, each
of these images forms part of
a golden thread that shoots
through the visual tapestry of
Kate’s career,”
John states.
“Storytelling has
always been
the heartbeat of
Kate’s body of
work.”
UNDER THE IVY – THE
LIFE AND MUSIC OF
KATE BUSH
GRAEME THOMSON
(OMNIBUS PRESS, 2015)
In an early poem, Kate
revealed that “no one will
ever see the real me” – yet
as many fans agree, short
of her autobiography, this
sympathetic work affords the
closest insight to date. Such
is its quality, you’ll want to
replay all KB’s output in order
to listen with fresh perspective.
It features 70 interviews: from
old schoolmates and record
company execs to King Of The
Mountain video director Jimmy
Murakami, shedding insight
into the public and private
Bush persona. When Thomson
first wrote this in 2010, he
was convinced that he would
never hear Kate perform live
again. Happily proved wrong
in 2014, he was inspired
to revise the whole book –
concluding with a shiveringly
vivid review of those hallowed
Hammersmith
dates. Mojo
considers this
edition superb;
it is: as both a
rich read and
reference book.
WOW! KATE BUSH
GERED MANKOWITZ
(ORMOND YARD PRESS,
2014)
Like Harari, Mankowitz’s
photography was showcased
in a London exhibition of
Kate related-artwork, timed
to perfectly chime with her
2014 concerts. This is a
lavishly large-format, limited
edition photo-volume, a
whopping 90cm x 60cm when
open – which can also be
displayed as a wall artwork:
wow indeed. Crucially there
at the key opening moments
of Kate’s career, Mankowitz
documented the fledgling
star four times between
January 1978 and February
’79. Naturally, “Kate was a
wonderful subject,” he says, as
evidenced from the precious
pink leotard Wuthering
Heights launch shots, via the
iconic backlit ‘red-haired’
session, the US cover of The
Kick Inside and the Lionheart
sessions. Each
image has
been freshly
scanned, and
the cover is text-
free for display
purposes.
THE NINTH WAVE: A
LITERARY ADAPTATION
OF KATE BUSH’S
CONCEPT
ROBERT JOPLING
(INDEPENDENT PUB, 2017)
Where publishing’s concerned,
Kate’s music can attract all
sorts, from the sublime to the
ridiculous. There have been
abysmal attempts at Bush
‘faction’ – such as 2004’s
Waiting For Kate by John
Mendelsohn – but this little
gem’s in a superior vein. ‘The
Ninth Wave’ was the song
cycle where she ‘voices’ a
shipwrecked woman caught in
limbo between life and death.
It was a masterful lesson
in story-telling, and author
Jopling was inspired to create
this literary adaptation about
Molly, adrift in the Atlantic,
battling between life and
death. “I turned each song
into a collection of short stories
that both stays true to Kate’s
original work whilst diverting
for art’s sake,” he said. Result:
a gripping
and surreal
story written
with wonderful
understanding
of its source
material.
THE HOMEGROUND
ANTHOLOGIES
PETER FITZGERALD MORRIS,
KRYSTYNA FITZGERALD
MORRIS, DAVE CROSS
(CRESCENT MOON, 2014)
Pre-internet and pre-fan
forums, one home-made
fanzine reigned supreme: the
enchanting and influential
Homeground, conceived in
1982, now the world’s longest-
running Kate Bush publication
(as supported by the lady
herself). Packed with news,
views and illustrations from an
eclectic perspective, it perfectly
captures her musical spirit.
Now a special 600-page
double-volume compendium,
this treasure-chest keepsake
traverses Wuthering Heights
to The Sensual World, The
Red Shoes to 50 Words For
Snow. As Record Collector
said, it’s “driven by love and
passion for Kate Bush and her
music”. It’s a tender testament
to the impact of the people’s
art-pop princess.
A further
volume covering
2012 to date,
including the
2014 shows, will
be out in 2019.
THE ILLUSTRATED
COLLECTOR’S GUIDE
TO KATE BUSH
ROBERT GODWIN (2ND
EDITION, APOGEE, 2005)
First, over-ride the strangely
inappropriate sci-fi style cover;
equally, ignore the fact that the
title’s something of a misnomer.
This is not a price guide as
such, rather a comprehensive
register of the star’s recorded
works. (Surprisingly, in fact, it
appears to be the only printed
guide of its kind dedicated to
Kate). Originally released in
1991, this update boasts 600
listings, full colour coverage
of most of her repertoire, and
extends from 1978 to 2005
– prompting the next query:
another up to date revision
must be due soon? Though
not quite as pedantic as some
artists’ collectors listings, it
goes some way in tracking
down paraphernalia past and
present: albums, CDs, 45s,
interview discs, books, sheet
music, fanzines, TV guest
appearances, or
a (short) promo
list. Overall, a
useful tool in
seeing what’s
missing from your
KB booty.
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 S T O R Y T E L L I N G

ALL WE
EVER LOOK
FOR...
MYSTERIOUS, ALLUSIVE, POETIC –
JUST A FEW WORDS THAT MIGHT
APPLY TO KATE BUSH’S LYRICS. IN
THIS FEATURE THE FOUNDER OF
THE KATEBUSHNEWS.COM SITE
REFLECTS ON THE MEANINGS THAT
LIE BELOW THE SURFACE OF JUST A
FEW OF THE ARTIST’S SONGS…
S E Á N T W O M E Y

sk a follower of Kate Bush’s music what her

A
songs are actually about and even the most
fervent fan might be momentarily stumped.
This is because the answer, in a way, is
”Everything!” Many stories are chronicled in
her work, and the challenge in explaining
them is considerable. Her creations include
compositions she has spent years agonising over,
but there are also songs that almost wrote themselves
overnight, inspired by a film, piece of literature, a
myth, a folktale, or simply a conversation she may
have had with an unknown individual.
It’s certainly possible to identify some broad themes
that Kate seems to return to often in her lyrics. There’s
no denying that her music is permeated with vivid
descriptions of nature and the elements; the heady
ambient chorus of Night Scented Stock, the “waist
high” seawater setting for The Fog’s wistful memories,
the windy moors of Wuthering Heights, the changing
light and abundant birdsong in A Sky Of Honey, the
tempestuous ocean of The Ninth Wave, the hillside
sunsets in The Sensual World, the haunting whale
song of Moving, and in recent years, an entire

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 IT’S POSSIBLE TO IDENTIFY
SOME BROAD THEMES THAT
KATE SEEMS TO RETURN
TO OFTEN: HER MUSIC IS
PERMEATED WITH VIVID
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE
AND THE ELEMENTS, AND
SONGS ABOUT ROMANTIC
LOVE ABOUND

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 S T O R Y T E L L I N G

THE ROLE OF SPIRITUAL

BELIEFS AND THE THEME OF
RELIGION BECAME MORE
EXPLICIT ON THE RED SHOES.
SONGS WHICH REFERENCE
A TURBULENT TIME IN KATE’S
LIFE SEEM RAWER AND
MORE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
THAN EVER BEFORE

album set against a backdrop of falling

snow. Conversely, songs about romantic
love abound, but are never presented in
any kind of conventional way. Kate has
a fascination with how human beings
try and often fail to communicate in all
kinds of relationships. In Running Up
That Hill she describes a situation where
only a pact with a higher power to
exchange places with a lover could ever
truly create mutual understanding. Love
And Anger, a song Kate herself found
difficult to explain, explores the process
of opening up to someone and letting go
of our feelings “like a bell to a southerly
wind” so that we can be “speaking
in sympathy” with each other. When
communication is severed altogether
we’re left with All The Love’s lonely series
of answerphone messages, and Deeper
Understanding’s sadly hypnotic electronic
voice program to fill the void.
Daring or controversial subject matter
have always been a hallmark of Kate's
storytelling. Heads We’re Dancing tells
the tale of someone in 1939 unaware
that they are dancing with Hitler himself,
while Army Dreamers protested the
futility of war through the grief of a
mourning mother. She sang about gay
lovers in Kashka From Baghdad on
children’s TV in the Seventies. Breathing
painted frightening pictures of nuclear
Armageddon from the point of view of
an unborn child, while Misty takes over
13 magnificent minutes to tell the deeply
erotic tale of a bedroom encounter with a
snowman. The sheer imaginative breadth
of her lyrical ideas is staggering.
Digging up old interviews with Kate
will constantly surprise you. One friend
was convinced that the devastating 1989
single This Woman’s Work was a song
about Kate’s mother – only to be floored
to read Kate explaining it had been a
soundtrack commission for an Eighties
John Hughes romantic comedy. Kate is
generally more delighted than bemused
when people form their own take on a
song’s meaning. The joy is in fully losing
yourself in each one’s individual quirks
and backstory.

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 SOWING THE SEEDS OF SONG
UNLAWFUL LOVE, CLASSICAL MUSIC, HIGHER POWERS, LITERARY CHARACTERS, HINDUISM,
PRECIPITATION – JUST A TINY SELECTION OF THEMES FROM THE EVER-FERTILE BUSH MIND…
1 
THE KICK INSIDE
The title track of Kate’s
debut album is a
heartbreaking tale of incest
and suicide, inspired by the
English folksong The Ballad
of Lizzie Wan. Such taboo
topics are commonplace in
Kate’s early output and yet
managed to pass under the
radar of late-Seventies music
journalists, determined as
they were to pigeonhole Kate
as a pre-Raphaelite Brönte-
obsessed pop waif. The young
girl in the song finds herself
pregnant with her brother’s
child and the lyrics reveal her
final, poignant, note to him.
The original ballad was a far
more gruesome and bloody
tale. A very early example
also of the role that the “old
mythology” and the English
and Irish folk music she grew
up with played in the crafting
of Kate’s words.
THE SENSUAL
5  WORLD
In the late Eighties Kate
had written an instrumental
piece of music, a rhythmic
melody that suggested the
cadence of Molly Bloom’s
speech from the end of James
Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Kate
had always been transfixed
by the beauty and femininity
of the writing, the epic train of
thought punctuated only by the
word “yes”. The words from the
book fitted perfectly. The track
was recorded in Dublin, and a
Macedonian folk tune was even
incorporated into the chorus.
Kate’s good cheer was short-
lived, however: the Joyce estate
would not grant her permission
to use the words directly from
the book. Disappointed, Kate
set about transforming and
rewriting her song. The piece
became about Molly Bloom’s
earthy character stepping out
from a black and white two-
dimensional “book” world, into
the real world – a euphoric
appreciation of everyday
experience, a theme that Kate
would return to on the Aerial
album. Creative frustration
and sheer perseverance had
blended to form a genuine Kate
Bush masterpiece.
CPP09.Storytelling.print.indd 127
DELIUS (SONG
2  OF SUMMER)
Emerging languorously
from the tinkling smashed
crockery of Babooshka’s fade
out, Delius, the second track
on Kate’s astonishing Never
For Ever album, owes a debt
to a 1968 Ken Russell TV film
Kate had seen about the final
six years of the life of British
composer Frederick Delius. He
had been rendered blind and
paralysed after contracting
syphilis, and a young man,
Eric Fenby, was tasked with
writing down the notes that
Delius dictated. Kate’s sparse,
impressionistic lyrics reference
the cantankerous old man
berating his long-suffering
young assistant; “In B, Fenby!”
Kate memorably met Eric Fenby
on a BBC chat show in 1980
and, after her rarely-seen
video for the track was aired,
the elderly Fenby told her that
Delius would have “accepted
that as a very gracious tribute”.
LILY
6  The role of spiritual
beliefs and the theme
of religion in Kate’s writing
became more explicit on The
Red Shoes album. Songs
which reference a turbulent
time in Kate’s life seem rawer
and more autobiographical
than ever before. Lily
Cornford, who passed away
in 2003, was a spiritual
healer and firm believer in
the powers of angels. She
became a close friend of
Kate’s and shared prayers
that Kate found very useful.
One of them, a form of the
popular Gayatri Mantra, kicks
off this track and is recited
by Lily herself. Kate chose to
open her Before the Dawn
concerts with a robust version
of Lily, and the words of this
ancient Hindu prayer seemed
intended to cast a spell of
protection over the performers
and audience alike.
SUSPENDED
3  IN GAFFA
Thematically, this
sweeping, waltz-like song is a
companion piece of sorts to Sat
In Your Lap. While that earlier
hit single from The Dreaming
album explored the challenges
and frustrations involved in
the quest for knowledge,
Suspended In Gaffa goes
one step further and talks of
someone being given a teasing
glimpse of “God”. The song
imagines some sort of purgatory
and the required effort and
struggle involved in getting
back to that spiritual “garden”.
Some clever wordplay sees
Kate inventing a place,
“Gaffa”, where time suddenly
warps and you are stuck in slow
motion, akin to being wrapped
in sticky industrial gaffer tape.
The breeziness of each verse
belies the heavy subject matter,
as does the warm, comforting
appearance in the music video
of Kate’s Irish mother, Hannah.
MRS BARTOLOZZI
7  Perhaps inevitably, some
dubious reviewers in
2005 couldn’t get past the
fact that Kate Bush had written
a song “about a washing
machine”. Was Kate simply
being indulgent and silly for
the sake of it? The song even
contains what sounded like a
washing powder jingle – “get
that dirty shirty clean”. Kate
found those reactions amusing,
but nonetheless earnestly
argued that there might be a
“heavier” situation happening
in the song. The enigmatic title
character seems to become
lost, trance-like, in the revolving
clothes. Everyday items that
look like people, wet arms
and legs wrapping around
each other, lead her to some
other, deeply-buried memory
which reveals itself. She
wades out into the surf, in a
haunting and perhaps sexually
suggestive reminiscence. We’ll
never know for sure who
was standing behind her in
the sea, or what took place.
That mystery person’s shirt
which looked “so alive” on
the washing line did appear
to make a brief cameo in her
King Of The Mountain video.
CLOUDBUSTING
4  Cloudbusting, the second
single from Hounds Of
Love, was Kate’s choice to
close out her 2014 live shows.
It was remarkably rousing and
effective when you consider
the sad subject matter of the
song itself. In the late Seventies
Kate had read Peter Reich’s A
Book Of Dreams; his father, the
psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich,
had been taken away by the US
authorities for his “dangerous”
beliefs in Orgone, a rain-
making energy. The metaphor
of the yo-yo, that the boy would
bury in the garden due to its
radioactive glow-in-the-dark
properties, equally applied
to the father he worshipped:
“what made it special, made it
dangerous”. The video famously
stars Donald Sutherland and
features Reich’s reimagined
cloudbuster machine; a
gloriously exaggerated design
shot in iconic silhouette on
Oxfordshire’s Dragon Hill.
SNOWFLAKE
8  Here’s an example of a
deceptively simple song,
lyrically, setting up the theme
for an entire album. Kate’s son
Albert had featured briefly
on the Aerial album, but as
the years passed he became
an accomplished chorister
with a striking vocal range.
Wanting to showcase his
voice, Kate penned a song in
which he portrays a snowflake,
falling, sometimes in wonder,
sometimes sounding hesitant,
to the winter landscape below.
Kate plays the role of a waiting
and reassuring earthbound
presence. His voice, sounding
not unlike his mother’s, is given
the space to pierce the soft
silence in the track to stunning
effect. At the time of recording
Kate knew that the purity of
his voice, his “fleeting song”,
was transitory, just like the
eponymous snowflake. This
idea of trying to hold on to
things that are unique, precious
and even mysterious to us
before they are lost forever
runs right through the songs on
50 Words For Snow.
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23/01/2018 11:05
 THE KICK INSIDE
Every Kate Bush collection
needs her debut album on
vinyl, and a good secondhand
copy won’t set you back much
money at all. The 13 tracks are
relatively short and succinct (only
three are longer than the standard
R E I S S U E S modern single length of 3:40), it’s
a set that was clearly devised with
A N D B E Y O N D vinyl in mind. For Kate, that’s
what it was all about. “The great
WE POPPED IN TO SEE THE TEAM AT thing about vinyl,” she told
CLASSIC POP’S SISTER MAGAZINE LONG Pitchfork upon the release of
Director’s Cut, “is that if you
LIVE VINYL AND ASKED THEM TO BUILD wanted to get a decent-sounding
US AN INSTANT KATE BUSH RECORD cut, you could really only have 20
minutes max on each side. So you
COLLECTION! FROM VINTAGE DELUXE LP had a strict boundary, and that
REISSUES TO FOREIGN PRESSINGS, HERE’S was something I’d grown up with
as well. Also, you were able to
WHAT THEY CAME UP WITH... have different moods on each
I A N P E E L side, which was nice.”
CUMBRES
BORRASCOSAS
Pre-hiatus, Kate enjoyed
worldwide acclaim, and
there’s a wealth of overseas
pressings and picture sleeves to
collect. As Rinfy The Gypsy
reports on The World Of Kate
Bush blog, this Spanish 7” single
of Wuthering Heights “features a
very unique picture sleeve. The
photography is by Gered
Mankowitz. Interestingly, there
are three different versions of this
single”. Indeed, the third edition
is the most curiously ‘Spanish’, so
the one to search for. EMI kept
repressing the single; thus, the
second edition adds a big cover
flash stating “No. 1 En Inglaterra”
and the third edition – pictured
here – translates the A-side song
as Cumbres Borrascosas.

EAT THE MUSIC
Kate Bush’s most sought-
after vinyl single is Eat The
Music – the promotional UK 7”
version, to be precise. The single
was released as normal – as the
lead single from The Red Shoes
– in the US, and it became the
follow-up to Rubberband Girl in
the Netherlands, but in the UK it
never went past promo stage and
what few vinyls were pressed
were all recalled. As a result, a
copy of this 7” single sold on
eBay in 2013 for £996 and, a
year later, for £1240. But that’s
nothing: in 2006 a copy –
“purchased prior to ‘release’
through a friend in music retail
back in 1993,” the seller
explained – went on eBay for a
staggering £2,250.
THEM HEAVY PEOPLE
& MOVING
One of Kate’s first vinyl
releases in Japan is also
one of her rarest. Started off their
The Kick Inside campaign,
Toshiba EMI issued Kate’s first two
singles, Them Heavy People and
Moving, as a DJ-only double-
pack, and the sleeve – as was
standard for Japan at the time
– was adorned with an advert, in
this case for Seiko watches. Many
copies (catalogue number PRP
1046/7) were hand-delivered to
DJs and media at the Seventh
Tokyo Music Festival in 1978,
where Kate also played live. A
copy sold on eBay in 2006 for an
impressive £700, helped by the
seller declaring it as “the third
rarest 7” from Kate in the world”!
THIS WOMAN’S WORK
You may be building a Kate
Bush vinyl collection. You
might even be referring to this
article as you build a Kate Bush
vinyl collection. But if you want to
get the whole thing done at once,
and have a statement piece for
your living room into the bargain,
then this is the one. This Woman’s
Work (Anthology 1978-1990)
was released in October 1990 as
a deep-end box set on CD and
cassette as well as vinyl. It’s the LP
edition we’re interested in and it
sells for, on average according to
Discogs.com, £350. The first six
LPs are Kate’s first six albums, but
what justifies the price tag are the
three extra LPs of rarities, taking
in everything from Heartbrake
from On Stage to GLC’s Ken.
PARIS, FRANCE, 1979
Paris, France, 1979 is a
mythical concert bootleg. It
was recorded at the Théatre de
Champs-Élysées on 6 May 1979
during the Lionheart tour and has
11 songs, though seven are from
The Kick Inside with just two from
Lionheart (In the Warm Room and
Fullhouse) and two from Never
For Ever. It’s true to say that this
bootleg only did the rounds in the
Eighties and Nineties as,
post-MP3, the ‘audience
recording’ album has had its day
and Paris, France, 1979 shows
up regularly on MP3 blogs as a
“liberated vinyl boot”. Not least
because, as one blogger puts it,
“The sound quality on this is way
ahead of the other boots you get
from Kate’s only tour.”

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 L O N G L I V E V I N Y L

HOUNDS OF LOVE
One of very few high-end vinyl reissues so far from the Kate Bush catalogue, Hounds Of Love
was reissued on 180 gram vinyl in 2014 via the Audio Fidelity label, and it is simply a
must-buy. Remastered by Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman, it was pressed on purple marbled vinyl
(which picked out colours and tints from the front cover photo). Housed in a gatefold sleeve – with an
alternative front cover shot on the left side of the inner gatefold, plus all the album lyrics – the album
can still be picked up relatively cheaply. Browse online and you should get a copy of this definitive
work for less than $50. To quote the team at Turntable Lab, “There is so much going on beneath the
surface that it will draw you in before you’re even aware of it.”

COMIC RELIEF PRESENTS KING OF THE THE SEER MELT

UTTERLY UTTERLY LIVE
Vinyl and cassette are your
only options to hear Kate
duetting with Rowan Atkinson on
Do Bears... plus a live rendition of
Breathing recorded at the
Shaftesbury Theatre in London in
1986. This was one of the first
concerts for Comic Relief, when it
was in the hands of the alternative
comedy crew; surely, no other
album could have Breathing
sandwiched between Billy
Connolly and Frank Bruno and
Lenny Henry. It also features
Howard Jones performing Life In
One Day with the wonderful and
much-missed Afrodiziak, and
closes with Bob Geldof and
Midge Ure performing Do They
Know It’s Christmas?
MOUNTAIN
If you’re building a Bush
vinyl collection, this picture
disc will only set you back a fiver.
King Of The Mountain was Kate’s
first single for 12 years, and the
only single from Aerial. The
image on this disc, like the
accompanying 7” black vinyl’s
sleeve, was based on a drawing
by Kate’s son, credited here solely
as Bertie, and the B-side is a
cover of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual
Healing that had been recorded
for Irish uilleann piper Davy
Spillane some years before. Bertie
– or Albert McIntosh to give him
his full credit – can also be heard
on lead vocals on Snowflake, the
opening track of Kate’s 2011
album, 50 Words For Snow.
Any Kate Bush vinyl
collection needs a good
stack of collaborations, and we
have a detailed feature on page
104 tracing the story of many of
them. One to highlight is her work
on The Seer with Big Country. A
classic album of Eighties art rock
bombast, it’s yet to get a deluxe
vinyl reissue, but originals are
relatively cheap to find on eBay.
As Kate Bush News.com explains,
it’s “one of the best ever examples
of Kate supplying backing vocals
on another artist’s recordings”
and as our collaborations article
points out, for one fan this is
“more than just ‘backing vocals’
– it’s more ‘featured’ status since
her vocals are so obvious
throughout the song.”
Kate’s work on Peter
Gabriel’s third, relatively
overlooked album was recently
given a deluxe vinyl reissue,
spreading the tracks across two
45rpm-cut discs. “This album was
the first time that I had a chance
to work with Kate Bush,” Gabriel
explains, “who was singing on
Games Without Frontiers. I’d
heard Wuthering Heights; I
thought she had an extraordinary,
wonderful voice and was doing
great things as a writer.” You can
hear Kate on both the ‘hit’ single
Games Without Frontiers and the
‘miss’ single, No Self Control,
both of which have a very eerie
take on pop. “The album was full
of what at the time were ‘strange’
sounds,” Gabriel recalled.

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 © Getty Images

CLASSIC

MOMENTS

J O I N I N G
V O I C E S
F E B R U A R Y 1 9 8 6
Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, pictured here at the BPI Awards in 1987.
Almost exactly one year earlier, the pair first entered the ex-Genesis
singer’s home studio in Swainswick, near Bath, to record their timeless
duet Don’t Give Up – one of 1986’s finest musical moments. Written
by Gabriel, Don’t Give Up made the UK Top 10 and took pride of place
on his classic No. 1 album, So. Dramatic, intimate and electrifying, the
song was elevated to new heights by an intensely moving video that
featured the pair in a powerful, unbreakable embrace. It took on an
even deeper meaning by being released near the end of a year that
had brought with it two terrible tragedies, the Space Shuttle Challenger
explosion and the Chernobyl disaster. As Mark Beaumont memorably
recalls on page 44, Kate only performed the song with Gabriel once –
at Earl’s Court on 28 June, 1987.
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CPP09.IBC.print.indd 131 22/01/2018 08:53
 T H E K AT E I N S I D E The Limited Edition Book

KATE BUSH
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
GUIDO HARARI
1982 | 1993

“I love to work with Guido.

He makes you feel special
without ever saying anything.
I think of him as an artist
as well as a photographer.”
- Kate Bush

COLLECTOR
EDITION

✶ 1500 copies worldwide

✶ 240 pages, over 300 photographs
✶ Foreword by Lindsay Kemp
✶ Deluxe Edition signed by
Guido Harari and Lindsay Kemp
with a signed numbered fine art
print and 8 replica Polaroids
DELUXE EDITION
✶ Collector Edition
signed by Guido Harari

A L IMITED EDITION BOOK BY

Wall Of Sound Gallery