FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in December 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield
Colin Irwin: Melody Maker (1980)
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I am heading back to 1980…
for this part of The Kate Bush Interview Archive. Thanks to this invaluable website for providing a huge resource regarding Kate Bush interviews. I have been thinking about Never for Ever (her third album which was released in 1980) and how it was a transformation in terms of her lyrics and sonic progression. It was, at that point, the biggest and most notable evolution in her music. Colin Irwin of Melody Maker interviewed Bush in Munich. Although there is talk about Bush’s sexuality and sensuality, there are some useful insights regarding the songwriting and characters in her songs. There are some sections from the promotional interview (of Never for Ever) that I want to include:
“I mean, no sweet, flippant family entertainer ever wrote a song as sexually explicit as Feel It. No surrogate Olivia Newton-John ever tackled a subject like incest (The Kick Inside). No cosseted girl-next-door would ever dare conduct a fantasy around a saxophone (Saxophone Song).
The lights suddenly pick out Kate on the other side of the studio, standing perfectly still, the bass standing phallically before her, her eyes wide and manic, staring at the camera.
The intro to Babooshka, the bottom portrudes, and she's away, jumping and thrusting, and utterly living the part. A bunch of photographers have been allowed in to the studio, and push and jostle each other for the best views.
As the song ends, several kids chase her for an autograph, but she's already gone, flitting away on her broomstick, or does she merely turn into a pumpkin?
Kate re-emerges, totally unrecognized, sitting alone at the side, observing, waiting for her next party-piece. She's dressed as a haggard washer-woman in dowdy clothes and headscarf.
It's a routine she's never tried before and she's been nervous it all day. The song is Army Dreamers, a track from Never For Ever and the next single, a simple but melancholy little song in which Kate appears as a weary mother reflecting on the death of her son, a soldier killed on duty.
"Should have been a rock star...But he didn't have the money for a guitar..." Three soldiers dressed in British army camoufflage uniforms appear, one carrying a mandolin, one a Tommy gun [played by Paddy Bush and Del Palmer respectively], another in the role of a sergeant barking orders.
"Should have been a politician...But he never had a proper education..." Kate shrivels and cringes behind the soldiers, her face crumpled and distraught. The soldiers march and prowl and stand at attention.
"Should have been a father...But he didn't even make it to his twenties..." The song is all the more striking for the pretty tune, and the genteel structure, the innocence of the lyric.
It end with the three soldiers cowering in a heap, Kate spreadeagled protectively above them. Purely as a piece of theater it's brilliant. RockPop has never seen anything like it, that's for sure.
Kate has an enormous number of relatives in Ireland, and she's fearful of the Irish reaction to Army Dreamers. Ireland isn't mentioned in the song, and she inserted a reference to BFPO to divert attention; but let's face it, the song's a contemporary one with its mention of rock 'n' and there ain't too many other places a young soldier is gonna get killed in action right now.
"It's the first song I've ever written in the studio," she ask her about it. "It's not specifically about Ireland, it's just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she'd bought him a guitar when he asked for one.
"Have you heard Roy's new album?" she says suddenly. Er, Roy? Oh, Harper, of course. They appear on each other's albums. He gets a dedication on the sleeve of Never For Ever: "Special thanks to Roy Harper for holding on to the poet in his music".
No, Kate, I haven't heard the album. "You should." Adrian Boot took it, took the sleeve photograph. "Actually" says Kate sweetly, "I didn' like the sleeve." Adrian looks hurt. "The photograph was great, I just didn't like the sleeve" she reassures him.
A flood of chatter follows. Did I know Dave & Toni Arthur/What are the Dransfields doing now/Do I like the Bothy Band? "I've a very strong folk music influence" she says.
"First songs I ever sang were dirty sea shanties. I'm very proud of it, I can't think of a nicer influence. Traditional music says a great deal about the country. English folk music is a lot different from Irish folk music, not only musically, but lyrically. I mean, that song She Moves Thro' the Fair: it sums up the Irish spirit. It's incredible, so moving."
Certainly her fascination for traditional ballads is the key to her more lurid story-lines. The Kick Inside was inspired by the richly colourful ballad Lucy Wan, in which a brother murders his sister when she becomes pregnant by him (though there are numerous variations). Kate's version has the sister committing suicide.
Babooshka is similarly based on a song called Sovay Sovay. I tell her I'll listen to Roy Harper's album if she'll listen to an album called Carolanne by Carol Pegg, which includes a similar embellishment on Lucy Wan.
My favourite track on the album is The Wedding List. "Oh, really?" she says bubbling, the little kid who's been given a puppy for Christmas.
"That was based on a film, a Jeanne Moreau film I once saw on the telly, when the bride's husband was killed and she sought revenge for those responsible." She spends the next 15 minutes relating the plot of the film, ending in a breathless flourish. "It was an amazing film. Can't remember what it was called, though." [The film, Truffaud's tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, is called La Mariee etait en noir, or The Bride Wore Black.]
Films and fiction, in fact, count for a prominent chunck of her inspiration. And whatever you feel about the histrionics and the wayward vocalising, you've got to concede that in a chart overflowing with grey music and tepid lyrics, the success of a colourful number like Babooshka, for example, has to be healthy.
She's reticent to agree [sic]..."Well, it does always amaze me how songs get in the charts that are--I won't say rubbish, because they're not -- but the sort of songs that so many people could write.
"I often find myself inspired by unusual, distorted, weird subjects, as opposed to things that are straightforward. It's a reflection of me, my liking for weirdness."
They don't come any weirder than The Infant Kiss. This, she explains patiently, was based on a film, The Innocents, which had itself come out of the Henry James book, The Turn of the Screw. A governess goes to stay with a man to look after his two children, who are possessed by the spirits of people who lived there before.
"Some people might think it's a song about...what's the word when older women fancy little boys?" Paedophilia? [Kate probably knows this word better than she lets on: she made a similar claim of ignorance of the word in the Hot Press interview, also included in this volume.] "Well, it's not actually that, and it would worry me if people mixed it up with that because that's exactly what worries her so much. I find that distortion very fascinating and quite sad. And frightening. The thought of someone old and evil being inside a young and pure shell, it's freaky."
But you really live out your roles and fantasies. Playing the mother in Army Dreamers.
"Yeah, I seem to link on to mothers rather well. As I've grown up a bit I've become very aware of observing my own mother trying to observe me. It's fascinating. When I was a kid I never really thought about her, about how she ticks.
"But I can be more objective now and I find it fascinating about mothers, that there's something in there, a kind of maternal passion which is there all the time, even when they're talking about cheese sandwiches. Sometimes it can be very possessive, sometimes it's very real."
Kate doesn't know when she'll be touring again. She enjoyed her one tour, and it gave her a thrill to choke the critics who'd suggested she'd be a disaster on stage, that she couldn't sing live. But it takes six months out of a year to rehearse and prepare for a tour the way she wants to do it, and will also cost her enormous amounts of money to stage.
"Not that I mind losing money on a tour--there are so many benefits from it--as long as we don't go bankrupt. We do want to tour again, we will tour again, because there are so many things we still want to do on stage, but we'll have to think about it very carefully because it will stop me doing a lot of other things."
On the plane back to London the next day I ask her about Peter Gabriel. They did, after all, record together on Games Without Frontiers, and I thought I'd detected a Gabriel influence on Never For Ever. I ask about Peter Gabriel and she talks about Pink Floyd.
"That last album of his was fantastic, but I don't know if it was a direct influence on me. He may have opened up bits in me I hadn't thought of, but a more direct influence was The Wall.
"It got to the point when I heard it I thought there's no point in writing songs any more because they'd said it all. You know, when something really gets you, it hits your creative centre and stops you creating...and after a couple of weeks I realized that he hadn't done everything, there was lots he hadn't done.
"And after that it became an inspiration. Breathing was definitely inspired by the whole vibe I got from hearing that whole album, especially the third side. There's something about Floyd that's pretty atomic anyway."
We part at Heathrow, she to the next leg of the Never For Ever promotion There's a day of interviews ahead; personal appearances at record shops in Glasgow, Manchester, and London; various radio station interviews and a visit to a dealers' party in Birmingham, where she will personally meet the EMI employees who'll be flogging her new album. They in turn-cream themselves stupid and get their photographs taken with the great lady”.
It is really interesting reading the transcript of that Melody Maker interview. Even though the promotional duties for Never for Ever were quite intense, Bush was as enthusiastic - giving and warm as you could imagine. It is testament to her professionalism and engaging nature that she provided so many memorable interviews. The snippets of the interview above is a fascinating insight into…
ONE of her best albums.