FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982
1982: Company Magazine (Rosie Boycott)
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AS Kate Bush’s fourth studio album…
turns thirty-nine on 13th September, I want to feature an interview that was published before The Dreaming came out. I am looking at an interview from the start of 1982. It is exciting to hear Bush talk about the upcoming album. Bush spoke with Rosie Boycott of Company Magazine. It was rare for Bush to be interviewed by a woman. She has been interviewed by women through her career, though most of the print, radio and T.V. interviews up to 1982 were conducted by men (and that continues to this day). There is no particular reason for that. I find there is a more interesting approach and angle when Bush speaks with another woman. Perhaps you get a more sexist and reductive interview from male interviewers – not always the case but there were quite a few examples! The interview in Company Magazine is really interesting. The interview is really about Bush being this unassuming star who has risen to prominence despite not attending big parties or doing worldwide tours. I have selected some parts of the interview that caught my eye:
“We all have preconceived notions of what superstars should be like. Larger than life on stage, we expect all these exaggerated qualities to be present in the person themselves. So I was not sure quite what to expect of Kate Bush. I had heard she is a terribly nice person; quiet, easy to talk to and family-minded. But I found it hard to associate this picture of Kate with her stage image: the blatantly sexual, pouting mouth; the high, almost freaky voice; the live body that twists and gyrates under the lights. Above all, could that enormous talent belong to someone who insists she is an ordinary home-loving girl? Which side was the facade?
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her family home, East Wickham Farm in Welling, in 1978
I went to talk to her at her parents' home in Kent. Her mother and father, a local GP, live in a beautiful old, white farmhouse. Now incongrously surrounded by a council estate, the house has a high wooden fence which surrounds an overgrown, jungly garden--the type of place that can easily feed a young girl's fantasy and imagination. Inside, the house is warm and homely: dogs flop by the fire, the phone rings incessantly, the atmosphere is very family-orientated--no sham here, the Bushes genuinely enjoy being together.
Wearing a knitted skirt and jumper, Kate sits beside me on the sofa, nursing a cold, complaining about the weather--it is raining heavily--and talking with ease and warmth. Meeting her has not made it any easier to understand how someone can be one person in the flesh and another on stage, but the fact that she is likeable and unaffected is certainly no publicity stunt.
Kate's arrival in the superstar ranks of the pop world was well timed. Not for her messing around at the lower end of the charts, waiting for the big break which would make her a household name. Her single, Wuthering Heights, entered the charts in early February 1978; and music lovers everywhere pricked up their ears to the entirely original, haunting, wailing sound of a nineteen-year-old girl, striking notes that seemed impossible and singing with a strength of feeling that was almost unnerving. Within six weeks, Wuthering Heights had ousted Abba and their hit, Take a Chance on Me, from the number one spot. Kate Bush had arrived.
The stories which began circulating about her were numerous; she was EMI's pet product, signed up as a schoolgirl at the age of sixteen, and kept under wraps until the time was deemed right to spring her on the world. She was reticent about giving interviews, carefully shielded by her family, and cossetted by the record company. Everyone was fascinated, but finding background information on this new star with the dynamic, sexy stage persona presented problems. Kate, for all her stardom, was--and still is--a very private person.
Twenty-three-year-old Kate Bush says publicity still makes her feel weird. "It comes," she says, "from seeing just how much I have done over the last three years. Sometimes I find it hard to understand people's interest in me. I hate it when I feel that someone is just after the scandalous details. The most important part of my life is my work." And with that we find ourselves discussing her new album, due out in February.
"At the moment it hasn't got a title," she says. "It has been very hard to produce because all the studios are so incredibly booked up, and becuase I wanted to use one engineer only. This is the first album that I have actually produced myself.
"Inevitably, this has meant a great deal more responsibility for me. But it is a responsibility I like; I think that as soon as you get your hands on the production, it becomes your baby. That's really exciting for me, because you do everything for your own child. And I have been forced to think harder about what is good and what is not so good."
I asked her if the vulnerability of that situation didn't worry her. "Yes, in a way--but it is a stronger position, too, though I find that I now rely much more on other people's feetback--especially when I lack confidence about a song."
In the past Kate says she used to find that her words and music came together with ease--now they take far more time. "I like to leave all my options open until the last minute so that I'm really sure--like about the title of an album, for instance. I'm taking a complete break from recording at the moment, going over songs, tightening up lyrics and tunes, not going near the studio. I've worked on this album so intensely for so long that I seemed to be losing sight of my direction. I really wasn't sure what to do next--and that has never happened to me before”.
Kate wants to dispel the notion that she is someone who writes about fantasy. "I think my lyrics have a far tougher edge to them now. I always thought that ultimately I would be super tough...presuming that as I gathered experiences I would learn to accept situations for what they are. That has worked in some ways, but in others I'm far more vulnerable."
One new song on her next album has Kate talking about herself and her new awareness of life, its goals and inevitable pressures. "The song is called Get Out of My House ," she says, "and it's all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors--not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this--they don't hear what they don't want to hear, don't see what they don't want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide what I will let in and what I'll have to exclude.
"While I was working on this album I was offered a part in a TV series. I've been offered other acting roles, but this was the first totally creative offer that has ever come my way. I had to turn it down--I was already committed to the album. Sadly, I don't think that offer will be made again, but you have to learn to let things go, not to hang on and get upset, or to try to do it and then end up making a mess of everything else. It's like wanting to dance in the studio when I'm recording--I want to but I know that I can't because it will just tire me. I wish I had the energy to do everything," she says, sighing at her limitations, "but at least I'm healthy and fit."
Kate is one of those lucky people who never puts on weight. <Well...> She's a slim, elf-like, five foot three and has been a vegetarian since sixteen because, she says, "I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat--and I really do think that it has made me calmer." She smokes occasionally--though she admits she shouldn't--and hardly drinks. "Champagne, I love champagne...but I don't really call it alcohol!" She confesses that she doesn't do breathing exercises, though she is very aware of breath control when she is singing. She regards her voice as a "precious instrument: it can be affected by almost anything: my nerves, my mood, even the weather." On stage she's a bundle of energy--a complete contrast to the calm, mature, pretty girl who sits drinking coffee in the elegant farmhouse drawing room.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the ‘Hollywood’ shot in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
"My plans for the future..." she muses. "Well, I want to get into films. And I want to do more on stage. I love staging my own shows, working out the routines, designing the whole package, and using every aspect of my creativity." What kind of films would she like to make? "My favourite is Don't Look Now. I was incredibly impressed by the tension, the drive and the way that every loose end was tied up. I get so irritated by films which leave ideas hanging."
Singing, she says, will always be with her. So will songwriting. Never satisfied with her voice or with her work, she strives all the time towards some impossible goal of perfection. "But, I suppose," she says, "that if the day ever came when I was 100 per cent satisfied, that would be the day that I stopped growing and changing--my deatch knell”.
That period between 1980 and 1982 is really interesting. Bush released Never for Ever in 1980. Many might have assumed another tour would be on the cards (as The Tour of Life was in 1979), but one could tell that she was more interested in the studio and writing new material. Those who thought they knew Kate Bush as an artist were in for surprise when The Dreaming arrived. The fact that Rosie Boycott mentions Get Out of My House. This is one of the most physical and unusual songs Bush ever recorded. Listen to Never for Ever, and there is nothing like it to be heard! I will write about The Dreaming ahead of its anniversary on 13th September. Bush released the single, Sat in Your Lap, in 1981…so there were some indications that The Dreaming was going to be a different-sounding record to her previous releases. I guess the media would have thought that a star in the 1980s would be courting a celebrity life and chasing fame. Many got a surprise when they interviewed Kate Bush: someone very humble but focused on the music; not getting caught up in the emptiness that many of her peers did at that time. Bush proved, through interviews and her music, that she was…
A very rare and special talent.