FEATURE:
All They Ever Look For
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield
Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three: The Interviews
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THIS is the final feature…
about Kate Bush’s Never for Ever, as it turns forty-three on 8th September. Produced by Kate Bush and Jon Kelly, it was a number one success and it spawned successful singles, Breathing, Babooshka and Army Dreamers. Even though it is one of Kate Bush’s most successful albums, it is still not as discussed and celebrated as it should be. Many of its songs have not been played on the radio - including the sublime All We Ever Look For and Blow Away (For Bill). This final feature is going to be bringing in a few interviews from 1980. Promoting the album and showcasing a newer direction and sound, it did fascinate critics. There are a few interviews I want to quote from. The first, from Sounds on 30th August, 1980 found Phil Sutcliffe probe the extraordinary Kate Bush:
“WHAT THEY say about Kate Bush is that she's a lisping innocent, a born-with-a-silver-spoon, a too-good-to-be-true, a safe and uncontroversial, soppy, record industry banker.
What l reckon is she's brave and honest, the most sensual writer/performer around. For her, forget politico-socio-economics (which is crucial but not the only crux). Just feel her. She's very tactile, music you can touch, sometimes smell and taste too. All the senses embraced, like making love -- not as complete as experience by any means, sure, but . . . reminiscent.
As she wrote in 'Symphony In Blue': 'The more I think about sex/ The better it gets/ here we have a purpose in life/ Good for the blood circulation/ Good for releasing the tension'.
Doubters should see the front cover of her new LP, 'Never For Ever', out next week. Then they might recognize her. There's a painting of a cartoon Kate on a hill, the wind blowing her skirt and hem beneath it issues a billowing spume of people, devils, animals, monsters, birds, fish, butterflies --- the raw material of her songs intact, spreading and curving like the cornucopia, horn of plenty. The message is sensually true (hear, see, feel, taste, smell). Kate Bush's music flows like love juice.
'Breathing
Breathing my mother in,
Breathing, my beloved in,
Breathing, breathing her nicotine,
Breathing,
Breathing the fall-out, out in'
This is how the readers of teeny girl's magazine Look In were told to think about Kate Bush: 'To every young girl working hard at dance classes and learning music, the story of Kate Bush's rise to fame must seem like the ultimate fairy story. Few may look as striking as Kate, and it's unlikely that many have her incredible vocal range, but her rise to acclaim gives us all a model to aspire to -- showing just how much sheer hard work is involved in reaching the top.'
Arsenic and old lace, slow-poisoning gentility. Encouraging aspiration, encouraging hard work, while quietly easing the rug from under you. It's nice to dream, but honestly you don't have the looks or the talent or the determination, do you dears? What you're really rehearsing for, when these childish games are over, is a long stint behind me cheese counter and in front of the kitchen sink. Your only chance is no chance.
Or, as Kate said when I'd finished quoting it at her: "If I was still at school and I read that I'd think 'Christ, I'll just give up and work in Woolworth then'. It would scare me life out of me."
She becomes ever more aware of the difference between Kate Bush the public image and Kate Bush the self she knows (which includes the artist). How could she be anything but bemused to find herself described in the Sun as 'top sexpot of the year' -- what's that? --and in Sounds voted Number 2 'Sex Object (Female)' -- what's that?
The ephemeral quality of celebrity had just reached a new level in fact, she said: "A couple of weeks ago I read the first interview with me I've seen which was entirely made up. I had never spoken to this magazine and there I was talking about my life and fame and so on."
For the past two years she's been coming to terms with the half-truth. Now it seems she will have to develop her acceptance of the complete lie. She's working on it: "It does still worry me that people read things and take it as gospel. So much of what you read is propaganda whether it's political or show biz."
She's been taken advantage of by people striding in with an 'I'm your greatest fan' smile, then tearing her apart in print. Very nasty, but she insist to herself that "they are all forgivable", even the ones who go away and give her a hard time for being too nice to them.
"What do they expect? Do they want me to rip the place apart? The thing is when I'm on stage I can do anything. I have a role to play. Off-stage it's hard for me to be anyone but myself which is a rather shy, philosophical...little thing."
'Little thing'! In moments like that you can see how she has set some people's teeth on edge with a mawkish word and a flash of the dimple high on her left cheek. We were setting out on a five-hour interview. If the schoolgirl coquette had struck the keynote it would have been unbearable. But Kate Bush was 22 on July 30. She's not like that anymore. The jokes about her saying amazing' and 'wow' all the time have worn thin.
Her own genuine fear that she is boring when she doesn't have a role to play is quite wrong now, if i twas ever true except in the self-fulfiling anticipations of many journalists. The feat itself may still be hampering her though. For instance, she invariably chooses the matt-finish neutral territory of the EMI office for interviews: she takes her self out of context. So I can offer you no significant details, no atmosphere. We were plonked down among someone else's business clutter with sandwiches wrapped in plastic and drinks from the tin.
Kate was wearing a lot of red and a lot of make-up -- one rough soul in the vicinity remarked that she seemed to have 'tarted herself up' way beyond her usual daily casualness, probably because she knew Mike Laye would be sitting in (although he didn't take any pictures as it happened). Later she did say she had been nervous because we had both deliberately built it up to her as 'a big one'.
'My radar sends me danger
But my instincts tell me to
Keep breathing'
So let me introduce you first to Kate Bush the professional. Of course, there are many in her position who, if they were worried enough by an interview to be nervious, wouldn't do it. She does have the power to decide not to be bothered with any of the show biz process apart from the music. Instead she quotes from whoever-it-was and steps out saying "As long as they spell my name right!"
She's the girl who goes along to pick up the awards in person when others send their fridges to take delivery. She's the one you see in the papers the next morning pulling silly faces and pointing at Alan Freeman who's pointing at her, or standing with her arm matily round fellow EMI earner Cliff Richard's shoulder, or scrunched between Bob Geldof, Paul McCartney and an armful of shields and plaques. Usually at these moments she looks quite barmy, but at least a hundred percent more alive than the company she's keeping.
Why?
"I'll always play up for photographers. I can't stand there looking miserable, it'll get printed anyway. To cope I have to play the complete loon, I do have to keep my face in the papers you know. I need the publicity."
She meant it, although the last couple of phrases did come out rather as if they'd been learnt by rote from 'Teach Yourself Show Biz'. Tactically it seemed to me she was underrating herself again. On the other hand the bare-faced, uncool honesty of her was more than striking.
"I don't like show biz. I very rarely go to parties. If I go to one of these dos it's because people have been good to make the effort for vote for me and I think I should say 'Thank you' rather than 'I can't be bothered to come, send it round.' "
The choking unctuousness and obsequious gluttony of those affairs is enough to turn your stomach and I dragged up a quote from Kate's past which suggested she had been suckered into the rotten opulence of it. According to another of those teen'n'weens mags she had spouted on about what 'a great honour it is to be part of this business'.
"If I said it I didn't mean exactly that. The honour is to know that people like me to be here and make my music and explore. Behind the business propaganda there is a connection between the artist and the public which is real. Take these Personal Appearances ('PAs' they say in the trade). You go to a shop and you're like some kind of royal person put on a pedestal and the people are led to you as if it was to kiss your feet. They're forced to buy an album to get your autograph.
"That part of it is horrible, but I like them because I meet all these faces full of therir own lives. It's really special to me. I do it because there's something human and good in it rather than refusing because it's not perfect.
"But if it wasn't for my music I wouldn't come near a situation like this (a glance took in our little room and its large implications). It would scare the shit out of me. There was a time when I would never have signed myself away to any record company. But what I wanted more than anything else was to get my songs on to an album. EMI were interested and there were willing to wait (giving her a few thousand pounds and a couple of years to 'grow up' with).
"Everyone's doing everyone up and you have to minimise that. My way isn't one of forcefulness, I like to talk to people on a mutual level. I've had to work and prove myself to people which I find a great challenge. There are so many aspects to people...Fred isn't just nice Fred, he's bad Fred, Fred that's cuddly, Fred when he's been drinking. It does get terrifying."
When her name, demos and pictures were first introduced to the majority of the EMI staff at an annual convention, the mainly male gathering nudged, winked and said "Wor, I wouldn't mind handling her, boss!" Some also noticed that 'Wuthering Heights' was a smash hit waiting to be pressed. If it had failed she would have been crushed in the cogs of the corporation. As it is, success is her passport through the long corridors. In this sense her greatest step forward on 'Never For Ever' is that she moved up to co-production with her everpresent engineer Jon Kelly.
"I'm free in lots of ways and I'm getting more free, more artistic control. The first two albums were a matter of proving I was a reasonably intelligent and creative human being who could produce their own project. A great deal of artists aren't capable of being objective enough. To be close with everyone involved and though their respect and enthusiasm create what you have been thinking about for over a year is a beautiful experience.
'Out-in, out-in, out-in...'.
There are two more than I want to highlight. It gives us an idea of how Bush was being perceived by the press - and, indeed, how she described her music and career. I think a lot of the questions asked of Bush were either too personal or not relating to her music. She always handles that with decorum and patience! Although we can’t be 100% sure the interview is from 1980, I want to bring in one that I have sourced before. ZigZag’s Kris Needs chatted with Kate Bush about her progress and remarkable new album:
“Kate had to be persuaded to do this interview. She didn't believe we wanted to talk to her! Thought we'd come in and stitch her up, I s'pose. However, once she'd perused a stack of old ZigZags, a meeting with a still-rather-puzzled Kate took place on a Friday afternoon at EMI.
Kate Bush has just done the Daily Express. Now it's me...But no way does she just press her nose and gush out the conveyor-belt niceties. We talk for over 90 minutes, touching all manner of subjects in an enthusiastic flow. Quite deep at times--"It's like two psychiatrists talking," she said after. I left impressed with her honesty and sense of awe, which, in the wrong hands, could be the reasons detractors have a field day. She don't deserve it, even if you can't stick her music. And I'm warning you, don't just take my word on Kate Bush, then say I wasted your fiver -- it is down to taste, but if you've got any feelings, or just like music, have a go. It's about the only music I like that I can't dance to.
So, Kate, do you think your audience is restricted by these prejudices against you?
"Yeah, I think I'm conscious of people doing that in certain areas, because of the way they've seen me, and I think that's inevitable. I don't blame them. It's really good for me to speak to other magazines."
It'd be good if people could see that you're doing stuff that's pretty new, too. You could never mistake Kate Bush for anyone else.
"Oh, great. I'd like to think that, but it's not for me to say. When you first come out, people say you're the new thing. then when you've been around for two or three years you become old hat, and they want to sweep you under the carpet as being MOR, which I don't feel I am from the artistic point of view. It doesn't feel like MOR to me at all, although I wouldn't call it Punk! Sometimes it's not even rock...I don't know, I think it's wrong to put labels on music. Even Punk, that's really just a label for convenience--it covers so many areas. I think sometimes it can actually kill people, being put under labels. I think it's something that shouldn't be encouraged. If people could just accept music as music and people as people, without having to compare them to other things...which is something we instinctively try to do."
The way you're presented in the press could alienate some people, I s'pose.
"Don't you think any form of publicity alienates the person who is not involved in it? I think that's part of the whole process. That's why I feel that the good thing about albums and gigs and even radio is that you are directly communicating with your audience, but with papers and appearances on TV you're not really relating directly."
Does the bad criticism hurt you?
"No, I don't get hurt. I've read a few reviews of the album, an some of them really couldn't stand me, probably much more than the album. In fact, one guy didn't like me so much, he had to write four columns of 'I can't stand Bush!' That's cool. Sometimes I find it funny. I think a bad review is a good omen in some papers."
At least that's a positive reaction.
"Yeah, if they really hate you, it's just as good as really liking you. You're really getting under their skin so much that they've got to speak about it. That's great!"
And the album still came in at number one.
"I can't believe it, still. Every time I tell someone I feel like I'm lying. I couldn't have asked more for such an important step in what I'm doing, because I feel that this album is a new step for me. The other two albums are so far away that they're not true. They really aren't me anymore. I think this is something the public could try and open up about. When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain kind of sound.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips
"I'd really like to be able to leave myself open to any form of music, so if I wanted to, I could do funk tracks on the next album, I could do classical, I could do bossa novas. I think it's best to stay as open as you can. As a person I'm changing all the time, and the first album is very much like a diary of me at that time--I was into a very high range. The same with the second album, and I feel this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It's like the first album on a new level. It's much more under control."
You took a long time doing it. [You think that one took a long time!]
"Yeah, it did. It took a lot of work, but it was very beautiful work because it's so involving and it's so like emotions. It's totally unpredictable and you can fall in love with it or you can hate it or if you want to you can ignore it: you know, all the things that you can do with people."
That's one of the main things I like about the music--the emotions running around.
"I think everyone is emotional, and I think a lot of people are afraid of being so. They feel that it's vulnerable. Myself, I feel that it's the key to everything, and that the more you can find out about your emotions the better. Some of the things that come into your head can be a surprise when you're thinking."
The next single is Army Dreamers, which sounds like a wistful little waltz-time ditty on first hearing, though a bit sombre. Kate adopts a lilting Irish accent--all very nice. But listen to the words and she's mourning her dead son, killed in the army. I thought Kate was singing about Northern Ireland, but not necessarily...
"It's not actually directed at Ireland. It's included, but it's much more embracing the whole European thing. That's why it says BFPO in the first chorus, to try and broaden it away from Ireland."
What about the Irish accent?
"The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. 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”.
The final interview I will source from is from Record Mirror. Mike Nicholls spoke with Bush. This interview is interesting, as it is more about her work and career. It was conducted around the time of Never for Ever, but this deep chat gives us a wider look at Bush’s work ethic and career:
“And work is your God?
"It is, really, yes, as everything in my life goes into my music. Everything that happens to me affects me, and it comes out in my music. If I did become perfect, and was no longer vulnerable, perhaps I wouldn't get the same shocks of emotion that make me want to write."
So while philosophers and related beings have for centuries been ruminating about how to attain perfectability, Kate Bush, still a baby at twenty-two, has decided this is the very thing that ought to be bypassed. Heavy stuff, huh? Then again, she wasn't exactly brought up in a lightweight atmosphere.
Since our last rendezvous at the beginning of the year, I'd heard that her father and brothers, ostensibly the greatest influences in her family-orientated life, were great believers in the Russian "magician" George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Thinking it might assist our dialogue, I spent some time before the interview swotting up on the guy, who in the early part of this century ran a school for wealthy mystics, that preached stuff like "We had better torture our own spirit than suffer the inanities of calm," and "Any unusual effort has the effect of shaking the mind awake."
Now there seems to be a certain amout of overlap between these observations and Kate's remarks about "shocks of emotion", but, perhaps fortunately for your good selves, she didn't seem into having a protracted natter about G. I. Gurdjieff (classic initials, what?)
Besides, it wouldn't entirely have suited the circumstances of our discourse. On a marginally sunny day, it seemed absurd to be cooped up inside some dusty office at EMI, particularly when outside their West One premises there is a little park. Now you might think that in talking to Kate Busdh in central London one runs the risk of attracting inquisitive stares from God knows how many passersby--especially when, during a photo-session on the same piece of greenery last year, Cliff Richard was besieged by scores of drooling school-kids.
But rate-payers (no quips about EMI's ability to retain this status, thank you very much) are allocated a key to the gardens, so Kate and I spent a chatty couple of hours locked within these leavy confines, and I was too much a gentleman to throw away the key.
Since the interview was for promotional purposes, it was hardly surprising that she was happiest talking about the new songs. And because these are the latest instalment of her life, questions were answered conscientiously and, of course, enthusiastically. With promotion being an extension of her work and hence her life, etc., it was illuminating to see how she handled interruptions to it. These came first from a couple of scruffy pubescents who athletically scaled the spiky railings to see if she really was who they thought she was, and then from a slightly lunched-looking gardener who reckoned it was us that had done the climbing.
Kate dealt with both in untypically peremptory fashion, even though in retrospect the distractions added a little light to the generally serious, if nonetheless enjoyable, shade of the proceedings.
Light and dark, good and bad. Both types of emotions flow out of Kate Bush and into her songs. Visually, it's all there on the sleeve of Never For Ever. Nick Price's Hieronymus Bosch-style cover shows a confused mass of bats and swans. The latter symbolise good, and on their backs ride the bad--all of them billowing out of Kate's dress, which is handsomely decorated with the clouds of her imagination.
The good emotions have produced songs like All We Ever Look For and Blow Away-- the one about liveing for music and being naively optimistic about death. The idea is that when she (or the musician she is purportedly singing about) dies, he will go and join all the other musicians in the sky. Hence, references to Keith Moon, Sid, Buddy Holly and even Minnie Riperton, who died around the time the song was being conceived.
It was based on an article she read in the Observer about people who had temporarily "died" through cardiac arrests. Apparently several members of the public interviewed about this experience reckoned they felt their spirits leave their bodies and go through a door, where they were re-acquainted with dead friends and relatives. When their hearts were resuscitated, it was almost with reluctance that they stepped back out of the room and returned to their bodies.
"So there's comfort for the guy in my band," Kate explains, "as when he dies, he'll go 'Hi, Jimi!' It's very tongue-in-cheek, but it's a great thought that if a musician dies, his soul will join all the other musicians' and a poet will join all the Dylan Thomases and all that."
Hmmmm. The darker side of her emotions shows the lady as down-to-earth as her surname befits. In fact, it's more than realistic: it's downright sinister. Hence The Wedding List and its obsession with revenge.
What happens here is that at the point two people are about to be married, the bridegroom gets shot. Who by is irrelevant, but the bride's need for vengeance is so powerful that all she thinks about is getting even with the villain. Since his death is the best wedding gift she could have, he goes right to the top of the (wedding) list.
"Revenge is a terrible power, and the idea is to show that it's so strong that even at such a tragic time it's all she can think about. I find the whole aggression of human beings fascinating--how we are suddenly whipped up to such an extent that we can't see anything except that. Did you see the film Deathwish, and the way the audience reacted evey time a mugger got shot? Terrible--though I cheered, myself."
Another film Kate saw recently was the highly publicised Elephant Man, which, though directed by loony humourist Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, and History of the World Part I), is ultimately a tragic movie. [Both Nicholls and Kate were mistaken on this point. The film was directed by David Lynch (Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet). Mel Brooks merely produced Elephant Man, mainly because he was able to cast his wife, Anne Bancroft,in a leading role. Given Kate' increasing involvement in the craft and business of film direction since the time of this interview, however, it's unlikely that she still retains this misconception.] Ever ready to seek out the introspective angle, she philosophises as follows:
"I thought, 'How weird for a comedian to do such a serious film,' but if you think of the syndrome of the comedian who is hilarious onstage but really manic-depressive at home, it figures."
Of the few artists in her field whom she has met [Few?], she cites Peter Gabriel as one who is able to separate his public and private personas.
"Offstage he's very normal, and that's the kind of thing I believe in." Kate helped out with the backing vocals on his excellent recent album, and describes the experience of walking into someone else's work as "lovely--especially after the pressure of going out under your own name.
"I was thrilled to do it, and it's not often that I meet people in the same position that I can relate to. It' not like relating to people at EMI, as they're on a completely different side of the fence".
Because the wonderful Never for Ever is forty-three on 8th September, I am wrapping up my Kate Bush feature with a few great interviews. I hope that people explore the album and spend some time with it. The first time Bush had real input into the production, you can hear develop musically and lyrically (and vocally) from Lionheart and The Kick Inside (1978). From the weird and wonderful to the political, right through to impassioned and heart-stopping, Never for Ever is…
A wonderful thing to behold.