FEATURE:
“Do You Want to Hear About the Deal That I'm Making?”
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in March 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix
Kate Bush, David Gilmour and The First Steps into the Studio
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WHEN we think about the start of Kate Bush’s career….
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1977
David Gilmour’s name comes up frequently. Many claim that he discovered Kate Bush and was responsible for her being noticed. I have written features where I have looked at Bush’s musical influences and what sort of sounds and texts were in her house when she was growing up. One could hardly say that the Bush household was conventional in terms of the type of music played and some of the earliest sounds a young Catherine/Cathy Bush would have absorbed. How she went from a girl who would have heard a lot of Celtic ands Irish music (from her mother’s side), traditional English folk and the poetry of her brother, Paddy, to getting to the attention of Pink Floyd’s Davide Gilmour is quite a story! I read an article from Far Out Magazine from earlier in the month, where they talk about Gilmour’s ‘discovery’ of Kate Bush:
“There are few bands as unique as the prog-rock legends Pink Floyd but, when the band’s guitarist came across the strange and beguiling voice of a teenager by the name of Kate Bush, he dropped what he was doing and made it his missions to sign her. It just so happens, what he was doing was creating one of Floyd’s undying albums in 1975’s Wish You Were Here. With his guidance, Kate Bush was able to become an icon of British music and challenge Pink Floyd for their unique crown.
Kate Bush was only 16 when her demo was passed on to Gilmour. While there would certainly have been some trepidation from any teen had they known Gilmour—at this time (and quite possibly still) one of the most well-regarded musicians on earth— was listening to their demo tape but it turns out that Bush was relatively unaware of who Gilmour was exactly, outside of a family friend.
IN THIS PHOTO: Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour at Earls Court, London on 19th May, 1973/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky
“I was intrigued by this strange voice,” Gilmour said in a new interview for the BBC. Like any producer of the time was captivated and had to learn more. After receiving the tape from Ricky Hopper, he travelled to see the young singer: “I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent. And she played me, gosh, it must have been 40 or 50 songs on tape. And I thought: ‘I should try and do something.’”
“He was really responsible for me getting my recording contract with EMI in the first place,” said Bush. With so many songs already in her canon, at such a young age, Bush was a hot prospect. It was clear that her songwriting was far beyond her years and so Gilmour was keen to get things moving right away. He organised for three of the demos to be recorded in full and even recruited Andrew Powell and Beatles collaborator Geoff Emerick to help out on the sessions.
“I think we had the [EMI] record-company people down at Abbey Road in No. 3,” Gilmour adds. “And I said to them, ‘Do you want to hear something I’ve got?’ They said sure, so we found another room and I played them ‘The Man with a Child in his Eyes.’ And they said, ‘Yep, thank you — we’ll have it.’ [Laughs.]
“It’s absolutely beautiful, isn’t it? That’s her singing at the age of 16, and having written those extraordinary lyrics”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorehouse/Evening Standard/Getty Images
The whole myth around Gilmour ‘discovering’ Bush is not quite fair to Bush’s innate talent. I am sure she would have found her way to a record company soon enough, given that she was a friend of musicians and was very much in that circle, and she would have had a demo tape passed to an A&R man before long. It is clear that Gilmour’s position and fame has really added this sense of weight to an otherwise unremarkable discovery. As Graeme Thomson writes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, it was a friend of Kate Bush’s brother Jay, Ricky Hopper (mentioned above), who was probably the most important link when it came to connecting Bush and Gilmour. Indeed, Gilmour heard talent and knew that Bush was very special, but the passionate commitment and support from Hopper – who was a record plugger – doesn’t get talked about that much! There is this life and chapter prior to David Gilmour and Bush stepping into the studio the first time that is not often written about. Hopper visited the family house to hear Bush play and there were thirty or so tapes with over a thousand songs on them that Bush had worked on. We look at her now and think her output is quite unpredictable and gradual but, look back to when Bush was thirteen/fourteen and the material she had amassed.
Using some basic recording equipment from her father and performing these songs on piano, the songs were very bare and lo-fi, so it would have been natural if some record labels passed her by. There was a big leap in terms of production and sound on her debut album, The Kick Inside, but the material she had written and recorded by 1973 was still very different to anything out there! Even though Hopper was determined and knew a star when he heard one, because the material was quite naked and it was fairly unusual, record companies passed her by. Tracks like Something Like a Song, Cussi Cussi, and Freighted Eyes were very much her own work. As Bush would have digested a lot of poetry from her home, and there would have been a lot of literature and art in the air, it is no surprise that her songs had an unconventional twist and were a lot more immersive and distinctive than average love songs and anything one would expect from a teenage artist! Even if some record label people would have felt exhausted having to wade through demo tapes or did not really hear the spark that they needed to secure Kate Bush a deal, David Gilmour’s perceptions and intuition was on the money. It was Hopper’s dogged resilience that created that bridge between Bush and Gilmour. The latter knew that the recordings were brilliant but not that commercial.
Bush would have been fifteen by the time Gilmour fully came into the frame, and he was scouting other artists at the time – it isn’t the case that Gilmour specifically went after Bush or she was the only musician on his radar. By 1973, Pink Floyd were massive, and Gilmour was keen to give something back as it were. That lack of instant commercial recognition with Bush was a barrier, even if Gilmour knew that record company bosses wouldn’t necessarily hear a good thing if it slapped them in the face! It was not like a young Kate Bush was from out of space and putting out the weirdest stuff; more that they were looking for something more traditional and chart-bound from their artists – there were not that many female artists like Kate Bush at the time, so it was hard to know how to sell her. I will take things up to 1975 but, in 1973, Bush was afforded a rare showcase. Musicians Pat Martin and Pete Perrier, along with David Gilmour, assembled at Gilmour’s home studio with a view of getting a proper demo tape down. One of the most interesting phases of Bush’s career is those earliest recordings and days; when she was still very nervous and in a milieu that was strange. The gulf between recording alone at home and having to perform in front of other musicians would have been quite noticeable – she was not used to working alongside other musicians, so there was a period of adjusting and becoming settled in this new environment.
One can only imagine what it would have been like for seasoned musicians to meet Kate Bush and hear her songs! She would have looked and spoken very differently to artists they were used to working with, and her music was worlds apart! A few songs were recorded during that time and, whilst Army Dreamer’s B-side, Passing Through Air, is the only one to have survived, a few other tracks were laid down. The performances would have been promising if not essential (as the musicians had not worked with Bush before) and it was a case of learning the songs as they went along. Bush’s voice then would have been less remarkable, assured and unique as we hear on The Kick Inside; more in common with many female peers – very beautiful and striking, but not quite the peerless instrument we know it to be. For Bush, having a few songs on a tape would have been a dream! From 1972 and 1974, other recordings would have been made by Bush, but after that 1973 session, there was a bit of a gap before the next chapter in the Bush-Gilmour story. Looking back, and that first session with other musicians would have been a revelation. Before, working at home, there was this old equipment and a family piano, and it would have been a solitary and quite basic experience. The fact her songs were then fleshed out by musicians and she got to hear them in a very different way grabbed her imagination - and ignited a love of the studio and the recording process.
Before the summer of 1975, there was contact between Bush and Gilmour but – as I have been reading from Graeme Thomson’s biography of Kate Bush – there was not a lot of development. Bush was not out there playing her songs live, and Gilmour had his hands full with Pink Floyd and various commitments. Gilmour played the earlier-recorded songs from Kate Bush to producer Joe Boyd and, in a rare move of ultraism from anyone in music, Gilmour offered to pay for Bush to record professionally at AIR Studios in London. I may have covered this briefly in other features, but when do you hear of musicians, especially back in the 1970s, being so blown away by an artist that they pay to get them into a studio?! With plenty of songs to choose from, Gilmour selected six and contacted Andrew Powell (who produced The Kick Inside). The two were friends and Powell, an experienced producer who had worked with the likes of Cockney Rebel, was brought in to produce alongside him. The period of June-July 1975 was a busy and pivotal one for Kate Bush. In June, she was called into AIR Studios, and Bush was just approaching seventeen. She was clearly very nervous but, as this was her dream, the excitement was also palpable! Powell helped steady Bush’s nerves, and he assembled some great session players for the songs. Two of the tracks that were captured at AIR Studios made their way onto The Kick Inside – Berlin (later retitled The Saxophone Song), and The Man with the Child in His Eyes.
Listening to those recordings would have been eye-opening for Bush, considering what she heard on her demo tapes a couple of years earlier! Having musicians like Alan Parker and Alan Skidmore adding their talents to the songs – combined with the better sound of a professional studio – elevated these promising tracks to something otherworldly. That said, some of the musicians who played with Bush did not recall the experience years later, yet Geoff Emerick (who worked with The Beatles among others) knew that Bush was a revelation and so different to any other artist he had observed. The Man with the Child in His Eyes was part of a 1973 demo collection, but the version that was recorded at AIR Studios transformed the song – Bush was backed by an orchestra, and that gave it shimmer and swell! Bush worked away at the song and Andrew Powell, already in love with the song, drafted the London Symphony Orchestra to add their part. Geoff Emerick cited The Man with the Child in His Eyes as one of his favourite-ever recordings, and it remains one of her most-adored songs. That AIR session was responsible for Bush being signed by EMI in July 1976 (there was a delay after much negotiations; they give her an advance of £3,000 to develop and widen her talent). Bob Mercer was interviewed by The Independent in 2010, and we learn more about how Bush and EMI’s Mercer first came together:
“In July 1975 Mercer dropped in at Abbey Road to check on the Pink Floyd sessions for what would become the Wish You Were Here album. The Floyd guitarist David Gilmour played him the three-song demo tape he had made with Bush at AIR Studios. Mercer was particularly taken with "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" and "The Saxophone Song", which would both be included on The Kick Inside, the singer's 1978 debut album.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing at the Rose of Lee in Lewisham on her first tour (albeit, quite a modest one) in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Vic King
Mercer put the then 17-year-old singer under contract, but also suggested she take time to develop further artistically. "On meeting her, I realised how young she was mentally. We gave her some money to grow up with," he said. "EMI was like another family to her. She was the company's daughter for a few years".
Today, artists sign a record deal and it is not long before they are releasing music on that label, but things were more complicated for Bush. It wasn’t until July 1976 when the seal was set; Bush was eighteen at the end of July, and there would have been a sense that she needed to get an education and focus on that before thinking about music as a profession. Her family were very supportive but they knew that, if things did not work out, then she would need that to fall back on – if those are the right words?! Bush left school in 1976, and she knew that if she stayed any longer and pursued further education then it would take her further away from music. She would have had career advisors and teachers guiding her in various directions and, not committed to that course and knowing that music was her passion, she made a very big move. From that 1976 confirmation, it was only a short time before she was in AIR Studios to record the rest of The Kick Inside. To prepare for the recording, she embarked on playing with the KT Bush Band around various pubs from April 1977.
Finally, in July and August 1977, the rest of the songs were recorded at AIR Studios in London, helmed by producer Andrew Powell. Bush was keen to keep the line-up of the KT Bush Band for the recordings, but EMI insisted that she use properly experienced session musicians. Powell engaged Ian Bairnson, Duncan Mackay and Stuart Elliott among others - many of whom he had worked with before. I am really interested in the connection between David Gilmour and Kate Bush, and how these two very different people found one another! One cannot forget Bush’s family and Ricky Hopper, but I do love this part of Kate Bush’s career where she went from the girl recording at her family home to her music reaching David Gilmour and, in a couple of years, she was playing her songs at one of London’s best studios. It is credit to EMI that they did not rush her into recording a debut album – given the gaps between albums since her debut, the label were very patient and supportive! -, and they wanted her to spend a bit of time growing and not being thrown straight into the mix. Given the whirlwind that proceeded in 1978 and 1979, it is good that Bush had a little time to put together songs for The Kick Inside. It amazes me to think that these unusual and under-developed home recordings took the course they did and, not long after Bush recorded her first songs at AIR Studios she would go on to become one of the most popular and intriguing…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980
MUSICIANS we have ever seen.