FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Babooshka at the Dr. Hook T.V. studio in 1980
1980: Sounds (Phil Sutcliffe)
___________
EVEN though…
I have not done this run of Kate Bush features for a while, there is an interview I came across that I want to include. I have sourced a Phil Sutcliffe interview before, but this one is earlier. In 1980, he profiled her for Sounds magazine. Published in September of that year, it came out a week before she released her third studio album, Never for Ever. One reason why this interview is illuminating is that Never for Ever was an album that shifted Kate Bush. Coproducing with Jon Kelly, sonically and production-wise, it was a move away from her first two albums (1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart). There was perception from the press that Bush was somewhat soppy, lightweight and weird. After the successful The Tour of Life in 1979, there could be no doubt that here was an artist blossoming, maturing and proving her full potential. 1980’s Never for Ever is Kate Bush having much more artistic and production control. The album’s lyrics and themes are broader than ever. Her sound assortment and confidence are heightened. In spite of the interview with Sounds looks back at songs from The Kick Inside, there is this excitement around the new album, Never for Ever, and just how far Kate Bush can go. It is odd to think there was ever a time when there was doubts or a sense that she might be a short-term artist. I have selected various portions of Phil Sutcluffe’s interview with 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.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in August 1980
"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.' "
A FEW DAYS before the interview I'd watched the Peter Finch film of Oscar Wilde's life on TV. In court a poem by Oscar's young lover Bosey is read out which refers to 'the love that dares not speak its name'. Kate Bush dares, dares speak the name of any love -- even when she doesn't know it ('Infant Kiss' is about paedophilia all right, but she claimed she'd never heard the word before we mentioned it to her).
The technical terms and harsh 'morals' don't enter into it, sensual love is supreme, the juice flows, the treasures of the horn of plenty are boundless . . . do you remember the 'Wow' video, when at the fine 'He's too busy hitting the vaseline', she cocked her bum out and slapped it saucily to tell interested, slow-witted parties like me that it was nothing to do with the clapped-out star taking his make-up off after all.
Dangerous territories? "That's why I think they're so fascinating. So many love songs stay in such a light, unreal area. If I write one it has to be focused on an energy I can really feel. Mostly it can't be just 'a man and a woman'."
'Kashka From Baghdad' is about a happy homosexual couple who overcome prying eyes and vicious tongues by keeping themselves to themselves and enjoying it: 'At night they're seen / Laughing, loving/ They know the way/ To be happy'.
I asked her why she'd taken the objective role of the outsider looking in rather becoming the voice of the central character as she often does. No cop-out she said: "It would have been very difficult to make people understand I was singing as a man in that scene. That's a problem sometimes. A lot of people don't realise I'm a little boy in 'Peter Pan' and a male who a female is trying to poison in 'Coffee Homeground'."
The voice of 'The Kick Inside' comes from a girl who is pregnant by her brother and is about to kill herself to save her family from the scandal of exposure. Kate curved in towards the topic via some reflections on the delicate balance of sexuality in every relationship:
"Men, friends, get very close to each other. At what point does it become sexual? Love can be very strong and not sexual.
"It's the same with my brothers. I see them as men and I see them as attractive, but there is no sexual content in the relationship. I suppose there's never been much physical contact . . . well, most relationships are platonic.
"The story of 'The Kick Inside' was taken from a folk song. It is a pure love, it starts so innocently ('You and me on the bobbing knee') There are no demands between them except the most basic ones. I mean, I find I can trust my brothers more than anyone else because they know me so well. We were brought up in the same way, in the same house, with the same games and just a few years between us. It's as if we were reflections of each other."
In 'Infant Kiss' a woman is tucking a child in for the night when something happens which sets her whole life sliding away: 'What is this? an infant kiss/ That sends my body tingling/ I've never fallen for/ A little boy before/ No control/ ...All my barriers are going/ It's starting to show/ Let go, let go/ ...There's a man behind those eyes/ I catch him when I'm bending/ Ooh, how he frightens me'.
BREATHING' is Kate Bush's triumph. Its sensuality so intense it becomes sense, a higher meaning than moral or political analysis. It's not perfect. Very few will be convinced that she's got the whole nuclear power/weapons situation sussed because she can lob out a line like 'Chips of plutonium are twinkling in every lung'.
But what she's got vibrating in every cell of her body is the positive, her feeling for life force, her awareness and concentration on the elemental process of breathing as pure as a new-born baby or a wrinkled yogi, her entranced absorption in it until the mundane chemistry, oxygen in carbon dioxide out, becomes the ultimate love making love.
"When we were doing the track in the studio someone from EMI came down and caught the 'in-out, in-out' bit and said 'You're not seriously thinking of releasing this are you?' He really thought it was all pornographic! I suppose it's that Freudian thing. But 'Breathing in-out', it's like the tide, the elements are so sensual more than anything humans' can do -- like snow, it doesn't just change the look of everything, the acoustic is completely different too. Just touch textures, it's so sensual and often it comes back to sex.
"The misinterpretation I was worried about was that people would think I was exploiting the nuclear issue being in the news. I certainly had no intention of exploiting tragedy -- though I do wonder how much good someone like me can do. People have said to me 'Send a copy to the Ayatollah' or whoever . . . music can get through but those leaders are on such a strange level . . . I don't know "
Dabbling, naive, way adrift of reality in moments like that, no doubt. But if destructive cynicism is your reaction it's a nosedive on to concrete. Under the house-of-cards argument the positive is pulsing.
"It was uncanny making the video because it was so apt. I was inside three transparent plastic inflatables to represent the womb. Zipped up tight and they were pumping oxygen in to me. Then it would steam up and they had to open it out so the air blasted into me and it felt so good. That really helped me -- like when I was young there was a stage when I would lie in bed and suddenly think 'My God, I'm breathing', and become very aware of it . . .
"That song was terribly important to me. more than anything else. From the writing, arranging, production viewpoints, everything, that's my little symphony. Before I put the lead vocal on the backing track alone made me want to cry it was so perfect.
"From all the hard talking we had with the musicians they suddenly stopped thinking about the technical side and played from their hearts, so much love in it. Music is . . . you have to break your back before you even start to speak the emotion”.
I think 1980 was a very important year in Kate Bush’s career. Her third album was very different from anything she released to that point. I love the Sounds profile and interview. We get a lot of honesty from Bush. She is always a compelling and really interesting interviewee. Here, she talks about her past songs and looks ahead. The next five years of her career would see her music change even more. Never for Ever is an album that is still underrated, as it contains some of Bush’s best work. In 1980, she was promoting the album quite a bit and doing T.V. interviews and performances. Not that there was ever a loss of respect, affection and confidence in Bush (not from the public at least), but her third studio album made people fall in love with her…
ALL over again.