FEATURE:
The Kate Bush Interview Archive
1989: Janice Long (Greater London Radio)
___________
I might wind down…
this Interview Archive series, but I am indebted to resources like this that store interviews Bush has conducted through the years. Whilst the majority are print interviews, there are some radio chats that have been transcribed that are fascinating. I have been writing a bit about her 1989 album, The Sensual World, a bit lately. Bush did a lot of promotion for The Sensual World, including some radio conversations. On the twelfth and thirteenth October, 1989, Janice Long broadcast her two-part interview with Kate Bush during her morning shows on Greater London Radio. The interview took place at Bush own studio in Welling. In is a really interesting and relaxed interview, we get some nice exchanges between the two. I have selected various parts of the interview that caught my eye:
“Why is there such long gaps <sic> between albums being released?
"I think the problem is, too, that there seems to be a longer gap between each album progressively--which is a bit frightening for me, too. All I can say is that after each album is finished and the promotion is done, I can't just start an album straight away, because otherwise it's just a continuation of that last album. And the whole thing about writing an album is that you want to find something new to say, and at the same time, try to find out who you are at that point in time. You know, what you want to do. What direction you want to move in. So it's very much a self-exploratory process as well."
Now, the thing is, people wait with bated breath for the next Kate Bush album, and they get very excited about it. How do you feel about it? How do you feel about that--knowing that people are still excited about you?
"I think that's quite hard for me to take in, really. I just feel so lucky that I can spend as much time as I need to to make an album, and that people are actually still waiting to hear what I do. It's very exciting for me, and I think sometimes it feels like a big responsibility. It is really important that I put as much as I can into each album, so that it is, hopefully, worth waiting for. It's not something I'm terribly aware of. It's almost too much for me to think about, really--that there are people who want to hear it after such a long time."
So what happens? Do EMI breathe down your neck and say, 'Come on, Kate, the punters are waiting!' Or do you wind down after one album and then just get into it gradually yourself?
"Well, I think the record company know me well enough by now to know that really they just have to leave me to it. I'd really like to be able to make an album quicker. I dream of making an album in eight weeks, but if I did, it would be something that I wouldn't be happy with. Unfortunately, it's just a very slow process for me, and I think they realize this. And they know there's not really much they can do about it, because I couldn't possibly give them an album until it was written and finished."
What sort of influences do you have when you're making an album? Particularly other music?
"My normal way of working is not to listen to other music when I'm making albums. I tend to listen to music after I've finished. A good example of that is after I finished the Hounds of Love album. My brother Paddy played me a tape of The Trio Bulgarka, and I'd never heard anything like it. <This is a slight distortion of the facts. Paddy had in fact been an enthusiast of Bulgarian vocal folkmusic since the late 1960s, when he discovered the genre through an album by the Pennywhistlers. Since Kate was heavily influenced by her brothers' musical tastes at that period, it is unlikely that she didn't get at least some preliminary exposure to Bulgarian music at an early age--IED> I was devastated, like everyone is when they hear it. And by hearing it then, it gave me a lot of time to listen to them and gradually think that maybe we could work together. Bearing them in mind, I actually wrote a track, and then it eventually evolved into the process of working together. But it was probably three years before I actually got around to doing something about it. It just shows you how slow the whole evolving process is."
You don't follow trends at all, do you? <For those thinking that the Bulgarian music influence was a trendy one, remember that Kate's involvement with the Trio Bulgarka actually pre-dated the first re-release of Marcel Cellier's recording of Le Mystere on 4AD by several months. Neither she nor Paddy could have had any idea that Bulgarian vocal music would become chic in the West.>
"I think again, Janice, that it's just as well I don't, because if I did, by the time the album was out it would be three years out of date! I don't stand much chance of being hip--unless it comes right round again, that is."
To many, you're something of an enigma.
"I don't know about enigmas or anything. I just take a long time to make an album."
Do you always write in the studio?
"Yes, I do now. I play around with ideas at home, but most of the writing goes on in here, and that's important, too. Because years ago I'd make demos, and there would be things that I wanted to keep, but of course you can't, because it's a demo. It's the eternal problem. By having your own studio, you can get around that. You can actually make the demos the master, and keep all those little bits that are interesting, but then make the rest sound much better. I work very closely with Del (Palmer), who engineers for me. So most of the time it's just the two of us in there. He works a lot on the rhythms and things, so at least I'm not totally alone in there. Once the song feels good enough to work on, then you bring musicians in and just sort of layer upon layer. You sort of create the picture, as it were, and just build up the sounds that seem to work for what the song is saying. It feels as though songs have personalities. You can try something on a song and it will just reject it. It doesn't want it. And yet you can tray that on another song and it will work so perfectly. They're all so individual."
What about the tense atmosphere when the album is in its final preparation stage? Do tempers begin to flare?
"Yes. I think healthy argument is a very important part of the process, really. Creative or otherwise. Because it can be very constructive. The problem is actually having a strong enough direction, knowing what you want to do."
How important is it to you that te person listening to your record understands what's going through your mind? Or do you mind if they have their own interpretations?
"I think it's wonderful if they have their own interpretations. I think that's really important, although it matters to me that the lyrics are saying something, and I spend a lot of time on lyrics. They're very difficult. I think a lot of the power of lyrics is the sounds. The whole thing is just a combination of sounds and textures, and definitely different words have a different feeling that go with them. The way consonants mark things. It's a very percussive instrument, in a way, words. And I think that's what's very important, that they feel and sound right."
I read somewhere before that you were into Irish music. Is it traditional stuff, or what?
"Yes, it is that. I just love Irish music. It's so emotional, and passionate. It's very, very happy, and it can be very, very sad. It just does something to me. I guess it's because it's in my blood, as well. My mother's Irish, and as soon as I hear the pipes, you know, I feel my blood surging through my veins. And I think the Bulgarian music has...it moves you. The sense of melody and everything. It feels like very old music, stuff we're not in touch with any more. Probably when music was music, and men were men (laughing), and the women were very lonely!"
About "Deeper Understanding": On the way here, the driver kept leaping because he though his VodaPhone was going.
"It's very interesting that you should say that because so many people have. If they'd have that track on, people would be talking away and then they hear the computer sound, they're completely distracted. And I think it reinforces in a way what the whole song is about, which is rather nice. It's almost like people respond more to a machine talking to them than to a human. It's like we're all keyed into mechanical information".
Following on from the hugely successful and acclaimed Hounds of Love in 1985, one could feel and sense a change in Kate Bush’s music and outlook. Entering her thirties (she turned thirty on 30th July, 1988), the 1989 album seems more personal, reflective and futured-looking. Although there is great sensuousness and beauty throughout The Sensual World, I get the sense of Bush thinking more about a future where she is more settled and has different priorities. Maybe not thinking only of work and music, there is this incredible depth and potency that enriches the songs; weaving through the notes like a tapestry. Because of this, I am really interested in the interviews Bush documented to promote the album. Her chat with the much-missed Janice Long (who died on Christmas Day last year) is wonderful! It seems playful but professional. There is a warmth, yet Bush is asked questions that provoke something quite revealing and serious at times. It is another wonderful interview with…
THE inspiring Kate Bush.