INTERVIEW:
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985
Kate Bush and Me: Mark Binmore
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I was keen to resume…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Binmore
this Kate Bush interview series, as there is more love and focus on her than there has ever been. I follow a lot of people on social media who are massive Kate Bush fans. Someone who has loved and been following her music a lot longer than me is author Mark Binmore. Check out his Twitter and official website. Mark speaks to me about when he first experienced Kate Bush music, what he feels regarding her ‘resurgence’ following Stranger Things’ use of her Hounds of Love classic, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), which album of hers he counts as his favourite, his thoughts about Courtney Love Cobain calling out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame regarding the lack of female inductees and their tin ears when it comes to Kate Bush being omitted, and whether he feels Bush will release new music soon. It has been fascinating hearing the insights and memories from an author and superfan who has been a diehard, loyal and passionate fan of Kate Bush’s since the beginning. I have learned new facts and perspectives after chatting with…
THE superb Mark Binmore.
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Hi Mark. To start, tell me when Kate Bush first came into your life. Can you recall the moment or song that opened your eyes to her music?
I was there at the beginning. Seven years old, clutching a £1 record token, holding a 7” Wuthering Heights in John Menzies. The song was unlike anything I had heard. I grew up in a house filled with music - ABBA, ELO, Queen, Dusty Springfield. There was always music. But it wasn’t just the music that I loved but the actual vinyl covers, which to this day I still treasure and sometimes dig out to look at the pictures and read the sleeve lyrics and credits. I could look at them for hours. Wuthering Heights just captured me as a kid - the words, the shrieking high-pitched vocal and that Kick Inside sleeve; the eye looking at you. It was looking at me.
To me, Bush is almost a theatre direction or author in the way she writes and comes up with song. Never conventional. As an author, how to do you view the way she finds inspiration and how deep her lyrics go?
My first editor gave me sound advice when I started. The audience needs to be held by the end of the first chapter, sometimes even by the first or second paragraph. If it doesn’t grip them, they will leave. But also, let the reader find their own journey. I find inspiration by watching people, sitting still, observing. In my novel, Beautiful Deconstruction, there was a whole section of life unravelling in a French village. All of what I wrote was true because I sat watching it happen before me. But what was interesting was the feedback from people who believed what I was writing about was actually about something else. Kate sometimes give a brief insight into her songs, but usually it’s up to the listener to interpret what is being expressed.
Take Big Stripey Lie from The Red Shoes. A great, quirky cookie song. Why is love so difficult? It is sacred, idealistic, but people don't acknowledge that. Instead they subscribe to superficial aspects of relationships, cheating, deception, coming up behind: big stripey lies. Mrs. Bartolozzi is a beautiful one to examine. On first listen, you believe it’s about a woman doing the domestic chores of the house but, watching the washing machine, she begins to daydream about a day on the beach and her thoughts all entwined like the jumbled tumbling blouse and trousers. But listen to the song again. Time telescopes when you’re encased in grief. After a grievous loss, days blur into days, moments prolong into agonizing hours, and the only way to endure the pain is to suspend time, to simply exist moment to moment and wait for the pain to ease. Did Mrs. B lose her husband? This song is pure BBC2 drama right there.
“I like to imagine Kate sat at home wondering what was going on!”
Bush experienced new resurgence last year because of Stranger Things and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). What was your reaction when everything was unfolding through 2022?
Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. I believe sometimes we would be better off valuing progress and modernity over the rose-tinted view that old stuff is somehow better. But, like all my thoughts and rules, they are made to be broken. It felt strange hearing young people say, “Oh I love this, who is Kate Bush?” and having her entire catalogue re-examined by new blood. For some reason, I felt protective. Kate was my era. Find your own path. Nonsense of course. I like to imagine Kate sat at home wondering what was going on! The last few years have been a kind of pause and re-set. At the start of lockdown, I was in France and couldn’t leave the country, so I wrote and wrote, four books in total. There was nothing else to do. Then 2022 arrived and the world started to open again, but it also felt reflective, a nostalgic feeling, the looking back. Running Up That Hill in 1985. I was 14, that difficult age, and Kate was seen then by many as that reclusive odd person who had disappeared (remember those rumours, 18 stone and living in France). And yet in 2022 Kate made front page news, loved by the nation, a proper national treasure. No wonder she felt bemused.
My favourite album of hers is The Kick Inside. Which one of her studio albums would you class as the absolute finest?
I remember hearing The Dreaming for the first time. I was 11. The beating drums of Sat In Your Lap were known, but what else I discovered was magical. The helicopter backdrop to Pull Out The Pin, the answer phone messages in All The Love (such an underrated gem), and the album ending with a baying donkey. This was 1982. It was the season of Bucks Fizz, Dollar, and Duran Duran, and yet here was Kate Bush singing cockney. At the time, it was a sinister album but looking back, '81 and '82 were dark times, so I guess the backdrop of an angry country played into the conscience of the album. But it is a disc to play with headphones on so you can hear the gentle sounds beyond the vocal. Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave (the conceptual second side of Hounds of Love) played into that: the morse code, seagulls, astronauts, a submarine. Who doesn’t do a jig when Jig of Life is played? But The Dreaming. I can still play this album 40 years on and get thrilled by it. I also believe music improves with age. The Sensual World album I found stale when it was first released. A let-down from the brilliant Hounds of Love. But then you should never expect a big sister to a previous release. The Sensual World has grown fonder in my heart since.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
There has been a lot of recent controversy around the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the lack of female inductees. Courtney Love Cobain took to Twitter to voice her disgust – including the ignorance when it comes to Kate Bush’s value and legacy. Why do you feel the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has ignored Bush until now?
For some awards, they insist you have to be there, to adhere to their terms and conditions. Wasn’t that why she turned down a BRTTs achievement award, because it came with a load of terms and conditions…you will perform, you will do these interviews? Is Kate bothered that she has been ignored. I don’t she think she is at all. Nice to be nominated; matters not if you win. But I am reminded of a Pet Shop Boys lyric: “You're another major artist on a higher plane/Do you think they'll put you in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?/Tell me baby how you generate longevity/Tell me baby how you really hate publicity/How can you expect to be taken seriously?”.
For anyone new to Kate Bush’s music who might only be familiar with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Hounds of Love, where would you say they should start/go next?
The Whole Story is a simple 12-song starter pack. It gives a brief introduction to her music. Even though her all-important debut number-one single is not here, but substituted for an eighties new vocal mix (should have stayed a B-side in my opinion). But it does omit some great songs like The Big Sky. Probably the closest to a traditional Pop song that Kate has ever done. And it’s such a hand-clapping, happy track. Then start at the beginning. Hunt out The Kick Inside with its gorgeous English storyboard and feel what it must have been like for a young Kate to commit lyrics to music. The journey had begun…
“But you know now she has the freedom to create and produce what she likes”
I get the feeling we will get some new music from Bush this year. Based on what we heard on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, where do you think her music might head next?
I love it when the rumour mill whirls into action. I remember when, in 1987, folk said ‘the album is ready’, then we waited two more years. But I think the time is right now. I would love Kate to return to a standard ‘I can still do it’ ten, three-and-a-half-minute Pop songs. But you know now she has the freedom to create and produce what she likes. The conceptual visual production is where she suits best; where she can let her imagination and time go. The Secrets of the Fish People would make a great album title. I think she has recently had a slight moment of looking back. But it’s always what happen next that counts. Of course, a greater expanded ‘hits’ album makes marketing sense, but then Kate has never followed the rulebook. She tore that up in 1978.
She turns sixty-five in July. She is without doubt one of the most important artists ever. What does she personally mean to you?
Someone who has been there throughout my life. As a child, a teenager, a young adult, a home-maker, and now in my fifties. I play a song and I am instantly back where I first heard it. Doing Wow dance routines in the school playground, hunting out the Japanese 12” sleeves in HMV back in '85, watching the Experiment IV video for the first time at the video party in '86, carrying a huge The Sensual World cardboard cut-out in '89. That’s the great thing about music: it never leaves you. But for me, when I saw her live in 2014 it finally felt I had come full circle. I remember being at the KBC Convention in 1990 and a tour was hinted at but never happened. And here years later, Kate tiptoed on to the stage barefoot to a standing ovation. A ten-minute ovation, and she had not sang one note. There was a smile (was it a smirk? I like to think so), then the hands were raised. “Sssh please”. The production began. And at the end, Kate returned to what she was at the beginning: a simple vocal and piano, Among Angels. Perfect.
To finish, you can select any Kate Bush song (one available on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple) and I will play it here. What shall we go with?
Night of the Swallow from The Dreaming. A sweeping Irish tune. “Let me, let me go…”.