FEATURE:
Brother Stands for Comfort
ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush
John Carder Bush at Eighty: His Influence on Kate Bush’s Career
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ALL of us are inspired and guided…
by our relationship with siblings. Whether it is an approach to life, a taste in music or something else, we take a lot from a brother or sister. This is true of so many musicians. When it comes to Kate Bush, her older brothers Paddy and Jay (John Carder Bush) opened her eyes to a whole new world of music. Beyond contemporary bands of the 1970s like Pink Floyd and artists such as David Bowie and Elton John, Bush’s brothers were playing English Folk and more esoteric sounds. Paddy Bush, who played on most of her studio albums, constantly brought weird and wonderful sounds to his sister’s attention. When it comes to John Carder Bush, there was a range of influences. A talented poet, his promise and imaginative writing clearly had an impact on the young Kate (Catherine/Cathy) Bush. Rather than writing in a conventional/traditional way, I feel a lot of her lyrical approach was influenced by her eldest brother and his poetry. A big reason why she wrote poetry herself, John Carder Bush also photographed his sister through her career. The book, Cathy, compiles photos from her earliest years (see above). Some wonderful childhood shots. Photographing images for 2011’s Director’s Cut, and iconic snaps such as the Hounds of Love album cover, you can see them all in KATE: Inside the Rainbow. There is another reason to talk about John Carder Bush. Born on 26th March, 1944, he turns eighty very soon. I know that the Kate Bush community will celebrate that nearer the time. I can only imagine how proud he was, as a fourteen-year-old, when his sister, Catherine, was born on 30th July, 1958. The two bonded very quickly. Although Kate Bush definitely inspired her brother, the influence of her brother in terms of her writing and performance can be traced to him.
I love thinking about the Bush household. All of them living at East Wickham Farm in Welling. You can see this video here of Kate Bush with her family. That was produced in 1979. I look back at photos from Cathy of John Caser Bush capturing his young sister in these intimate and brilliant photos. Entwined and interconnected throughout her career, I think the last input he has on her work was when he appeared in a speaking role on the album of Kate Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. The narrator and writer on Jig of Life, he contributed to her most recent album release. That album came out in 2016. You wonder how much the two have worked together since then. Whether any new photos have been taken or there has been any musical coloration. Whether you feel John Carder Bush’s poetry and musical tastes is the biggest and most important association with his sister or the iconic and brilliant photographer, he clearly had a big impact on her. In fact, Kate Bush trained at Goldsmiths College Karate Club where John was a karate instructor. There she became known as ‘Ee-ee’ because of her squeaky kiai! I will wrap up in a second. I first want to bring in an Attitude interview. They spoke with John Carder Bush in 2017 about a lifetime of photographing his sister - and some favourite memories:
“John, Kate – Inside The Rainbow is just gorgeous. Why did now feel like the right time to put a book like this together?
I think the timing of this book was dictated by the reprint of Cathy [last year]. So many people had shown an interest in that book long after it went out of print, and it seemed logical to see what would happen if I brought it up to date. Originally, when I published Cathy back in 1986, I had planned to do three books – Cathy, Catherine and Kate, but like so many ambitious plans, it never happened.
Let’s start with those earliest photos you took of your sister, the ones that formed the book Cathy. Was it a case of your little sister being an easy subject to practice on, or were you aware even in those early days that there was a ‘star quality’ to her?
In those days I had only just started to feel that the camera could evoke something I wanted to express about childhood and the world of the imagination that so many children live in. I was also excited by my personal discovery of the pre-Raphaelites and had started collecting illustrated books of the turn of the century, which nobody was interested in in the early sixties and could be bought for next to nothing. My little sister was the perfect model, and although I was pleased with the results, I don’t think I detected star quality – we were a long way away from the her future career; when you know someone so well and see them every day of your life, you just don’t notice that kind of thing, although looking at them now it is quite clear she had something special.
This feels about as close to an ‘official’ retrospective book of Kate’s career as we might get. What are her thoughts on it?
I first discussed the book with Kate back in the summer of 2014. The live shows then swept her away for a few months. When I had done a preliminary selection of photos and written the text, I showed them to her for her comments and I then worked with her final selection of images for the rest of the project. As I remember, she pointed out that she had ten ‘O’ levels, when I had put nine.
When you look through the images in the book, do you see changes develop as the years go on? There’s a sophistication that seems to really develop in Kate’s imagery from Hounds of Love onwards…
Yes, I agree. You can see the development in the sense that she becomes more expert at conscious projection, more confident in knowing what works and what does not, and I think the same thing applies to my photography.
One thing that strikes me, looking through the book, is her willingness to try different things – poses, props, costumes etc – in the pursuit of a great shot. Did either of you take the lead in those situations, or was it quite a 50/50 partnership?
I think this is dictated by two different things. With album and single shots, there is a very specific intention to project a persona that matches the songs; with promotional shots, variety becomes very important otherwise every session would have looked the same. With album and single sessions, Kate always had a very definite idea of what she wanted before she stepped in front of the camera and it was a question of trying to realise that in a photographic context.
In the book, you mention Hounds of Love being a favourite record – it’s the album with perhaps the most iconic artwork of Kate’s career. What is it for you that makes that album / period a particular favourite?
Hounds of Love seems to me to demonstrate the perfect combination of Kate’s power and ability to be able to operate successfully in the world of popular music, and at the same time create something iconic like The Ninth Wave that transcends the throwaway nature of the charts. I also had a lot more involvement with that album executively and creatively, and writing and performing the poetry section on the song Jig of Life meant that I had many happy memories of that time.
There is a big time gap in the book from The Red Shoes to Director’s Cut – eighteen years between photos. How had things changed when you went back to photographing Kate after all those years?
The big difference was that I was photographing her face and not her feet! But, seriously, nothing seemed any different except the machinery I was using; digital and not analogue. And, of course, she now had a son who was popping in to see what was going on, whereas it used to be the other way round”.
On 26th March, John Carder Bush turns eighty. It is cause to look ahead and celebrate. A few days before her brother’s seventieth birthday, on 21st March, 2014, that is when Kate Bush announced Before the Dawn. That is an anniversary I will mark. Even though her brother was not a massive part of that residency, you can see his influence through the set. The design, concept and feel. He would have inspired 1979’s The Tour of Life (see him in this video at 15:42) too. The way poetry and spoken word is in Before the Dawn definitely comes back to her oldest brother. These incredible photos that he took of a young Kate Bush, right through to more recent ones, are among the most striking and memorable of all Kate Bush photos. We discuss Kate Bush’s music a lot, though not in the context of her family. Her mother, Hannah, and father, Robert, had their part and influence. So too did Paddy. So tight-knit and supportive, I wanted to spend a moment highlighting John Carder Bush. Or Jay. How his photographers brought something from this incredible artist. His poetry and love of the arts and music had an immediate and early influence on his sister. In a year where there are going to be some important anniversaries – The Tour of Life (forty-five), The Sensual World (thirty-five) and Before the Dawn (ten) -, some might overlook a big birthday for John Carder Bush. I have been thinking about his relationship with his sister and how involved in her work he was. Even though Kate Bush is her own woman and a singular and extraordinary talent, when it comes to her beloved eldest brother, she definitely…
OWES a lot to him.