FEATURE:
Inside the Essential and Sensual Worlds
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Kate Bush’s 1988 and 1989
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I like doing…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush cuts her 30th birthday cake on 30th July, 1988 at Blazers Boutique, where she was raising money for AIDS victims on behalf of the Terrence Higgins Trust (celebrities appeared in shops at Covent Garden, London as shop assistants to sell T-shirts and raffles. The money generated from this, plus 5% of the shops' takings, were donated to the charity)/PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo
some Kate Bush timeline-related features, as it provides a glimpse into the extraordinary and sometimes mundane things that filled that time. Sometimes you get a packed few months/year with lots of promotion and interesting stuff. Others provide some routine stuff alongside bigger events. In terms of stepping back in time this time around, I have used this essential website to document what Kate Bush did in 1988. I relying on the accuracy of the dates they provide though, if there is any inaccuracy, you can forgive that. One reason why I am looking back at 1988 and 1989 as it is the period when Kate Bush was clearing the way for her sixth studio album, The Sensual World. In fact, it was in May 1989 when The Sensual World was finished. Almost thirty-five years since one of her best and most acclaimed albums was complete. It is interesting hearing about the lead-up to that. How some events of 1988 might have influenced sounds and tones on The Sensual World. Rather than her being an artist who records an album then goes on tour and repeats that cycle, here was someone who was starting to break away from relentless promotion. 1988 is a very interesting year in terms of things she was involved in. Some very worthy causes and commitments:
“1988
Publication of The Kate Bush Club Newsletter is suspended pending the release of Kate's still-unfinished sixth studio album.
Kate attends a concert by Davy Spillane, an Irish musician formerly of the band Moving Hearts, who contributes uillean pipes tracks to Kate's new album. She also attends concerts by the Momentary Lapse of Reason incarnation of Pink Floyd, and by violinist Nigel Kennedy.
April 1, 1988
A report is printed in The Guardian that Kate has taken on a lead role in the longrunning television series Dr. Who. The date of the report is overlooked by some fans.
July 30, 1988
Kate celebrates her thirtieth birthday by participating in an AIDS charity project involving some 200 celebrities. She serves as a shopkeeper for the day at Blazer's boutique.
August 22, 1988
Kate comments on London for a BBC2 television programme, Rough Guide to Europe.
There is a lot to take in before we have even get to September! I wrote a feature back in 2021 regarding how Bush spent her thirtieth birthday (30th July, 1988) volunteering her time for charity. Typically her! Someone always dedicating time and her support to very important causes. It is a shame that ‘report’ about Kate Bush being cast in Dr. Who was an April Fool’s trick. Someone who was offered a lot of acting roles and rarely did any, I think she would have been perfect as a assistant for The Doctor! Maybe playing a villain. I suspect that Bush, were the offer genuine, might have actually agreed to it! That Rough Guide to Europe contribution is quite interesting too. How the offer came her way. I guess she was quite open to various voiceovers and interviews if they were interesting and worth her time. It seems like there may have been rumbles that The Sensual World was coming in 1988. The fact the fan newsletter was suspended was a way of stopping presses ahead of this big release. There would have been so much interest and speculation as to what an album would sound like that followed Hounds of Love. One that came four years after that carried extra weight and responsibility.
It is amazing that, in a year and time when she was still putting the finishing touches to The Sensual World, Kate Bush used the occasion of her thirtieth birthday to do some fundraising. Most of us would have put ourselves first, though Kate Bush was pitching in and doing some retail work at Blazer's boutique. To have been one of the customers and have seen Kate Bush serving and helping out. When we think of her career and events, it is her charity work and commitment that deserves its own chapter. She has done so much through the years. She does much to this very day. War Child are the official charity partner for Record Store Day UK. They have an exclusive Rega turntable signed by Kate Bush as well as a signed test pressing of her upcoming Eat the Music 10" single. You can enter the prize draw and be in with a chance of winning that. Yet another incident of Kate Bush focusing on charity. Let’s move into the remainder of 1988 and what was happening:
September 1988
Midge Ure releases a new album, which features a guest duet vocal with Kate on the track Sister and Brother.
Fall 1988
After making contact with Joe Boyd, co-producer of the Balkana compilation album of traditional Bulgarian vocal music, Kate travels to Bulgaria to meet with Yanka Rupkina, Eva Georgieva and Stoyanka Boneva, nationally famous soloists who perform and record together under the group name Trio Bulgarka. Meeting again with the Bulgarians in England, Kate records three vocal tracks with Trio Bulgarka for the sixth album, and makes an appearance with the Bulgarian vocalists for a video-taped segment of the BBC series Rhythms of the World, which is broadcast in the spring of 1989.
I have touched on this when discussing The Sensual World and the use of the Trio Bulgarka. Kate Bush was no stranger to travel when it came to recruiting artists and getting that particular sound. She would do it for The Sensual World but, for Hounds of Love, she travelled to Ireland and recorded artists there. These Irish sessions were important to her. She is half-Irish (on her mother’s side), so she made that journey. It was a bit stranger and less familiar being in Bulgaria. Led to the trio through her brother Paddy and his discovery of them, they are an essential ingredient on The Sensual World.
1989 was understandably busy and eventful. Full steam ahead getting The Sensual World finished. Having met and worked with the Trio Bulgarka through the autumn of 1988, we would hear these collaborations come to light and life in October. One of her most accomplished and beautiful albums. One where she changed sound and dynamic. A more feminine album. One with a female energy. Hounds of Love has a deliberate masculine energy. Kate Bush, thirty when The Sensual World came out, was perhaps at a stage in life where she was exploring sensuality and life through a feminine lens, musically and lyrical. Even though the article says that Bush finished The Sensual World in May, that would be the spring rather than the summer. Even so, the spring and summer of 1989 was important. Another case of her committing to important causes. Bush has always been interested in ecological matters and conservations. Issues explored occasionally in her music, I wonder whether it was in her mind to feature that more on The Sensual World:
Summer 1989
Kate appears briefly in a video for a worldwide television programme about ecological issues called Our Common Future. She is seen in a London studio with many other artists, singing two lines from a song written for the programme (not by Kate). The song is called Spirit of the Forest. The programme, with the pre-recorded video, is aired on June 4, 1989.
There is also a report that Kate appeared at the United Nations with Peter Gabriel and other artists in support of the campaign to save the rain forests; but as of presstime this report had not been confirmed.
Kate's sixth studio album is finally finished at the end of May.
Fall 1989
Kate's new single, The Sensual World, is released on September 18th, and her sixth studio album, The Sensual World, is released at last on October 16th. The video for the first single is debuted during the week of September 15th. Meanwhile Kate's new U.S. label, Columbia Records, decides to release Love and Anger as their first Kate Bush single, and Kate, apparently trusting the company's knowledge of the American market, must rush to produce an accompanying video.
Back in England, the new single debuts at number 12 in the Music Week/Gallup chart, sinking to number 15 its second week; but the BMIRC chart tells a quite different story, listing the single's chart debut as number 16, but placing the record at number 10 the second week.
The album does rather poorly in England, mainly for two reasons: the radio stations' refusal to play the music, and Kate's unwillingness to offer any more than minimal support for the record. She makes no personal signing appearances, and makes only a few brief television appearances.
At the end of the year Kate's longtime electric guitarist Alan Murphy dies prematurely, and she attends his funeral in England”.
I would disagree about the album’s performance in England. It did poorly in the U.S. (reaching forty-three, which is still not too bad). It got to number two in the U.K. That is a decent chart showing! She gave quite a few print interviews. There were some interesting interviews and features in 1989. Maybe not promoting as hard as she did for Hounds of Love, Kate Bush still put in a lot of time speaking about The Sensual World. She was starting to peel away from the tireless promotion of the past. Something that would be more defined by 1993’s The Red Shoes. I suppose The Sensual World is less commercial compared to Hounds of Love. Nothing quite as soaring and epic as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) or Hounds of Love. Although The Sensual World is quite an energetic track, a lot of the songs are different in sound. Perhaps more contemplative and emotive. I guess that is why Columbia Records released Love and Anger as their first Kate Bush single. It is one of the more spirited songs. Kate Bush directed the music video, though it is a song few people know about. Not one you hear played at all. In a busy year, the loss of Alan Murphy would have hit her hard. Someone she was very fond of, it was like losing a member of the family.
I really love 1988 and 1989 in terms of Kate Bush’s career. That blend of charity stuff and some promotion. Getting The Sensual World finished by May 1989 (if that is inaccurate then my apologies!). It was quite a distance between the album being finished and being released, through Bush was pretty busy when it came out. I can see interviews where she has spoken at length about making The Sensual World. It is interesting looking at the build-up and year before the album came out. Everything she was involved in. Working with female voice was a rarity. Not something that was part of her studio albums until 1989. She would work with the Trio Bulgarka for The Red Shoes. Bringing new sounds and culture into her music added something special and very powerful. It would be another four years after The Sensual World until we got the seventh studio album. The Red Shoes once more took Kate Bush in a different direction. Before the album was released, she lost her mother (in 1992) and broke up from Del Palmer. It was a changing time. More turbulent than the period between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. I have a lot of love for The Sensual World. It remains such…
A magnificent and majestic album.