FEATURE:
Eponymously Yours
Exploring the ‘Kate Bush’/’Kate’ Projects Through the Years
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I must give thanks…
IMAGE CREDIT: The World of Kate Bush
to Kate Bush Encyclopledia for their resource. I was interested to discover the eponymous Kate Bush projects. Those that use her name or part of it. There has been a variety of things through the years. I am not including those by Kate Bush herself. Any E.P.s, Christmas specials or anything else, instead, I am looking at Kate Bush-tiled things by other people. This year is a quiet one when it comes to Kate Bush anniversaries or anything big. Of course, things can pop up and there might be an occasion when one of her songs blows up. However, I think it will be less busy than last year. It would be good to see something arrive like a new book or some documentaries. I wanted to look at a selection of Kate Bush projects from throughout the years. I am starting out with the below, which concerns the Kate & I pop-up museum:
“Pop-up museum devoted to Kate Bush, created by Luna van der Horst (who was 15 years old at the time) in Zaandam (Netherlands) in December 2016. The museum started as a project for school. Luna decided she wanted to make something that didn’t feel like work.
The museum was officially opened on December 2, after which it was open to visitors for free on December 3, 4, 10 and 11. Besides official memorabilia, records and magazines, the museum showed art created by Dutch artists Bregtje Zitman-Deelen (portrait). Buket Albayrak (engraving art), Edgar van der Woude (couture), Esther Hans (painting), Eveline Heijkamp (beamer art), Gea Zwart (painting), Gerben Valkema & Eric Hercules (cartoon), Joost Pielkenrood & Katrine van Klaveren (installation), Lousanne Schuuring (glass art), Marja Eshuijs (bags), Martijn Couwenhoven (drawing), Michel Teunen (PU-foam), Panda Gielen (digital art), Stefana Caramanica (photography), Willem Moeselaar (graphics) and famed Dutch artist Rob Scholte with a special creation”.
IMAGE CREDIT: The World of Kate Bush
Even though there is not a lot of detail about it, I do love that a special issue of Rock & Roll Comics focused on Kate Bush. You can read more about it here, and there is a page here, where you can see artwork from the comic:
“Issue 58 of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Comics series, published by Revolutionary Comics in the USA on 1 April 1993, is devoted to an unofficial biography of Kate Bush, with uncredited writer and artist. It tells the story of the beginning of Kate’s career up until the release of The Sensual World”.
I do think that there should be more about Kate Bush in graphic and comic form. She is a fan of science fiction, fantasy and horror, so it would be great if there was something more modern. I tend to find a lot of eponymous Kate Bush projects sort of stopped in the 1990s. When she was still quite active or releasing new music. I am shocked that not too much has been done recently. I guess there is the occasional documentary, though not too much when it comes to books, comics, exhibitions or anything like that. I am going to include a couple of eponymous Kate Bush songs, as she has also not been immortalised in song for a while. It is interesting to hear what artists did when using Kate Bush’s name. It is a bit annoying that there has not been a tribute album where major artists take on her songs. Consider how many modern-day artists cite her as an influence, having Charli xcx, The Last Dinner Party, CMAT, ROSALÍA, Björk and even Big Boi do something with her music would be amazing. However, as this article explains, there was a great Kate Bush covers album in the 1990s:
“Kate Bush Covered is a compilation album of cover versions of Kate Bush songs, as performed by fans and professional musicians. The album came together in the first half of 1997 when Kate Bush fan Marcel Rijs used the Kate Bush mailing list Love-Hounds (also known as the newsgroup rec.music.gaffa) to get recordings from fans all over the world.
Contributions were sent in on tape, CD and DAT from Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK and USA. The album was released on 1 August 1997”.
A Kate Bush fan club is something that we need this year. Maybe something too oldskool, many people are hankering for something by gone in terms of maybe a physical fanzine or magazine and conventions. Opportunities for Kate Bush fans to get together. I am going to mention a great Kate Bush tribute act to finish. However, the Kate Bush Fanclub is something we need to revive:
“Dutch fanclub, based in Breda (Netherlands), which started in 1980. The club was founded by Joshja Brans. He was soon joined by Rob Assenberg, Arie den Draak and Eric Vermeer. In 1987 Theo Haast also joined the fanclub board. Joshja’s wife Laila and Arie’s wife Diana also helped out. In the beginning their relationship with EMI Records in the Netherlands was virtually non-existant, but by the end of the 1980’s that had improved. The club’s membership usually hovered around the 200 mark.
The fanclub published its own magazine called ‘Kate’, which appeared irregularly between 1981 and 1996. The fanclub folded by the end of the 1990’s when the internet became the go-to medium for Kate Bush fans”.
There have been some relatively recent projects using Kate Bush’s name, including a documentary and a book. One from the 1980s that would be good to see reprinted is Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary. I do think that we will get some Kate Bush books this year. An encyclopaedia or huge reference book would be incredible to see and has not yet been published. Kate Bush: Song by Song was published in 2021 and is worth buying:
“Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary is a book written by Kevin Cann and Sean Mayes. Published by Omnibus Press on 5 December 1988, this 96 page book was presented as “the first book to present a major study of Kate as a serious and exceptional recording artist”.
The book features photographs (both in colour and in black & white), a chronology, a discography and videography, as well as 12 chapters in which her career is described in some detail”.
One book that is quite well-known and recent is 2016’s THE KATE INSIDE by Guido Harari. Someone who photographed her for many years, it is something that I hope to own one day. A little out of my price range, I am also hopeful there will be more Kate Bush books with photos of her. Maybe another volume from someone like Guido Harari or her brother, John Carder Bush:
“Book published in March 2016, featuring photographs of Kate Bush by Guido Harari. Guido photographed Kate between 1982 and 1993, while she was involved in her albums Hounds Of Love, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes and the film The Line, The Cross & The Curve.
The book was limited to 3000 copies worldwide. The deluxe edition was limited to just 350 copies, all personally signed by both Guido and Lindsay Kemp, who has also written a special foreword for the book. The deluxe edition had a full leather cover and featured extra pages. It also included a 24x30cm (10”x11”) signed/numbered fine art pigment print and a set of 8 replica Polaroids (10x15cm/3”x5”, unsigned and non editioned). These are replicas of the actual Polaroids used by Guido with Kate on the 1985 and 1989 shoots”.
Before ending with a terrific Kate Bush tribute artist, there is a great booklet, Kate Bush: Before the Dawn that I was not sure existed. I would love to get a copy or see the contents, if anyone knows where to look. I did not get to see Before the Dawn, so it would give me insight into what the epic and adored residency was like:
“Booklet released by Paul Sinclair from the website SuperDeluxeEdition.com on 14 September 2019. The A4 sized, 20 page booklet describes Paul Sinclair’s experiences seeing the Before The Dawn live shows in 2014: reflecting all aspects of them; the surprise announcement, the press frenzy, the build up, the anticipation, the expectation, and finally the concerts themselves; what it was like to actually be there and see Kate perform many of her best songs live, for the very first time.
Additionally, the booklet includes the full interview by Sinclair with David Rhodes, conducted only a few weeks after the series of concerts were completed. The front cover was created by Helen Green”.
There have actually been recent documentaries about Kate Bush: L'odyssée musicale de Kate Bush (The Musical Odyssey of Kate Bush): A fifty-minute documentary available on the ARTE channel's website in France; Kate Bush: The Timeless Genius: A program that aired on Sky Arts/NOW in the UK in late-2025, celebrating her enduring appeal; BBC Archive on 4: Kate Bush: The Power of Strange Things: A BBC Radio 4 program exploring her impact, referencing Stranger Things and her unique creative journey. 2014’s Kate Bush at the BBC was released to coincide with her residency. Great moments when Bush performed for the BBC. Some performances that many people have not seen:
“TV special, produced for BBC Four and originally broadcast on 22 August 2014. The special is a compilation of performances by Kate Bush in various BBC programmes.
Track listing
Wuthering Heights (Top Of The Pops, 23 March 1978)
Them Heavy People (Saturday Night At The Mill, 25 February 1978)
Moving (Saturday Night At The Mill, 25 February 1978)
Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake (Sounds Like Friday: Leo Sayer, 17 November 1978)
Wow (Abba Easter Special, 21 April 1979)
Hammer Horror (Nationwide, 3 March 1979)
The Wedding List (Kate, 28 December 1979)
The Man With The Child In His Eyes (Kate, 28 December 1979)
Running Up That Hill (Wogan, 5 August 1985)
Hounds Of Love (Top of the Pops, 6 March 1986)
Experiment IV (Wogan, 31 October 1986)
The Sensual World (music video, 1989)
This Woman’s Work (Wogan, 6 December 1989)
Rocket Man (Wogan, 16 December 1991)
And So Is Love (Top of the Pops, 17 November 1994)”.
Another 2014 BBC documentary is The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill. It has not been shown on the channel for a while but, given a resurgence and new interest, it is time to show it again. Though it is not that authoritative or deep, it is a good introduction for new fans:
“Documentary about Kate Bush, originally broadcast on 22 August 2014 on BBC television on the occasion of her then upcoming Before The Dawn live shows. It explores her career from January 1978 to her 2011 album 50 Words for Snow, through the testimony of some of her key collaborators and those she has inspired.
Contributors include the guitarist who discovered her (Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour), the choreographer who taught her to dance (Lindsay Kemp) and the musician who she said ‘opened her doors’ (Peter Gabriel), as well as her engineer and ex-partner (Del Palmer) and several other collaborators (Elton John, Stephen Fry and Nigel Kennedy)”.
The Guardian reviewed the documentary. It is important because of the incredible contributors, including the late Del Palmer. A portrait of an artist who is unique and original yet has this wide and diverse fanbase. Someone whose influence is huge and continuing. Nobody else out there like Kate Bush:
“When Kate Bush got her £3,000 record deal from EMI at 16, she used some of it to pay for dance classes with the legendary choreographer Lindsay Kemp. In last night's The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill (BBC 4), a documentary about the singer-songwriter broadcast on the near-eve of her first tour in 35 years, he remembered how he had to coax her forward from the back row – . "She was as timid as hell … but once she started dancing, she was a wild thing" – and a few months later found an LP pushed under his door.
It was Bush's first album, The Kick Inside, released in 1978, with the song Moving dedicated to Kemp. "I didn't know she had any aspirations to be a singer," he says. "She never talked about herself." Fellow contributor Elton John called her "the most beautiful mystery", and recalled how at his A-lister-stuffed civil partnership ceremony she was the only person anyone wanted to speak to.
Guests, contributors and soon even formerly ignorant viewers like me were in awe of the talent displayed and then intelligently discussed and dissected by John, Kemp and other respected experts, such as David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel, John Lydon, Tori Amos and Del Palmer, Bush's bandmate and partner from the 1970s to 1990s. Neil Gaiman was on hand to hymn her fearlessly literary inspirations and lyrics, from – of course – Wuthering Heights (from which she derived her first single, in March 1978) to Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Ulysses in the title track of her 1989 album, The Sensual World.
Bush herself appeared only in old interview footage – so young, so fragile, so shy, but full of the sureness and certainty that only talent brings – but what emerged was a wonderful, detailed portrait of that talent. Although it gave her precocity its full due (she had written The Man With the Child in His Eyes by the time Gilmour came to listen to her when she was 14), it also gave proper weight to her evolution and her later, less commercial, still astonishing work. Why it chose to close on a stupid jarring joke by Steve Coogan, I do not know. But the rest of it succeeded in making Bush and her work less of a mystery but no less beautiful for that”.
I might re-explore Kate Bush tribute acts later in the year. Maybe not a tribute act in the strict sense, Sarah-Louise Young is different in that sense. It is more of a production and theatrical experience that a straight concert where she covers Kate Bush songs. An Evening Without Kate Bush is a worldwide sensation:
“A self-described ‘chaotic cabaret cult’, An Evening Without Kate Bush is created by performer Sarah-Louise Young and director Russell Lucas. The idea is to celebrate Kate Bush’s songs with a unique show.
The show debuted in August 2019 at Edinburgh Fringe festival, and continues to this day. Regular tours in the UK followed, as well as a tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2025”.
You can discover more about An Evening Without Kate Bush here. I am going to finish up with this review from 2024 for An Evening Without Kate Bush. I have not seen it yet, though I have interviewed Sarah-Louise Young about it, and she is amazing. I think she lives up in Manchester, though she is going to be travelling a lot this year:
“If you know anything about Kate Bush (other than her song was recently in Stranger Things) you may know she’s an artist who rarely tours. A decade ago she took on a residency at the Hammersmith Apollo for a month. Aside from that and a handful of gigs at the end of the 1970s, she doesn’t play live. She’s never gigged in Nottingham and sadly it’s likely she never will.
However, Kate’s lack of public appearances has opened the door to a shadow industry of tribute acts; Cloudbusting, Kate Bush-Ka, Baby Bushka etc. What we see tonight is at times a bit like one of those, but it’s also quite a lot more – a tribute act crossed with a comedy show and an academic thesis on the artist. This show is created by Sarah-Louise Young and Russell Lucas and stars Young as the principal and only cast member. It’s charming, funny, emotional and at times quite moving.
The first thing that we should probably say about Sarah-Louise Young is that she’s got an amazing voice on her. Quite a lot of Kate's notes can be hard to hit and she’s basically note perfect all night. This despite the fact that during some songs she’s also running, clowning, doing gymnastics and quite a lot more. She works her way through all the songs you’d expect; Cloudbursting, Babooshka (sung entirely in Russian), This Woman’s Work, Hounds of Love, Hammer Horror, Wuthering Heights and more.
She gets the crowd involved and up on stage with her, accompanied by the kind of suitcase full of props and costume changes you’d expect to belong to a 1970s Butlins comedian. She’s also constantly spouting facts about Kate Bush that even the most-hardened ‘Fish People’ (apparently what a collective of Kate Bush fans is known as) may not know.
At the beginning of the show Young states that she wanted to create a show that can be enjoyed by both enthusiasts and also for people who don’t know much about the artist. I’m probably somewhere between both of those and I completely loved it. Entertaining from start to finish, when it finished I wanted to see more. The only shame is that Kate herself wasn’t there to see it”.
I was curious about some of the Kate Bush-titled projects, whether eponymous or semi-eponymous. Most of them are way in the past, though some recent documentaries have used Kate Bush’s name. I wonder what the rest f this year offers and whether anything Kate Bush-titled will come. An interesting selection I have featured above, from documentaries and books through to a comic book and a tribute act. All proudly representing Kate Bush in their own way. Giving their love and salute…
TO one of the most important artists ever.