FEATURE:
Purple Patches
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The Similarities Between Kate Bush and the Iconic Prince
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THERE are some bittersweet and big…
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Avedon
anniversaries this year, as we remember the late Prince. On 31st March, it will be forty years since one of his best albums, Parade, was released. On 30th July, it will be fifteen years since his final album, Welcome 2 America, came out. Sadly, we lost Prince on 21st April, 2016. Ahead of the tenth anniversary of his death, there will be a lot of retrospectives and new articles written. Tributes paid to The Purple One. I associate Prince’s best album, Purple Rain, with that colour obviously. That came out in 1984. In 1985, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love was released. Purple in the cover. For some reason, I see the two artists as sharing a colour palette. There were a lot of similarities between the two. As we close on the tenth anniversary of his death, I will write more about their association. On 19th November, 1996, Prince released Emancipation. Kate Bush provides some backing vocals on the album, including on My Computer. Marking thirty years of that album later in the year, it will be a little sad. Prince worked with Bush on 1993’s The Red Shoes on Why Should I Love You? It is a shame that this track was a bit overloaded and Prince added so much to it. What could have been a brilliant collaboration – they were working remotely so never recorded in the same studio -, turned out to be something a little overcooked. However, there was mutual respect between the two. If many connect Bush with David Bowie and artists like that, I think the Prince connection is strongest. Although Bush never went into films and toured like Prince did, it is their control of the studio and work rate that bonded them. Both artists were born in 1958. Prince was born the month before Kate Bush. Their debut albums were released in 1978. Starting out their careers as incredible young artists, they both had this regency in the 1980s.
Although Prince’s 1980 album, Dirty Mind, is different to Kate Bush’s Never for Ever; 1982’s 1999 shares little common ground with The Dreaming; Around the World in a Day is not like Hounds of Love; Batman and The Sensual World are polls apart, they did put out albums in the same years – with Prince putting more out in the 1980s away from those albums – and they would have kept an eye on each other’s progress and career. Prince was an admirer. Although you can say that Prince was perhaps a bigger influence on Bush than the other way around, I actually think she had an effect on him. Prince once called Kate Bush his “favourite woman," and they bonded after meeting backstage at his Wembley concert in 1990. That independence and experimentation in the studio. No doubt they both drew inspiration from each other. Both released two promising early albums that sold well but were not as revered as their best work. They both hit an early peak in 1980. After his death in April 2016, Kate Bush did share a message:
“I am so sad and shocked to hear the tragic news about Prince. He was the most incredibly talented artist. A man in complete control of his work from writer and musician to producer and director. He was such an inspiration. Playful and mind-blowingly gifted. He was the most inventive and extraordinary live act I’ve seen. The world has lost someone truly magical. Goodnight dear Prince”.
The two definitely had this connection and chemistry, even if they meet briefly and their recordings together were not in person. Bush would have admired Prince’s work ethic and how he managed to balance so many projects at once. She would have seen what he was doing in the 1980s in terms of doing something completely different with each album and getting more ambitious. In turn, as she was this independent female artist producing her own albums and writing her own songs, that would have struck a chord.
I wonder, ahead of 21st April, whether Kate Bush will share memories of Prince or do anything. Of course, though there were these common threads, the two did lead very different lives. Both were very shy and introverted but you suspected Prince wanted fame and adulation more than Kate Bush did. Also, Bush had family around her and was about to enjoy relationships and that support around her, whereas I always think as Prince as more solitary. What we can’t take away is that there was this enormous respect between the two. Even if the 1990s were not exactly peak decades for both artists – Prince released a couple of decent albums but nothing to the standard he did the decade before; Bush’s The Red Shoes her only album of the '90s -, their collaborations together happened then. I always think about their musical and production talents. How both could pretty much do anything and were so pioneering. Especially on the albums of the 1980s. This musical variation and using technology of the day to remarkable effect. Not traditional Pop artists of the time in terms of their compositions and videos. Both hugely arresting visual artists. Incredible fashion and wonderful looks. Songs like Bush's Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Prince's When Doves Cry shared innovative production touches, like stacked vocals and minimalist beats. The lack of bass too. Hounds of Love as an album did not lean heavily on bass. Utilising and pushing drum machines (like LinnDrum) and using them in such impactful and interesting ways. The legacy they both have. So many artists of today influenced by these groundbreaking artists who had this huge hunger and passion for what they did. Many artists you feel have half their heart in it or are not that driven. Kate Bush and Prince were completely dedicated to music. If Prince was more prolific in terms of the frequency of releasing albums, Bush was as committed to the studio and making sure her albums were as original and brilliant as possible. I picture them working at their own studios in the mid-1980s and building these little empires. Making work that will stand the test of time.
You can appreciate why they respected and loved one another so much. Maybe few women of the 1970s and 1980s were writing their own music and were like Kate Bush (maybe Madonna and a few other major Pop artists). Prince definitely admired Kate Bush and how she was taking care of each part of her music and it was very much her own vision. If he has not directly said Bush inspired him, you just know that she did! And vice versa. I will end in a minute. I have been thinking about Prince in relation to Kate Bush. I have written about the two before – as recently as this time last year -, but I wanted to revisit it. This great VICE article about the two meeting and Prince working on Kate Bush’s Why Should I Love You? A shame that these two geniuses did not do a lot of work together or appear on film together:
“Bush was in a strange place when she met the Purple One. Her close friend and guitarist Alan Murphy had just died of AIDS-related pneumonia, she was going through the motions of a relationship breakdown, and was teetering on the cusp of a break from music, which, when it came, would actually last for 12 years. Prince, on the other hand, was going through one of his many spiritual rebirths. He had just emerged from the murky shadows of The Black Album, a creation he withdrew a week after release because he was convinced it was an evil, omnipotent force. He vaulted out of that hole, into a period of making music that was upbeat, pop-tinged and pumped up. In essence, the two artists’ headspaces could not really have been in more opposite places; Prince, artistically baptised and ready to change the world, and Kate Bush, surrounded by a fog of melancholia and disarray.
Prince had been a huge Kate Bush admirer for years. In emails exchanged in 1995 between Prince’s then-engineer Michael Koppelman and Bush’s then-engineer Del Palmer, Koppelman says that Prince described her as his “favourite woman”. But despite both artists being active since the 70s, it wasn’t until 1990 that they actually met in real life. Bush attended a Prince gig at Wembley during his monumental Nude Tour, asked to meet him backstage, and the rest is God-like genius collaboration history.
Perhaps it was the sheer distance between their headspaces at the time that led to what happened. Bush asked Prince to contribute a few background vocals to a song called “Why Should I Love You”, which she had just recorded in full at Abbey Road Studios. But when Prince received the track, he ignored the intructions and dismantled the entire thing like a crazed mechanic taking apart old cars on his backyard. He wanted to inject himself into the very heart of it, weaving his sound amongst her sound, giving it a new soul entirely. As Koppelman explains, “We essentially created a new song on a new piece of tape and then flew all of Kate’s tracks back on top of it… Prince stacked a bunch of keys, guitars, bass, etc, on it, and then went to sing background vocals”.
I genuinely believe that Kate Bush inspired Prince. He lauded her incredible live performances and how innovative she was. Maybe referring to 1979’s The Tour of Life or her T.V. spots, some of that theatricality and ambition was put into his iconic live tours. Same with the videos and how Bush could command the screen. Both tirelessly pushing boundaries and crafting their music meticulously. Some would say they were both controlling and unable to work with other producers. However, both were visionaries who were at their best and most directly when working alone. No doubt the two shared a lot of traits. This incredible creative and commercial successful period in the 1980s. On 21st April, we will remember Prince, a decade after his untimely death. Kate Bush had great respect for him and felt that loss. He was a big fan of hers and was one of few artists that he collaborated with and possibly could trust to be on any of his records. I think about what would come if Prince were still here. Maybe the two working together again or meeting once more. It is both tantalising and heartbreaking to consider…
WHAT could have been.