FEATURE:
You’re All Grown Up Now
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her home in Eltham, London on 13th September 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images
Kate Bush in Her Thirties: The Changes and Challenges
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I am borrowing heavily…
from Graeme Thomson’s excellent biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. It is a book that I use a lot when writing features about Kate Bush. One of the most interesting chapters concerns Kate Bush turning thirty. Around the release of The Sensual World in 1989 and the period before that. Her final album in the 1980s, I guess turning thirty was not a huge deal for her. However, in terms of emotional maturity, life priorities and relationships, it was an important birthday to celebrate. One that must have caused her to pause and reflect. I have written about this particular fact before. On 30th July, 1988, Bush’s thirtieth birthday, she was typically donating her time to other people. Rather than spend the day making it all about her – though I hope she did celebrate with family in the evening -, she spent the day with other celebrities raising funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust. She was participating in the Shop Assistance charity event in London. She worked as a celebrity shop assistant at the Blazers menswear store in Covent Garden. This initiative involved celebrities selling merchandise to support HIV/AIDS awareness and care. This was a disease that would impact her life and claim the life of those close to her. It is a whole other chapter regarding Bush’s charity work and how she dedicates so much time and herself to these incredible causes. At the end of the 1980s, there was a lot of conversations around AIDS and HIV. Artists like Madonna bringing it into their work. Before 1988, there was a lot of rumours about her weight. Bush had gained a little weight and there were a couple of live appearances in 1987 – The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball and performing Don’t Give Up with Peter Gabriel at Earl’s Court -, but she address the work-diet-exercise balance and there was this new fitness regime.
There was no dramatic changes as Bush turned thirty. She was spotted at the odd show and was staying at home. She was not someone who loved jaunting abroad on holiday. Preferring to stay put, she did the odd bit here and there. However, it was clear that turning thirty did influence and infuse what we hear on The Sensual World. There was a major change in terms of collaborations. This was the first time she brought other female singers into the studio. The Trio Bulgarka appeared on The Sensual World and The Red Shoes (1993). Bush discovered them towards the end of the Hounds of Love sessions. Yanka Rupkina, Stoyanka Boneva, and Eva Georgieva added new dynamics and tones to her work. Before July 1988, Bush was busy still with promotion. Promoting Hounds of Love through 1986, 1987 was a year when she could start work on a new album. Writing This Woman’s Work in spring 1987 for John Hughes’s She’s Having a Baby, it was a kick. The Bulgarian sessions definitely gave new impetus and energy to an album that was floundering and faltering at times. It was the task of having to follow a masterpiece like Hounds of Love that was this massive success. Not wanting the next album to be similar, it was a massive task trying to release something that would prove popular but also perhaps not deviate too far from what people expected. One of the most notable aspects of Hounds of Love and The Sensual World is when they were released. The former is forward-thinking and innovative, yet it easily slotted into 1985 and was not that alien. It is hard to think of much else like The Sensual World in 1989. The scene had shifted drastically and it was harder for Bush to be relatable and innovative at the same time. I think that milestone birthday refocused her priorities. Perhaps wanting an album more womanly and feminine, I also feel that she was looking to head more away from conventional Pop music. Not that you could ever see her a traditional Pop artist. However, Hounds of Love had some big and bright songs. Some commercial successes alongside more conceptual tracks. The Sensual World she saw as ten stories tied together. You can hear more influences of Folk and voices like the Trio Bulgarka. Less intense and dramatic as Hounds of Love, The Sensual World has this warmth and sense of loss to it.
It is fascinating to think about Kate Bush turning thirty in 1988. Already working on a new album, I do feel like there were changes and new considerations. Bush was personal on Hounds of Love and previous albums. However, I feel like there is this mix of desire, loss and growth. Hounds of Love’s title looked at Bush being chased by metaphorical hounds of love. Afraid to commit, there was not much else in the way of her talking of love and close relationships I feel. There is more on The Sensual World. Perhaps one of the first albums where Bush is angrier, defeated and mournful. Her parents still close to her heart. Her dad, Robert, can be heard on The Fog. There is still room for oddness and fantasy. Songs like Deeper Understanding and Heads We’re Dancing step away from love and relationships. Desire and sensuality. Hounds of Love had twelve tracks, though The Sensual World keeps it to ten. The same as The Dreaming (1982). It is interesting what Graeme Thomson notes about the technology Bush used for The Sensual World. Bush and Del Palmer upgraded the farm studio and added an SSL console. There was a sense of her being overwhelmed by all the technology around her. Working with the Fairlight III and DX7 synth to form demo-masters, Bush recorded quickly and then took a break for several months or so. I think The Sensual World is one of her best albums, though it is clear it did not come together as easily as others. At a stage in her career and life when she had worked tirelessly for over a decade, she wanted to end the 1980s with an album that was unlike anything she did previously. The daunting thing of the blank page. Less conceptual than Hounds of Love, The Sensual World is a songwriter’s album. Perhaps taking us back to her work from 1978. This was Bush stripping layers to an extent. In 1988/1989, there were other artists being compared to Kate Bush. It was harder for her to stand out and push her music forward.
I think the twenties for most artists is about putting out work and keeping busy. Priorities more about work and promotion. For women especially, this sense of ageism in the industry means that they may be discarded or sidelined when they hit thirty. You can see it in modern Pop. The ferocity in which women in their twenties (and even thirties) are pushing themselves and the amount of touring they do. Bush also didn’t need to prove herself. Having released commercially successful and stunning albums, that pressure to top what went before was perhaps not on her mind. She did still value music and wanted it to be amazing, though she was perhaps not as intense as she once was. In terms of hours logged in the studio and how little free time she had. Also, between the release of The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, she would be affected by loss and tragedy. Alan Murphy, her guitarist of ten years, died in 1989. One of her longstanding dancers, Gary Hurst, died in 1990 (both Murphy and Hurst contracted AIDS) a Her mother, Hannah, died in 1992. Like volunteering to work for Blazers in Covent Garden on her thirtieth birthday and raise money for charity, she was very much not doing what a lot of her peers were. Personal loss definitely did reshape how she saw music and its importance. Maybe not strictly related to Bush turning thirty. She did change her compositional and technological relationship. Wanting to go more back to basics, especially for The Red Shoes, maybe a feeling her work was too complex and hard to follow. The Dreaming experimental and layered. Hounds of Love a big and complex album too. The Sensual World was slightly more rooted or sparse in some ways. You can feel something different come through. The Red Shoes would be Bush working at the piano again and writing in a different way. Trying to make her music easier to follow and appreciate. That personal and spiritual growth. Different priorities and objectives regarding her music. Not making it cinematic or grand. Something more direct and accessible.
I do like how there was this reordering of her priorities. I keep using that word but, as Bush entered her thirties, she was a different person. I think she also wanted to change how the press saw her as well. Her promotional photos becomes less sexualised. Less provocative. She did not want to be seen as a sex symbol or have people talk about her body. I want to end by quoting from a Pulse interview from December 1989. Will Johnson asking the questions.
“She's genuinely bemused that one of her appeals, initially, at least, was a certain physical allure. Anyone who's seen clips of Bush's only live shows ever played in the spring of '79 can't help but be stimulated by her inimitable stage performance -- a visual spectacular of music, dance, mime and sorcery. The whole experience of releasing records quickly and keeping pace with the related promotion work eventually wore her down. The '80s would see Bush slow her pace.
"The problem with my live work," she admits, "was that I had to expose myself in public so much, whereas now I can concentrate on just doing videos for my work. What I really like about videos is that I'm working with film. It gives me a chance to get in there and learn about making films, and it's tremendously useful for me, because one day I might like to make films myself."
Bush's videos, which she codirects, are easily as vibrant as her vinyl work. In the video for "The Sensual World," Bush stars as a black-and-white Molly Bloom touching that oh-so-black-and-white sensual world. [What? The video is in full color!] Her own favorite is "Cloudbursting" [sic], in which she stars with Donald Sutherland.
In '80, her third album, Never Forever, included tracks like "Babooshka" and "Breathing." The latter concerned itself with the nuclear age and how man insists on screwing up the environment. In the video Bush appeared inside a large bubble, predicting the era of the ozone friendly consensus, lamenting: "Outside gets inside, through the skin," followed by the slow chant: "In, Out, In, Out, In, Out."
"I think it's really good, the fact that it's so fashionable now," says Bush. "Everyone's pleased 'cause everyone's wanted to do something about it, come out of the closet as it were. Unfortunately it's like most things -- it's not until things start going horribly wrong that you try to do something about it. I think the media's got a lot to do with it, people like David Attenborough (renowned filmer of wildlife, best-known for his strange antics with gorillas, and brother of well-known film producer Sir Richard) 'cause they present things in a human way. There's no lecturing, there's no saying, 'Look, you're very, very naughty treating the earth like this,' but saying, 'Look at all these beautiful things.' The photography is so superior, it just moves people. I mean, years ago, people would not stay in to watch a wildlife program, would they?"
Since 1982's The Dreaming LP ("the album was so difficult to make, just about everything that could go wrong did during that period"), Bush has been more determined to do things her way -- especially in image terms, to get away from her marketing image of "The Tease." She's become progressively quieter; you won't find her sipping Tequila and Cherryade at Stringfellows, or whooping it up in a rubber mini at The Hippodrome, or lobbing french fries around Langan's Brasserie. It's just not her idea of fun.
"I do like the quiet life," she replies almost bashfully. "I do like having privacy; it's incredibly important to me, because I do end up feeling quite probed by the public side of what I have to do. I'm just quite a private person, really. You just end up feeling quite exposed; it's this vulnerability. After I've done the salesman bit, I like to be quiet and retreat, because that's where I write from. I'm a sort of quiet little person."
Which my explain why it's taken so long for this idiosyncratic yet compelling artist to break in the States. "Yes," she says perkily, "I've really had no success in America at all, apart from the Hounds of Love LP. That did quite well, and it was really exciting to think that there were people out there wanting it. But I've never seen it in terms of you make and album and then conquer the world. I must say it's never really worried me that I've not been big in America, but I'm with a new record company over there now, and I really feel good about the people -- they're lovely to talk to and to deal with. It's quite exciting for me. I just hope people out there will have the chance to know that the album's out. Then, if people want to hear it, they can. If they don't, well, that's absolutely fine.
"You know," she continues, "what I like about America is that there's a tremendous sort of hyper energy that I really like. Especially in New York -- there's a much stronger social setup, especially between artists. It's a very isolated setup here, because London's so spread out and everybody's off doing their own thing. You don't seem to bump into people the way you do over there; it's exciting to have that interchanging of ideas, just to talk to people who're going through similar things. It's real modern energy stuff. And also, I really like the positivity of the Americans. I mean here, although I love being here and I love the English, we're very hard on one another, very critical, whilst they have a wonderful willingness to give everyone a chance. We're really hard on people trying to get off the ground -- it's really unfair."
[If Kate likes America so much, why on earth doesn't she *come* here?]
One of the most engaging characteristics of Bush's persona is that she's so much the epitome of The English Rose, the natural beauty with innate intelligence -- a woman who just doesn't have to try. On The Sensual World, she feels that it's the Bulgarian influence -- three aging ladies named The Trio Bulgarka -- that add what she calls "a very interesting female aspect" to the LP, complementing Bush's own very feminine touch. The Trio's music was introduced to her by brother Paddy, and, as a result, she ventured over to Sofia, Bulgaria to meet the threesome. The Trio has an intensity about their voices, a deep expression of womanly pain and suffering, that hit a chord with Bush: "They were so important for me," she relates, "both musically and personally. I got a tremendous amount out of them as people, and a very important musical influence."
The release of The Sensual World ushers in a few changes for Bush: a new record label, a growing profile in America, and a realization that there's life outside the recording studio. "Something that really hit me on this album a bit like a hammer," she says, almost embarrassed, "is that I didn't really have any hobbies, and all I did was work, and everything that had been my hobby had sort of turned into work, like dancing, even reading -- in a way, because your're continually drawing from things that happen to you.
"But recently," she adds, "things like gardening have now entered my life, which is wonderful. I've never had a garden before, just very down-to-earth things like that. Again, it's just having a bit of contact with nature, you know, and planting things and seeing the slowness of it all. I've planted a flower bed; you have to be very patient. And it's a good thing for me to work with, ' cause making an album, you have to be very patient, and this flower bed helped me, *tremendously*, to watch how things have to fight for space: You have to get the weeds out, a little bit of water everyday, everyday a little something. Odd things like that, really!”.
Bush giving herself more time and space for hobbies. Some might see this as Bush becoming a bit boring but, after burning through her twenties without putting her feet up for a second, you can tell that she wanted things to be different. I hope that I have got to the heart of how things changed personally and professionally for Kate Bush after July 1988. I think there is more to be said about it. The Sensual World was definitely the first sign that she was perhaps looking to spend less time with music and not work as tirelessly as before. Reshape and redesign her career path. However, you cannot deny the brilliance of her sixth studio album. Featuring some of her most enduring and spectacular songs, it was the work of an artist…
STILL at the top of her game.