[avaincmolla]

Big Boi from Outkast talks about Kate again

[Rufio]

Yeah, for those who don't know, Big Boi has been on a campaign to work with Kate for years. He even claimed at one point that she invited him to camp out at her house. I think that would be really neat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006...ndrock.outkast

When Antwan 'Big Boi' Patton, the more sober half of pioneering hip hop duo OutKast, announced last week that he'd been invited by his musical heroine Kate Bush to 'camp out' at her house and collaborate on tracks for his forthcoming solo album, it sent eyebrows shooting sharply upwards. For a start, one might have predicted that Big Boi's cravat-wearing, Pushkin-reading other half, Andre '3000' Benjamin, would be the more obvious OutKast member to duet with the British songwriting icon who has made a career out of giving the impression that she is a bit wispy in the head. While the thought of Bush adding her ethereal sheen to Big Boi's rapping makes the mind boggle in a good way, it's to be hoped that their collective efforts see the light of day; unlike the tiny-dynamite hook-up mooted several years ago between Prince and Kylie, musical giants at roughly five feet tall apiece, which sadly never materialised.

[feannigvogten]

^ I'd say Kate is wary of working with anyone outside of her cadre of regular collaborators after the disaster of working with Prince

[Rufio]

I've just been trying to explain to my best friend, who is a Prince fan, why Kate had to get Lenny Henry in to smooth over Prince's contributions. She doesn't even know who Lenny Henry is.

[Rufio]

I thought this might be fun. I'll start with the entire text of the interview Kate gave to John Aizlewood of Q Magazine in December, 2001. This was transcribed by a friend of our Mis from @'s Kate forum.


THE BIG SLEEP
SHE'S THE HERMITIC ROCK SIREN WHO TOOK TO HER BED EIGHT YEARS AGO WITH DAYTIME TV FOR COMPANY. NOW KATE BUSH HAS WOKEN UP AGAIN. "PEOPLE HAVE BEEN INCREDIBLY PATIENT WITH ME," SHE TELLS JOHN AIZLEWOOD.

December, 2001

It's just after midday, Catherine "Kate" Bush is alone, sipping a glass of bottled water at one of Harrods' many restaurants. She waves frantically, all beaming smile, hesitant handshake and concerned as to whether Q received the message she left on the mobile apologising for her timekeeping.

The setting is public, but she will remain unrecognised. Now 43, she looks like an older version of Kate Bush. Although she stumbles with her "r"s, her sing-song speaking voice is a siren in the original sense.

She last surfaced in 1993 with The Red Shoes, her biggest American hit. Undervalued even then, it has, like its creator, aged rather well. Since then much has happened, although she would prefer as little of it reaching the public domain as possible and - we must speak boldly here, for she will not - she would rather not be here. Despite constantly ululating press, Bush hates being interviewed. Indeed, she hasn't done it for eight years.

"I don't think of myself as a personality, so a long time ago I made a decision that I would only do publicity in connection with my work. To do an interview when I have no work out doesn't make any sense."

Of course, she's very nice about it and she is here.

Crudely, there are two ways to get what you want. One is to scream and shout. The other, ultimately more effective, is the Kate Bush way: firm but extraordinarily polite, bordering on diffident, all delivered in that voice.

She changes her mind and decides she doesn't want to eat. Politely but unapologetically, she charms the waiter into moving everything, including the bill, to a table 50 yards away where we can share water and breakfast tea rather than solids.

As she chats to Q, she spurns the comparison (although delighted to hear it) that she is rock's Stanley Kubrick. Mystically reclusive; unwilling to surrender creative control in any aspect or march to any timetable but her own; wholly original in a genre which instinctively crushes originality; obsessively perfectionist. For both, the use of the word "genius" is not wholly hyperbole.

"I admire Kubrick. God knows how he kept all that control on his movies and without having his heart broken. He really was a genius and he took himself away. I'm privileged to have creative control; that to me is everything. I wouldn't dare compare myself to him, but I know what you mean."

The Red Shoes took four years from conception to release. Immediately afterwards, Bush erred. Instead of putting her feet up, she spent much of 1994 making The Line, The Cross & The Curve, a film originally conceived as a visual companion to The Red Shoes.

"I shouldn't have done it," she sighs. "I was so tired. I'm very pleased with four minutes of it, but I'm very disappointed with the rest. I let down people like Miranda Richardson who worked so hard on it. I had the opportunity to do something really interesting and I completely blew it."

"Also, I was actually viewed in quite a negative light at that point, more so than after The Dreaming where I was viewed as some kind of nutter. It dissipated my energy severely and threw me into a state of severe exhaustion. You just get worn down."

She will never do another film. She guested on a Larry Adler tribute, sang in Gaelic on an album by bouzouki player Donal Lunny, and retreated to her Bexleyheath lair, close to her family. Her personal life was not quite the idyll of yore. Bush's mother Hannah had died during the making of The Red Shoes.

"There had been a period, a very big period, where I hadn't been able to work, but I hadn't grieved properly, then work became my way of coping."

Somewhere along the way, her long-standing relationship with her engineer, programmer and sometime bassist Del Palmer had quietly crumbled.

"I needed to stop working because there were a lot of things I wanted to look at in my life. I was exhausted on every level."

She began to write almost immediately.

"There was a part of me that didn't want to work. I'd got to a point where it was something I didn't feel good about. It was as if I was testing myself to see if I could write, but I didn't like what I was writing. I thought, No, if you don't want to do it, it will be rubbish. Basically, the batteries were completely run out and I needed to re- stimulate again."

What did you do?

"I slept. I spent a lot of time sleeping."

Anything else?

"I used to enjoy watching bad television, like really bad quiz programmes or really bad sitcoms. I found that really fascinating. I wouldn't name the programmes, obviously..."

Obviously...

"... but it just seems that I needed to be in a position where there were no demands. I saw friends occasionally and I was very quiet. I was just trying to recuperate."

One doesn't have to be a member of Mariah Carey's inner sanctum to read between the lines. Having peered into the abyss, Bush slowly got her life back on track. She went on holidays. She moved to Central London, renting before buying a flat which she still retains. She describes exactly where, but asks, ever so politely, that the district is not revealed.

"I'm scared to tell you. I don't like where I'm living being pinpointed. It would create problems for me. I went to places I never had the time to visit, like museums. I love museums. I was fleeing my work situation, which was very consuming in every way."

Eventually, Bush tentatively set about writing her eighth album. Then she found herself pregnant. The father was Danny McIntosh, responsible for most of the guitars on The Red Shoes, although in the late-'70s he was a member of hard rockers Bandit, who spawned Jim Diamond and AC/DC's Cliff Williams. Three years ago, Bush gave birth to Albert, destined to go through life as Bertie, although the onset of puberty might just turn him into Al. Bertie now controls her life, and she adores this coup-de-rusk.

In fact, father and son are in Harrods this lunchtime and the trio will spend the afternoon shopping. McIntosh is compact, ear-ringed with greying auburn hair. He's friendly enough, but predictably not one to tarry. Little Bertie has his father's hair (the auburn, not the grey), his mother's eyes and the broadest grin you did ever see. Bush's guard comes tumbling down.

"Although I hadn't always wanted children, I had for a long time. People say that magic doesn't exist but I look at him, think I gave birth to him and I know magic does exist. He is his own human being, but my role is to try and guide him and give him a really good time. I'm very proud of him and I get so much joy out of being with him. It's totally incomparable with anything else."

"What I have found very difficult since I've had my child is finding time to talk to people, because he comes first. He doesn't care whether the album comes out, so it comes second. I don't want to miss a minute of him. It's so much fun, by far the best thing I've ever done."

Are you and Danny married? Immediately the shutters spring up once more. She twiddles her ringless fingers.

"Do you know, I knew you were going to ask this. I said to Danny, What do I say if he asks if we're married? I feel I have to give you an explanation: I'm so protective of Bertie, I get so concerned for him. A lot of people mix with are the mothers of Bertie's friends. I don't even know if some of them know who I am, so I'm really concerned about whether I'm married going to print. This is where I start to get nervous and concerned."

All people care about is if you're happy.

"I am really happy, I feel I've got the balance right where Bertie comes first and then the album. Some people say the best work comes from suffering: I don't agree with this. Hounds of Love is one of my best albums and I was very happy then. I'm very happy with Danny. I feel very lucky and that I've achieved a lot of things I was looking for after the last album."

If ever a track - aside, of course, from Wamdue Project's King of My Castle - sounded as if it were the first and final sighting of a one-hit wonder, it was Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, which, in 1978, appeared to come from nowhere and go to Number 1. The singer was a strange, doe-eyed lass of 20. In fact, she'd been nurtured for a while after Pink Floyd's David Gilmour had heard a demo and alerted his label, EMI, who signed her almost instantly.

Revelling in their Pygmalion role, the company paid for tutoring in mime and dance and gave her what appeared to be valuable stage experience when they encouraged her into leading the KT Bush Band around the pubs of West London. Only when EMI were satisfied she was ready did they unleash Wuthering Heights.

She would never again top the British singles charts, but EMI knew what they were doing, for there was much more and much better where Wuthering Heights came from. The hits piled up, but 1979's Tour of Life might have been better titled The Only Tour Of Her Life, for she never did it again and major international success has always eluded her.

At first, she was prolific, releasing two albums in 1978, a third in 1980 and a fourth in 1982. The reclusive years began after 1985's Hounds of Love, commonly regarded as her masterpiece. Since then she has released just two more albums, although as her public appearances are most infrequent, the picture of Kate Bush in many people's minds is of the young woman of Wuthering Heights. With each passing year of silence, the mystique around her has grown.

With the myth a succession of rumours have grown about her weight, her state of mind, her love life and her work. She rarely bothers to refute them, if only because denying one thing invariably means admitting to something else, if only by default.

Today her weight is normal; she is in both robust mental health and her second settled major relationship. All the time she is beavering away on motherhood and her new album and, although Hounds Of Love and The Whole Story were in the Top 75 as recently as October, she fears her audience might have vanished.

"It would be cynical and arrogant to think I'll be deliberately mysterious and spend years making an album, but I'm not capable of doing it once a year. If I'm really honest, what I find so exciting is that people want to listen to my music when I'm not thrust in their faces. In this fast-moving world, people do forget, but they're incredibly patient with me."

The self-produced new album has no title yet. It may be released in 2002, it may not. There is an element of not wanting to put pressure on herself by not committing to a date.

"It's hard to say when, because it's a matter of how much time I get to work on what's left to do, so I couldn't actually measure it in time."

What's it like?

"I'm not sure, because I don't get to listen to it. You see, with my other albums I used to listen to stuff such a lot. It's very different now because with Bertie I don't have the time. I'm quite pleased with it though. There's quite a lot of it done, but I can't really talk about something that's not finished, it's like talking about an event that hasn't happened."

The sound of gnashing teeth in the background comes from EMI Records. If she hasn't got the time to listen to her new album, the back catalogue is long-neglected.

She sips her tea. Father and son are returning. Bush sweeps Bertie off his feet. What if the little fellow wanted to go into music?

"There's something very special about him. I don't know what he's going to do, but he will bring something very special to it, he's got that spark. If he really wanted to do music, I couldn't stop him, could I? It would be wrong. Music is the most wonderful thing, but it can be very painful. I just want him to be happy."

Has music made you happy?

"Yeah, sort of."

A few days later, at the Q Awards, Kate Bush is less happy. "I was booed outside, I've never been booed," she confides, most distressed. Unaware of awards ceremony etiquette, she ignored to paparazzi outside. In accordance with awards ceremony etiquette they had, therefore, booed her. She looks sceptical at this explanation, for she had honestly thought the general public was so keen to pursue a vendetta against her that they had gathered en masse to jeer. She allows herself to be led by the hand into the empty awards hall where she can sip water and compose herself.

Of course, she has a whale of a time. "When I was told I'd got an award, I thought they'd confused me with somebody else," she giggles. The extraordinary spontaneous standing ovation she received and a vote of confidence from John Lydon gladdened her to the giddy degree where her first words on a British stage this century were, "Ooh, I've just come." Good job she didn't bring Bertie. Del Palmer gets a thank you. Danny McIntosh did not.

Politely she explains she will have her photograph taken, but only with the adoring pussycat that is Lydon and her old chum Midge Ure. Elvis Costello gives her his telephone number in the hope she'll call and work with him. If he's made arrangements this weekend, he'd be best not to cancel them.

Eventually, almost unnoticed, Ms Kubrick skips off into the late afternoon, wondering aloud whether anyone thought she'd behaved rudely. She hoped not. She hoped that more than anything.

[IntinyBut]

Ah, I remember that one like yesterday, really thought we were getting the new album soon(er than 2005).
It had nice pictures of her and it was nice to her again after 7 years or so.
I wish she did something like this again if the next album is not here in foreseeable future.

[IntinyBut]

I like this one as it has lots of info about Kate's writing and recording practices.


2005, BBC Radio 2
The Mark Radcliff Show
November 7, 2005


Mark Radcliff: Aerial, the new double album by Kate Bush is released today. It's a double album. We'll talk about the second one, "A Sky Of Honey" a little bit later on. We'll start with songs on the first of the albums "A Sea Of Honey". So I went her house, and we had asparagus flan for our lunch. And she was utterly charming, friendly... and something she's worked very hard to preserve - normal. Doesn't live a show business lifestyle. Doesn't live the life of a celebrity. She doesn't have a domestic staff or anything like that. She's a working mother, mother to Bertie. Something which has had a major effect on this record. She's also a devoted pet owner, and as we talked in her sitting room, her dog Ted made his presence felt on more than one occasion during this conversation. But it has been a long time since "The Red Shoes", 1993, so I started off by asking her why it's taken so long?

Kate: Well, I suppose when I finished the last record, I really didn't want to go straight back in and make another one. I thought I'd take a year out...

Mark: Right.

Kate: ... because up until that point...

Mark: ... which takes us to 1994.

(Both laugh)

Kate: Yes, it's been a long year. I think after about a year, I decided really that it was just something I want to kind of stay with a bit longer. I suppose really, since I was about 17 or 18, I'd gone and made a record and then come out of the studio, promoted it, and then gone straight back in to do the next one. And because they take such a long time, there's the impression that, you know, there's these big gaps where I'm not doing anything. But with a lot of those records, I was actually working on them for a long time. And it's... it's quite an intense process. And I think it got to the point, at the end of the last one, where I just thought, I don't want to just go straight in and do another one. I want to just take a break, and do some other stuff.

Mark: Yeah. Why does it take you a long time? Have you got the songs when you go into the studio? Do you write in the studio? Or do you go in with the songs, but it takes a long time to get the sound in your head down onto tape? Why does it take so long?

Kate: Well, that's a very good question. I ask myself that "why does it take so long?" Because the actual writing is normally very quick.

Mark: Yeah.

Kate: And with a lot of them, what I do is go in and just write straight onto tape. So, it's a bit different, with piano/vocal tracks, where I would, that would be written at the piano as opposed to written onto tape. And then once I've written it I'd just put it onto tape. So that's a different process, because that's the way I always used to write, when I was a little girl really. I used to just sit at the piano and write the songs. And in a way, it was like I was the tape machine, I guess. But once I started working in my own studio, I wanted to stop making demos. Because the problem was, you'd make a demo, and it would be really good, but you couldn't use it because it wasn't technically... sounding right or... So you try to reproduce it and it would never sound the same. It wouldn't have the atmosphere, or the buzz.

Mark: Is that something you've managed retained on this? I mean? two albums, there's a lot of stuff here, isn't there? Just tell us a bit about the concept that's driving it, in that sense.

Kate: One of the things I thought I did wrong with the last record, was that I think it was too long. And what I was trying to do, was give people as much for their money as possible. I think it's very difficult, ?cause as an artist you want to give people their money's worth. In a lot of ways, people's attention span doesn't really last that long. And what was so great about vinyl records was you had that forced gap. And so you'd listen for 20 minutes, and then go off and have a cup of tea or something and then turn it over or put another record on. You had that enforced break between the two sides. And I think that was a much more comfortable length of music for people to listen to.

Mark: Yeah. So, you've made two albums, so your attention span is... seven songs... and then this kind of "song suite" or whatever you want to call it, which is kind of nine tracks. So you thought that was a reasonable amount of attention to demand from people, did you?

Kate: Well, what I was finding was, once I started putting this sort of concept idea together, I'd get to about the third track... you know when it was just sort of in its very basic form... and I'd find it so tiring, you know, just to try and get beyond the third track, I found almost impossible. And I thought, well Christ, what's it going to be like for people who'd never heard it before, to get to this lot, and then to have extra tracks as well? And I started thinking that, well maybe, what I should do is actually split it, and have a double album. [Mark: Yeah] And I mean, you know, initially I was concerned, you know, it might be very expensive for people to buy. I suppose, also, I always really liked the process of making "Hounds of Love", which was a sort of... similar idea... except that was one side of a record, rather than a two record set. So in some ways, this is a bit like a kind of larger version, more like a sort of... "Irish Wolfhounds of Love".

(Both laugh)

Mark: How much has being a mother, and a mother and son, how much has that has inspired and infused this record, do you think?

Kate: I think it's all over it. You know, it's everywhere in the record. He's such a big part of my life so, you know, he's a very big part of my work.

Mark: Yeah. The life you lead, has been because you prioritized being a mother, more or less, above everything else, isn't it?

Kate: Yes, and it's something I really wanted to do, through choice. It's such a great thing, being able to spend as much time with him as I can. And, you know, he won't be young for very long. You know, already he's starting to grow up and I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss out on that, that I spent as much time with his as I could. So, the idea was that he would come first, and then the record would come next, which is also one reason why it's taken a long time (laughs) Yes, it's a wonderful thing, having such a lovely son.

Mark: Yeah, yeah? Can we talk about some of the songs? When I first heard the album I didn't have any track listings. And I picked up on 3.1, and I thought, I'm pretty sure from my basic mathematics... which I haven't done since "O" level... I thought "that sounds like pi". And I went back, and I know that in "Schott's Original Miscellany" it gives Pi, the whole sequence of numbers, so I went back to check, and it was. So why are you writing about numbers in that way, why did Pi become the subject of the song?

Kate: I really like the challenge of singing numbers, as opposed to words because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing and it was really fascinating singing that. Trying to sort of, put an emotional element into singing about...a seven...you know and to really care about that nine.

Mark: And did you care about it, I mean...

Kate: I really cared about that nine!

Mark: Are you hooked on, I don't know...Sodoku, or whatever it's called, number puzzles or something like that. Are you a numerate sort of person?

Kate: I find numbers fascinating, I mean, I think the whole idea that nearly everything can be broken down into numbers, it is a fascinating thing; and I think also we are completely surrounded by numbers now, in a way that we weren't you know even 20, 30 years ago we're all walking around with mobile phones and numbers on our foreheads almost; and it's like you know computers... numbers are a very integral part of how we live now. And, you know, I think what I find interesting, was trying to make it sound like an emotional lyric, when numbers, I suppose, are very much associated with machines and unemotional qualities, and it was a very interesting exercise as a singer trying to inject emotion into it.

[Intro of ?pi? is played]

Mark: IIt's quite funny really, because it's often been said, when people like someone's voice, and someone likes someone as a singer, and they say "what's the new stuff like?" and they say "ah well, Kate Bush could sing the telephone book, and it would sound fine to me". And you've kind of almost done it really! It's a sequence of numbers, isn't it? But why Pi?

Kate: I think...

(a low, moaning noise is heard)

Mark: That's the dog snoring, by the way...

(Kate laughs)

Kate: I don't think he thought much of that question, is getting fed up already.

(Both laugh)

("Pi" is played)

Tonight, the program is devoted to Kate Bush, on the release day of the double album "Aeriel". So the word that keeps coming up when I told people I was going to talk to Kate Bush, people kept saying "Oh, she's a bit of a recluse, isn't she?" Which is inaccurate. A recluse is someone who shuns all contact with the outside world. And that's not the way that Kate Bush lives her life at all. She's reluctant celebrity, I think in many ways, but that she does not live the life of recluse, which is kind of what she's talking about here:

Kate: I think I live an extremely normal life, and it's something that I?ve fought very hard to do. I don't choose to live my life in the industry. I guess it's all down to what matters to you in your life as to how you lead it, you know? I think I'm very privileged to be able to have my work as something that I love doing so much. And to be able to be a mother, and to still work, is also a privilege; a lot of people can't do that. So I feel very privileged, to be, really, to be doing the two things that mean the world to me.

Mark: Do you get bothered for being Kate Bush, you know, when you go out, doing normal stuff? Do you go to school sports day and stuff like that? Do people say "oh, that's Kate Bush, you know"?

Kate: I think really, for most people there I'm Bertie's mum.

Mark: Which is what you want to be.

Kate: Yes.

Mark: You must have had to fight, in a way, to make that space for yourself, because, you know, you have a record deal, and a record company... perhaps now you're at a stage where you can choose when to make a record. But you must have been under pressure from the record company wanting another record?

Kate: I don't know, I think they gave up on me years ago.

(Both laugh)

Kate: I mean, by the third album, where I was starting to get involved in the production. I remember that took six months, and um, at that time, that was considered a ridiculous amount of time to spend making a record. And of course, it just got worse from there. And I think the record company just thought... well, what could they do? They can't sort of make me finish it before it's ready, can they?

(Kate laughs)

Kate: The dog's just farted!

(Both laugh)

Kate: It's putting me off a bit...

(Both laugh)

Kate: Erm? Sorry, what was your question, young man? What were you saying??

Mark: I'm just saying. It's just interesting you've got to the stage where you can take your own time about it. Presumably, you could make a fortune if you did do an album every two years...

Kate: Yes.

Mark: ? there being some financial considerations...

Kate: Yep, certainly I could be a lot richer. But you know, if I wanted to make lots of money I'd put a record out every year. And if I thought it was crap, I wouldn't worry. But that's not what it's all about for me.

Mark: So you've managed to create this world for yourself, you have a nice house to live in, and a nice studio to work in. Not lavish, you know, but a nice lifestyle. You guard your privacy fiercely. And yet the record is like full of the most soul-baring emotional stuff. Which would seem in a way, quite a contradiction. Someone who wants to be private, and yet is very public and open about emotions in the context of her work?

Kate: Well, I don't think that is a contradiction. I think that in a lot of ways, it makes complete sense, because... and it's not that I guard my privacy fiercely, but, you know, I think the creative process is something that's very difficult to focus on. You have so many distractions as? for me to get into that creative process. I have to have a sort of quiet place that I work from. And if I was living the life of somebody in the industry, as a pop star or whatever, it's too distracting. It's too to do with other people's perceptions of who you are, and what's important to me is to be a human being who has a soul, and who hopefully has a sense of who they are, not who everybody else thinks you are.

And I think, you know, that's something that's very difficult for people who become extremely famous. I mean, I find it completely ridiculous this obsession with celebrities, and? Why are celebrities so important to people? It's absolute crap. I mean, the important people are surgeons and doctors and people actually put people back together and make a difference to people's lives. Not somebody who's in an ad on telly. I mean, okay, so that's valid for what it is, too. But why so much attention on something that's so shallow?

Mark: Has there ever been a time where you enjoyed the fame, when you were younger did you enjoy being "Kate Bush, the pop star"? I notice you laughed when you said "pop star", ?cause you obviously don't see yourself as a pop star. But you were a pop star! I saw Top of the Pops doing a number one hit single, so you must've been. Did you ever enjoy that?

Kate: I think so. There are lots of times when it's fun. And I think that's again, that's important if you can to try to keep it fun because, you know, in a lot of ways is quite ridiculous, really. What I desired was not to be famous, I wanted to make a record. That was the big thing, and I was on the mission from God. And that's what I was going to do. And I was that driven.

Mark: What, since you were a very little girl, then? Since you were a kind of... when did you start playing the piano and making up your own songs?

Kate: It was probably about nine when I first started to play around with just little ideas. But by the time I was 12, through to 14, I was taking it very seriously. And when I came home from school, I'd, er.. you know, instead of going and watching the telly, I'd sit and play the piano.

Mark: Right. The life you lead, and you kind of paint this picture of a normal mum's life, and that's great and everything, there is a song on the album, which seems to be primarily about a washing machine?

Kate: Mrs. Bartolozzi

Mark: Mrs. Bartolozzi. Obviously there will be some raised eyebrows. There will be some people who will say, you know, perhaps you want to get out more if you're writing a song about washing machine.

Kate: Well, I don't know, is it? Is it a song about a washing machine? I think it's a song about Mrs. Bartolozzi.

Mark: I don't know who Mrs. Bartolozzi is.

Kate: She's this lady in the song who...does a lot of washing (laughs).

Mark: It's not you then?

Kate: No, it's not me, but I wouldn't have written the song if I didn't spend a lot of time doing washing. Because I know what it's like to do a lot of washing. And of course, that's what the connection was that made me write the song.

Mark: Is it a real character or a fictitious one?

Kate: No, no, it's fictitious, but, um? I suppose, you know, as soon as you have a child, the washing suddenly increases enormously...

Mark: Absolutely, it's on all the time at our house!

Kate: And I was spending a lot of time in the washing room. And, um, what I like, too, is a lot of people actually think it's funny. And I think that's great, because actually, I think... I think it's one of the heaviest songs I've ever written. And I love the fact that people think it?s funny, I think that's great. It's actually one of the moments I'm really the most pleased with, from a writing point of view, on the record, because what I wanted to get was this sense of this journey, where you're sitting in front of this washing machine and then almost as if in a daydream, you're suddenly standing in the sea. And I took a few takes... they're all live takes. So it's not something that's been pieced together in the studio. So, you know, I had to sort of take a whole performance, flaws and all. And what I was quite pleased with about that performance, although there's things in it I really hate, I think it does achieve this sense of taking you from one place to another.

("Mrs. Bartolozzi" is played)

Just extraordinary. That is Kate Bush, and "Mrs. Bartolozzi" from the first of the two albums, Aerial is released today - as you know by now, and that is Mrs. Bartolozzi from the first album, Sea of Honey. We'll have more little bit later on. Fascinating all the e-mails coming in, actually. Great affection for Kate all over the place.

Rolf Harris, who has played with Kate Bush before, he used his didgeridoo on "The Dreaming", Rolf Harris is back to doing some painting and talking and singing and didgeridoo-ing. So we'll talk about that album, and what it's all about what it might be about in the whole sound and the concept behind it. But before that I just wanted to find out why Kate Bush, only toured the once? Remember, right back in the early stages of her career, she did the tour, which was very successful, never to return to the stage. But I was also interested to know when she knew she wanted to be a performer. Because when she was a teenager, she formed the KT Bush Band with her brother Paddy and bassist Del Palmer, who still engineers her records to this day. And so I wondered whether it was at that point, that she knew she wanted to be a singer.

Oh, and Ted the dog makes no appearance in this part of the conversation, having snored in the first part, and farted in the second, wandered off somewhere now.

Kate: I knew I wanted to be a writer, and in that band, which actually only existed for about 10 months, er... we did lots of cover versions and stuff like that.

Mark: How old were you about then, 16, or something.

Kate: Yeah, probably a little bit older, probably 17.

Mark: Can you remember which you were playing, what kind of songs were playing?

Kate: Yeah, we used to do "Honky-tonk Woman" and Free tracks. It was really fun.

Mark: And, you were playing piano and singing at this time..?

Kate: No, no...I was just the... I was just the singer.

Mark: Right, the lead vocalist, up at the front... And did you enjoy the attention of that?

Kate: I don't know, I think... it was a very interesting experience. I mean, learning other people's lyrics was quite interesting, ?cause I'd never had do that before, and, em, we used to do this track called "The Steeler" and em.. Brian Bath, who was the guitarist and the singer in the band as well, he used to do that track and, sort of halfway through, I?d jump off the stage and dance around the audience, and... I mean, it's hilarious really! And it was great! The looks on people's faces, as you started to approach them...it was like, "go away, go away".

(Kate laughs)

Mark: You see, now what's interesting about that... is because, then, you would've thought... and, quite early in your career you went out and did a tour in, what was it? 1978 or something like that...?

Kate: Yeah, ?79.

Mark: 79? Yeah...

Kate: Of course, I was only 12 of the time...

(Mark laughs)

Mark: But you did this to tour... you'd always performed... and you'd danced... you jumped off the stage, and approached the audience and you did a tour. And yet for some reason, you withdrew entirely from wanting to perform. So why was that then?

Kate: No, no, I didn't. I think that's a general presumption, and quite understandable. I loved the tour, it was fantastic fun, but I didn't want to repeat a tour with the same material. So I thought okay, I got two albums up until that point. I thought I'd go and do another two albums and then do another tour. So it would all be fresh stuff.

Mark: Right.

Kate: But then, by the time I started the third album I?m starting to become involved in the production, and it became a much more time-consuming process. And I think by the time I got to the fourth album, which I had promised myself it would be the end of the fourth album I'd do the next tour, it had all gone off into a different tangent where I was really trying to learn how to put records together in a studio. And that was a very time-consuming process, and it kind of took me away from the whole world of wanting to do shows, really, for a while, I mean. And I've toyed with it on and off a lot, because I did enjoy it, but I think I found the writing process so interesting, that I wanted to stick at that really, and try and make something of that, and it takes a lot of time.

Mark: ... but you know, people can, there are a lot of people who still find, you know, the time to perform, perhaps the need to perform... but you don't have the need to go out and do this stuff in front of people?

Kate: Of course!

Mark: ... but I know people can this a lot of people who still find you know the time to perform. Perhaps the need to perform... that you don't have the need to go out and do this stuff in front of people?

Kate: No, I suppose, I don't. (Said in a very deadpan way)

(pause)

Mark: Was it ever... kind of... when you got a new album out...which... you're very proud of it and you know, the reaction is very positive. Is there any part of you that thinks "actually, I wish I could get out on stage and do this for people"?

Kate: Yes. (Said in an equally deadpan way)

(pause)

Mark: But you won't?

Kate: I don't know if I won't. Normally something else comes along to sort of take me away from even pursuing the idea the any further. Yes, I would I would like to do some shows.

Mark: So you wouldn't rule it out?

Kate: No, I wouldn't rule it out, but then, I haven't ruled it out for the last 20-odd years.

(Kate laughs)

Kate: And I haven't done it yet.

Mark: It just hasn't happened yet.

Mark: Let's talk about the second album, the second of the two, "A Sky of Honey", which is a sort of song suite featuring Rolf Harris, who you have worked with before. So why Rolf again?

Kate: You know, it's very interesting, because, when people hear the records...the only two points that they stop to comment when they're listening is, after "King of The Mountain"...people go "that's real drums!",

(Kate laughs)

Kate: And I think, you know, my God, you know, where have we got to that people actually have to comment that there's real drums on the track? And then the next point they comment is when Rolf comes in, and they go..." is that Rolf Harris?"

(Both laugh)

Kate: And they have this sort of really childlike delighted look on their face. Because they know it's Rolf, but they just want it to be confirmed.

Mark: Yeah.

Kate: And, em, I think that says a lot about how... he's really touched a lot of people. He's like a national treasure of ours now, isn't he? I mean? A part of our culture, and I think he's a very talented guy as well. I think we all recognize him as a brilliant painter, and I suppose really that's why he sprung to mind was because I needed a singing painter.

Mark: Right, and there aren't many.

Kate: There aren't many are there?

Mark: In the Yellow Pages under "singing painters".

Mark:

So, is that the second album, and I know you don't want to talk
about individual tracks, particularly?

[?Prelude? can be heard]

?but the whole overall sweep of it seems to be... based around... well I'll tell you what I think - here's Rolf Harris in your garden, painting a picture with all the birds song going on and everything, and it seems to be a kind of dream sequence that develops into some
"Midsummer Night" from that. Anything in that??

(Kate laughs)

Mark: Or am I clutching at straws?

Kate: No, I think that's great! I think it's what you want it to be, if that's how you see it, then I think that's lovely. Somebody said to me? they said "it's not like listening to a record, it's like watching a film or something". And that was just the most fantastic compliment anybody could have said. I mean, I suppose really, it's very much to do with the idea of Birdsong.

Mark: Hmmm

Kate: That's it. It's all based around Birdsong, and.. I like the idea of these things that are different languages from use of words, I mean, for instance, like "Pi". It is a language, but it?s not one that we really speak. I think Birdsong is a really beautiful sound. I think what I find interesting about it, too, is the way that they mark the day. Like for instance, you know, the dawn chorus - they seem to be very strongly connected with light. And I think in some ways, that was one of the sort of explorations I was trying to go off on with this, the connection between their song and light and the passing of day.

("Prologue" is played)

Mark: Right, here's some theories, some "Aerial" theories, right, of mine? mother and son relationship, a lot of water images in what you do. "Ariel" is the little mermaid, there?s one. Sylvia Plath wrote a collection of poems called "Ariel", very intense love poems...

Kate: Did she?

Mark: Yeah, there's a Shakespearean spirit in ?The Tempest? called "Ariel"...somebody got the Tempest... and there's also Ariel washing powder for the washing machine we were talking about before.

(Both laugh)

Kate: Uh..uh.."Product placement"?

(Both laugh)

Mark: So?

Kate: Well, um...

Mark: None of those, presumably?

Kate: Well, I think, I think all of them, [They laugh] and many more. But that's what I liked about the word was it's got so many levels to it. It actually means "of the air", and, you know, also I always have an image of aerial suggesting height, as well so, it felt like it worked very well for the second disc. Uh, you know, with the sort of theme of birds...and also an aerial is something that, em, collects and gives out sound waves, and we've all got aerials connected to our televisions and our mobile phones, and?. I just thought it was an interesting word that had lots of puns.

Mark: Do you feel a relief now it's out after, you know, after working on it for so long, is a great to have it finished?

Kate: Yes. [They both laugh] I'm so excited about it coming out. And, it took so long to make, I just thought I was never going to finish it.

Mark: Did you?

Kate: Yes.

Mark: There days when you were sort of almost crying with frustration and beating the mixing desk, ?cause you thought we?re never going to finish this??

Kate: ?.Well, I don't know about beating the mixing desk, but? it just took so long to try and piece it all together, and try and make it work and... there were so many times, I just thought? I wasn't going to have the energy or the strength just to try and finish it. So, it's fantastic relief, to have it all done, and I mean... When I first finished, I felt like I?d been let out on good behavior. And it's great ?cause I can do other things, and the response from other people has been so positive - I'm so excited, at it actually coming out...

Mark: Did you doubt what the response would be? I mean, has it kind of been so long since you had that kind of response that you really started to worry about it?

Kate: I don't know if I worried about it. I think I did worry about there being such a long gap, I was worried that...I suppose, you know, in some ways, without wanting to sound sentimental, I was worried that people would forget about me.
Transcription by Chris Williams; Proof-reading by Robin Gow

[Abnorttrano]

Fantastic interview!

[Rufio]

This is an interview Chrissy Iley did for The Sunday Times Colour Supplement when TRS was released. A lot of fans thought this was a real hatchet job. The new unauthorized bio maintains that Kate was very hurt by this and the negative reaction to the album in general.

The Sunday Times, September 12th 1993
Kate Bush likes to get her own way. She has done ever since her pop rendition of Wuthering Heights turned her into a teenage star 15 years ago. She is still only little, but mighty corporations tremble at the stamp of her tiny foot. Chrissy Iley reports on a mauling at the hands of the Bush baby. Portrait by Anthony Crickmay.

BEATING ABOUT THE BUSH by Chrissy Iley
Kate Bush, shy megalomaniac. She shrugs a girlie shrug. Smirks. Oh, yes, yes, she likes that description of herself. Its aptness tickles her. She's big on paradox. Thinks that most people are extreme contradictions. Personally, I've always thought shy was another name for awkward, and megalomaniac just meant spoilt. Certainly, exposure to her special blend of diffidence, wariness and clenched control is extraordinarily wearying.

We'll do control first. Ever since she was a teenager, bigwigs at EMI records have scurried to the stomp of her tiny foot. It is a sensible little foot clad in Chinese slippers: she doesn't believe in uncomfortable shoes. She's no fashion victim, no anything victim.

In the late 1970s when she was spinning around Lindsey Kemp style and hollering "Cathee come home ..." the hair was as plum-coloured as it is today and her way of getting what she wants is similarly undiluted. Bob Mercer was then the managing director of EMI; now he runs a record label in Nashville. He has remained friends with Kate over the years. She calls him whenever she has a dream about him. He was given a tape of her songs by Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour when she was about 15. Mercer sent her off for piano lessons and encouraged her to do her O-levels.

Four years later she came back with a completed album. Mercer recalls, "Kate came to see me. She was unhappy at my choice of James and the Cold Gun for the first single. She said she really felt it had to be Wuthering Heights. I told her it was her job to write the songs and my job to market them and we should stick to what we were best at. I felt that if she experienced failure at such a young age she might not be able to handle it. I told her not to worry, hers wouldn't be a commercial success straight away. It would take at least three albums and she should be patient.

"In those days I was a very busy man. I had to contend with the Sex Pistols fiasco and I didn't expect her to behave like this. I was getting angry and fuck me if she didn't burst into tears. My leverage was gone, so I said all right, but when this hits the wall it will teach you a lesson not to interfere. It went to number one and stayed there four weeks. To her credit she has never reminded me of the incident and after that I always had respect for her instincts. It was in the days when artists didn't have much control over their contracts. But she changed all that. EMI always had to listen to her"

Over the years eight albums have plopped out, each one taking longer to produce. When they do come they are a blend of accessible pop sensibility and quaking pain. Her image has always been of this intense quivering thing plumbing her depths to deliver what is most sad. Yet her life can hardly be described as tragic. She's doctor's daughter Kate, safe, cosseted from the world. That's the way she grew up and that's the way she still is.

Me and the Bush baby have met to talk about her new album, out next month, called The Red Shoes. A dilemma: she doesn't really want to talk about anything but her music and I am not allowed to have the album to listen to. I was granted five tracks, but not to take home with me, only to listen to in the Abbey Road studios. I was also given a printed lyric sheet, but then like an exam paper had to hand it in at the end. "I haven't found anyone who can take in the album all in one session," she said. Lighten up Kate. It's supposed to be a pop record.

She's made a film to accompany the album but goes tense when you ask her what it's about. We know it has got Miranda Richardson in it, and Lindsey Kemp. And she squeaks in her pithy high-pitched voice: "Well, it's something like Magical Mystery Tour but it's not like that at all. It's not finished yet and I hate talking about anything until it's there. It's like talking to you about the album if you haven't heard the tracks. Completely ridiculous."

We are sitting side by side in a little preview theatre looking at a blank screen because she can't show me the movie, nor any part of the movie, because I might make a judgement, God forbid.

As the seats are cinema seats, it's difficult to swivel round to look her in the eye and it's perfect for her to avoid being looked at. She stays quite still and stares straight ahead. I'm fidgeting and feeling like a cheap perfume. Her diminutiveness hads the effect of making you feel huge and clumsy and gruff.

The sweetness of her elfin face and tiny, tiny voice are curdled with something; the bobbly eyes seem to belong to a very old person. The smile comes zipped on with her lips pressed so tightly together that there is a constant "Mmmmmmmmmmmm". The edges of the smile are tacked in place with invisible threads that move up and down, up and down. Before I met Kate Bush, I liked the record. It is probably a very good record. certainly, one track, Moments of Pleasure, is compellingly sad and makes people cry for no apparent reason.

So, Kate, what was going on in your head when you were writing it" "Er, it's just a very personal song. [This was the first of many 'It's personal' responses] It's to show just how precious life is and all those little moments that people give you. And that's how people stay alive, through your memories of them."

It has been a gruelling three years for Bush. She's a strong person but sometimes things have been so bad that "I couldn't even work. Singing is such a deeply personal thing to do, I couldn't manage it." She has "lost" a lot of friends; her relationship with her boyfriend Del Palmer, who was her bass player of 10 year's standing, evaporated; and her mother died. She was close to her mother. "She got ill and she died." No details given. But when she was alive and well she was full of old Irish sayings such as "every old sock meets and old shoe". "Isn't that a beautiful little saying?" I ask if it means the same as "we seek the teeth that made the wounds". She looks blank. You know, pain seeking pain. "Oh, it's so cute, isn't it? So cute."

This was my first inkling that Bush, for all her swelling emotions, might be a little one-dimensional. Mercer told me that she's a poet and sometimes poets have a tendency to say things without really knowing what they mean. "Like when she wrote the song Man With The Child In His Eyes. Does she mean that he was looking at a child, that he looked like a child, or he wanted to procreate? I always wondered who that father figure was: was it a brother, was it her father or was it an older man she had a relationship with when she was very young?"

She is close to all her family, her older brothers Paddy and Jay and her father particularly. The father figure has featured in much of her work. Dr Bush himself even speaks on an old song of hers, The Fog. He was teaching her to swim. The crying to get what she wants, the little girl's body, the little girl's wilful mind, have all the hallmarks of daddy's girl. So what kind of doctor is he? "That's a personal question. It's not really about my work." Yes but he features in your work. "It's not something that I really want to talk about."

When she first started to write songs she didn't tell boys because she thought it would be a threat to their masculinity. She has devised a concept of masculine and feminine energy. In Running Up That Hill from her multi-platinum selling album Hounds of Love, she said she would like to make a deal with God. "I wanted to be a man in a woman's body. I thought it would be completely astounding, so that we could completely understand each other. Because in essence we are so different.

"There is a feminine energy and there is a masculine energy. Some women have very masculine energies, and the creativity of a lot of women is masculine driven because they are ambitious to speed forward." She says she is not ambitious - not for money, not for material things -but she is driven by that great creative force to produce her work. "It is the feminine energies which are very sepcial and they have been a little neglected. [Early in her career everyone was discussing how her nipples poked erect from an early poster of her in a leotard: "I was flattered and it did help me to establish my music. I could never say it annoyed me."] I can understand why in many situations women have found the need to become masculine. A lot of my friends feel the feminist movement set women back a long way. Man-hating is wrong but many women are ashamed that they can't just be a woman. I think idealy people can be quite androgynous. That can be exciting."

She has got a new song about bananas and papayas and putting things in mouths and putting her hands into pomegranites. "All is revealed/Not only women bleed." That, she explains, is not sexual, it's about how beautiful men can be on the inside. "I think proper opposites are very exciting. How could you possibly experience pain until you knew what laughter was?"

She then goes into a discourse about why the song Life Is Sad And So Is Love is incredibly positive, and I'm afraid she lost me. I cannot tell whether she is being obtuse on purpose but suspect that she is trying to avoid the questions about men which she senses are coming. There have been so many wincingly intimate songs about relationships, I wonder who has been her muse. "That's for me to know and you to find out. I don't really see what that question has to do with my work."

Well, as she's already said, her life is her work; I'm merely inquiring which bit if her life has inspired which bit of work. "I think that's personal and I'm here to talk about my work. My private life I don't want to let go of. I need to keep it close and tender so that is is still my own." And she's smiling an assassin's smile.

I try to manoeuvre by pointing out that it is difficult to know where to draw the boundaries when the songs are so personal and she shrugs that little girl shrug. "Well, I'm telling you." She is unsettingly polite. If she had been angry with me there would have been at least a confrontation, a connection.

Bush baby doesn't care if there is no connection. She doesn't care if I like her or not. Mercer says that "even in the early days, all she wanted was to create. Her work is her only therapy. Her psyche is not about promoting her personality. Usuallly in this business the artists have an agenda: they want to make you love them, they want to project their personality and that's what drives them. And to do that they need to expose themselves. She feels that she has worked herself so hard and exposed herself in her work so much, it is hard to give any more. She's written about the last affair she had, or didn't have, that broke her heart. Of course she is scared to talk more about it. She seems to be interested only in warming to other artists. She feels press people have their own agenda."

She has an acute suspiscion of journalists. She usually brings her own tape recorder to interviews to check if she has been misquoted. On the other hand, she does have a schoolgirlie enthusiasm for other "artists". She's got great cred: she's worked with the best, Eric Clapton and Prince. Price, who appears on one song on the new record, is a fellow recluse. They never actually talked to each other, they simply exchanged tapes.

"I think creative control is so incredibly important," she says. "If you don't have that control your work will be interfered with until it's gone out of your hands. I was always aware that things wouldn't be how I wanted them unless I was willing to fight. You have to fight for everything you want. Struggle is important. It's how you grow and how you change.

"I've always been tenacious when it comes to my work and I became quickly aware of the outside pressures of being famous affecting my work. It seemed ironic that I was expected to do interviews and television which took me away from the thing that had put me in that situation. It was no longer relevant that I wrote songs. I could see my work becoming something that had no thought in it, becoming a personality, which is never what I wanted. All I wanted was the creative process."

She uses the phrase "my work" as if she's talking about some other person very close to her of whom she is the guardian. She is in her mid-thirties and won't comment about any biological urges to reproduce. Perhaps her albums are her children. She flashes me a zipped smile. "No. Can you imagine a child which took three-and-a-half years to come out?"

I remind her that she has been quoted as saying she is as tough as nails. "Ah, yes." She squints, the brows knitting together under the short fringe. "The journalist made that up. Also in the same piece [four years ago] she said I said I was as fragile as a butterfly. People impose their own personalities on me. I'm surprised you don't know that." And she looks at me with those cold limpid eyes. "I'm strong but I'm not as tough as nails. The two are very different. Quite often people project their whole life on you."

She is so full of contempt that communication is almost impossible. Is it just me that she doesn't like to reveal things to? "It's quite dangerous to go through life extremely open. In a way you need an element of trust. For some people it's just very hard. Fear is such an enormous thing in all of us and I think it stops a lot of rather nice processes."

Mercer believes that Bush has "matured enormously, but she's become more introspective, more true to her art. There was a point where it could have happened the other way, where she could have become more of a personality. Instead she dug deeper into herself. She is a sadder, wiser person. It has been an exhausting process.

"It's so strange to imagine she must be 35. I'll always see her as that little girl who's 15. She is the sweetest, a mensch. You don't either hate her or love her. You love her or you don't know her. Getting to know her is difficult."

Still trying to discover that sad place from which these sad songs have sprung, I try her childhood. What sort of things moved her then? I'm hoping there'll be an anecdote about her father, her brothers, her mother, her grandparents. But no. "I was always impressed by the sea, I think it's completely stunning. I'd love to be part of the sea. Wonderful." I can't even swim I tell her. I feel as though I'm drowning. I persist and she tells me, "It's been a difficult three years for everybody. The recession has affected everybody so badly .."

We are both exhausted from the experience, with my wrangling and her not letting go. She stands up to show me out. She's truly tiny, but not just in height. I see her as a bonsai person. Everything that should be is perfectly developed but in miniature: her emotional range is intense, stunted, trapped. Although she insists she is more happy than sad, I have not found her sense of humour to justify this. I have not found her.

A few days after the interview I met an early biographer of hers, Paul Kerton, and he understood my problem. He recalled, "I sent an asistant to get her birth certificate. She came back saying, "Bad news: she was born a man called Martin.' I sighed, and then she said, 'April Fool, April Fool'. But she's so mysterious and androgynous it would not have surprised me."

Perhaps we can get an insight from a poem he sent me written by Catherine Bush, Form 2 (1970-71). It later became a song, and here it is. "I have seen him/I have noted him seven times or more/but he has not seen me/He may have seen a girl called by my name/But neither he nor anyone else will ever really see me."

[deackatera]

I'm guessing Kate didn't make any of her trademark mince pies before meeting with Chrissy Iley then.

[Rufio]

Sarah!!!!! ! Seeing you here has made my day.

[AnypecekceS]

This is an interview Chrissy Iley did for The Sunday Times Colour Supplement when TRS was released. A lot of fans thought this was a real hatchet job. The new unauthorized bio maintains that Kate was very hurt by this and the negative reaction to the album in general.

Wow, that goes a ways to explaining Kate's defensiveness regarding her private life.

Reading up on that era led me to this, which makes me suspect it might have planted the seed for the 'Waiting for Kate Bush' bio/fiction mix -

http://gaffa.org/reaching/i93_to.html

DAFT AS A BUSH
Nick Coleman

Kate Bush - what's she like, eh, with her wailing voice, whimsical words and penchant for throwing wild Terpsichorean shapes? Suitably intrigued by her new album and accompanying, film, Nick Coleman tries to suss out the bird in the Bush.

I have a friend who lives in the house Kate Bush grew up in. It's an old and creaky Victorian house and my friend inhabits the attic, which was converted into a flat some time in the '80s when the house was sold. My friend's name is Catherine and she gets loads of post.

Kate Bush has a solitary dimple on her left cheek beneath her eye. It certainly looks like a dimple, being a small, oblong depression in the highest flesh of her cheek, like the imprint in dough of a toothbrush handle. Its charm is such that it must be a dimple. And though it's one of those negotiable features that never seems to come out in photographs, it serves a very useful function in the flesh. It tells you what's coming. It's an early warning dimple.

Bush has two smiles, you see. One smile is a tidal thing. It comes in quite slowly then crashes over her features uproariously, her eyes pressing into hyphens, her mouth opening and relaxing, while the entire upper portion of her face subdivides into jolly circles. It's the sort of smile you'd want for company on cold days. Unlike the other smile, which is not so warm. It's an unaccompanied hitch of the mouth, a mirthless, mannerly derivative of a blank face. You wouldn't want it around your person at all, ever, not even on really hot days.

And the dimple tells you which one's coming, either by disappearing altogether in the frosty glare of her cold smile, or by expanding to meet the furrows of her warm smile, when she manages to forget the invidiousness of her situation. Sadly, the cold smile out-performs the warm one by a ratio of about four to one, though of course this is a rough estimate based only on an interview.

Bush hates interviews, prefers her art to speak for her; has felt betrayed by journalists, who acquiesce at first to her insistence that they only discuss her work and then go off and write about what kind of person she appears to be. In fairness, Bush has been the subject of some terrifically creative speculation. It's been that sort of career. She appeared as a teenager in the mid-'70s throwing Terpsichorean shapes and hooting 'Wuthering Heights' on 'Top Of The Pops'. Photographer Gered Mankowitz, who took memorable early publicity shots of her, and shared in the creation of the attic-set sleeve to the 'Lionheart' album, remembers her as 'incredibly bright, exhaustingly creative and striving'. They got on 'terribly well'. She seemed mature beyond her years. Mankowitz says he found in her a mixture of vulnerability and self-confidence that was both unusual and attractive.

This seems to have been most people's view of Bush at the time. And as each new album appeared, invariably accompanied by a slew of visual appendices demonstrating a heightening taste for sub-literary interior fantasy, Bush acquired the imprimatur of an authentic English auteur-eccentric: part sphinx, part pixie, part bookish homebody on heat; the missing link between Angela Carter and Felicity Kendal. For the first time in pop, suburban middle-class Englishness had sex.

Yet Bush has maintained a buffering distance between herself and the knowing methodology of traditional pop-craft, preferring to define herself as an expressive vessel of subtle emotion, for whom creativity is both a burden and a joy, from whom music just comes out, like blood. She says ideas come to her at the piano, from doodles, which evolve rapidly into visual images, which are then nurtured and enlarged upon through various stages until they are given final, incorruptible shape in the recording studio. Over recent albums, the studio itself has become a musical instrument, which she has learned to play with some accomplishment. The talk is always of art, creativity and reaching inside; never of craft, commerce and giving people what they want. This is English, suburban, middle-class sexiness with a high mind.

Is she disingenuous? Almost certainly not. But then one of the privileges of eccentricity is perceived innocence. Bush doesn't have to be disingenuous, because no one would believe it of her, not even if she went on telly and announced formally to a choking Michael Aspel that really she never meant a word of it; and isn't it great, pop, the way you can do anything you like so long as there's demand! After all -- perhaps above all -- she embodies the homely Noel Streatfeild ideal of creativity as a distinguishing mark, as a personal brand, fizzing, black and indelible. In a world overstocked with Gemmas and Paddies and Susies and Kates, who you are is what you're good at. That's how the grown-ups tell you apart.

She pours tea and places herself on the edge of her chair. She is small, not minute, and erect. One booted leg crosses the other and bumps gently up and down. She cocks her head and waits. She is courteous, cool and suspicious.

My friend Catherine has never opened any post addressed to Kate Bush. There was, however, a letter that came addressed merely to 'Catherine '. So Catherine opened it. Inside was a lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff about dreams, and about how the writer was watching Catherine. So Catherine snorted, noted the postmark and forgot about it. Then another letter arrived, identically addressed, from the same postal region; then another, and another, each of them increasingly weird and disturbing. Sometimes three would arrive in a day. And it so happened that on the day that Catherine decided to go to the police, a letter arrived that included a reference to Catherine's poetry and music, neither of which are big with Catherine. Also, the letter included the appellation Kate.'

'It's so nice to talk about my work for once,' she says. By this she means she's glad we've started by talking about the great film director Michael Powell and his influence on her, which is signally manifest in the title track of her new album 'The Red Shoes'.

'The Red Shoes' is a ballet film made by Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1948, telling the story of a dancer who is torn between the demands of a great impresario, who can help her to become an artist of destiny, and those of her composer/husband, who can bring her happiness. The story elides an old fairy tale and a take on the power struggle that raged between the dancer Nijinsky and Diaghilev, first director of the Ballet Russe. Bush says the song evolved out of a feeling she had one day at the piano of music running away with itself. The image in her mind 'was like horses galloping and running away, with the horses turned into running feet, and then shoes galloping away with themselves'. Which corresponded, conveniently enough, with the key fairy-tale element in the Powell film: the red pumps worn by the tragic ballerina, which are imbued with a magic that carries their wearer off in a terrible outpouring of expressiveness.

Bush contacted Powell shortly before he died, 'to see whether he'd be interested in working with me. He was the most charming man, so charming. He wanted to hear my music, so I sent him some cassettes and we exchanged letters occasionally, and I got a chance to meet him not so long before he died. He left a really strong impression on me, as much as a person as for his work. He was just one of those very special spirits, almost magical in a way. Left me with a big influence.'

Which makes some kind of sense. Powell's super-rich three-strip Technicolor, his English-ness, his 'expressiveness', his interest in the shadows cast by daylight; even, you could argue, his thematic preoccupation with islands, solitary souls and the unconfined spirit; these are some of Bush's favourite things.

'His work is just so... so beautiful,' says Kate, in her tiniest voice.

Meaning what, exactly?

'Well, there's such heart in his films. The way he portrayed women... that was particularly good and very interesting. His women are strong and they're treated as people...'

That's one kind of beauty.

'The heart, I think, is the main beauty. This human quality he has. Although there's clever shots in his films, they're not really used for effect, to be clever. They're used for an emotional effect. I'd call that a human quality. Like vulnerability. Also, I like the emotional qualities of the characters. I suppose in one way they're very English ...'

To combine her interest in Powell with her lust for new directions, and perhaps to solve one or two promotional problems, Bush has directed a 40-minute film interpreting six songs from the excellent 'Red Shoes' album. It will be premiered at the London Film Festival.

'I'll be very interested to see what people make of it. To see whether they regard it as a long promo video or as a short film,' she says.

Where do your stories come from?

'Oh, all kinds of sources but generally they come down to people. People's ideas or works. Films, books, they all lead back to someone else's ideas, which in turn lead back to someone's else's ideas...'

I've always assumed you must be a bit of an Angela Carter fan.

'Um, no. I don't think I know her stuff.'

She wrote 'Company Of Wolves' and was big, I believe, on pomegranates, the predatory nature of nature, the heat of female sexuality; that sort of thing.

'Oh, yes.' Bush smiles, and her dimple disappears.

Other post addressed to Kate Bush arrived which went unopened. Then one day a letter came for the attention of Catherine Earnshaw. This being ambiguous, Catherine opened it just to make sure. Inside was a note from a Harley Street doctor indicating that Catherine was fit as a fiddle. This was good news. Unfortunately, Catherine had not been to see a Harley Street doctor. She hastily sent the letter on to Bush's record company, blushing at her daftness in not remembering immediately that Catherine Earnshaw is the name of the storm-tossed tragic heroine of 'Wuthering Heights '.

You're 35 and you've been doing this since you were a teenager. How have you changed?

'I think I've changed quite a lot. Essentially I'm still the same person but I suppose I've grown up a lot, and learned a lot.'

What's made you grow up the most?

'You get lots of disappointments. I'm not sure that they make you grow up but they make you question intentions.' She pauses. 'But life is what makes you grow up.'

That's a fantastically evasive answer.

'It is quite evasive but I think it's true.' Still no dimple. 'It's hard to say... when I was young I was very idealistic, and I don't really think I am any more. I think I'm more... realistic. I think it's good to change. I think I'd be unhappy if I didn't change. It would mean I hadn't learnt anything.'

Do you ever get curious about living another way?

'I do. But so far I'm extremely lucky to be doing what I'm doing. I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to do it.'

Mankowitz, who last worked with Kate in 1979, says he saw her being interviewed on TV by Michael Aspel recently. 'She struck me as being rather humourless, and I wasn't aware of that when I worked with her. She seemed uncomfortable, suspicious even, and was obviously tormented by the fact that if she doesn't promote then she can't expect any success.

'Although I haven't had any contact with her for years, it's certainly true to say that she has her world and it's very important to her, and, to begin with, that held her feet on the ground. And of course as she began to have this huge success, and the money that goes with it, she found she was able to shape her world to her own design, and that must isolate you. In a general way, that has to be part of the madness of being a very successful artist. With so much control over life, the artist's reality becomes unreal to the rest of us.'

Kate, do you concern yourself with how you're perceived. Does it worry you that to a lot of people you seem quite potty?

'I'm not sure that it's something I've created. But potty is okay.'

What do you think it means?

'I presume it means people think I'm mad.'

Do you ever think you're mad?

'Yes.' This is a slow answer, not without humour. 'Yes, I do. But it could be worse ... I think everyone is mad in their own way. I mean, what is normal? I do think I have quite a lot of fun with my madness, though. It's nice that I can channel it into my work.'

Does work ever feel like it's not quite enough?

'Oh, now! She glares. My blood vessels turn into zip-fasteners. Now I've done it. 'Those last two questions seem like they're coming in on an angle ...'

The lecture follows about how she makes it quite clear that questions about her private life are out of bounds. I protest that I'm not trying to get her to betray facts about her private life but to talk about how she sees herself, and the world outside. After all, I bluster, there is a connection between her feelings and her work, is there not? She pours tea, clanking the lid of the teapot, doing stuff with her hands.

'Yes, well, I think my work is far more interesting than me, and nobody would be interested in me if it wasn't for my work ...'

It used to be said of Olivier that when he wasn't acting there didn't seem to be much of him left.

'Well, I'm only five foot three, so there's not so much of me here anywhere. I have so much time for actors. I mean, that really is putting yourself on the line. And acting is being so many different things, isn't it? I wonder how easy it is for very famous actors to hold on to a sense of who they are.'

Quite.

'But Olivier was awfully good at what he did, wasn't he? So if there wasn't much of him left, who cares, really? What he did was great.'

What do you make of children?

'I suppose I think in a way that we're all children. And the older I get I think there isn't any difference between children and grown-ups. It's just that grown-ups are the ones trying to pretend that they're not children, while all the time they're the most sensitive children of all.' Another long pause. 'There's a sense of preciousness, don't you think, about children? Especially when the child is young enough. Such a pure spirit, so uncorrupted. A child is so symbolic of purity and tremendous potential. And people who have childlike qualities ... well, it's a lovely thing. It's tough for people to hang on to things like that ...'

Supposing someone were to point their finger at you and say, 'J'accuse Kate Bush of...'

'I confess.'

... of trying to occlude the nasty, real world so that you can live in a protected fantasy world of ballet shoes, over-ripe fruit and warm feelings. How would you respond to that?

'Um, I guess I'd wonder why someone should feel like that, and what it is within themselves that makes them feel that I don't have the same kind of pressure and problems in life as they do. My work deals with fantasy, and there's levels of realism in all fantasy...'

I tried to sucker her with some pretty low-level sub-Freudian stuff about the world of common reality as a place exterior to her own experience: as somewhere she visits. But she wasn't having any. She told me that there's a perpetual correspondence between the exterior world and the interior world and that that was what life was all about.

Catherine hates going to bed in her attic when there's a storm blowing. There's a casement window up there, loose and weathered, and when the wind howls it creaks. Catherine says she keeps imagining Kate Bush outside in the storm, calling to be let in; says she feels quite haunted by her. Especially when cab drivers insist on telling her that this is where Kate Bush used to live.

The album 'The Red Shoes'is out now on EMI. 'The Line, the Cross and the Curve' is being screened on Saturday. See Film: LFF Listings for details.

[Rufio]

I see what you mean, Dae. I wonder if he made up his friend Catherine. I thought the house she grew up in was still in the family.

Also, I wish these journalists had spent less time poking at her to see if she reacts like a crazy woman and more time asking her thoughtful questions about her music.

[annouhMus]

What are those paragraphs in bold? They seem totally out of place with the rest of the story and made up.

[deackatera]

I remember reading the following article in the Sunday Mirror when I was a teenager and completely at the peak of my Kate obsession. I sort of half believed it at the time, being a naive 13 year old and all, and was so excited to see a half page story on my beloved Kate.

Despite it being total and utter bollocks, the headline has stuck in my head for all these years and even though it has absolutely no truth in it, I thought I'd post it to show how in the mid-nineties Kate totally dropped off the radar and the papers would write any old crap about her!

Heathcliff! It's me, it's Cathy, I've gone potty

Sunday Mirror, Sep 22, 1996 | by FIONA WHITTY

It Was the song that shot her to stardom in the Seventies.

But now Kate Bush's obsession with Wuthering Heights has gone beyond a joke.

Shrill-voiced Kate, 38, is living as a virtual recluse ...and she's taken to calling herself Catherine Earnshaw, the tragic heroine in the Emily Bronte novel.

The once-sexy singer - who has lost her slim, good looks - has long admitted she is fascinated by the story of love-crossed Cathy and the novel's romantic hero, Heathcliff, portrayed by Laurence Olivier in the 1944 film Wuthering Heights.

And as her career has faded, her Wuthering Heights obsession has grown. A friend said last night: "Kate used to just use the name occasionally, but it's coming out more and more now. She has even signed herself Catherine Earnshaw on a voters' register. "

Wuthering Heights was Kate's first single in 1978. It was Number One in the charts for four weeks. In it, she uses her legendary, high- pitched voice to sing: "Heathcliff, it's me, it's Cathy, I've come home."

The erotic image made her into one of the most drooled-over sex symbols of the time. But the GP's daughter now lives her life behind closed doors. Her pounds 500,000 home, just a few miles from where she was brought up in Bexleyheath, Kent, is shrouded by trees.

The huge wooden gates are guarded by security cameras and an intercom system.

Neighbours say they rarely see or hear the woman once hailed as the best British female singer ever.


Located on this archiving site:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=content;col1

[Abnorttrano]

Haha! God the British press are horrid. "The once-sexy singer - who has lost her slim, good looks..." The Daily Mail ran a story last week about how Debbie Harry looks "unrecognisable" from the "'70s bombshell." Hmm, could be because there's 30 years' difference and she's 65??

I wonder how much the "friend" got paid. Or if said friend even existed? It's pretty funny in a way, but it's stupid nonsense like this that gives people the wrong idea about her.

[stastony]

I see what you mean, Dae. I wonder if he made up his friend Catherine. I thought the house she grew up in was still in the family.

The farm? Yes, it definitely was at the time of the article. As usual, the stupid journo has not done their research properly. A quick check would have established where Kate grew up. It's listed in every bio ever written about her, complete with photos and establishes that it is not a Victorian house converted into flats. Kate did live in a flat, but not until she left school and home. She lived in a three-storey house converted into flats, on the top floor. Her brothers Jay and Paddy occupied the other two flats. She lived there at least during the Kick inside and Lionheart eras (she said she got the idea about Coffee Homeground from a taxi driver who took her home babbling constantly and paranoically about plots) and I believe it may have been the house where Fred Vermormel hid in the garden to stalk her. I believe the house was owned by the family, although I may be wrong about that.

[Rufio]

I think you're right, Helen. Also, who knew kathatsung inspired Coffee Homeground?

[annouhMus]

Here's another "quality" article, which tries to find something shocking about how she wants to hide her son etc.



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=content;col1

KATE Bush, the reclusive pop star who had a string of hit records in the Seventies and Eighties before turning her back on show-business, has become a mother to a baby boy.

Kate - whose biggest hit, Wuthering Heights, was a number one all over the world, and who has a personal fortune of [pounds sterling]25 million - is bringing up her son away from the eyes of the world, behind the high walls and dense woods of her six-acre mansion in Berkshire.

The isolated 170-year-old house sits on a small river island, and is an effective hiding place for Kate, her son Bertie and her boyfriend, guitarist Danny McIntosh.

A web of secrecy has been cast around the child who is now more than a year old. The pop star has not allowed him to be photographed nor has she given any interviews or informed her fan clubs of his existence which is known only to her family and a select group of close friends.

Kate always made it clear she wanted a child but she does not want it subjected to the pressures of the paparazzi that she herself came to loathe when she was Britain's most successful female pop star.

That is why, seven years ago, she retreated from the world, hiding herself away in two lonely and isolated mansions in Berkshire and Greenwich, South-East London, and occasionally using a penthouse overlooking the Thames in Battersea, South London.

Greenwich affords Kate the anonymity she craves. She is never seen shopping on the local high street, she is not known in the local restaurants or wine bars and even the families who live next door are oblivious to the identity of their neighbour. Her sprawling Victorian mansion sits on a main road and backs on to a park, but the singer's privacy is protected by an impenetrable ring of overgrown, towering woodland. There is a forlorn and derelict air about the place - as though it is home to a Miss Haversham, rather than an internationally successful 41-year-old pop star.

The address is a closely guarded secret and attention from the outside world is clearly not welcomed. There is only one entrance and that is blocked by an 8ft-high wooden gate which is rarely opened. Covered in graffiti, it bears no name, only a street number and an intercom to vet all visitors.

Her Berkshire home is also hidden by a barricade of tall, dense trees - although it is just possible to make out a child's paddling pool in one corner of the garden.

The house is situated at the far end of a tiny village. Kate has lived there, on and off, for more than six years, yet neighbours have never seen her. The singer is also sheltered by a small band of fiercely protective friends. But Peter Gabriel, the ex-Charterhouse public schoolboy who founded Genesis, and who is a very close friend of the star (they were rumoured at one time to be lovers) has confirmed that Kate has a child.

The millionaire rock star said: 'Kate Bush has become a mother. I have not been to see her for about six months but I think she is working on her music now. She lives next to the Thames but she is going to move because she is anxious for her baby.' Gabriel is referring to Kate's Battersea apartment which she has used as a London base for the last four years. But it is too exposed for the reclusive star and she has now put the flat up for rent.

A porter said: 'She does not think it is a good environment for Bertie.

She wants him to be safe and also to grow up surrounded by fields and fresh air. She said that that is why she will spend the majority of her time in her Berkshire home.' But ironically, the place that Kate has chosen as a secure, safe, hideaway for her son was the scene of an extraordinary child kidnapping in the Seventies.

One winter's night in 1972, 19-year-old Simon Greenwell was grabbed as he drove his mother's green Mini into the garage of the very same house. He was hit over the head and taken in a car at gunpoint to an isolated riverside hut near Winchester where he was left with his feet tied to a root beam and sticking plaster binding his wrists and over his eyes.

After a terrifying three-hour ordeal, the teenager managed to escape when his kidnapper left to demand a [pounds sterling]30,000 ransom on the telephone. The attack shattered locals' confidence in their previously safe and peaceful village and the rural isolation that had been the original attraction of the imposing house instead became threatening and a constant source of fear. However, villagers are convinced that Kate remains oblivious to the building's history. And friends confirm that she has specifically chosen the estate, where she employs 24-hour security guards, as a suitably secluded environment in which to bring up her son. Her deliberate concealment of Bertie is by any standards peculiar.

Usually a birth is greeted with joyous celebrations. Most mothers cannot wait to tell the world their good news.

Kate is, of course, delighted. Asked some years ago if she would like to have children, Kate said: 'I guess the answer to that is yes. But I don't think I would unless I felt totally ready for it.

For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love.' But now that she is finally ready for motherhood - Kate will be 42 at the end of this month - her secretive attitude towards Bertie comes as no surprise to those who have followed the fortunes of Britain's most mysterious pop star.

She remains as much an enigma today as she did 22 years ago when - as an unknown teenager - she astonished the world with her first single, Wuther-ing Heights. The song went straight to number one, knocking Abba off the top spot and spawning an international frenzy of Kate Bush fever which the singer has been running from ever since.

The country became fascinated by the beautiful, ethereal 19-year-old with an obsession for Emily Bronte's tragic love story about the ill-fated young lovers Cathy and Heathcliff on the Yorkshire moors.

Wuthering Heights is her most famous record and, for Kate, the most important. She has a strange affinity with Emily Bronte. Their birthdays both fall on July 30 and as a child the singer insisted on being called Cathy after she saw the classic 1939 film adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

On the release of her hit she said: 'I saw the film years ago. It was just fascinating me so much, it kept coming into my brain. I thought the only way to get rid of it and stop it bothering me was to write it down.' But Kate Bush's obsession with the tale may have grown out of hand and in 1992 and 1994 she even signed herself Catherine Earnshaw on the voters' register. In 1996 one friend said: 'Kate used the name just occasionally but it's coming out more and more now.' Friends, family and her fans were becoming increasingly worried about the mental state of the wild-eyed, tangle-haired singer, known for her fragile grip on reality and rumoured to have eccentric leanings towards mysticism.

She herself has admitted: 'I often find myself inspired by unusual, distorted and weird subjects, as opposed to things that are straightforward.

It's a reflection of me, my liking for weirdness.' It was this eerie quality - her dark cabalistic lyrics sung in that unnaturally high voice - that guaranteed Kate her position in pop history.

She was signed to EMI in 1974 at the tender age of 16. After the success of Wuthering Heights, EMI, keen to capitalise on its protege's success, pushed its young star into a whirlwind of tours, publicity and promotion.

But only a year after she burst so spectacularly on to the music scene, Kate Bush disappeared. She would never perform live again and she recorded only sporadically and, in her studio, away from the interfering hands of EMI record executives.

She said many years later: 'They (EMI) took me away from everything familiar and, four months later, wanted another record. I figured out then that music was a priority, not publicity. And that completely changed my life. I stopped doing all the things that were expected.' Determined and wilful to the core, Kate - then only 21 - withdrew from the world of showbusiness. To reject the glamorous perks of an international music career was an extraordinary decision and one that most young women would find impossible to understand.

But Kate had developed a fear of flying and she is also profoundly suburban at heart.

Her only loyalties are to her music and her family. She named her son after her father, Robert, a doctor from Kent, and remains very close to him and to her elder brothers - Paddy, a record producer, and John, a photographer. Her Irish mother, Hannah, died in the early Nineties.

Paddy lives next door to his sister's London home and also works closely with her. Last year he was paid [pounds sterling]299,779 by one of her companies.

Kate's family are zealously protective of her and her decision to retreat into the bizarre private world of her imagination. For the singer's only contact with the outside world has been through her music. Every two or three years, between 1980 and 1993, she put out an album, not always critically acclaimed, but eagerly snapped up.

She has sold more than 10 million albums world-wide and still makes [pounds sterling]1million a year, including royalties from her back catalogue. Considering her stubborn refusal to reveal anything of her private life, this is an astonishing feat.

For when the records stopped so did all news of the star. Bush's last album, The Red Shoes, was released in 1993. The last interviews to publicise it were in 1994. And from that moment on she hasn't given an interview for any British newspaper or a magazine, nor on UK radio or television. She simply disappeared.

There is undoubtedly an element of paranoia to her hermit-like existence.

Her only public appearance was this March at a party to celebrate Rolf Harris's 70th birthday where she posed for a picture for OK magazine.

Harris is one of the few people accorded entry to her small and eclectic group of friends which includes Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Nigel Kennedy and a couple of old schoolfriends.

Her boyfriend, Danny McIntosh, played guitar on The Red Shoes.

One friend said: 'She is very, very happy with Danny and with Bertie, who is beautiful.' It was the guitarist who provided the singer with an obsession other than her work. In her final interviews, then aged 35, she said: 'I am at a point when I'm older than I was and there's a few things I'd like to do with my life. I have spent a lot of time working. I'd like to redress the balance' However she still didn't feel physically or emotionally ready to have a child. She admitted: 'I think a mother should be totally dedicated to her role, which for some years I won't be able to do because of my work.'

Ironically, it now seems that becoming a mother is the one thing that has encouraged Kate back to work. Last year she spent tens of thousands of pounds upgrading her recording studio and after a deafening silence, spanning seven years, EMI have confirmed that the star is busy writing material and that fans can at last look forward to a new album, possibly by autumn 2001.

Perhaps Kate Bush realises that she will have to interact with the world once more. She has kept Bertie a secret for many months now. But she cannot hide a child behind the decaying walls of her lonely mansions forever.

[Rufio]

Yeah, the press was really miffed that Bertie had been around for almost two years and they knew nothing about it. He was not named after her father Robert, his name is Albert. And the adaptation of Wuthering Heights that she based the song on was the 1970 version with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. I loved that one so much.