She took some convincing, but eventually agreed to not just one, but three, all of which took place at various intervals during the height of her commercial success. In this personal account, Needs recalls some of the most in-depth discussions that took place during the artist's formative decade.
In retrospect, my decision to stick Kate Bush on the cover of ZigZag magazine in 1980 was an act of sheer punk-style defiance; so unlikely she had to be persuaded it wasn’t going to be another stitch-up before agreeing to do our interview. Yet once the ice was broken, it led to further encounters that Kate described as the most in-depth interviews of her formative decade.
Launched by Pete Frame in 1969 as an underground fanzine, ZigZag had become the UK’s first serious music monthly by the time he appointed me as editor in 1977. Punk’s revolution was in full swing and I reported from the frontline on The Clash, Ramones, Siouxsie And The Banshees, etc. In that era dominated by strict musical categories, punk soon became a blinkered parody of itself, motivating Johnny Rotten to voice his love of Peter Hammill and soon Kate Bush.
Coming from the John Peel school of non-existent musical barriers, I felt a fearlessly idiosyncratic talent like Kate deserved support rather than the disparaging treatment she was getting from the music papers. Knowing I’d ZI attract abuse from punkier elements, I found her precociously vivid talent so fascinating I requested an interview. Predictably, she was sceptical that a punk-associated publication would want to interview her, needing to be convinced of my honourable intentions. Finally, I won a slot after the Daily Express on the Friday afternoon following Never For Ever’s September 8 release.
Arriving at EMI’s Manchester Square offices, I saw jubilant staff popping champagne corks and celebrating Kate’s third album entering the UK charts at No.1, making her the first female solo artist to reach the top spot with a noncompilation set. Smiling in an emerald green top, the lady herself was perched on a couch in a side room. She was instantly friendly and likeable, chatting away in her south London accent, softly but deliberately outlining the creative ethos she would now pursue, displaying a maturity beyond her 21 years. We seemed to hit it off and ended up speaking for over 90 minutes. At one point she said with a laugh, “It’s like two psychiatrists talking!”
I was captivated by Kate’s bewitching mix of down-to-earth honesty and humour, steely determination and wide-eyed sense of wonder at her success, including coming in at No.1.
“I still can’t believe it! Every time I tell someone I feel like I’m lying. I couldn’t have asked for more for such an important new step in what I’m doing. The other two albums are so far away they’re not true. They really aren’t me anymore.”
Although Kate would always appreciate The Kick Inside as her entry point, in 1980 she felt vindicated after the album she’d spent a year conceiving and recording was a success. More importantly for her, she discovered how she would work from now on.
“When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain kind of sound. As a person I’m changing all the time, and the first album is very much like a diary of me at that time: I was into a very high range. The same with the second album. I feel this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It’s like the first album on a new level. It’s much more under control.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/0700828788.jpg]
As Kate often stressed, she was finding her feet on her first two albums, with Lionheart a hasty followup demanded by the record company that didn’t fare so well. Never For Ever saw Kate coming of age in the studio, igniting the work ethic that would define her. Of course, there were clashes with EMI, who wanted the jaunty Babooshka as first single, but Kate insisted on the astonishing Breathing, sung from the perspective of a post-apocalypse foetus reluctant to enter this ruined new world. She grinned widely when I described this track as her creative breakthrough:
“It’s great to hear you say that. From my own viewpoint it’s the best thing I’ve ever produced. The song says something real for me, whereas many of the others haven’t quite got to the level that I would like them to reach, though they’re trying to.”
Sometimes during those marathon conversations it felt like Kate was thinking aloud or working something out as her creative muse swum with new possibilities and pivotal moves like deciding between making a new album or doing another tour. As her studio experience increased, the answer was always going to be recording.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/9998978998.jpg]
Kate mentioned “stating your presence”, citing punk as an example of not being sucked into the music biz vortex or being controlled. She had more balls than many of the male punk bands I encountered.
“It’s so bloody easy to be forgotten. It’s so easy to go under unless you fight. Everyone has to fight and there are different ways of fighting. I’m definitely trying to state my presence. It’s important for me to do things on a one-woman basis: I seem to work, produce and create better as one entity, then involve others for feedback. That seems to be the ideal way for me to work; I feel I’ve only just begun. I’m not doing what I want to do musically yet. I’m getting there, but it’s nowhere near to what I actually want.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/0171802918.jpg]
Did she feel success got in the way? “When I’m in the studio I’m not aware of my success. It’s only really when you do the rounds of promotion, things like this. But the real pressures of success, I think, are something that come from the inside... I don’t intend to let pressures of success make me go under and lose everything. Pressures of life, yes, I think that’s something that can happen to anyone. There’s nothing you can do about it except to try and be as strong as you can. Success is a label other people like to put on you so they can go, ‘Success!’ I don’t feel successful. There’s so much I have to do to feel that I’ve really done what I want to. My success is in terms of fulfilment and perfection of my art. That’s something I never will reach. I have to accept that.”
Trailered by the contagious big drum whoopee of Sat In Your Lap, 1982’s The Dreaming saw Kate finally producing herself with engineer Nick Launay (fresh off Public Image Ltd’s heavily percussive Flowers Of Romance). They experimented wildly with tribal drum patterns, skyscraper vocal overdubs and Fairlight, running up the huge studio bills at Townhouse, Abbey Road and Advision that prodded the installation of ...
In retrospect, my decision to stick Kate Bush on the cover of ZigZag magazine in 1980 was an act of sheer punk-style defiance; so unlikely she had to be persuaded it wasn’t going to be another stitch-up before agreeing to do our interview. Yet once the ice was broken, it led to further encounters that Kate described as the most in-depth interviews of her formative decade.
Launched by Pete Frame in 1969 as an underground fanzine, ZigZag had become the UK’s first serious music monthly by the time he appointed me as editor in 1977. Punk’s revolution was in full swing and I reported from the frontline on The Clash, Ramones, Siouxsie And The Banshees, etc. In that era dominated by strict musical categories, punk soon became a blinkered parody of itself, motivating Johnny Rotten to voice his love of Peter Hammill and soon Kate Bush.
Coming from the John Peel school of non-existent musical barriers, I felt a fearlessly idiosyncratic talent like Kate deserved support rather than the disparaging treatment she was getting from the music papers. Knowing I’d ZI attract abuse from punkier elements, I found her precociously vivid talent so fascinating I requested an interview. Predictably, she was sceptical that a punk-associated publication would want to interview her, needing to be convinced of my honourable intentions. Finally, I won a slot after the Daily Express on the Friday afternoon following Never For Ever’s September 8 release.
Arriving at EMI’s Manchester Square offices, I saw jubilant staff popping champagne corks and celebrating Kate’s third album entering the UK charts at No.1, making her the first female solo artist to reach the top spot with a noncompilation set. Smiling in an emerald green top, the lady herself was perched on a couch in a side room. She was instantly friendly and likeable, chatting away in her south London accent, softly but deliberately outlining the creative ethos she would now pursue, displaying a maturity beyond her 21 years. We seemed to hit it off and ended up speaking for over 90 minutes. At one point she said with a laugh, “It’s like two psychiatrists talking!”
I was captivated by Kate’s bewitching mix of down-to-earth honesty and humour, steely determination and wide-eyed sense of wonder at her success, including coming in at No.1.
“I still can’t believe it! Every time I tell someone I feel like I’m lying. I couldn’t have asked for more for such an important new step in what I’m doing. The other two albums are so far away they’re not true. They really aren’t me anymore.”
Although Kate would always appreciate The Kick Inside as her entry point, in 1980 she felt vindicated after the album she’d spent a year conceiving and recording was a success. More importantly for her, she discovered how she would work from now on.
“When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain kind of sound. As a person I’m changing all the time, and the first album is very much like a diary of me at that time: I was into a very high range. The same with the second album. I feel this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It’s like the first album on a new level. It’s much more under control.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/0700828788.jpg]
As Kate often stressed, she was finding her feet on her first two albums, with Lionheart a hasty followup demanded by the record company that didn’t fare so well. Never For Ever saw Kate coming of age in the studio, igniting the work ethic that would define her. Of course, there were clashes with EMI, who wanted the jaunty Babooshka as first single, but Kate insisted on the astonishing Breathing, sung from the perspective of a post-apocalypse foetus reluctant to enter this ruined new world. She grinned widely when I described this track as her creative breakthrough:
“It’s great to hear you say that. From my own viewpoint it’s the best thing I’ve ever produced. The song says something real for me, whereas many of the others haven’t quite got to the level that I would like them to reach, though they’re trying to.”
Sometimes during those marathon conversations it felt like Kate was thinking aloud or working something out as her creative muse swum with new possibilities and pivotal moves like deciding between making a new album or doing another tour. As her studio experience increased, the answer was always going to be recording.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/9998978998.jpg]
Kate mentioned “stating your presence”, citing punk as an example of not being sucked into the music biz vortex or being controlled. She had more balls than many of the male punk bands I encountered.
“It’s so bloody easy to be forgotten. It’s so easy to go under unless you fight. Everyone has to fight and there are different ways of fighting. I’m definitely trying to state my presence. It’s important for me to do things on a one-woman basis: I seem to work, produce and create better as one entity, then involve others for feedback. That seems to be the ideal way for me to work; I feel I’ve only just begun. I’m not doing what I want to do musically yet. I’m getting there, but it’s nowhere near to what I actually want.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1729078929/articles/6IXT2dlhc1729409683626/0171802918.jpg]
Did she feel success got in the way? “When I’m in the studio I’m not aware of my success. It’s only really when you do the rounds of promotion, things like this. But the real pressures of success, I think, are something that come from the inside... I don’t intend to let pressures of success make me go under and lose everything. Pressures of life, yes, I think that’s something that can happen to anyone. There’s nothing you can do about it except to try and be as strong as you can. Success is a label other people like to put on you so they can go, ‘Success!’ I don’t feel successful. There’s so much I have to do to feel that I’ve really done what I want to. My success is in terms of fulfilment and perfection of my art. That’s something I never will reach. I have to accept that.”
Trailered by the contagious big drum whoopee of Sat In Your Lap, 1982’s The Dreaming saw Kate finally producing herself with engineer Nick Launay (fresh off Public Image Ltd’s heavily percussive Flowers Of Romance). They experimented wildly with tribal drum patterns, skyscraper vocal overdubs and Fairlight, running up the huge studio bills at Townhouse, Abbey Road and Advision that prodded the installation of ...
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 154