Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (01/26/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Be forewarned, even those who still read IED's postings may be taken aback at his causticity this time out. He's in an ornery mood today, and will allow blasphemers no safe haven. Alerted by a local Love-Hound of a "Kate Bush video night" at Hollywood's Lhasa Club, IED attended. He was apparently the only Kate Bush fan in attendance. Everyone at the place seemed more interested in his/her own appearance or drowning out the music with loud, idle chatter than in experiencing the GREAT ART that was being displayed before their unseeing eyes. As for the rarity of the video, humbug! All they did was show The Single File, plus "RUTH", the Wogan "RUTH", "Cloudbusting" and "Hounds of Love" -- all of which were taken straight off MTV. As for the live bands (The Telling and Babooshka), yech. For someone who likes to "n" IED's postings, Greg Earle, you certainly seem awfully concerned with what he has to say. (And thanks for the latest personal posting, Greg -- IED always appreciates your private letters!) >Apparently from: Douglas Traynor >And don't forget the non-mainstream stuff that also just happens to be >equally complex as this Miss Bush. Two immediate examples are Pere Ubu >and Matching Mole. If you really fail to see the difference in complexity between Pere Ubu and "this Miss" Bush, then how can you expect your opinions about "Matching Mole" to be taken seriously? Anyway, nothing "just happens" to be complex, least of all Kate Bush's recent records, which, it seems clear by now, are largely lost on you. >Well, I'm sorry I'm not coherent right now, but I'm sure you get the >idea. You're right on both counts; that's the problem. >Bands, for the most part, do not have their collective head up >their collective posterior. They know about how to craft records, and >many opt to make their sound unique. Sorry, but the above "observation" is too resoundingly stupid to be ignored. Of the many, many inanities contributed to Love-Hounds to date, the above has got to rank with the most colossally inane of them all. "Bands, for the most part...know how to craft records"?!? How did this all start? IED challenged the readers to come up with one -- just one -- LP that seriously competed with either The Dreaming or Hounds of Love in terms of musical, thematic, lyrical and sonic sophistication. Well, the gauntlet was thrown, and alot of people accepted the challenge. But what weapons were offered? Talking Heads (and not even just Eno's Talking Heads)! THE W H O, for chrissake! Look, everyone is entitled to LIKE a record, whether it's complex, subtle and sophisticated or not -- nobody said these are the only criteria for judging QUALITY in music. But if you're going to take up IED's challenge, at least try to come up with likelier candidates. But now IED is told not just that crude records (whether crudely powerful or not) may somehow miraculously become complex overnight, but that "bands" IN GENERAL "know" how to make records -- the implication, given the context of the discussion, being that practically EVERYBODY's records are somehow comparable! And it's IED who's supposed to "get real"?! >but... If Mr. IED is filled with "desperation" (sic) at not hearing >anything else as "good" as Kate Bush, perhaps he should open his ears >and listen to something else. It's too bad that it's tough to find >this stuff on the radio, but hey,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bc What's the "sic" for in this context? Could it be that you don't know the meaning of the word, or are you just not sure how desperation is spelled? It's too bad that it's tough to find this stuff in the dictionary, but hey... You have no idea how broad or deep IED's listening experience is, all you know is that he has concluded from it that there has been no music released since about '73 that can survive the same kind of scrutiny that The Dreaming or Hounds of Love can. If you think he is wrong, then demonstrate specifically how. And TRY to use more specific terms than "bands, for the most part." >> From: rhr@osupyr.UUCP (Robert Robinson) >> I tried so hard to see what you see, (even got hold of a concert >> videotape, the Experiment V video, and the Running Up That Hill >> video), but it's just not there. As a singer, she's marginal at >> best, and as a redefining force, nonexistant (SIC). >C'mon! Get a brain! Anyone who would say that "Kate Bush is at best >a marginal singer" is either just trying to be argumentative or is >brain-dead. And there are enough famous musicians who say that Kate >Bush is a redefining force to make her one. > >No one is saying that you have to like her music, but at this point it >is close to undeniable that her music *is* great. And we don't love >Kate as just a "singer". She's also a fantastic composer, lyricist, >keyboardist, producer, choreographer, video designer and director, etc. > > |>oug What's the point, Doug? Here is Part 4 of the Swales interview, The Second True and Only Gospel; though IED only bothers posting it out of an increasingly forlorn hope that deadbeats who make remarks like Robert Robinson's and Douglas Traynor's are not the only people reading this list. The Second True and Only Gospel: An interview by Peter Swales with Kate Bush, Paddy Bush and Del Palmer, Part 4 Swales: Did you get in the guy Youth on that track <"The Big Sky"> because he's highly thought of as a rock & roll bassist? Kate: Yeah, absolutely, the energy was right for the track, he used to play with Killing Joke. Del Palmer: Also he'd played on the original version and we thought it'd be good, karmatically, to have him play on the later one too. And he plays that particular style that's just perfect for that kind of track. That was very much a case of getting the right person for the right thing on the right track. Horses for courses... Swales: Besides Youth and Del, you have other bassists on this album, Danny Thompson, ex-Fairport Convention, and Eberhard Weber. Kate: Yes, I do love the bass, it's a very beautiful instrument and, there's no doubt, it does put a very strong mark on the track with the player's personality really coming through. And, it depends, but often there are some tracks that are ASKING for someone's particular style. And on this album I felt that "Hello Earth" and "Mother Stands for Comfort" were very much in the style of Eberhard Weber, actually it was partly Del's suggestion. I've been a fan of his for a long time and a few years ago we brought him over for "Houdini" on The Dreaming. This time he came over specially from Munich, and stayed two days to do the two tracks. Del: I think bass players in particular, more so than, say, a guitarist or something like that, are so individual in style, and there are songs that lend themselves to certain players like Eberhard. He's such a talented bass player, he's so together in his attitude and his playing. He turns up with this upright electric five-string double-bass that's like a work of art, and he brings his own amplifier, a tiny little one that I've never seen before that looked home-made and that he carries in a little suitcase, and he has his own stool that he always uses with a little frame that fits on the bottom so the bass is always at exactly the same angle and height. And he sets himself up, and I remember, on the second day, I was standing in the kitchen in the studio making tea and he was just sitting in the other room playing just to get himself going, and what he was playing was unreal. I wish I'd had a tape recorder going! I think personally he's the greatest bass player I've ever seen play. A beautiful player, and so fluid as well. Swales: And how did you come to get in John Williams on "The Morning Fog"? Kate: Well, as part of the ;concept of the second side, The Ninth Wave, the last song had to be very positive, very much the idea of everything bursting into light so it's all suddenly reborn, rather than that everything completely dies. And I though how lovely the acoustic guitar is, it's such a delicate and UPLIFTING sound. So I wrote out the part on the Fairlight with an acoustic guitar sound and then wrote the song to that. But I thought it didn't sound nearly so good as a real guitar would. I'd met John a couple times over the years when we were working at the same studio, Abbey Road, and times like that. So I asked him if he'd come in and do it. I got someone to write out the part, and he just played it and did it really quickly. Yes, he's got a lovely way of projecting his own personality in there, you know, the little thrills <sic -- perhaps she really said "trills"? -- ied> and things. Lovely! Swales: So tell me, how did it come about that you came to bring in Planxty, both on The Dreaming and Hounds of Love? Kate: My brother Jay was a big fan of theirs and played their records all the time. And when I heard them I though they were fantastic! Then one day I was writing the song "Night of the Swallow" on the last album and I thought: what would go really well on the chorus is a ceilidh band. So I thought: Planxty." Swales: Who came up with that beautiful melody-line on the Uillean pipes? Kate: Bill Whelan, who is a producer and also the keyboard player of Planxty. It was fantastic, 'cause I sent him a cassette of a rough mix, and then he rang up and said, "Listen, do you want to hear the arrangement?" He was at home in Ireland and I was in the studio here in London. And I said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So he said, "Well, hang on a minute," and he put down the phone, and then I could hear these pipes and this whistle. They had my cassette going on a machine and they were playing live with it over the phone, and it was beautiful! And then I heard these little steps up to the phone and he said, "Well, what do you think?" I said GREAT! It was wonderfull... Swales: Oh wow, what a pity you didn't tape it all! Kate: Oh I know, if I'd known beforehand, then I'd have had everything going. It was really beautiful, a fantastic moment. Swales: Was that a demo you sent them, or a backing track? Did they eventually overdub their part, or do it live with your band? Kate: Well, for the actual session with Planxty, we took a 24-track tape over to Ireland with the complete track mixed down rough on two of the tracks, also with a time-code on one track so we could synch it up again with the original tape when doing a final mix back in London. So the rest of the tracks were all free for Bill's arrangement and any other ideas we might get. Planxty were very different to work with as musicians, it was all so much fun. Swales: You brought in Rolf Harris to play digeridu on the title track on The Dreaming. Were you familiar with the extraordinary records he made with George Martin during the 1960s? Kate: Yes, it was really because of his "Sun Arise" that I brought him in. I'd heard it through Paddy when it came out, as it was one of his favourite records. And I couldn't believe it and thought it was fabulous! Paddy: Yes, I think it's one of the most important records ever made; for me it was, at any rate. And since I met Rolf Harris I've gotten into playing the digeridu myself, like on Kate's new album. I think Rolf Harris was on to something very special; aboriginal music is something VERY special... Swales: Those songs which you've used as flip-sides on singles, like "Warm and Soothing", "The Empty Bullring", and "Under the Ivy", on which you simply accompany yourself on the piano with no other arrangement, were those tracks recorded originally just as demos? Kate: No, they weren't, but in a way they are just demos. "Warm and Soothing" was a demo-tape which we did basically just to see what Abbey Road sounded like. We wanted to work there, and we went into Studio Two, and really the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a piano vocal. So I did, and it sounded great. "Under the Ivy" we did in our studio in just an afternoon. Swales: You play the piano track on all your recordings, right, but then on stage? Kate: Well, on stage, because of course I'm dancing and doing all these other things, I used a guy called Kevin McAlea who was an incredible find. Because I've never met anyone else who plays the piano, or who CAN play it if he wants to, so like me. My style is really quite simple, and that's the problem. Professional pianists tend to sort of FLOURISH everywhere, and that doesn't work in my songs because I use a simple style. I did play two or three numers on stage, the ones that I thought were important, but the rest of the time I was up front. Obviously, though, because it's the instrument that I always used to write on, it made sense for me to put down all the piano arrangements on record. But most of the songs on the new album I wrote on the Fairlight. I'm sure, though, that I'll still continue writing on the piano, somehow it's such an extraordinarily versatile- sounding instrument. Swales: Actually, I'm a little intrigued by the fact that, while so much of your music tends to sound so natural and organic, you're often exploiting all the technological wizardries of the studio, and the Fairlight even, yet without there ever being any clash or contradiction, musically speaking. Kate: Well, although the Fairlight is CALLED a synthesizer, so many of its sounds are actually of natural source. And I think really that's why I like it so much. I think there's perhaps not such a great gap between the Fairlight and natural music as there is between synthesizers and acoustic music. The Fairlight really seems to be a huge BRIDGE between all kinds of music, it's not actually so removed from natural sounds as you might think. Like what you thought might be a koto near the start of "Cloudbusting" was actually a banjo <l-hs take note: every sound has its day. -- ied> which I played on the Fairlight. And, as an album, Hounds of Love is really quite different because the Fairlight was very involved, rather than, as on the last albums, all the tracks being written at the piano. But "Waking the Witch" I actually wrote through a guitarist, Alan Murphy, because it needed to be written from a quitarist's point of view, a piano was just so wrong for that one. And he was brilliant about it. I mean, it was very hard for us because both of us felt a little embarassed. And then we said, look, let's just go for it. And I said, play something like this -- this is actually in the studio, he just came in for the day, and all we had down was the drums and hand-claps, he had nothing else at all to play with. But I told him the idea that I wanted. Swales: In the studio these days, now that you're producing yourself, it it a kind of benevolent dicatorship where what you say goes and the musicians just take it? <Paddy falls about laughing, suggesting that the true state of affairs might not be too far different.> Kate: Well, quite honestly, I think it IS sometimes. But I think, in most cases, I really do know what I want... Swales: Presumably you must command the respect which induces all these fellows to willingly subordinate their own egos... Kate: Well, there are never really any serious problems because the fellows I work with are great, and I think they just find amusing all of the things that I like and ask them to do. And they're fabulous, really. I mean, I've never really been able to communicate properly, like those producers you see sitting there talking about A-flats: "Now take it from the A-coding," and all that. I don't find that comfortable at all because, for a start, there might be one of the band (like me!) who doesn't know what you're saying. So what's the point? Because everyone needs to know. So I talk in really basic language. Obviously I have to identify chords and things like that. But in a way, the most important thing for me, I feel, is if I can convey to them the ATMOSPHERE of the song, the sort of FEELING which I want them to produce. Then I feel that they will give me what I want. As long as they're in tune with the song on the same level as I am, then I'm gonna get what I want. So, rather than saying to each of them "You do this," or "You do that," I spend an awful lot of time trying to explain the story and that sort of thing. And I think the one that was the most difficult, but the one I was most pleased with was "Breathing" -- that was an epic. We spent three days trying to get that backing track. And the silly thing was that we had all the riffs and everything by the second day, it was just that no-one could play as if they MEANT it, because we'd been playing it for so long. Swales: We're both agreed it was a great artistic success, was it not such a commercial success? Kate: Well, actually, I think it did incredibly well, it got to number sixteen in the singles charts in this country. And it was without any promotion and everyone thought, gosh, it's far too uncommercial. But I think sixteen is pretty good. And also what is nice is that, although in a way it didn't really get that much attention at the time, it's one of those tracks that people are still talking about now, even though they may have ignored it when it first came out. Swales: Oh, I HOPE so! That's a BRAVE record. I see it's been included in a new compilation album put together for Greenpeace. Kate: Yeah, Greenpeace approached us asking us would we like to put a track on it, and we felt "Breathing" was the most relevant to what they were trying to say, it was quite a CONSCIOUS track, we thought. Swales: Is there quite a lot of stuff which you begin recording but which you abort and dump half way through? That's not happened much. There's only been stuff dumped on Lionheart and Never for Ever, the second and third albums, and I prefer to think of that stuff as RESTING rather than "dumped". Some of the stuff would be fun for a quick listen, perhaps, but not for much else. On the new album, there was actually quite a lot of stuff that didn't get on. But it was in a very embryonic sort of stage, or else I just felt it wasn't interesting enough, it was too ordinary. Although there were a couple of finished songs that nearly made it to the album but didn't I just didn't feel they were strong enough. And the thing with The Ninth Wave, the second side, was I had the idea and wrote a first draught of it and, though I hadn't written all the material, it sounded like it would work. The hardest thing was making one song flow into the other one because creating dynamics in one song is very different from building it between seven songs. You have to sort of pace it very differently and yet hopefully you want it to keep interest and not have any boring bits. But then, by the second stage when things had already begun to be sort of sprinkled on the tracks, I realized there were certain songs that weren't working. The concept was very strong-minded and there were certain things that it certainly DIDN'T WANT having done to it. So I had to totally re-think the thing and say like, "Okay, look, this song has got to go." So, although we'd been working on it, it was still in really quite an embryonic stage and had no part of where it was. So the song would go, but maybe it can be used some time in the future. Swales: Does it sometimes happen, then, that you resurrect songs years later, like perhaps any of those hundreds you wrote as a teenager? Kate: Little bits. There was a little bit resurrected in "Suspended in Gaffa" on the last album. No, but this new album was, I think, all sort of contemporary, and little ideas that I'd put down on the Fairlight, which I'd though might perhaps turn into something, then turned out perfect for a little bit in a song or whatever as the concept started taking more shape. Swales: Do you generally record in the daytime or nighttime? KAte: Much more in the day with this album than the last. And I think that sort of goes with the energies, actually. The Dreaming was much more of a nighttime album, I'd normally do my vocals in the evening. But on this album I tended to do them in the afternoon when it was sunny because the atmosphere was right then, because the songs were quite uplifting. End of Part IV of The Second True and Only Gospel. The Fifth and final part comes soon -- IED just ran out of steam, and this is a FUCKING long interview. -- Andrew Marvick
Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (01/27/87)
Really-From: Vulture of Light <trainor@CS.UCLA.EDU> Let's get something perfectly clear. >Apparently from: Douglas Traynor >And don't forget the non-mainstream stuff that also just happens to be >equally complex as this Miss Bush. Two immediate examples are Pere Ubu >and Matching Mole. This is not me, the tip-offs are quite clear. I would never write a sentence with "Pere Ubu" in it or refer to Bush-baby as "Miss Bush." >Here is Part 4 of the Swales interview, The Second True and >Only Gospel; though IED only bothers posting it out of an increasingly >forlorn hope that deadbeats who make remarks like Robert Robinson's and >Douglas Traynor's are not the only people reading this list. Deadbeats?!? I anxiously wait with bated breath and quivering ears for the next indepth interview on Kate Bush submitted by IED. Douglas