Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (01/24/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU >First, I wish to ammend Steve Howard's list (which incidentally contains only >a couple of 'early 70's' titles. > >Actually, this list could go on. Note, I have included stuff from only the >early 70's'. If you wanted to include the 60's you would necessarily need >to add contributions by The Beatles, etc.... >-- John Jeez, this is incredible. If you had READ IED's message, it challenged you to name LPs made SINCE the early 70s, John! Time to change that prescription. One L-H has expressed confusion over |>oug's remark about the "secret message" in "X4". There is indeed a message, although since it has already been discovered by both IED and |>oug, it can hardly be called a very secret one. The message is (as far as IED can make it out): I BET MY MUM'S GONNA GIVE ME A LITTLE TOY! Now that's a pretty big clue -- does IED have to tell you guys where it is, too? (Anyway, it's obvious where it is.) As for its meaning, that seems pretty clear, doesn't it? KT NEWS UPDATE: After another round of exploratory telephoning, IED received assurances from an EMI employee, who sounded more or less sure of her information, that Kate's entire catalogue -- including Never for Ever and The Dreaming -- would be coming out on CD, starting within the next two months. IED just received issues 1 through 5 of Under the Ivy, the upstart UK KT 'zine which smacks of profiteering. This is a cheap, poorly edited quarterly that seems inordinately proud of its dubious status as "the first GLOSSY Kate Bush fanzine" -- as if the texture of the pages was what KT fans cared most about. Anyway, Homeground went "glossy" only two months later, and is so superior in every other respect that there is really no comparison. Remembering, in addition, the shameful exploitation campaign undertaken recently by "Under the Ivy" to peddle bootleg interview disks, IED finds further patronage of the publication difficult to justify. Now, as promised, the third installment of the Swales interview. The Second True and Only Gospel, Part 3 Swales: It does seem that, while Kate Bush is something of an acquired taste, she does on her own tend largely to satisfy the musical appetite of those who've acquired it, so that henceforth they tend to have a diminished interest in other artists. Del Palmer: Well, you've just summed up my own sentiment exactly. I mean, as far as being a musician is concerned, I don't really feel it's worth bothering with anyone else. I mean, sure, there's a certain amount of emotional content in that. But one's always surprised by what you DO. Kate: Gosh, I don't know if I can take this! Swales: This is bound to sound a bit off the wall, but it does seem to me that in a way you're the true heir to everything that was good, all that was great, about the 1960s. Sure, a lot about the 1960s was crap, but what I have in mind are things like the Beatles' "Walrus" and stuff like that. Your own music is similarly LARGE, it seems to me, both in its conception and the actual execution. Very eclectic, experimental, often very exotic, and at the same time animated by a certain spirit... Kate: Well, that's great if you think so, very interesting, very complimentary. I think certainly the sixties was the time when I was growing up and all those early influences are very strong. But I don't know whether I would say what you said, although I do find it very flattering. Del: Well, I think you've hit the nail right smack on the head, it's the truth, Kate is more or less all that was good about the sixties. Swales: And you know her music does strike me in a way as rather Beatlish. I mean, most rock artists work within one or another genre but usually tend to be limited by it. But, like the Beatles, you're always able to flit around in different styles while yet remaining recognizably yourself. Also you're always musical, always dynamic, always very polished... Del: Yes, exactly. And it's remarkable, too, because you were never really exposed to the Beatles at the time. Kate: Well, I take that as a GREAT compliment. I think that, because I was too young to be caught up in Beatlemania, then when I DID hear them -- and that wasn't perhaps till four or five years ago, I heard them objectively, if you like. And I was just so astounded by their musical quality, I mean, EVERY track! And something like the "Walrus" track, it's still so contemporary. I mean, there are very few people who are doing something really good. But apart from the sixties, when there was this huge wealth of stuff like Motown and everything, it really does seem that you get just two or three who are fantastic. Occasionally you get great bursts of wonderful things, but not often. Swales: Do you know Laurie Anderson's music? Kate: Yes, I really liked her album Big Science, there was some very interesting stuff on it. I love "Oh Superman". Swales: I was amazed recently to see that one of your favourite things was Captain Beefheart's "Tropical Hot Dog Night". Kate: Oh, he's fantastic! And the lyrics on "Bat Chain Puller", wow! He's a bit like Lindsay Kemp: he's terribly underestimated and yet he's been such an incredible influence on so many people. In a way, that seems to be his role, you know, people tend to use so many of his ideas. Swales: Are there certain singers you are into, or do you tend to listen more to instrumentalists? Kate: Well, there are certain singers I listen to, but I'd say generally I'm much more into instrumentalists; like there's a jazz pianist, George Winston, for instance, on the Windham Hill label, whom I find beautiful to listen to. But the thing is, when you've been working on an album so intensely, like I've been doing, in fact to unwind I tend to watch visual things because your ears get so tired and your brain gets so cotton-woolly from all the concentration in the studio -- say, for instance, if you're listening for clicks or things that are out of time. I find that if I listened to music after a day of that, I'd be sitting there criticizing it: 'Oh, that's out of time or out of tune,' or stuff like that. So it's really nice to watch comedy because it's good to relax and have a laugh. Also comedy is very observant stuff, as well. It's all based on observation of people. Swales: Kate, you've got so many different voices and a four-octave range, but how do you keep it in shape? I mean, it's not like you're getting practice doing performances or anything like that. Kate: No, no, that's right. Well, the hardest thing is sort of being psyched up in the right way to do the vocal with the right emotional feeling. And the hardest thing for me is to be able to feel relaxed enough to be uninhibited. So sometimes I do get just a little drunk, and at other times I like to do them with Del, because I feel much more relaxed than if there's an outside engineer there. I mean, I do become quite sensitive when I start singing. Swales: So can I assume you're pissed out of your head on "The Big Sky"? Kate: Yes, I might be getting drunk on that one -- the ad libs on the end, that was where I had to get drunk. And definitely on "Waking the Witch". I was very drunk doing that! Del Palmer: But you were asking whether she practices singing at all, and I think she practices without ever realizing it. I mean like, for instance, travelling in the car and there's a cassette on and she'll always sing along with it and try and get some weird harmony going... Swales: But I mean, the ability to pitch a note or sustain it, does that suffer because you're not performing? Kate: Um, it depends. I mean sometimes I have to sort of work my voice into it, like just LEARN it, and other times well it does tend to depend on how I feel. If I'm tired, it's a lot harder for me to get a vocal. Backing vocals, they're not so much trouble at all. It's the lead vocals that require the right feeling and ATMOSPHERE, mentally and in the studio. Swales: So most of the vocals we hear are dubbed on later? Kate: Yes, most of them take a long time and a lot of work, especially to get the right emotional inflections and that kind of thing. But "Man With the Child in His Eyes" and "The Kick Inside" on the first album, those two tracks were done live, vocal and piano with the orchestra, which was absolutely terrifying. I mean AWFUL! I was petrified and I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been forced into it. There aren't any live vocals on the new album, and particularly for the reason of the vocal sound, as much as wanting to be able to control it all separately. Del: Yeah, but what so many people don't realize is that Kate is an amazing ad libber. "The Big Sky" is a really good example, that whole end section is just ad lib all the way through. I remember on the third album, the song "The Wedding List", I can remember going in there and the engineer saying to me, "Man! You should hear what she's doing here!" I mean, they took about six or seven tracks of Kate ad libbing and you could have used any one of them, they were all just amazing. And people don't generally think of Kate as someone who does a lot of ad libbing, they think of her as being totally produced with everything completely worked out and contrived. But that's by no means the case. Swales: I must admit, while of course I love the mature Kate Bush, what I do miss is that very young and enchanting, almost ecstatic sort of voice on the early albums. You don't often sing in that high register these days but rather an octave or so lower. Kate: Well, I think it's like periods you go through. Albums are really very auto-biographical, and at that time I was writing and experimenting to try to PUSH my voice higher and into different areas, and I'm not really sure why, but I think at that time I felt my voice was strongest at that pitch. But I find that interesting 'cause when she was really young, Joni Mitchell used to sing very high, though now she's very low and jazzy. Del Palmer: But I think you do actually APPROACH your singing quite differently from the way you used to. Kate: Well, I've always found lower voices more appealing, I guess, and I didn't really like that high pitch very much. With high voices, the words tend to escape you more. I think when it's lower you tend to listen more to the words and a little less to the voice as an instrument. Swales: Kate, do your songs just burst out of you like so many Athenas out of the head of Zeus, or are they very crafted and do they cost you a lot of suffering and effort to construct as finished art-pieces? Kate: It's very different every time, really. With the Never for Ever album, I had to work really hard to write most of those songs. It would take me weeks and weeks just to get a chorus or to write the words. But then, when we went into the studio, it was actually quite spontaneous and very quick. Whereas with most of the songs on The Dreaming, I just sat down at the piano, got a rhythm and just literally wrote the songs. I couldn't believe it! I mean to say, the words probably weren't there, but the idea was there, and all the tunes were there. That was the first time I'd actually demo'ed the songs while writing them. I put the piano down, put a voice down, put backing vocals down, and I had a song! And apart from "Houdini", which nearly killed me, the rest were just so easy, it was really frightening. But then, as soon as I hit the studio, all that speed and spontaneity seemed to evaporate and turn into something completely different. The recording became really, really hard work, and it was very intense. With the new Hounds of Love album, the songs took quite a lot of time and effort to come out. Now that I've got my own studio, a lot of the writing process is very much the recording process so, rather than going in with a finished song, I'm able to go straight in and actually write the song in the studio, so that took a little bit of time. Swales: So it's not as if you're so abundantly creative that we're being deprived of a whole wealth of songs that never got onto disc? Kate: I wish, I wish, I wish! I think if I was abundantly creative, I could just sort of sit back and go: "Ah, there's another one, how about that!" But I just find it so hard. Usually with every album I'm in a situation where I SCRAPE together the songs. The first album was the only one where that wasn't so, then I had literally hundreds of songs to choose from, as I'd been writing from about the age of eleven. But now it's just getting harder for me to write. I think the longer I'm around, the harder it is for me to find something convincing in my art. There are all kinds of subject-matters which I think I could probably have enjoyed at an earlier time, but which now I find trivial. So there are all these changes. You know, the more you see, the more there is to fear, and the more there is to learn. And I think that very much applies to my work. Swales: And presumably your own criteria of perfection tend to escalate, so it gets a lot harder to reach that threshold. Kate: Yes, I think so, yes, that's right. And also, of course, you can't really control what comes out, which is something that I have to keep telling myself. Because, you know, I think I'm going to sit down and write this or that, but it all just depends on how you're feeling or what's happening. You can't really control it. Other than rejecting or accepting things and putting them into different bits of order, you don't have any control over it. It's not something that you actually OWN. I COULD write an album very quickly, but maybe only one of the songs would be what I considered INTERESTING enough, and I wanted to make sure with the new album that all the songs were good. Really, it's the lyrics that are like a big process that keeps on happening right from the word 'go' till I've done the last lead vocal. I mean, still then I'm playing with little bits of lyrics here and there that maybe weren't quite right... Swales: Is all that what accounts for the three-year gap between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love? Kate: Yes, it takes me a long time to write stuff that I feel is interesting enough, and also it takes me a long while to come out of the wake of one album and come into the energy of a new album. Because it would be wrong, I think, to be in the same frame of mind that I was in for the last album. And, in a way, you have to sort of say, "Well, O.K., that was it; now I'm gonna go out and just find some new stimulus." 'Cause, you know, you go from one very intense atmosphere into another one, and you've got to get some new inspiration in between. But another big reason why the new album took so long is Side Two, The Ninth Wave. It was incredibly difficult to actually be brave enough to go for it. I had the feeling that that was what I wanted to do. But then I started getting scared of it -- you know, I knew that, if it didn't work out, then I'd have wasted all that effort for nothing. Then I decided, though, O.K., yeah, I'm gonna go for it; but that was a relatively brave thing to do and it took a lot of time. What really consumed the time, though, was that the tracks took a long time to finish, they weren't as good as they should be, there were lots of things that still needed to be done. Del Palmer: I think it all really depends on what the context is. If the content wasn't too deep, then it could all be done very quickly. It's when you're trying to create a specific ATMOSPHERE that it gets difficult. Kate: It does, it depends on what the songs themselves demand. And the best thing about having the studio was not having the pressure of being in a studio that was costing nearly a hundred quid an hour. We do like to experiment, and sometimes it takes a while to make an experiment work. So we were able to take the time... Swales: But is having your own studio a two-sided coin, in that, while it makes life a lot easier, you don't feel under the same pressure, and it's therefore much harder to complete things and tie them up? Kate: Well, I though that might be a problem but actually, the way we worked, I don't think it was, there was a pressure all the time because the album kept taking longer and I was very concerned that it should be finished. Swales: I think, only naturally, a lot of people are wondering to themselves why there's been a three year interval since The Dreaming, and they're fearful they'll have to wait another three or four years before the next album. Was setting up the studio responsible for some of the delay? Kate: Yes, yes it was, to set up base down here rather than coming up to London all the time. As well as actually getting the place together, it takes some time to actually get ahold of and accumulate all the equipmentt, so that you've got what you need at hand. Also we made the step up from 24-track to 48-track while doing it. Swales: You don't think that if you were in an urban environment you'd be under a different pressure, under a different stimulus, and you might be more productive? Kate: No, I think there're more distractions when you go into an urban environment, and I think that was one of my big problems. Del Palmer: I think you've been more productive since you've been living out here. Kate: I have, absolutely. Swales: So then the bottom line is that, even if the bottom were to fall out, now that you've got your own studio you'd be able to keep on making new records? Del: Yes, but I think there'll always be a market for Kate's music. Swales: I think so, too! But even if worst came to the absolute worst, with the studio you'd be able to keep on recording even if only for your own edification. Once an album finally exists, can you enjoy it or will you have nothing more to do with it? Kate: I couldn't with the first two albums as they didn't turn out the way I wanted them to, so obviously when I listened to them it was quite disappointing for me because I kept thinking of all the things I'd have liked to have done. But the third and fourth albums, yes, I could listen to those and be quite critical about them and yet feel quite pleased about some of the things on them. Artistically, I was especially pleased with The Dreaming. I achieved lots more on it than the earlier ones. But then the songs were, in a way, more accepting of that kind of emotional style because they were so intense and demanding. The new album, which is the one I'm most happy with, was a very different energy. It was summer last year and I felt I wanted to write songs that had a very positive energy rather than staying in all that intensity of emotion that was so strong with the last album. I think it's important that each album SHOULD be different, otherwise you're not going anywhere and exploring but staying in a rut. But then it takes time to carry yourself over from one energy to another because you tend to get into little riffs and phrases and so on that perhaps you've got as some kind of theme on the last album, even if that's not obvious. And it's important, I think, to start writing in a slightly new style. Now that it's all done, I can sit here and enjoy it, especially here in the studio because this is the optimal way to hear it, because this is where it was all done. As soon as it gets onto vinyl, onto disc, it just SOUNDS different. And now I can just sit here and relax instead of taking notes, you know, like to remind me I've got to study that bit and so on... Del Palmer: Yeah, you should SEE the notes! There's two files, this thick! Full of notes, you'd never believe it. Kate: Yes, they're little memos and scribbles and charts on takes that are good. Swales: You don't have staves with whole lines of music written out? Kate: Well, no, the only time I did that was for the cello parts in "Hounds of Love", that the only time I've ever written out a part. I stayed up all night to do it and wasn't sure if I could. But I worked them out on the Emulator and wrote out the chords that I played in the treble clef. Then the cellist Jonathan Williams -- he's such a great player and so into the music he was -- helped me out by working it an octave lower. Swales: How did you manage, right from the word go, to find such a great bunch of musicians, all of them so terribly articulate and tasteful, yet none of them so stylized that he might detract from your own musical identity by imposing something inappropriately idiomatic? Kate: Well, in all fairness, the first album was all down to the producer, Andrew Powell, and the engineer, Jon Kelly. As far as I know, it was mainly Andrew Powell who chose the musicians, he'd worked with them before and they were all sort of tied in with Alan Parsons. There was Stuart Elliot on drums, Ian Bairnson on guitar, David Paton on bass, and Duncan Mackay on electric keyboards. And, on that first album, I had no say, so I was very lucky really to be given such good musicians to start with. And they were lovely, 'cause they were all very concerned about what I thought of the treatment of each of the songs. And if I was unhappy with anything, they were more than willing to re-do their parts. So they were very concerned about what I thought, which was very nice. And they were really nice guys, eager to know what the songs were about and all that sort of thing. I don't honestly see how anyone can play with feeling unless you know what the song is about. You know, you might be feeling this really positive vibe, yet the song might be something weird and heavy and sad. So I think that's always been very important for me, to sit down and tell the musicians what the song is about. Swales: Many of your songs are very intimate and extremely revealing of your own inner life. Does it ever happen that you write a song for self-satisfaction but then decide it is too intimate, too personal, too compromising perhaps, to offer to the public? Kate: No, that's never happened yet. The only reason a song will get dropped is that it's not good enough -- you know, the tune is a bit weak, or the lyrics aren't good enough, or the concept isn't tight enough. If it was good enough it would go on. Swales: The sort of vignette-songs like "Coffee Homeground" or "Houdini", are those conceived in the first place as ideas, intellectually so to say, while there are others which take shape while you're actually playing the piano, whereupon you look for suitable words? Kate: Well, "Coffee Homeground" would have been a song where the words and the music were coming together probably at exactly the same time. Actually, that's the only song which I wrote when I visited America about seven years ago <i.e. for the Saturday Night Live broadcast. -- ied> Which is quite interesting, as it's not at all American... Swales: A little bit German, maybe? Who did the arrangement? Kate: Well, actually, Andrew Powell arranged the orchestra. But the riff (Kate sings it), that was written on the piano and... Paddy Bush: ...then translated into different instruments. As a matter of fact, "Coffee Homeground" vibrantly MUTATED. Because when the very first demos of it were done, it had a decidedly different flavour. The Brechtian treatment didn't appear until much later on, that only took shape when Kate got the idea of treating the song with a slightly German sort of flavour. Swales: So, with a song like that, it's Kate who actually CONCEIVES what is possible, and then looks to the musicians or to an arranger to ACTUALIZE it? Paddy: Oh, yes, yes. But in the case of "Coffee Homeground" it did mutate. The Brechtian feel is something that appeared only gradually, during the actual recording, and became more definite as time went on. Del Palmer: It was like that, too, with "The Big Sky" on the new album. That song song changed about three times. Originally it was radically different from the way it's found on the album, the melody-line, the interpretation, everything. But Kate scrapped it and then rewrote it, retaining only a few elements of the original song. End of Part 3 of The Second True and Only Gospel. Keep a lookout for the conclusion, in Love-Hounds soon!