nbc@INF.RL.AC.UK (01/24/90)
Some time ago I promised to type in the article from CD review. As I have not seen anyone else do it - here it is. Unfortunately, it is only a shorter rewrite of Len Brown's article in NME 7/10/89 (transcribed earlier by IED) but I will include it for the sake of completeness since Brown's text surrounding Kate's quotes is different. From CD Review - December 1989 Len Brown Copyright Oasis Publishing Ltd. ******************************************************************* Positive Female Energy Four years. Is it really that long since Hounds of Love? Len Brown asks Kate Bush why. "I find it extraordinary that people should want to write about me when I do so little. I just pop out and do an album and go away again." Kate Bush doesn't really behave like your average pop star. While most performers, addicted to the limelight, either rush out records at regular intervals and/or court publicity in the popular media, Bush goes out of her way to avoid attention. "Reclusive" seems something of an understatement. "It's healthier for me not to indulge in being a famous person," she explains, quietly. "It's ridiculous, there's absolutely no reason why I should be at all, other than I make records." And they're increasingly infrequent too. Tears For Fears may have spent the last couple of years struggling with their art in the studio but Orzabal and Smith seem almost prolific by comparison with Kate. It's been four years since the critically acclaimed Hounds of Love adventure and that followed cold on the heels of The Dreaming three years earlier. But now The Sensual World is with us, complete with successful title-track single, and it seems that however much she likes to distance herself from the business, Kate Bush's music still returns to challenge and provoke and rise above the tide of mediocrity. Violinist Nigel Kennedy, who appears on the new release, recently described Kate Bush as one of the few geniuses in modern music. And certainly, looking at past and present creations, there's a sense of timelessness about her music; she doesn't second guess the public or depend on what's fashionable at any particular moment in time. "I found the writing very difficult on this," she admits candidly. "I didn't know what I wanted to say or how to treat the songs and make them sound differently; whether to get outside musicians in to do something or just go away and think. A lot of it is jigsawing. I'd get to the point where I couldn't write, where I was sick of the songs. The problem is holding on to that energy level. She speaks without arrogance, almost without confidence. The business of promoting and publicising her art is something she finds embarrassingly difficult. "I don't really see myself as a performer and that's hard for me when I have to come out and expose myself and be the saleswoman of the hour. I've been almost me for the last couple of years, but in the last two weeks I've been aware of people treating me as what seems to be a very famous person. It's totally surreal, going into an isolated way of working three or four years at a time, then coming out and having everyone looking at you as if they know you." Sometimes it's hard to reconcile this small, henna-haired 30 year-old with the received images of Kate Bush; the marketed blend of eroticism and innocence that helped rocket her to fame in the late 70's and early 80's, through the likes of Wuthering Heights, Wow, Babooshka, Army Dreamers, and Breathing. Her reputation from the remarkable Kick Inside debut through to 1982's The Dreaming was built not only on original compositions but also her presentation as a theatrical performer. But, in the decade after she last performed live, Kate Bush has grown up and away from girlie things. The Hounds of Love saw her developing lyrically, musically and technologically, particularly with it's intriguing "Ninth Wave" concept second-half. And while The Sensual World in many ways is built firmly on rootsy contributions from Celtic musicians such as Davy Spillane and Alan Stivell (plus the extraordinary vocal harmonies of Trio Bulgarka), it's naturally an even more mature creation than what's gone before. "Someone said that in the teens you get physical puberty and between 28 and 32 mental puberty," she suggests. "Let's face it you've got to start growing up when you're 30. It does make you feel differently. I feel very positive having gone through the last couple of years." According to Kate, now in complete charge of her projects (aided by long-term intimate Del Palmer and multi-instrumentalist brother Paddy), The Sensual World contains "the most positive female energy" in her work to date. It's a belief born out in the title track which was inspired by Molly Bloom's very erotic and sensual stream of consciousness in James Joyce's Ulysses: "Mmh, yes/ Then I'd take the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth/ Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes." "It's the idea of Molly escaping from the author, out into the real world, being the real human rather than the character, "stepping out of the page into the sensual world". It reflects Bush's own sense of maturity, her growing freedom from the limits imposed on her early work by inexperience, lack of confidence, ignorance and available technology. Tracks like Deeper Understanding and The Fog illustrate this development; the idea that Kate Bush no longer wishes to be seen as a child but regarded as a serious woman artist. And perhaps she's trying to convince herself at the same time. In The Fog her father, Dr. John Bush, tells her: "just put your feet down child/ cos you're all grown up now". "Growing up for most people is just trying to stop escaping," suggests Kate, "looking at things inside yourself rather than outside. But I'm not sure if people ever grow up properly. It's a continual process, growing in a positive sense." Of course, she's always been a serious thinker in her music. And again, within The Sensual World, difficult subjects are tackled, such as relationships under stress (Between A Man And A Woman), fears of childbirth (This Woman's Work, written for John Hughes' film She's having A Baby), and repressed emotions (Love And Anger). Plus there's Head's We're Dancing, a dark chilling creation compared to its more positive bedfellows. "The idea came from a family friend years ago who'd been to dinner and sat next to this really fascinating guy, who was so charming that they sat all night chatting and joking. Next day he found out it was Oppenheimer and this friend was really horrified because he despised what the guy stood for. "I was intrigued by this idea of being so taken with a person until you knew who or what they were and then completely changing your attitude. Then it turned into this story of a girl in 1939 being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him. Then, a couple of days later, she sees in the paper it was Hitler. Complete horror; she was that close, perhaps she could've changed history." It's a song firmly in the Bush tradition, dating back to Wuthering Heights via Army Dreamers, of immersing herself in a story, breathing life into it and conveying the emotions of the participants. However chilling like the rest of The Sensual World it's an honest, open, accessible song. Rocket's Tail was inspired by Kate's cat: it's also a celebration of the transient beauty of a firework's life; "It's also about how people see things from different standpoints. Those with a negative outlook see only the fizzle-fizzle while others see the celebration of the moment, the 'YEEAAAHHHHH!" Walk Straight Down The Middle is "about following extremes when really you want to plough this path straight down the middle. I'd like to think of myself as holding the centre course whereas really I'm being thrown from one end of the spectrum to the other and taking off all the time." After four more years in the wilderness, punctuated only by the Peter Gabriel collaboration Don't Give Up, several charitable outings and The Whole Story singles compilation it's apparent that Kate Bush is stronger, more original, more independent than before. The Sensual World may not have the commercial obviousness of her early work, or the state-of-the-art high-tech command of Hounds of Love, but it's truly a work of "positive female energy" and, above all, a labour of love. "Love is a wonderful and powerful thing," concludes Kate. "In many ways nearly every song I've ever written is a love song. It's very important to try and learn to love people as much as you can but we all get so scared. It's only when people are at a point in their lives when they get such shocks that they take it as it really should be. The rest of us just seem to piss about!" ********************************************************************** There is a small black and white pic of Kate with the sand in her hand from TSW poster, and a colour one by J C Bush - head and shoulders, with Kate in a blue floral blouse or dress. Be seeing you. -- Neil Calton UUCP: ..!mcvax!ukc!rlinf!nbc Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, NSFNET: nbc%inf.rl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX JANET: nbc@uk.ac.rl.inf England Tel: (0235) 821900 ext 5740