Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (10/11/89)
Really-From: IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu
To: Love-Hounds
From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
Subject: The 10/7/89 _New_Musical_Express_ interview with Kate Bush
<This interview was conducted in late September, 1989, by
Len Brown, with five accompanying photographs by Kevin Cummins. Brown
was also the man who interviewed Kate briefly for _NME_
in December 1988, during her recording sessions with Trio Bulgarka.
This interview is the first detailed interview to emerge in connection
with the new album, _The_Sensual_World_, and as such, is really
the first substantial interview with Kate in well over a year. IED
is not responsible for--but will probably not be able to restrain
himself from commenting on--the many infuriatingly silly and ignorant
remarks which Mr. Brown makes throughout the article.>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
_In_the_Realm_of_the_Senses_
The essence of sensuality and childlike wonder or screeching
wood nymph? Kate Bush steps back into the spotlight after
four years of reclusive recording and constant innuendo and
rumours from the press to explain herself again. Len Brown
reacquaints himself with Joyce's latest disciple.
Pictures: Kevin Cummins.
"on_Howth_head_in_the_grey_tweed_suit_in_his_staw_hat_
_the_day_I_got_him_to_propose_to_me_yes_first_I_gave_him_the_bit_
_of_seedcake_out_of_my_mouth_and_it_was_leapyear_like_now_yes_16_
_years_ago_my_God_after_that_long_kiss_I_near_lost_my_breath_yes_
_he_said_I_was_a_flower_of_the_mountain_yes_so_we_are_flowers_
_all_of_a_womans_body_yes"
(-- from Molly Bloom's speech in James Joyce's _Ulysses_)
"_Mmh,_yes,_
_Then_I'd_taken_the_kiss_of_seedcake_back_from_his_mouth_
_Going_deep_South,_go_down,_mmh,_yes,_
_Took_six_big_wheels_and_rolled_our_bodies_
_Off_of_Howth_Head_and_into_the_flesh,_mmh,_yes,_
_He_said_I_was_a_flower_of_the_mountain,_yes,_
_But_now_I've_powers_o'er_a_woman's_body--yes."_
(-- from Kate Bush's _The_Sensual_World_)
We meet in a rather sensual room in a sumptuous West London hotel.
It's an appropriate place to interview Kate Bush. The walls are
stacked with paintings of nudes--pink boobs, vermillion nips, plenty
of Botticelli cheeks--of cockfights and banquets, of mankind indulging
in animal passions. Orange juice and nuts are consumed varaciously
throughout discussions.
Four years from _Hounds_of_Love_, twelve
months since we last met in the company of three Bulgarian
grannies called Trio Bulgarka, Kate's changed little
physically. Still petite, naturally older, her hair's still
long and henna-ed and the nervous laugh is as infectious as ever.
<"Naturally older" is a typically ill-written phrase:
what does he mean?>
Musically she's been gone a long time. Sure there've
been collaborations (Gabriel's _Don't_Give_Up),
charitable outings (Amnesty, Comic Relief, Ferry Aid)and _The_Whole_
_Story_ compilation, but _The_Sensual_World_
is her first fresh substantial work since the _Experiment_IV_
single in late '86.
Reasonable people were beginning to wonder whether, at last,
she'd lost it completely and thrown in the towel.
What's always been remarkable about Kate Bush has
been the ability to withdraw from the music world, escape from the
machine, and return months or years later with something rejuvenating,
original, set apart from chart-fodder disposable pop. Like Bowie
in the '70s, Bush in the '80s has been one of the true
oddities, exceptions to the rules. Always out of step, always unique.
And always, as _The_Sensual_World_ implies, provocative.
implies, provocative. Bells ring as you enter her _Sensual_
_World_, bells of celebration, of sensual joy. "The communication
of music is very much like making love," she once said,
so it's entirely appropriate that she should derive her
title track from James Joyce's _Ulysses_
and, in particular, Molly Bloom's thoughts on sex, sensuality
and oysters at 2/6 per dozen.
"Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece
of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the
character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the
impressions of sensuality," says Kate, softly, almost childlike.
"Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free,
let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets,
just how incredibly sensual a world it is.
"I originally heard the piece read by Siobhan McKenna years
ago, and I thought, 'My God! This is extraordinary. What a piece
of writing!' It's a very unusual train of thought--very
attractive. First I got the "mmh yes," and that made me
think of Molly Bloom's speech; and we had this piece of music in
the studio already, so it came together really quickly. Then, because
I couldn't get permission to use Joyce, it took another
_year_ changing it to what it is now. Typical, innit!"
The result is extraordinarily sensual mouth music, far
removed from the cod-pieced crassness that usually passes
for physical love songs:
"And at first with the charm
around him, mmh yes/He loosened it so if it slipped between
my breasts/He'd rescue it, mmh yes."
"In the original piece, it's just 'Yes"--a very
interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by
the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: "Ooh
wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as
obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite
the words, I was trapped.
"How could you recreate that mood without going into that
level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before
I'd said I'd never write," she laughs. "I have to
think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much."
Having begun her career on _The_Kick_Inside_ singing lines like
"Oh I need it oh oh feel it feel it my love" and
"feeling of sticky love inside", and then gone on in _Lionheart_
to write a lyric like "the more I think of <sic> sex the better
it gets", her reluctance to get too sensual, too fruity, a decade later
may seem a little strange. <Naturally, however, Brown makes
no attempt to ask her about this apparent contradiction.>
But as Bush has increasingly gained control over the
presentation of her music and her image during this period,
stepping back from early marketing attempts to titillate (God,
how they worked!), these reservations are understandable.
She claims _The_Sensual_World_ contains the most
"positive female energy" in her work to date, and compositions like
_This_Woman's_Work_ tend to enforce that idea. <A bit simplistic,
this idea, since _TWW_ is written from the man's perspective. -- IED>
"I think it's to do with me coming to terms with
myself on different levels. <That has got to be one of Kate's
all-time favourite stock phrases!> In some ways, like on _Hounds_of_
_Love_ it was important for me to get across the sense of power in the
songs that I'd associated with male energy and music. But
I didn't feel that this time, and I was very much wanting to
express myself as a woman in my music, rather than as a woman
wanting to sound as powerful as a man.
"And definitely _The_Sensual_World_--the track--
was very much a female track for me. I felt it was a
really new expression, feeling good about being a woman musically."
But isn't it odd that this feminist or feminine perspective
should have been inspired by a man, Joyce?
"Yes, in some ways...but it's also the idea of
Molly escaping from the author, out into the real world, being
this real human, rather than the character:
stepping out of the page into the sensual world."
So is this concept of sensuality the most important thing to you at
the moment? Is it one of the life forces?
"Yes. It's about contact with humans. It could all
come down to the sensual level. Touch? Yes. Even if it's not
physical touch: reaching out and touching people by moving them.
I think it's a very striking part of this planet, the
fact that there is so much for us to enjoy. The whole of Nature
is really designed for everything to have a good time doing what
they should be doing...Fancy being a bee, leading an incredible
existence, all these flowers designed just for you, flying into the
runway, incredible colours--some trip..."
Mmh buzz.
Many bumbles have breathed their last since Kate Bush first
arrived on our screens, flouncing about in dry ice and funeral
shroud <sic>, oddly crowing _Wuthering_Heights_; obviously different
and apart from any musical movement before or since. But whereas
the all-conquering, universally acclaimed _Hounds_of_Love_
affair at least slotted into the then-pop world, _The_Sensual_World_ is
clearly even more out of step with current piss-poor post-SAW
<Stock, Aitkin, Waterman, a team of current British pop dance-record
producers, responsible for Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, etc.> scene.
Probably because it's got a slightly ethnic feel, founded
on Kate's use of Irish and Bulgarian musics and musicians in
the creative process. Perhaps because she's been free from pop
for so long. Maybe because she's crossed the threshold of 30?
"God! Yes. I'm sure it's all tied in with it,"
she laughs. "I think it's a very important time: from
28 to 32-ish, where there's some kind of turning point. Someone
said that in your teens you get the physical puberty, and between
28 and 32 mental puberty. 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."
<Very positive? What an unexpected remark!>
She's not specific about what she's actually gone through
in recent years <What a surprise!>, apart from the
usual trials by media. If you were to scan back through the smeared
pages of cheaper organs you would probably come to the conclusion
that she's been a.) pregnant; b.) fighting drug and alcohol addiction;
c.) 25 stone; and d.) having several flings with Peter Gabriel.
<Brown obviously didn't ask her directly about these
stupid rumours--but whether his own "organ" is "cheap"
or not, he and it couldn't resist dredging them all up once
again.>
More credibly, it seems she's been reclusively struggling
with her music, and even living in bliss (somewhere near Kent,
apparently) with long-term lover, bassist and moustachioed mixer
Del Palmer.
And yet one is naturally tempted to peer into _The_Sensual_World_
and inquire whether or not a song such as _Between_a_Man_and_a_Woman_
is a personal account of romantic difficulties?
("It's so hard for love to stay together/With the
modern Western pressures").
"But anything you write, people tend to think it's
about you," she says, nervously. "Like Woody Allen: his
films are obviously very personal. There's obviously an
awful lot of him in his work. But you see him being interviewed,
and as soon as he's asked if it's personal he gets really
defensive. It's a very awkward area...
"On this album there's more of me in there, in a more
honest way than before, and yet, although some of it's me, the songs
songs _aren't_about_
_aren't_about_ me. It's this kind of vague mish-mash of other people and
yourself; bits of films; things you've heard--all put
together in a mood that says a lot about me at this time.
"A lot of people will think these songs are about me.
I've always had that. And like, with _Deeper_Understanding_,
people react immediately, saying, "Is this autobiographical?
So you're into computers now? So you spend all night on
computers?' People immediately switch on to the mechanicalness:
It's a song about computers, so she must be into computers!"
<Note that she doesn't actually say whether she _is_ using
computers or not! Classic Kate! Nor, of course, does Brown have
the presence of mind to ask her; and in the second part of this
interview, when Kate was asked to comment on each track in succession,
she apparently declined to comment on this song further. -- IED>
The fascination with Bush's private life, and the tittle-tattle
speculation that't surrounded it, obviously arises from the
woman's reluctance to play the fame game. True, she now and
then turns out for charitable gaqtherings, but hardly ever see
her photographed legless in Lennon's, or chucking up outside
The Groucho like proper pop stars.
"I've almost been 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 look at you as if they
know you.
"It's healthier for me not to indulge in being
a famous person. It's ridiculous. There's absolutely
no reason why I should be at all, other than that I make
records." <Except maybe that she makes the _best_ records
in the history of civilisation!>
"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."
It sometimes seems that way. Three years between _The_Dreaming_
and _Hounds_of_Love_; four more before we begin to enter _The_Sensual_
_World_. Yet the creative business is a lengthy, complicated and
concentrated process, initially begun by Kate and Del in their
home studio.
"I found the writing very difficult on this,"
she admits, almost embarrassed. "I don't know what
I wanted to say or how to treat the songs, make them sound
differently, 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. And yet you thought they were OK to begin with.
The problem is holding on to that energy level."
The diverse musicianship on _The_Sensual_World_,
the variety of sounds and rootsy emotions that have been brought
to bear, is perhaps the album's greatest strength. Around the
hub of Kate, her multi-instrumentalist brother Paddy and Del Palmer,
are gathered Celtic craftsmen such as Davey Spillane, Alan Stivell
and Donal Lunny, plus the remarkable veteran vocal talents of
Bulgaria's Trio Bulgarka. Throw in Dave Gilmour guitar solos
and flurries of fiddle from Nigel Kennedy and you're beginning
to approach _The_Sensual_World_.
Her Celtic passion has been longstanding and comes from her Irish
mother. _Night_of_the_Swallow_ back on '82's _The_Dreaming_
first featured Donal Lunny with piper Liam O'Flynn.
And brother Paddy's obsession with obscure European musics
encouraged Kate to listen to those Bulgarian voices and try and harness
them with her own.
"I wanted to work with the Irish guys again because it
gets better each time. But I was never sure it'd come off
with Trio Bulgarka. On
_Never_Be_Mine_ all the Irish stuff was done, and then the girls
came in." (The girls must be 180 years old collectively.)
"Two separate entities put together, but similar energies. And
sometimes you can hear little Irish riffs and flavours in the
Bulgarian music and vice-versa.
"For Bulgaria, the terrific amount of suffering they've
gone through is so apparent in the music, so spiritually powerful
and intense that, if you let it, it'd just rip you apart.
Maybe it's the same with Ireland. Maybe these are two races
that have turned to music in times of hardship: broken hearts
singing, in terrible pain, getting help through the music."
The overall result of these liasons is a definite departure
from everything Bush has done before. In the past she's used
ethnic instruments and accents just to make her own compositions
(and costumes) more exotic--take _Kashka_From_Baghdad_ or _Egypt_
<what a jerk. -- IED>-- but here the Irish-
Bulgarian combination is powerful and effective,
an integral part of _The_Sensual_World_.
(Trio Bulgarka and the Uillean piper Davey Spillane feature on
three tracks, Spillane playing a wonderfully strange Macedonian
solo on the title track/single.)
"I'm curious and nervous to know how people will
take it," grins Kate. "They'll either really like
it or hate it. Ethnic music for some people is just too far
out. They can't relate unless there's a Western influence.
They can't understand."
To be frank, when Kate Bush began and some of us were still
at our physical peaks, the appeal was largely physical and sexual.
Mmh, yes, the wiggling of _Wow_. Mmh, yes, the bounce of _Babooshka_.
Mmh, yes, the erotic womb-view of _Breathing_. But we've all
passed a lot of water since then and, naturally, all grown up.
Except, it sometimes seems from the songs, Kate herself. <What
about this foul-minded little twerp who did this interview? Does he
actually consider the previous paragraph "grown-up" writing? --IED.>
Listening back, to tracks like _Cloudbusting_, and now to _Reaching_
_Out_, it seems as if the child in her has been preserved.
In _The_Fog_ on _The_Sensual_World_, her
father, Dr. John <sic--his name is Robert, fuckhead.--IED> Bush,
paternally announces: "Just put your feet down child, 'Cause you're
all grown up now."
"It's hard for me to say. The way people see me is
so diverse," comments Kate, on the theory that childishness
is part of her appeal. "I suppose in lots of ways I'm
still very much like a little girl, and probably always will be,
even if I make it to 60 or 70.
"It's an interesting perspective of life, a child's.
Maybe it's because I'm so small and still at knee level.
The symbolism of the child is such a powerful thing, because it's
the small vulnerable thing looking out at the big worl."
But hasn't reaching 30...?
"OK, stop rubbing it in, young man!"
Don't you start worrying about what people think of you
physically?
"But this is like the first time we've experienced
young music growing old, and it's like people won't allow it.
Look at the stick a lot of our gorgeous men are getting now that
they're in their 4os. It doesn't seem to be hip for guys to be
in their 40s and still in the rock industry.
"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 don't have the same kind of
exposure as other performers do. I suppose if people think I look
horrible they tend to keep it to themselves. Maybe I haven't
started hittling the real horrors yet. What do you think?"
Er...
"Oh, dear!"
No, no, you don't look horrible at all!
"It's the whole train of thought: 'Oh my God,
doesn't she look old!' Usually I get, 'Oh my God,
doesn't she look small!"
"_When_I_could_wear_a_sunset,_mmh,_yes,_
_And_how_we'd_wished_to_live_in_the_sensual_world_,
_You_don't_need_words_,
_Just_one_kiss,_then_another..._"
Pleasures of the senses? Or the vicious indulgence of animal
passions? You can view the sensual world either way. To Kate
Bush, sensuality is obviously a positive, receptive, natural
experience, far removed from Happy Mondays-style chemistry-set
hedonism. Check that video, "walking through these woods,
with the weather changing, the elemental energies of the earth,
wind, pollen, sunset, bite of hail, continually walking through
the same environment with that sense of the changing world."
To the believer this is real sensuality, communion with nature,
oneness with the earth. To the cynic it's a load of hippy shit
in any language. <What a fuckhead! Jeez, IED hates these
effete British music journalists.> And predictably, at the centre
of the whole philosophy, there's the doctrine of, yes, love.
So choose your path carefully, children...
"Love is a wonderful, powerful thing," trills Kate,
without a hint of Fotherington-Thomas. <These music journalists
are always so astoundingly preoccupied with the job of making
sure they're coming off as cynical and hip and "cool" in their
readers' eyes that they don't even have the minimal courage to
consider the wonder of the natural world--as though love and Nature
were only fads of the 60s, now somehow "out of date"! And one more thing:
Kate doesn't "trill"! Smug, patronizing, supercilious jerk. -- IED>
"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 points 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."
Track by track: The Sensual World of Kate Bush
"It feels like ten very separate songs, ten short stories,
but although I think there's probably a mood that hangs them
together, it's not really conceptual at all."
Very true, Kate, except there's 11 of 'em; from the
Joycean celebration of _The_Sensual_World_ single through to the almost
_Dreaming_-like optimism of _Walk Straight Down the Middle.
<Optimism? _Optimism_?! -- IED>
THE SENSUAL WORLD
Based on Molly Bloom's monologue at the end of Joyce's _Ulysses_,
_The_Sensual_World_ only stepped off the printed page when the publishers
refused to give Kate Bush permission to quote the novel.
"It transformed the song. Obviously the words had to change,
but also the musical sections were completely different. By them
being oncooperative it made the track better in many ways, but it
was very difficult to keep the rhythmic sense of the words."
What's the significance of the bells at the beginning of the
song?
"I've got a thing about the sound of bells. It's
one of those fantastic sounds: sound of celebration. The're
used to mark points in life--births, weddings, deaths--but they
give this tremendous feeling of celebration.
"In the original speech she's talking of the time
when he proposed to her, and I just had the image of bells, this
image of them sitting on the hillside with the sound of bells in
the distance. In hindsight, I also think it's a lovely way to
start an album: a feeling of celebration that puts me on a hillside
somewhere on a sunny afternoon and it's like, mmh...Sounds of
celebration get fewer and fewer. We haven't many left. And
yet people complain of the sound of bells in cities."
Why's Davey Spillane playing a Macedonian air on his
Uillean pipes in the middle of it? <Note that Kate has not identified
this music as such, only the idiot interviewer. It may or may not
be correct.-- IED>
"It was one of those, 'Oh what the hell' things.
That seems to have been the way with a lot of this album. Sort of
'Oh god! Tut...Will it work? Ooh, er...' Then when I've
eventually just gone for it, it seems to have worked."
LOVE AND ANGER
"This song! This bloody song!
"It was one of the most difficult to put together, yet
the first to be written. I came back to it 18 months later and
pieced it together. It doesn't really have a story. It's
just me trying to write a song, ha-ha.
"Obviously the imagery you get as a child is very strong.
This is about who you can or cannot confide in when there's
something you can't talk about. 'If you can't tell
your sister, If you can't tell a priest...' Who did I have
in the lyrics? Was it sister or mother? I can't remember."
<She got it right, though. -- IED>
THE FOG
Featuring Kate's dad, the good doctor Bush, plus Nigel
Kennedy and some wicked seagull imitations. It seems to be more about
ponds and swimming pools than pea-soupers.
"It's about trying to grow up. Growing up for most
people is just trying to stop escaping, 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."
REACHING OUT
<Note that Kate apparently refused to comment at all to this
moron about this song and _Deeper_Understanding_. In IED's opinion
this fact is a kind of warning to us about Kate's attitude toward
this interview. -- IED>
After papa, Kate's "reaching out for Mama". Another
song about children beginning to experience the adult world. "See
how the child reaches out instinctively/To feel how fire will feel."
Probably the least developed work on_The_Sensual_World_ but it
does have strange strings arranged by Michael Nyman. <This is
the kind of _idiotic_ remark that IED most despises the British
music press for making. How _anyone_ could describe _Reaching_Out_
as "the least developed work"--whatever that means--is inconceivable
to IED. And the airheaded follow-up (why are the strings "strange",
and why the "but"?) is all too typical, as well. Incidentally, the
strings, Kate fans will notice, are arranged for exactly the same
rather unusual configuration as the strings for _Cloudbusting_:
string sextet. Kate described in some detail how she composed that
string part--by creating the six "voices" on the Fairlight, and then
getting someone in to transcribe them for strings. The chances are
this is how these strings were arranged. -- IED>
HEADS WE'RE DANCING
I found it really funny, bit strange in a way... <FUNNY? MORON!>
"That's a very dark song, not funny at all!"
'_It_was_'39,_before_the_music_started._' Did you
write it to tie in with the war anniversary?
"No, purely coincidental. I wrote the song two years
ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn't write a song like it now.
I'd really hate it if people were offended by this...But it was
all started by a family friend, years ago, who'd been to dinner
and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so charming.
They sat all night chatting and joking. And next day he found out it
was Oppenheimer. And this friend was horrified because he really
despised what the guy stood for.
"I understood the reaction, but I felt a bit sorry for
Oppenheimer. He tried to live with what he'd done, and actually,
I think, committed suicide.
"But I was so intrigued by this idea of my friend being
so taken by this person until they knew who they were, and then it
completely changing their attitude.
"So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate
One: charming, elegant, well spoken.
"Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl 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 that it
was Hitler. Complete horror: she was that close, perhaps could've
changed history.
"Hitler was very attractive to women because he was such a
powerful figure, yet such an evil guy. I'd hate to feel I was
glorifying the situation, but I do know that whereas in a piece of
film it would be quite acceptable, in a song it's a little bit
sensitive."
DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
Bizarrely balancing the ancient voices of Bulgaria with lyrics
and effects from the computer age. Dark, lonely songs <songs?> about
someone betrayed by humanity, finding solace in the friendship of
a clever black box that sings like Sparky. 'As the people grow
colder/I turn to my computer...I press Execute.' Bleak and
disturbing, almost as morbid as some of her early creations <Huh?>
and elevated by Yanka Rupkina's emotional solo.
BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
"It's about a relationship being a very
finely balanced thing that can be easily thrown off by a third
party. The whole thing really came from a line in _The_Godfather_,
during some family argument, when Marlon Brando says, 'Don't
interfere, it's between a man and a woman.' It's
exploring the idea of trying to keep a relationship together, how
outside forces can break into it...Rubbish really, but I quite
like the cello." <That's she said, folks...to this jerk
interviewer, anyway...-- IED>
NEVER BE MINE
"_Ooh,_the_thrill_and_the_hurting...
_I_know_that_this_will_never_be_mine._"
Kate and the Bulgars again, supported by Spillane's
Irish piping.
"It's that whole thing of how, in some situations,
it's the dream you want, not the real thing. It was pursuing
a conscious realisation that a person is really enjoying the fantasy
and aware it won't become reality. So often you think it's
the end you want, but this is actually looking at the process that will
never get you there. Bit of a heart-game you play with yourself."
ROCKET'S TAIL (For Rocket)
"Rocket's my cat, but it was written for the Bulgarian
girls. Ridiculous collection of images, <Just read the lyrics and
you'll see immediately that Kate is deliberately deflecting the
request for an explanation. This is _not_ a "ridiculous collection
of images"! -- IED> nothing to do with Rocket, really. He
just started it all off.
"At the time the only song I could think of that mentioned
rockets was _Rocket_Man_ <which, by the time she was working with
the Bulgarians, Kate had already agreed to record a cover version
of for the forthcoming Elton John/Bernie Taupin tribute album>, but
since then there have been about three of them. I feel a bit like the
Python sketch withthat guy making eight-millimetre films, saying,
'Hitchcock had his _Rear_Window_ out while mine was still at the
chemists'."
THIS WOMAN'S WORK
"It was written for John Hughes's film, _She's_Having_a_Baby_.
Really light comedy about this young guy who gets married, very much
a kid. His wife is pregnant and it's all right until they get to
the hospital, and the baby's in the breach position.
"That's the sequence I had to write the song about,
and it's really very moving, him in the waiting room, having
flashbacks of his wife and him going for walks, decorating...It's
exploring his sadness and guilt: suddenly it's the point where
he has to grow up. He'd been such a wally up to this point."
WALK STRAIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE
The most positive <Positive? _Positive_?> statement on _The_Sensual_
_World_, and featuring some of Kate's most remarkable vocals to date.
Perhaps even an impression of a howler monkey?
"My mother thought it was a peacock--she was looking for
a peacock, isn't that sweet? I fancied being Captain Beefheart
at that point, and it just came to me: standing out, calling for
help in the middle. It just went, 'BBRRRROOOOAAAAAAAAA'.
"It's the idea of how our fear are sometimes holding
us back, and yet there's really no need to be frightened.
Like _The_Fog_: being scared because the water's deep, you could be
being scared because the water's deep, you could be drowned;
drowned; but actually if you put your feet down the bottom's there and
it's only waist high, so what's the problem? Just get
on with it: that's what I'm trying to tell myself.
.bf ital
"Walk Straight Down the Middle came together very quickly. It's
about following either of two extremes, when you really want to plough
this path straight down the middle. Rather than 'WAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH':
being thrown from one end of the spectrum to the other. I'd
like to think of myself as holding the centre, whereas in fact
I'm--'WAAARRRRGGGGHHHH'--taking off all the time."
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-- Andrew MarvickLove-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (10/11/89)
Really-From: gatech.edu!mit-eddie!gaffa.mit.edu!jsd@cs.utexas.edu (Jon Drukman) hah! All you pedestrian twerps can get down on your knees and kiss the ground that I walk on. I sussed out "Heads We're Dancing" totally and Kate's very own words back me up 100%. So, grovel at my feet, you paltry fools! PS to IED: Lay off on the British music press. It's the way they are and I love it. Peace and love -- hippy shit indeed! +---------------------- Is there any ESCAPE from NOISE? ----------------------+ | | |\ | jsd@gaffa.mit.edu | "I like George Bush, but this `kinder, | | \|on |/rukman | jsd@umass.bitnet | gentler' crap is killing us." - D.Trump | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (10/13/89)
Really-From: archet!wlm@uunet.UU.NET (William L. Moran Jr.) Don't bother to read the interview part, just scan for the IED comments; they get more and more amusing. Bill -- arpa: moran-william@cs.yale.edu or wlm@ibm.com uucp: uunet!bywater!acheron!archet!wlm or decvax!yale!moran-william ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Playing on the status symbols - Laying out the ready cash Bigger, better, newer, smarter - Hear the status symbols clash! Flanders & Swann