Gavin Friday, the Irish composer, actor and painter who fronted Irish post-punk band Virgin Prunes before becoming U2’s creative director, once asked Kate Bush to producer his band. He didn’t get the reply he wanted – but as he told Prog, he was delighted to receive any reply at all. It only increased his appreciation for her work.
“I first saw Kate Bush on Top Of The Pops in 1978 and I loved the gothicness of Wuthering Heights. She was just extraordinary – here was this woman that was doing this sort of erotic mime all by herself. She was just phenomenal.
And, of course, I went out and bought the album, The Kick Inside. I wasn't as embraced by Lionheart, but with the later singles, Babooshka and Breathing, you’d just go, ‘Wow, this is deep – she’s talking eco, Mother Earth shit here.’
Musically, Never Forever stopped me in my tracks and I became quite obsessed. This may sound like an odd analogy, but there’s something almost James Joyce about The Dreaming. Ulysses is a fucking phenomenal book.
When you first read it you don’t know what it is. But when you think about it, you start seeing that he was writing in 3D; he was thinking about the visual, the audio, and every sense. And Kate does that with her music. She makes the instrument become a character and a feature and brings it into this 3D thing.
Hounds Of Love is the classic of classics. I was just mesmerised; you put it on and it’s actually a work of art. There was a gap of 12 years for Aerial after The Red Shoes. it’s got Mrs Bartolozzi on it; that’s the one with the fucking washing machine and it’s so sexual watching the clothes spin in it! Who the fuck would go there other than a James Joyce?
I was so blown out by The Dreaming that I wrote to Kate, asking her to produce The Virgin Prunes. I got a reply saying, ‘Thank you so much, Gavin. You’re very sweet – but I don’t produce other bands. But thanks for all your love and support.’ And it's like, ‘Yeah – I got an answer from Kate!’
I think she fell in love with the otherworldliness of Pink Floyd, The Beatles and David Bowie and combined them all in her own neoclassical way. She’s never gone totally pop or totally rock; it’s like she’s weaving a tapestry for five years and you don’t know what it is.
And then she reveals it, and it’s not the work of a mad person – it’s the work of an absolute genius.”
