In 2011 veteran rock journalist Mick Wall recounted the story of his unexpected interview with Kate Bush, which took place in 1984 while she was working on the album that would become the following year’s classic Hounds Of Love.
It all seems like a dream now… but back in 1984, during what was then viewed as a period of unprecedented reclusiveness for a major rock star, I put in a request to interview Kate Bush. Expecting nothing back – she had more or less disappeared since her 1982 album The Dreaming had received such a bashing in the press – I was astonished when the record company got back and said, “She’d love to speak to you.”
It seemed the opportunity to be interviewed by a bona fide rock writer intrigued her. “She likes Def Leppard,” they added, hopefully. Strange to relate by today’s manicured PR standards, but I was given her address and told to pitch up sometime that week. A few days later I was at door of the south London house Kate used as her home-from-home workplace; a space to play piano, dance and listen to records.
She answered the door herself with a big smile and ushered me in. Dressed in an understated way – no make-up, hair brushed but not sculpted, just jeans and top to keep her warm – Kate was 25 at the time, and very beautiful.
She skipped off to make tea and I knelt by the record player, flipping through her albums. I recall seeing Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things, some Pink Floyd, some Bowie, plus some other things I didn’t easily recognise. Classical, maybe? Dance?
She returned with tea and biscuits and we sat cross-legged on the floor together. With no new album to promote, I didn’t really know what I should talk about. I hadn’t actually expected to be given an interview. Somehow we got onto the subject of smoking dope, and she giggled and talked of “pinning” – pretending to inhale from a lump of burning hash held up by the unbent pin of a badge.
Kate said she was “very influenced in my writing by old traditional folk songs, handed down by new generations of musicians but with the original atmosphere and emotion still maintained. The sort of music my mother would have listened to and danced to, and used to play for me when I was very little. It’s probably my biggest musical influence.”
With an astonishing talent for songwriting, which went back to her early teens, and an unmistakable singing voice, utterly unlike anything else before or since, she explained how her dancing skill was a more recent acquisition. Though Mum was a prize-winning dancer, Kate hadn’t begun taking lessons until she was 17 – a little over 12 months before her first single, Wuthering Heights, reached number one.
I wanted more than anything in the world to make an album, just to see that piece of plastic
Kate Bush
Indeed, it was her ability to dance so extravagantly that made her live show, which I’d recently caught at London’s Palladium, so enervating and different. “I got so incredibly nervous before I’d go on,” she confessed. “All I’d ever really done in the way of live performance before the tour were TV shows and videos. And the sort of props and ideas for the show we were carrying around with us seemed a bit ambitious, a bit awesome, at first. But I loved those shows. Once I was onstage I had so much fun. I would like to do more of it...”
In another life, could she have made a career out of dancing? “I had people approaching me at the dance class, asking if I wanted to go to Germany and dance in clubs and things, and for a time I really got into the dance thing... But I don’t think I was good enough. I didn’t stand out enough.”
Did she write all the time? “No. I have to be forced to write for an album.” She wasn’t very prolific then? “I used to be. I used to write every day, and if it wasn’t very good keep a little bit and maybe use it in something else. As soon as Wuthering Heights became a hit, though, my whole routine was just blown apart. It was extraordinary how suddenly everything changed.”
Was she very happy then? “Yes, I was. I think it was one of the happiest times for me as a person. I’d just left school and I was beginning to find myself as an individual. It was very exciting, but I wanted more than anything in the world to make an album, just to see that piece of plastic. And then it happened. And it was instant – you know, Around The World In 80 Days sort of thing. It was frightening. I don’t know how I did it. I couldn’t do it now.”
She said she found it hard to read a book without turning it into a song
Were her dancer mum and musician had worried when she signed to EMI at 16? Sex and drugs etc? “No, not at all,” she smiled. “They had seen it coming for a long time. The original idea was to see if we could sell my songs to a publisher, not that I should be a singer or a performer or anything. We had quite modest, curious aims. So it was gradual and they were always supportive.”
Kate told me she was currently writing songs for a new album – which was to be Hounds Of Love. She explained how she hennaed her hair, crimped it occasionally, and that she had make-up artists and hair beauticians available, as well as costume designers equipped to run off fantasy threads like the still-legendary Babooshka number.
She said she found it hard to read a book without turning it into a song, and told me Oscar Wilde was probably her favourite author – she was especially fond of his children’s stories, which could still make her cry.
By now the winter sun was paling through the window and I made to leave. I had a little lump of hash in my pocket and wondered if... Naw, probably not.
We did meet one more time, at the official record company playback for the Hounds Of Love album. I had given it a rave review. The party was held at the London Planetarium and she must have spotted me lumbering about the antechamber where the free drinks were being served, thinking perhaps to offer some small thanks.
Unlike our previous meeting, this time she was dressed up, and looked absolutely stunning. There was no pretending she was just like any other girl this time. With what is now probably regarded as her greatest album about to enchant the world, and in the prime of her life, the future, it seemed, was entirely hers for the asking. And so it proved...
