Kate Bush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name Catherine Bush Born 30 July 1958
Bexleyheath, Kent, England
Genres Art rock art poppop rock
Experimental pop baroque pop
Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, director Instruments Vocalspianokeyboardssynthesizers
Website:
Catherine Bush CBE (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. Bush came to notice in 1978 when, aged 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single “Wuthering Heights”, becoming the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a self-written song. She has since released 25 UK Top 40 singles, including the top-10 hits “The Man with the Child in His Eyes”, “Babooshka”, “Running Up That Hill”, “Don’t Give Up” (a duet with Peter Gabriel) and “King of the Mountain”. She has released ten studio albums, all of which reached the UK Top 10, including the UK number-one albums Never for Ever (1980), Hounds of Love (1985), and the compilation The Whole Story (1986). She is the first British solo female artist to top the UK album charts and the first female artist to enter the album chart at number one.
Bush began writing songs at 11. She was signed to EMI Records after Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce a demo tape. Her debut album, The Kick Inside, was released in 1978. Bush slowly gained artistic independence in album production, and has produced all her studio albums since The Dreaming (1982). She took a hiatus between her seventh and eighth albums The Red Shoes (1993) and Aerial (2005). She drew attention again in 2014 with her concert residency Before the Dawn, her first shows since 1979’s The Tour of Life.
Bush’s eclectic and experimental musical style with literary and unconventional lyrical themes has influenced a diverse range of artists. She has been nominated 13 times for British Phonographic Industry accolades, winning for Best British Female Artist in 1987. She has also been nominated for three Grammy Awards. In 2002, she was recognised with an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. In October 2017 she was nominated for induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.[15] Bush was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to music.
Bush was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, to an English medical doctor, Robert Bush (1920–2008), and an Irish mother, Hannah Daly (1918–1992). She was raised as a Roman Catholic in their farmhouse in East Wickham, an urban village in the neighbouring town of Welling, with her older brothers, John and Paddy. Bush came from an artistic background: her mother was an amateur traditional Irish dancer, her father was an amateur pianist, Paddy worked as a musical instrument maker, and John was a poet and photographer. Both brothers were involved in the local folk music scene. John was a karateka at Goldsmiths College karate club and Kate also trained there, becoming known as “Ee-ee” because of her squeaky kiai.
Her family’s musical influence inspired Bush to teach herself the piano at the age of 11. She also played the organ in a barn behind her parents’ house and studied the violin. She soon began composing songs, eventually adding her own lyrics.
Bush attended St Joseph’s Convent Grammar School, a Catholic girls’ school in nearby Abbey Wood which, in 1975, after she had left, became part of St Mary’s and St Joseph’s School in Sidcup. During this time her family produced a demo tape with over 50 of her compositions, which was turned down by record labels. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour received the demo from Ricky Hopper, a mutual friend of Gilmour and the Bush family. Impressed, Gilmour helped the sixteen-year-old Bush record a more professional demo tape. Three tracks in total were recorded and paid for by Gilmour.[28] The tape was produced by Gilmour’s friend Andrew Powell, who went on to produce Bush’s first two albums, and sound engineer Geoff Emerick, who had worked with the Beatles. The tape was sent to EMI executive Terry Slater, who signed her.
The British record industry was reaching a point of stagnation.[30] Progressive rock was very popular and visually oriented rock performers were growing in popularity, thus record labels looking for the next big thing were considering experimental acts. Bush was put on retainer for two years by Bob Mercer, managing director of EMI group-repertoire division. According to Mercer, he felt Bush’s material was good enough to release, but felt that if the album failed it would be demoralising and if it was successful Bush was too young to handle it. However, in a 1987 interview, Gilmour disputed this version of events, blaming EMI for initially using the “wrong” producers. After the contract signing, EMI gave her a large advance, which she used to enroll in interpretive dance classes taught by Lindsay Kemp, a former teacher of David Bowie, and mime training with Adam Darius. For the first two years of her contract, Bush spent more time on schoolwork than recording. She left school after doing her mock A-levels and having gained ten GCE O-Level qualifications.[36] Bush wrote and made demos of almost 200 songs, some of which circulated as bootlegs known as the Phoenix Recordings. From March to August 1977, she fronted the KT Bush Band at public houses in London. The band included Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (guitar), and Vic King (drums). She began recording her first album in August 1977, although the tracks “The Saxophone Song” and “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” had been recorded in mid-1975.
Songwriting and influences
Elements of Bush’s lyrics employ historical or literary references, as embodied in her first single “Wuthering Heights”, which is based on Emily Brontë’s novel of the same name. She has described herself as a storyteller who embodies the character singing the song and has dismissed efforts by others to conceive of her work as autobiographical. Bush’s lyrics have been known to touch on obscure or esoteric subject matter, and New Musical Express noted that Bush was not afraid to tackle sensitive and taboo subjects in her work. “The Kick Inside” is based on a traditional English folk song (The Ballad of Lucy Wan) about an incestuous pregnancy and a resulting suicide. “Kashka from Baghdad” is a song about a homosexual male couple; Out magazine listed two of her albums in their “Top 100 Greatest Gayest Albums” list. She has referenced G. I. Gurdjieff in the song “Them Heavy People”, while “Cloudbusting” was inspired by Peter Reich’s autobiography, A Book of Dreams, about his relationship with his father, Wilhelm Reich. “Breathing” explores the results of nuclear fallout from the perspective of a fœtus. Other non-musical sources of inspiration for Bush include horror films, which have influenced the gothic nature of her songs, such as “Hounds of Love”, which samples the 1957 horror movie Night of the Demon. “The Infant Kiss” is a song about a haunted, unstable woman’s paedophilic infatuation with a young boy in her care (inspired by Jack Clayton’s film The Innocents (1961), which had been based on Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw);. Her songs have occasionally combined comedy and horror to form dark humour, such as murder by poisoning in “Coffee Homeground”, an alcoholic mother in “Ran Tan Waltz” and the upbeat “The Wedding List”, a song inspired by François Truffaut’s 1967 film of Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black about the death of a groom and the bride’s subsequent revenge against the killer. Bush has also cited comedy as a significant influence. She has cited Woody Allen, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and The Young Ones as particular favourites.
Personal life
Bush’s son, Bertie, featured prominently in the 2014 concert Before the Dawn. She previously had a long-term relationship with bassist and engineer Del Palmer from the late 1970s to the early 1990s Bush is a former resident of Eltham, southeast London. In the 1990s, she moved to a canalside residence in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, and moved to Devon in 2004. Bush is a vegetarian. Raised a Roman Catholic, she said in 1999: …
I would never say I was a strict follower of Roman Catholic belief, but a lot of [powerful, beautiful and passionate images are in there. There’s a lot of suffering in Roman Catholicism. I think I’m looking for not necessarily religion, but ways of helping myself to become more understanding, more complete, a happier person …But I really don’t think I’ve found a niche.[20]
The length of time between albums has led to rumours concerning Bush’s health or appearance. In 2011, she told BBC Radio 4 that the amount of time between albums was stressful: “It’s very frustrating the albums take as long as they do … I wish there weren’t such big gaps between them”. In the same interview, she denied that she was a perfectionist, saying: “I think it’s important that things are flawed … That’s what makes a piece of art interesting sometimes – the bit that’s wrong or the mistake you’ve made that’s led onto an idea you wouldn’t have had otherwise.” She reiterated her prioritisation of her family life.
Bush’s nephew, Raven Bush is violinist in the English indie band Syd Arthur.
Discography
The Kick Inside (1978)
Lionheart (1978)
Never for Ever (1980)
The Dreaming (1982)
Hounds of Love (1985)
The Sensual World (1989)
The Red Shoes (1993) Aerial (2005) Director’s Cut (2011)
50 Words for Snow (2011)
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