Kate Bush News

LAUNCH EVENT & MUSIC PERFORMANCE: If you’ve been following our Facebook page you will know that Guido Harari is launching the publication of his lavish book of photographs of Kate (1982-1993), The Kate Inside this month with a (fully booked out) Q&A event with LINDSAY KEMP and GUIDO HARARI plus special guests on Friday Sept 16th, 7:30pm, at the Underdog Gallery, London. Mandy, Michael and Dave from Cloudbusting will be performing Kate’s songs after the Q&A at the Underdog!

UPDATE: We now have the full video from the live stream of the event that we organised on our Facebook page here.

EXHIBITION DETAILS: The exhibition itself is at the nearby Art Bermondsey Project Space – here is a link to the gallery with details of opening hours and how to get there. The exhibition runs till September 30th. [all details on ordering the book are at the Wall of Sound Gallery site here]

Update: Guido will be appearing on the ITV 6pm News in the UK On Thursday 15th Sept. 

MEDIA: Media coverage of The Kate Inside has been extensive, including prominent news pieces in Mojo and Uncut magazines in the UK and the following media : Another Magazine | The Guardian (gallery) | The Guardian (interview) | Internazionale | NME | Dazed | SuperDeluxeEdition (great interview!) | Rolling Stone | Art Info | BBC Arts | Electronic Beats | The Resident | Panorama (Italy) | Amateur Photographer |

Shambush event, Brighton, UK – 2013

Norway, America, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Denmark, Netherlands, England, Sweden..are just some of the places taking part in The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever! The events will see organised “flash mobs” of people dressed in red dresses recreating the dance moves of Kate’s original video. Already seen in the UK over the years at “Shambush” events, these fun happenings are growing in popularity. On Saturday, July 16th 2016 it is going global, as you will see by the variety of beautiful posters below designed by graphic artist Tim Brackmann. Instructions for participants (apart from studying those iconic dance moves) are as follows:

Invite: Everyone! All ages and genders welcome.
Wear: Red dress, red stockings, black belt.
Bring: Unadulterated glee!

ALL information for each event can be seen by checking out the Facebook links below:

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS LIST
UNITED STATES, Atlanta
https://www.facebook.com/events/1757269587829405
GERMANY, Berlin
https://www.facebook.com/events/603347023152998/
IRELAND, Dublin
http://allevents.in/dublin/the-most-wuthering-heights-day-ever-dublin/618759054958323#
SWEDEN, Uppsala
https://www.facebook.com/events/1107935932588472
UK, London (Shambush)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1690842347830732
UK, Lancaster (Bush Rush)
https://www.facebook.com/events/512576758924565
ISRAEL, Tel Aviv
https://www.facebook.com/events/153141261710220
DENMARK, Copenhagen
https://www.facebook.com/events/494685907371182
NORWAY, Oslo
https://www.facebook.com/events/1692551067653177
NETHERLANDS, Amsterdam
https://www.facebook.com/events/491823134322814
AUSTRALIA, Melbourne
https://www.facebook.com/events/1799065286992379
AUSTRALIA, Adelaide
https://www.facebook.com/events/509559399227126
AUSTRALIA, Sydney
https://www.facebook.com/events/1528088157521526
AUSTRALIA, Brisbane
https://www.facebook.com/events/963955903694748
AUSTRALIA, Perth
https://www.facebook.com/events/729674230502623
AUSTRALIA, Blue Mountains
https://www.facebook.com/events/207239513000629
AUSTRALIA, Hobart
https://www.facebook.com/events/480703488782706
AUSTRALIA, Lismore
https://www.facebook.com/events/283047528715575
NEW ZEALAND, Christchurch
https://www.facebook.com/events/1685967265004022
NEW ZEALAND, Wellington
https://www.facebook.com/events/1586676678312820
NEW ZEALAND, Auckland
https://www.facebook.com/events/1790393037861722
CANADA, Montreal
https://www.facebook.com/events/802785893201300
US, Madison, WI
https://www.facebook.com/events/549936971858238

Glenys Groves has published a new biography/memoir, “Ballads, Songs and Snatches” and included is a chapter about being on tour with Kate. Glenys was one of the two backing singers on Kate’s 1979 Tour of Life, along with the late Liz Pearson who sadly passed away in 2012. Here’s a short excerpt:

“So, there I was, sitting on Kate Bush’s sofa, drinking herbal tea and playing with her two adorable cats, Pyewacket and Zoodle. I honestly cannot remember whether I actually sang anything or not, but I obviously convinced Kate that I had the vocal range needed and I could reproduce the sound she wanted. I realise now it was vitally important that she liked me as a person and that she felt I would fit in with the rest of the band. Hooray! I was invited to join the Lionheart Tour and tasked with finding an ‘accomplice’ B/V (Backing Vocalist), starting on Wednesday.”

The book can be ordered at this site. (thanks to Darrell for letting us know)

Glenys Groves in Kate’s 1979 tour programme

Glenys Groves attends Kate’s Before the Dawn concert in 2014 with her friend Darrell Babidge

Happy Bloomsday! I thought I’d re-publish this piece I wrote a few years back about Kate’s song, The Sensual World, as I know a lot of you particularly like to listen to it today – on June 16th. Of course we’re spoiled altogether now as in 2011 Kate released “Flower of the Mountain” – her version, finally, with Joyce’s original words. It was a sublime treat. On balance though, I’d say her greatest artistic achievement came on the earlier track. Creative frustration and sheer perseverance blended to forge something truly exceptional. ~ Seán

James Joyce’s Ulysses has long been hailed as a masterpiece since its publication in 1922. The character of Molly Bloom looms large over the events of the single day in Dublin depicted in the story. The novel takes place on 16th June 1904, the day of Joyce and Nora Barnacle’s first date, now celebrated as Bloomsday. It was Joyce’s intention for the novel to have Homeric parallels and Molly, the wife of Leopold Bloom, represents Penelope. Unlike her faithful mythical counterpart she is having an adulterous affair with Hugh ‘Blazes’ Boylan after ten years of celibacy. Her celebrated internal monologue, which concludes the novel, takes the form of eight enormous “sentences”, with only two marks of punctuation in the entire episode. Molly accepts Leopold into her bed, frets about his health, and then reminisces about their first meeting and her first feelings of love for him. The episode both begins and ends with “yes”, a word that Joyce described as “the female word”. Earlier, Leopold had been having a cheese sandwich and glass of Burgundy in Davey Byrne’s pub and thinking of the moment in the spring or summer of 1888 when Molly agreed to marry him, among the ferns and rhododendrons on Howth Head with just a comical nanny-goat to witness it. This deeply romantic reminiscence, parts of which recur several times in Ulysses, includes the description of Molly passing the warm and chewed seed-cake from her mouth to his. Their love, at least sixteen years before, was passionate, erotic and vital.

More than sixty years after the publication of Ulysses, Kate Bush was working on the follow-up to her 1985 ‘Hounds of Love’ album, which is now widely hailed as her own masterpiece. Around this time Kate had written an instrumental piece of music, a rhythmic melody that strongly suggested the cadence of Molly Bloom’s speech. Kate’s introduction to the final passage of Ulysses had been a 1958 recording of the soliloquy by the Irish actress Siobhan McKenna. Kate was transfixed by the beauty and femininity of the writing. “It’s like this never-ending sentence, this long train of thought, and the only thing that punctuates it is the word “yes” and it very gradually accelerates. I just thought it was one of the most sensual pieces ever written.” The words from the book matched perfectly to the music. “It was just like it was meant to be. The words fitted – they just fitted. The whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous…”

The music was recorded at Windmill Lane studios in Dublin, arranged by Bill Whelan. The featured players were Davey Spillane on uilleann pipes, Donal Lunny on bouzuki, John Sheahan on fiddle, Charlie Morgan on drums and Del Palmer on bass. Kate’s brother Paddy would be credited on the sleeve-notes with playing ‘whips’ on the record, an error he quickly rectified. “I’m actually playing a pair of fishing rods. I wanted to get the impression of a beautiful Irish lakeland and the swishing sound of the rods should conjure the atmosphere of fly-fishing, tweed hats and long Wellingtons.”

Kate’s good cheer at this progress was short-lived however. The Joyce estate would not grant her permission to use the words directly from the book. Attempts to change their minds continued for about a year. “We approached the relevant people and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried everything. Obviously, I was very disappointed. It was completely their prerogative, but it was very difficult for me, then, to re-approach the song. In some ways I wanted to just leave it off the album. But we’d put a lot of work into it. The Irish musicians had worked so hard.”

Despite this frustration Kate set about completely transforming her song. “I gradually rewrote it, keeping the same rhythm of the words and the same sounds but turning it into its own story.” The piece, now titled The Sensual World, became about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book world, a black and white two-dimensional world, into the real world. “The immediate impression was the sensuality of this world. The fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual – the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand, the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that is an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. I’m sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing.” Later in her career Kate returned to this theme, a euphoric appreciation of everyday experience, on her ‘Aerial’ album in 2005 to huge critical acclaim.

The song opens with the sound of church bells, perhaps echoing Leopold’s proposal to Molly on Howth Head. “I’ve got a thing about the sound of bells. It’s one of those fantastic sounds: a sound of celebration. They’re used to mark points in life; births, weddings, deaths, but they give this tremendous feeling of celebration. In the original speech Molly’s talking of the time when Leopold 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.”

A piece of traditional Macedonian music (called ‘Antice’) was re-worked to fit the ‘stepping out…’ chorus in the song’s new structure. The song would become the lead single for her new album, also titled ‘The Sensual World’. The accompanying promotional video had Kate, swathed in a velvet gown, dancing hypnotically through woodland as the sunlight turns to dusk, moonlight and back to sunrise again. In interviews in the autumn of 1989 Kate explained that the song and album contained the most positive female energy of her work to date.

“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. I didn’t feel that this time. I wanted 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 song The Sensual World was very much a female track for me. I felt it was a really new expression, feeling good about being a woman musically.”

Just as Kate had ignited a renewed interest in Emily Brontë’s novel with the global success of the song Wuthering Heights, it is also likely that many curious souls have taken the plunge into the extraordinary pages of Joyce’s Ulysses (and beyond) upon hearing a woman at the height of her musical powers interpret Molly Bloom’s rich inner life in such a unique and perfect way.

Two excerpts from Ulysses by James Joyce

“…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw 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 a womans body yes…”

“….and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

In a new interview to promote his work on Scottish Opera’s The Mikado in the Forres Gazette, Kate’s stage designer for her Before the Dawn shows, Dick Bird, talks about working with her. From the article:

International stage designer Dick Bird admits when Kate Bush came on the phone to ask him to work on her show two years ago, his 13-year-old self would have been over the moon. He said: “I haven’t done rock n roll before and it was the most extraordinary 18 months of my life. In a way, it started very unusually for me because she started by assembling a team like the Magnificent Seven – slowly putting together a team of reprobates and drunks and knocking them back into shape till they are a fine fighting crew!” laughs Dick. “That is sort of what Kate did, slowly assembling this fascinating team, but she wanted everything to be completely original. So we did a lot of workshopping. We would hire the Hammersmith Apollo for a week to do our experiments in – or go off to some incredibly draughty hangar in Northampton and play with silks and LED screens. I’ve never made so many models for one show. But it was a great, great, experience and the best thing written about it, she wrote herself, the most brilliant and comprehensive notes for the programme about the whole show.”

For Dick it was the chance to meet a boyhood idol. He laughs: “I was absolutely, madly in love with her when I was 13. She was my first big crush, so it was very interesting to meet her 35 years later. Dick’s friend, costume and props maker Rob Allsopp had worked with shadow puppets – as Kate wanted to – and Rob recommended she see a show Dick had also been working on using puppets.

But before Kate phoned him, Dick had been sounded out in a slightly mysterious way about whether he’d be free to do the show. He recalls: “About three-quarters of an hour before, someone else rang up and said ‘Would you be free at this time but I can’t tell you why I’m asking!’. “Then 45 minutes later the phone rang and it was Kate Bush – my unrequited crush of 35 years!” laughs Dick. “I was very tongue-tied, but she was saying ‘I really love your work!’ and I was replying ‘I really love YOUR work!’. She’s a very extraordinary and wonderful person.”

Full article is here. See more of Dick Bird’s designs, including Before the Dawn, at his official site: http://dickbird.co.uk/