Kate Bush’s first album came out when she was just 20 years old, in 1978. She had been “discovered” prior to that by David Gilmour, of Pink Floyd fame. I imagine it wasn’t that difficult to notice how unusual she was, how eccentric, cerebral, gifted, and glowingly strange. Many of my favorite female singer/songwriters from the 90s were influenced a great deal by her. Milla Jovovich, Tori Amos, and P.J. Harvey, especially. And she was quite the buzz in the literary circles of two colleges I attended. Which made sense. Sound and sense. Kate Bush utilized literary sources for many of her songs, and recently contributed to the songtrack of The Golden Compass. Dickens, Bronte, Joyce and Tennyson are some of the literary giants she integrated into her music. Bush wanted to use at least some of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses in her song, The Sensual World, but the Joyce estate said no. So she wrote her own lyrics for Molly.
Of course, the fact that Kate Bush is literary and influenced by great writers was not the sole reason for her popularity. She sings beautifully, is wild strange, writes haunting songs, and follows no formula. If you have forgotten about her, give her a listen …
Hounds of Love
A good friend of mine was art director for EMI during the early 80’s and to say Kate Bush was difficult to work with would be an understatement.She was/is a talent but her ego knows no bounds.
John, thanks for the comment. As has been mentioned several times in Spinozablue, I think it takes a strong ego to make great art. People suffer as a result of great art. I leave it, as always, to others to decide whether it’s worth it, blah blah blah. Again, I think Rilke is the epitome of that. He seems to have been a rotten human being in more than a few ways. But, oh, the magnificence of his poetry!
How many artists, excellent in their craft, are also beautiful people to all and sundry? I don’t know. Though I imagine in our homogenized land of ice, we should be getting better at behavior toward the hoi polloi (as in, us). Toward the people who actually buy the records, etc. etc.
Kate should know better, if she is rough to work with. She was raised on a farm. But, sheesh. She’s talented. She’s not Monteverdi. But she’s pretty damn good for Rock N Roll.
Well she wasn’t the biggest pain during that time period.Cory Hart of the one hit wonder“Dark Sunglasses at night” had his picture on the art dept dart board and it was well used.Folkie turned Country guy Michael Murphy and his wife were looked upon as the plague whenever they were forced to deal with the pair