Kate Bush

This article is about the British musician. For the Canadian writer, see Catherine Bush (writer) .

Kate Bush, 1986

Kate Bush , CBE (born July 30, 1958 in Bexleyheath , Kent (now London); actually Catherine Bush ) is a British singer , pianist , songwriter and music producer . Her best-known songs include Wuthering Heights , Babooshka and Running Up That Hill .

Childhood and youth

Catherine Bush was born in 1958 as the third child of Robert John Bush and Hannah Daly. The father was a resident doctor, the mother a nurse, they married in 1943. Bush has two older brothers, John Carder Bush (* 1944) and Patrick (Paddy) Bush (* 1952). She grew up with her family on a farm in Welling , Kent . The family was interested in art; her brother John wrote and published poetry; her mother, who came from the Irish county of Waterford , inspired her for Irish folklore and Irish music; the father played the piano a lot. The family held regular house music evenings on the farm, which Catherine was involved in from an early age. From 1963 to 1969 Catherine attended the local elementary school, then until 1975 the Catholic convent school Saint Joseph's Grammar School in Bexley. She began playing the piano in 1966, took violin lessons at the school from 1969 and took singing lessons. In 1970 she began to write her own poems and to set them to music. One of these early works is the single The Man with the Child in His Eyes , released many years later .

Career

Her brother John introduced Bush to David Gilmour , guitarist for Pink Floyd , in 1973 . Gilmour recognized her talent and henceforth promoted her career. He recorded some demo tapes with Bush at AIR Studios with sound engineer Geoff Emerick and producer and arranger Andrew Powell . In June 1975, Gilmour presented the demo tapes to Bob Mercer of EMI , the record company with which Pink Floyd was also under contract. In July 1976 EMI signed a contract with Bush, who was just 18 years old, for an initial four years. Bush moved from rural Welling to Lewisham on the outskirts of London, where the father owned a house that was already occupied by the two brothers. In 1976 she attended the performance Flowers by the British dancer Lindsay Kemp and took dance lessons with him for six months. She continued her dance training with Arlene Phillips. At the same time she worked on the composition of songs for an album. Her brother Paddy put together a band. The formation, founded as KT Bush Band, consisted of Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (guitar) and Vic Smith (drums) and gave Bush the opportunity from April 1977 to gain first stage experience with cover versions in small pubs and bars.

Early Work - The Productions with Andrew Powell (1977–1979)

In July 1977, the seven-week recordings for the debut album The Kick Inside , which was released in early 1978, began at AIR Studios . Bush and Andrew Powell, who had already produced the demo recordings, selected the songs and put together a band of session musicians for the recordings. The band consisted of members from The Alan Parsons Project : Ian Bairnson (guitar), David Paton (bass), Stuart Elliott (drums) and Duncan Mackay (keyboards). As a sound engineer, Jon Kelly supervised the recordings. With The Saxophone Song and The Man with the Child in His Eyes , the album contained two of the 1975 recordings made with Gilmour and Powell.

In November 1977 the first promotional copies of Wuthering Heights were distributed to British radio stations. The single was released on January 20, 1978 and then the album on February 17, 1978. On February 9, 1978 Bush presented her single together with the KT Bush Band (with Charlie Morgan on drums) in the first show of the ARD program Bio's Bahnhof and became known in German-speaking countries. Shortly thereafter, she also appeared on the British pop show Top of the Pops . The single climbed to the top of the UK singles chart on March 7, and the album reached number three in April. In the German charts, the single reached number eleven and the album number 21. The press response was divided; the press found it difficult to classify Bush's single and album. The second single, The Man with the Child in His Eyes , was released in late May 1978 and reached number 6 in the British charts in June .

In July 1978, at EMI's insistence, Bush began recording the second album Lionheart in the Sunbear Studios in Nice with the KT Bush Band , again with Powell as producer and arranger. Powell pushed through during the recording that the session musicians of the first album were used again, so that some of the tracks already recorded with Palmer, Bath and Morgan were re-recorded or supplemented with Bairnson, Paton and Elliott. The album was completed after ten weeks and released in November 1978. The first single of the new album, Hammer Horror, was released on October 27, 1978, but did not reach the British Top 40 at number 44. The album followed on November 13, which reached number 6 in the British and 25th German album charts. It was not until the single Wow , published in March 1979, that it ranked 14th in the British charts as well as the two singles from the debut album. EMI pushed Bush to tour. The Tour of Life included 29 performances in Europe within six weeks in April and May 1979 and remained her only tour, although she also gave concerts later.

Artistic development (1979–1982)

Bush founded Novercia Holdings Ltd. in 1978 . a management company and with Kate Bush Music Publishing Ltd. her own publishing house because she did not agree with EMI's urging for the quick production of a second album and the tour. The two companies, headed by other family members besides Bush, were supposed to represent their artistic and economic interests better. She set a first sign of greater independence from EMI with the production of the live EP On Stage , a concert recording of the Tour-of-Life performance at Hammersmith Odeon on May 13, 1979. Bush produced the only authorized live recording himself.

The third album Never for Ever was made between autumn 1979 and June 1980 and was recorded from January to June 1980 at Abbey Road Studios. Bush co-produced with Jon Kelly himself. She wanted to incorporate new ideas into the production that she had observed as a background singer while recording Peter Gabriel's (third) solo album Peter Gabriel (Melt) . The musical direction changes on this album due to the use of synthesizers and drum machines, which displaced Powell's arrangements. The Fairlight CMI as a compositional tool plays a special role and should influence all of Bush's other compositions. Bush was still composing at the piano while Never for Ever was being made, but the first arrangements were already made with this computer musical instrument. Brother Paddy was more closely involved in the production with his knowledge of some non-pop instruments. Breathing was released as the first single on the album on April 14, 1980, followed by Babooshka on June 27 , before the album was released on September 8. With Army Dreamers a third single was released on September 22nd. The singles placed themselves well in the British Top 40, Babooshka reached number 14 in Germany. With the album, she reached the top of the chart in her home country and number 5 in Germany.

In August 1980 Bush began new compositions for the album The Dreaming , released in September 1982, in a studio set up on her parents' farm . She had Richard James Burgess explain to her how synthesizers and samplers work and how to program the Fairlight CMI. The recordings for the new album began in May 1981 in London's Townhouse Studios with Hugh Padgham as the sound engineer. After three songs, Padgham had to cancel due to deadlines because he was working on the album Abacab at the same time as Genesis , and recommended the twenty-year-old Nick Launay . The instrumental tracks were recorded within three months, including a didgerido part by Rolf Harris . EMI pushed for the release of a single, so that in June 1981 Sat in Your Lap was released. The single peaked at number 11 in the UK. After the release of the single, Bush continued the production of the album at Abbey Road Studios with Haydn Bendall as sound engineer and completed the instrumental recordings. The Irish instruments for Night of the Swallow were recorded with musicians from Planxty and the Chieftains at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin . Overdubs and vocal recordings were made in the Odyssey studios in London with Paul Hardiman as engineer.

The album was mixed in five months from January 1982 in the Advision studios. The single The Dreaming was released in late July 1982. Shortly before the single was released, Bush appeared on July 21, 1982 at the Dominion Theater in London as part of a concert for the Prince's Trust with The Wedding List . She was accompanied by an all-star band with Phil Collins on drums, Mick Karn on bass, Gary Brooker on keyboards, and Pete Townshend and Midge Ure on guitars. The album was released on September 13, 1982 and reached number 3 in the British and number 21 in the German album charts . The singles extracted from The Dreaming , on the other hand, could neither place in the British nor in the German charts.

International success (1983-1993)

EMI rated The Dreaming as a commercial failure due to the high cost of studio rentals in relation to the proceeds. Bush withdrew from the public eye and moved from London to a cottage (small country house) on the Sussex coast . To compensate for the losses, EMI released the compilation The Single File and a video cassette of the same name in December 1983 .

In September 1983 Bush started composing new songs. Bush was initially heavily criticized by EMI because they wanted to produce the next album again themselves. It was not until the demo studio was expanded into a professional 48-track studio on the family's farm at the end of 1983 that EMI gave in because of the elimination of studio costs. Bush and Palmer began demo recordings for a new album called Hounds of Love in January 1984 , which were gradually overdubbed and further developed with additional arrangements. First, Bush created all the tracks on the Fairlight. In the early stages of development, Del Palmer acted as a sound engineer and programmed rhythms on the LinnDrum . After that, real instruments were recorded with Haydn Bendall at the mixer, primarily to replace the electronically generated rhythms. The drum parts were recorded by Stuart Elliott and Charlie Morgan (also Bodhrán and Lambeg ). The German jazz bassist Eberhard Weber , Del Palmer, Danny Thompson and Youth from Killing Joke played on bass, and Alan Murphy and Brian Bath on guitar. Numerous Irish instruments have been re-recorded at Windmill Lane Studios under the direction of Bill Whelan . In addition to Liam O'Flynn ( Uilleann Pipes ) and Dónal Lunny ( Bouzouki , Bodhrán) from Planxty, John Sheahan from the Dubliners played tin whistle and fiddle . Paddy Bush took over the Eastern European instruments balalaika and fujara , the Australian didgeridoo and a violin. For the song Cloudbusting , the Medici Sextet, a string motif arranged by Dave Lawson and dominating the song, was recorded. Other orchestral arrangements are by Michael Kamen . The Richard Hickox Singers contributed a choral motif for Hello Earth . The recordings were completed in June 1984, but it would take another year for all the overdubs to be recorded and the Brian Tench album mixed.

On August 5, 1985, Running Up That Hill was released as a single under this title at the instigation of EMI; Bush had intended the title A Deal with God , but with God in the title, EMI feared that the single would not be played on American radio and MTV . The album followed on September 16. The single placed well in the European charts and reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 . As a result, the album also did well not only in Europe, so that with Cloudbusting , the title track Hounds of Love and The Big Sky, three more singles were released by summer 1986, all of which were able to place in the British and German single charts. The album was awarded a platinum record in Germany and double platinum in Bush's homeland and marks the commercial breakthrough for Kate Bush in North America. Part of the success is certainly due to the A&R manager at EMI, David Munns, who approved the funds for the videos that were produced much more elaborately. The video for Cloudbusting should be highlighted in which the Canadian actor and later Golden Globe winner Donald Sutherland plays.

The music press celebrated Hounds of Love as a big comeback. EMI and Munns pushed for a best-of album in the wake of commercial success. Bush agreed on the condition that this time it had to be implemented in a "tasteful way" (Bush). For the album, Bush re-recorded her voice for Wuthering Heights and composed a new song with Experiment IV . The compilation, entitled The Whole Story , was released in November 1986, one month after the release of Don't Give Up , a duet with Peter Gabriel . The album reached number 11 in Germany and was awarded a gold record. In their homeland, the album reached the top of the charts and was certified triple platinum. Experiment IV with Nigel Kennedy on violin was released as a single and gave Bush his fourth UK Top 40 success within a year. EMI also released The Whole Story as a video album.

In 1986 Kate Bush sang the humorous song Do Bears ... in a duet with Rowan Atkinson at the Comic Relief charity event . The piece, which was written with the participation of Howard Goodall , uses the means of pop music to criticize the heroization of certain ideas of love in pop music. It appeared on the album Comic Relief Presents Utterly Utterly Live on the label WEA Records (No. 240 932-1). In 1987 she took part in the Ferry Aid charity project , for which she sang a short section of the Beatles song Let It Be .

In the summer of 1988 it was announced that she was working on a new album and had signed the Bulgarian vocal trio Bulgarka for it. At this point, most of the songs for The Sensual World were already written. Bush recorded the three Eastern European singers in October 1988 at Angel Studios in London. In addition to the trio and the previous studio musicians, Nigel Kennedy and David Gilmour made guest appearances. Kevin Killen, whom Bush met during their duet with Peter Gabriel, mixed the album. EMI released the title track The Sensual World on September 18, 1989 as a single. The album followed on October 16, from which two more singles were released in November 1989 with This Woman's Work (from the soundtrack for She is having a Baby ) and in February 1990 with Love and Anger . All singles were able to place in the British and The Sensual World also in the German charts. The album had good placements worldwide and was awarded a platinum record in the UK.

At the end of the 1980s, the compact disc music format became more and more popular. EMI therefore decided to release all albums previously published by Bush in this format. The label decided to launch an 8 CD box set in 1990. The title was set based on the single This Woman's Work .

In November 1993, after a four-year hiatus, the seventh studio album The Red Shoes was released. It comprised twelve titles and also served as musical accompaniment to Bush's film debut as a director and film actress in The Line, The Cross and the Curve .

Since 1994

In 1996 Bush worked with Prince and can be heard on his album Emancipation in the song My Computer . After she had subsequently withdrawn from the music business, the double album Aerial followed in autumn 2005 . The time lag of twelve years to the previous album is remarkable - during this time Kate Bush had become a mother and had mainly taken care of her private life.

Her album Director's Cut , a compilation of alternative versions of tracks from the albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes , was released in May 2011. On November 18, 2011, the album 50 Words for Snow was released. It consists of seven titles that deal with the topic of snow. In addition to some well-known artists such as Elton John and Stephen Fry, Kate's son Albert McIntosh also sings in a song.

On March 21, 2014, she announced her first concert series since 1979 on her website. From August to October 2014 22 concerts with the title Before the Dawn took place in London . The concerts were sold out within 15 minutes. A recording of the concerts was published in November 2016.

In March 2019, Kate Bush released a four-CD collection called The Other Sides . Among other things, B-sides of their singles are collected on it.

Musical style

Kate Bush's style includes influences from classical music , art rock , glam , jazz as well as various ethnic , especially Irish - Celtic and Southeast European sources. A characteristic that runs through her entire work is the uniform repetition of certain musical elements, such as drum loops or other short motifs. Kate Bush's works in the 1980s can be assigned to the New Wave or New Romantic wave of the time.

Bush writes her own songs, plays the piano and synthesizer as well as the violin and guitar . She produces her albums and has directed much of her videos . Kate Bush also often uses unusual instruments such as didgeridoo , balalaika and clavichord . She was one of the first artists to use samples in pop music.

In addition to her preferences for unusual costumes, she has found a form of amalgamation of song, dance and music for her live performances. She also made the musical fairy tale film The Line, the Cross & the Curve , inspired by the film Die Roten Schuhe (1948).

Technical innovations

Kate Bush is considered to be the first artist to have a headset with a wireless microphone built for use in music. For her tour Tour of life 1979 she had a compact microphone connected to a self-made construction made of wire clothes hangers , so that she did not have to use a hand microphone and had her hands free and could dance her rehearsed choreography of expressive dance on the concert stage and sing with the microphone at the same time . Later, her idea was also adopted by other artists such as Madonna or Peter Gabriel and used in performances.

Private

Kate Bush lives near London with her partner, guitarist Danny McIntosh, and their son Albert (called “Bertie”), who was born in 1998.

Discography

→ Main article : Kate Bush / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1978	The Kick Inside	DE21 (14 weeks) DE	-	-	UK3 platinum (71 weeks)UK	-	First published: February 17, 1978 Sales: + 400,000
	Lionheart	DE25 (5 weeks) DE	-	-	UK6th platinum (38 weeks)UK	-	First published: November 13, 1978 Sales: + 400,000
1980	Never for Ever	DE5 gold (31 weeks)DE	-	-	UK1 gold (25 weeks)UK	-	First published: September 8, 1980 Sales: + 550,000
1982	The Dreaming	DE23 (19 weeks) DE	-	-	UK3 silver (12 weeks)UK	US157 (7 weeks) US	First published: September 13, 1982 Sales: + 60,000
1985	Hounds of Love	DE2 platinum (32 weeks)DE	AT14 (14 weeks) AT	CH3 (11 weeks) CH	UK1 × 2 Double platinum (64 weeks)UK	US30 (27 weeks) US	First published: September 16, 1985 Sales: + 1,300,000
1989	The Sensual World	DE10 (21 weeks) DE	-	CH11 (5 weeks) CH	UK2 platinum (24 weeks)UK	US43 gold (26 weeks)US	First published: October 16, 1989 Sales: + 950,000
1993	The Red Shoes	DE18 (10 weeks) DE	AT34 (4 weeks) AT	CH26 (5 weeks) CH	UK2 platinum (19 weeks)UK	US28 (14 weeks) US	First published: November 2, 1993 Sales: +350,000
2005	Aerial	DE3 gold (16 weeks)DE	AT23 (10 weeks) AT	CH12 (11 weeks) CH	UK3 platinum (19 weeks)UK	US49 (2 weeks) US	First published: November 4th, 2005 Sales: + 1,100,000
2011	50 Words for Snow	DE7 (9 weeks) DE	AT26 (4 weeks) AT	CH12 (5 weeks) CH	UK5 gold (13 weeks)UK	US83 (2 weeks) US	First published: November 18, 2011 Sales: + 100,000

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Awards and nominations

Bush was nominated three times for the Grammy and twelve times for the Brit Award, but won only once: in 1987 with the Brits in the category British Female Solo Artist . In 2001 she received the Best Classic Songwriter Award from the English music magazine  Q , and in 2002 she received the Ivor Novello Award for "Outstanding Contribution to British Music".

For her musical merits, she was appointed Commander in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the end of December 2012 .

year	price	Nominee work	category	Result
1978	Melody Maker Annual Poll Awards	Kate Bush	Best Female Singer and Brightest Hope	Won
	Edison Award	Wuthering Heights	Best single	Won
	Tokyo Song Festival Awards	Moving	Silver Award	Won
1979	Ivor Novello Award	The Man With the Child in His Eyes	Outstanding British Lyric	Won
	BPI Awards	Kate Bush	Best Female Singer	Won
	Melody Maker Annual Poll Awards			Won
	Record mirror poll		Best New Artist	Won
1980	BPI Awards		Best Female Singer	Won
	Music Week annual awards		Top female artist	Won
	Capital Radio Awards		Best Female Vocalist	Won
	New Musical Express poll		Best Female Singer	Won
	Record Mirror poll			Won
1981	MIDEM Video Awards	Babooshka	Best international performance	Won
1985	Kerrang! 's Top 20 Albums of the Year	Hounds of Love	Top 20 Albums of the Year	2nd place
	Record Mirror survey		Best album of the year	1st place
		Best Song of the Year	Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)	1st place
	New Musical Express survey	Top track		3rd place
		Hounds of Love	Top album	10th place
1986	MTV Video Music Award	Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)	Best Female Video	Won
	BRIT Awards		Best British single	Nominated
		Kate Bush	Best British Female Solo Artist	Nominated
		Hounds of Love	Best British album	Nominated
		Best British Producer	Kate Bush for Hounds of Love	Nominated
1987		Kate Bush	Best British Female Solo Artist	Won
	US College Music Awards			Won
	MTV Video Music Awards	The Big Sky	Best Female Video	Nominated
1988	Grammy Awards	Experiment IV	Best Concept Music Video	Won
1990	BRIT Awards	Kate Bush for The Sensual World	Best British Producer	Nominated
		The Sensual World	Best British album	Nominated
1991	Grammy Awards		Best Alternative Music Performance	Nominated
1995	FHM	Kate Bush	100 Sexiest Women	78th place
1996	Grammy Awards	The Line, the Cross & the Curve	Best Music Video - Long Form	Nominated
1999	VH1	Kate Bush	100 Greatest Women of Rock	46th place
	Q Award		100 Greatest Music Stars of the 20th century	33rd place
2001			Q Classic Songwriter Award	Won
2002	Ivor Novello Award		Outstanding Contribution to British Music	Won
2005	BRIT Award	Wuthering Heights	Best Song Of The Past 25 Years	Nominated
2006	BRIT Awards	Kate Bush	Best British Female Solo Artist	Nominated
		Aerial	Mastercard British Album of the Year	Nominated
	BBC 's The Culture Show	Kate Bush	Viewer's poll of Britain's Living Icons	7th place
2007	Satellite Award	Lyra (From The Golden Compass Soundtrack )	Best original song	Nominated
	The Observer Readers award	Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) ( Elton John Cover)	Best cover of all time	Won
2008	BBC Pop on Trial reader survey	Wuthering Heights	Best Song of the 1970s	7th place
	The Sunday Telegraph	Kate Bush	Best British songwriter of all time	2nd place
	Out survey	Hounds of Love	Greatest Gayest Album	52nd place
		The Kick Inside		90th place
	Virgin Media Readers Survey	Kate Bush	Alternative cool list	1st place
2012	BRIT Awards	Kate Bush	Best British Female Solo Artist	Nominated
	Ivor Novello Award	50 Words for Snow	Ivor Novello Award	Nominated
	South Bank Sky Arts Awards		Best album	Won

literature

• John Carder Bush: Cathy . 2nd revised edition. Sphere, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-7515-5989-7 (English).
• John Carder Bush: Kate - Inside the Rainbow . Sphere, London 2015, ISBN 978-0-7515-5990-3 (English).
• Kate Bush: How to be invisible . Lyrics. Faber & Faber, London 2018, ISBN 978-0-571-35094-0 (English).
• Rob Jovanovic: Kate Bush - The Biography . Hannibal, Höfen 2006, ISBN 3-85445-269-1 (English: Kate Bush - The Biography . Translated by Kirsten Borchardt).
• Graeme Thomson: Kate Bush - Under the Ivy - The Biography of Graeme Thomson . Bosworth Edition, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86543-748-8 (English: Under the Ivy - The Life and Music of Kate Bush . Translated by Tobias Rothenbücher).
• Deborah M. Withers: Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory . HammerOn Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9564507-0-8 (English).

Web links

Commons : Kate Bush  - Collection of Images

• Literature by and about Kate Bush in the catalog of the German National Library
• Kate Bush at Discogs (English)
• katebush.com (English)
• Kate Bush at laut.de
• morningfog.de: Kate Bush

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Joachim Biemann: KFBE: Bio's train station. In: bahnen-im-rheinland.de. March 14, 2010, accessed July 28, 2011 . 
2. ↑ KATE BUSH'S FIRST TV Cologne Frechen Benzelrather Eisenbahn-Kite & Wuthering Heights LIVE. Kate Bush at Bio's station with "Wuthering Heights" and "Kite". In: YouTube website . February 9, 1978. Retrieved December 28, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Richard Buskin: CLASSIC TRACKS: Wuthering Heights. In: soundonsound.com. June 1, 2004, accessed July 28, 2011 . 
4. ↑ Jovanovic 2006, p. 167
5. ↑ Kate Bush and Rowan Atkinson: Do Bears… , Youtube-Video ( Memento of July 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Widge: Rowan Atkinson and Kate Bush. A love song. In: Need Coffee (Blog), December 30, 2008
7. ↑ Comic Relief Presents Utterly Utterly Live on Discogs
8. ↑ kate-bush.de , accessed on January 12, 2012.
9. ↑ Kate Bush concert tickets sell out in 15 minutes. Retrieved March 28, 2014 . 
10. ↑ Kate Bush completes her remastering project. Retrieved March 6, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Claire Laborey (Director): Kate Bush - Powerful and eccentric. In: ARTE France Documentary - Culture and Pop > Pop Culture . 2019, accessed September 18, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Kate Bush and the war of Wuthering Heights . In: The Evening Standard . May 5, 2007. Retrieved December 3, 2008.
13. ↑ Sales of Aerial ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ BRIT Awards. Retrieved July 26, 2011 . 
15. ^ New Year Honors: Quentin Blake knighted, Kate Bush appointed CBE . In: The Independent . December 29, 2012. Retrieved December 30, 2012.