Women Guitarists

"Illusion, dance, mime, even magic — the Tour of Life, as it was called, had the lot. I shan't forget the way those Pink Floyd-like whale sounds that open The Kick Inside album heralded Kate's entry to the stage as waves were projected on huge screens and her band launched into Moving. For a split second, the audience thought Kate was lip-synching because there was no microphone, but in pre-dating Madonna by a couple of decades, she was wearing a headset to allow free movement around the stage. Every song from that first album was performed before the switch to stuff from follow-up Lionheart, virtually every number warranting a change of costume and stage set. ... The entire show was pure theatre."

"I always heard about Kate Bush being considered one of the most influential female artists during the modern era of pop/rock music, but never understood what her appeal was... But when I recently stumbled upon her debut 1978 single, "Wuthering Heights," I found myself spending hours absorbing as much of her pre-1985 material as possible . . . Listening to an early Kate Bush album brings you far, far, away to a dreamworld filled with pixies and love and Peter Pan and pure hearts . . . "Wuthering Heights" and the rest of The Kick Inside display all of Bush's trademarks: a literary consciousness; flourishing, heartfelt waves and the ability to successfully incorporate just about every eccentric vocal style you've never heard into each song."

"A Sky of Honey is a celebration of song itself, which has a child's joyful lack of inhibition about it — Kate Bush is heard laughing freely towards the end while a young child, possibly her son, is heard several times... Aerial stands alongside The Hounds of Love and The Kick Inside as her finest work."

"A Sky of Honey is, in a sense, a lyric poem set to music. Full of lush, fecund melodies which swing from jazz to rock, it is threaded through with bird song and chatter and feels distinctly organic and earthy.... Side two is the album Pink Floyd might have made if Kate Bush had been their lead singer and lyricist in 1979."

"When EMI invites a group of journalists to the Royal Academy of Music, in London, for a one-off listen to Kate Bush's new album, they are sending a clear signal — this album is not to be dismissed lightly."

"I'm really looking forward to Kate Bush's return — I'm no expert on her work but I know some of it and I think she's an incredibly original and talented artist. Anyone who writes most of an album like her first album, The Kick Inside, at 15 years old has got to be pretty special."

"Bush has always teetered dangerously at the edge of sentimentality and cliché, and her early songs (what one reviewer called her “soft-focus Victorian melodramas”) could have gone all wrong had her bizarre phrasing not somehow let us know how serious she was. Bush sang melodramas, but she meant them like truth; those “oohs” aren't filler. The conviction in her voice, the baldness and great crushing desperation of it, is overpowering. It's the kind of music that grabs your innards and you turn it up, squint your eyes with the strain of it. Kate Bush was younger than 20 when she wrote “Wuthering Heights.” She couldn't (and still can't) read or write music, but she knew how to make a song true, how to up the tension with a key change, repeat the chorus with a hardness in her voice. She was a prodigy, an 18-year-old who looked 35, with an ethereal voice and a knack for inventive songwriting. She looks, in photos of the time, simultaneously naive and defiant, like someone who doesn't need other people. Much later in life, when she was asked in an interview with Rolling Stone why she toured so infrequently, Bush replied: “The more I got into presenting things to the world, the further it was taking me away from what I was, which was someone who just used to sit quietly at a piano and sing and play. It became very important to me not to lose sight of that.” In other words, Bush decided early on that our approval didn't matter. She was doing this from herself and largely for herself and if people didn't like her, or if they didn't understand her, well then, screw them."

"With a voice you either love or hate, she belts out a song with a desperation that grabs you and won't let go."

"Could Keely Garfield be the Kate Bush of downtown dance? The question is raised by “Wow,” the bizarre, hilarious, enthralling, confounding and cathartic new work that Ms. Garfield presented on Thursday at Danspace Project. Surely it is the recent comeback tour of Ms. Bush that has put that singer-songwriter on Ms. Garfield's mind. But it is “Wow” that suggests the comparison: two British-born women, intensely idiosyncratic and theatrical with outlandish taste in costumes, who follow their imaginations uninhibitedly. The salient difference would seem to be irony. Much of Ms. Bush's power stems from her absolute sincerity, the sense that she is unaware that anyone might find what she's doing ridiculous. But Ms. Garfield has always been wry, droll, deadpan. Her assertion in a program note that she meant “Wow” to be “entirely sincere without a hint of irony or cleverness” cannot and should not be taken as entirely sincere. The program also credits Matthew Brookshire with “music inspired by the poetry of Kate Bush.” What we actually hear, though, are Kate Bush songs. Some are played in the original recordings, some chopped up and looped, but most are performed live by the marvelous Mr. Brookshire, on vocals and piano, joined by Ms. Garfield and her four terrific dancers. The arrangements are stripped down and seductively vibrant. Some lyrics are recited in a manner between sports cheer and Greek chorus. Some singsongy melodies are swapped for the tunes of actual nursery rhymes. Ms. Garfield, in other words, does not shy from the naïveté of her material. Much of her choreography illustrates the lyrics literally, in the manner of a children's pageant."

"I simply think she is one of the greatest figures in British music over the last 30 years. There are an awful lot of people in the business wandering around claiming to be artists, but she is one of the few who can genuinely make that claim... I don't think there is any competition, she's on a different level and quite outside them all."

"Her music remains reassuringly the same ecstatic alchemy of the humdrum and otherworldly. Recalling the hello-clouds wonder of The Big Sky from 1985's Hounds of Love or the frank paean to menstruation that is Strange Phenomena from her debut, The Kick Inside, Aerial finds Bush marvelling in the magic of the everyday: the wind animating a skirt hanging on a clothes line, the trace of footprints leading into the sea, the indecipherable codes of birdsong."

"Of course she's still relevant. I wasn't actually in the country when her music first came out, so I only discovered it three or four years ago. What's amazing is that something like "Wuthering Heights" still sounds so different. I actually saw her about nine months ago, we were just passing at an industry event and I went up to her and said I was a big fan and asked her about the new record. She was really excited about it but quite nervous because she felt that everyone was hyping it up a bit and she just wanted to bring out an album. You know, she's a musician."

"That's a song where we were listening to a lot of Kate Bush last summer, and we wanted a song which had a lot of tom-toms in it,I just had my daughter up also, and was kind of feeling in a sense of awe and wonderment, so the song is kind of a Kate Bush song about miracles."

"One of music's most reclusive and enigmatic figures has re-emerged into what some have seen as a rich era for British female singer-songwriters. Bush's new double album, Aerial, is due out in November, only her eighth after three decades in the business. It will be treated with due reverence."

"Kate Bush's celebrated full return to the stage after a 35-year absence is proving that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Eight positions of the current British albums chart are occupied by the art-rock icon's albums, according to The New York Times, which sets a new record for the artist, whose 1978 debut single "Wuthering Heights" made her the first female in British charts history to have a self-written Number One. In addition to being the only woman in U.K. charts history to have that many albums in the Top 40, Bush is now trailing Elvis Presley and the Beatles for having simultaneous Top 40 records; Presley had 12 at one point in his career, while the Beatles, at another time, had 11."

"I didn't realise how commercially successful she might be. I thought of her more really, I suppose, in the terms of someone like Joni Mitchell — the level of a lady who's very talented, but would appeal to a more esoteric audience. But she had different ideas."

"For me, it's not important how well the songs will be received because I think she's already an amazing influence in what she's done. I listen to her stuff a lot while I sketch and I think there is a weird sense of emotional encouragement in her work. There's something therapeutic in her voice and in her attitude, so that sometimes just listening to it can encourage you or give you some kind of energy."

"I know this may give her a mystique and make the press all the more curious about her, but that's not the intention; it's not a ploy to get her more attention. She genuinely doesn't see why people should be interested in her personal life and she certainly doesn't like going out to clubs or trendy restaurants. It's just not her."

"I think she is still relevant. It's nice to see people reinvent themselves. She was a great performer and a great singer. I like that song, you know the one, "It's me, I'm Cathy…" I love that song. I remember listening to it growing up."

"To me, Kate Bush will always represent the age of exploring your sexuality, when you change from a girl to a woman. I guess that's what I found fascinating about Kate, she totally stuck out. She created her own look and sound. There's a timelessness to her music."

"One of the main things that brings people to the Brontë Museum from all over the world is Kate Bush. We have copies of her No 1 hit single "Wuthering Heights" in our collection of Brontë-related items. People often arrive at the Brontë novels through that song."

"They got alchemy. They turn the roses into gold They turn the lilac into honey They're making love for the peaches. And they'll do it, Do it for you."

"What a lovely afternoon On a cloudbusting kind of day. We took our own 'Mystery Tour' And got completely lost somewhere up in the hills. And we came up on a bee-keeper, And he said "Did you know they can change it all?""

"I don't know you, And you don't know me. It is this that brings us together."

"I know it works for me. As we cross the bridge — the burning bridge — With flames behind us, We front the line. It's you and me, baby, against the world."

"It's not easy for me To give away a secret — It's not safe..."

"This little girl inside me Is retreating to her favourite place. Go into the garden. Go under the ivy, Under the leaves, Away from the party. Go right to the rose. Go right to the white rose (For me.)"

"I'm reeling in the music, And I've only had a few... And I'm afraid by the way we grow old... My darling..."

"Warm and soothing That's how I remember home. Walking into arms through the back door Hearing voices I know well and long for."

"December will be magic again. Don't miss the brightest star, Kiss under mistletoe, I want to hear you laugh, Don't let the mystery go now."

"See how I fall like the snow, Come to cover the lovers, (But don't you wake them up) Come to sparkle the dark up, With just a touch of make up. Come to cover the muck up. Ooh with a little luck — December will be magic again."

"December will be magic again. Take a husky to the ice While Bing Crosby sings White Christmas. He makes you feel nice. December will be magic again."

"When the fantasy bells Of the universe ring You can fly through the sky On a dragonfly's wing. There is magic within There is magic without Follow me and you'll learn Just what life's all about."

"When you reach for a star Only angels are there And it's not very far Just a step on a stair Take a look at those clowns And the tricks that they play In the circus of life Life is bitter and gay There are clowns in the night Clowns everywhere See how they run Run from despair ..."

"Oh! Don't you throw my love away, I need your loving, I need your loving..."

"Passing through air. You mix the stars with your arms. Walking through there. The doom of eternity balms. Skies of grey are not today."

"I feel so sorry for you, Believing because they control. And of all the guardian angels They chose me to save your soul! Oh, I'm just trying to explain, I'm a disbelieving angel."

"So much for all the prayers you've learned. They are no help to basic needs. And all the worlds they've shown you Just make you even greedier."

"There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it. You might feel it and just not show it."

"Aren't we all the same? In and out of doubt. I can see angels standing around you. They shimmer like mirrors in Summer. But you don't know it. And they will carry you o'er the walls. If you need us, just call."

"Only you can do something about it. There's no-one there, my friend, any better."

"And I'd never know where you'd gonna be next But I'd know that you'd surprise me."

"When we got on top of the hill, We saw Rome burning. I just let you walk away. I've never forgiven myself."

"Excuse me I'm sorry to bother you, But don't I know you? There's just something about you. Haven't we met before? We've been in love forever."

"You were playing in the snow You were banging on the doors You climbed up on the roof Roof of the world You were pulling up the rhododendrons Loping down the mountain They want to know you They will hunt you down Then they will kill you Run away, run away... We found your footprints in the snow We brushed them all away... You're the wild man."

"Lying in my tent I can hear your cry Echoing round the mountainside You sound lonely"

"I am ice and dust. I am sky. I can see horses wading through snowdrifts. My broken hearts, my fabulous dances. My fleeting song, fleeting. The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you."

"I was born in a cloud... Now I am falling. I want you to catch me. Look up and you'll see me. You know you can hear me. The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you."

"All of the birds are laughing Come on let's all join in."

"I can't hear a word you're saying Tell me what are you singing In the sun"