Women Guitarists

"It is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? And its a sort of over two years before any of the other recordings she did. That is her singing at the age of 16, and having written those extraordinary lyrics — about whatever they're about."

"I had a listen, I was intrigued ... by this strange voice, and I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, it must have been forty or fifty songs, on tape, and I thought, I should try to do something. ... We were making — Pink Floyd was making the Wish You Were Here album, and I think we had the record company people down at Abbey Road, in number 3, and I said to them "Do you want to hear something I've got? And they said "sure", so we found another room, and I played it to them, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and they said "Yep, thank you – we'll have it.""

"Its funny no one ever applies the term "progressive rock" to Kate Bush, but to me its prog. It's the same think I love about the best prog, it's like, the really sort of brash stuff, people showing technical ability, I have no interest in, but the experimental dreamy stuff, that sort of came from many places at once, I set her stuff next to, well next to Janis, is the obvious comparison..."

"Kate Bush makes a record, and you don't hear from her. And you play the stuff she has made, and one day you are surprised, and she brings out something else, and she's been quietly working away on it, for however long she wanted to work on it, and I love that. I love the willingness to be quiet, until its time to speak — which is something that she does over and over."

"One of the things I love about Kate Bush is her absolute ability to take things, to pluck things that you would never expect to see on a rock album, and put them there and make them work. James Joyce's Ulysses — one of the greatest passages in all of English or Anglo-Irish literature, is Molly Bloom's glorious soliloquy ending in a sequence of Yeses. It's about embracing the world of the senses, embracing yourself, embracing sex, embracing love, embracing the future, embracing all possibility, and it goes all the way back to me, to "Wuthering Heights" — this is somebody who is not afraid of books. This is somebody who is not afraid of reading, somebody who's not afraid of writers, and who's not afraid of translating, being an intermediary, being a door, between the world of books and the world of rock."

"I'd never heard anything like it before. It was like banshee music. This absolutely otherworldly voice, singing about a book, and as a bookish kid, I was always fascinated by anything, any music that seems to be about or inspired by books."

"It's extraordinary what that song has been used for — I think a lot of people who have gotten into trouble, have attached themselves to that song, and I think a lot of it is Kate's wonderful voice is there, in a sort of reassuring and loving way, and it just makes them think that perhaps there is going to be that type of love out there for them."

"Creativity comes from the freedom to fail. And freedom to fail comes from experimentation, and that's what gives something its individuality. And, you know, I think her courage, which is the positive way of interpreting it, or bloody-mindedness, which is the negative, is part of what gives her real value as an artist."

"The Man with the Child in His Eyes is still one of those things, which right from the get-go ... has its own life, because it's just a great song. ... For all the time that she or I or anyone spend decorating and creating moods, its actually the key element of what your saying, the melody and the chords which still speak louder than all the stuff around, on a great song."

"She has a very intense poetic mind. That's what makes it — that voice that comes in."

"I was called by my agent, who said "Would you like to record a track with Kate Bush?" To which there is only F-ing one possible answer. Unless its me singing. I said, "She does know I can't sing?" "No-no-no, it would be voicing, saying words for snow. … I still can't believe it says "Kate Bush-Stephen Fry.""

"She's a gift for satirists. Of course it's easy, because dull artists, especially in pop music, are very difficult to satirize. It's all there on a plate wasn't it?"

"You don't ever get the sense that she's making music to pander to anyone. I think you always get her absolute best attempt at her true vision whenever you get a Kate Bush record."

"I still remember going to the CD store and buying The Sensual World when I was 16, and the cover — there was a rose in front of her mouth, that has bloomed, she's got big wide eyes, and I remember, you know, putting it on the shitty car stereo on the way home, you know — and my life was forever changed."

"I'm convinced that, as great as that record sounds, if you had anyone else sing it, you know, anyone else try to kind of weave and make it do that thing where it burns like wildfire and it comes alive, no one else could do it. It's incredible the way she kind of brings this cold arctic atmosphere, It's just like fire, you know? It's like all aaarh coming out of her mouth. ... and now I'm listening to the song in my head. "Do you know what I really need? Do you know what I really need? I need lalalala yea yo yea yo your love.""

"I read an interview with her one time, where she was asked, something along the lines of "Why do you write from the perspective of a lot of characters?" and she said very simply and eloquently "because they're more interesting than I am.""

"For that to have come out of someone's brain, period, is a remarkable feat. For that to have come out of someone's brain, at 17 years old — this incredible song, incredible song ... there aren't that many amazing pop songs that have two or three key changes in them —‚ and I'm not talking about some modulations, I'm talking: "Okay, now we're in the key of Q." It's like WHAT? But it's so brilliant, it's so memorable. I always karaoke that song — if I drink enough."

"You can hear one note of a Kate Bush song, or one note of her voice even, and know immediately what it is. And that is the biggest feat of any artist, especially when you consider, you know, all the roads that she's gone down."

"That's one of like my all-time favorite songs, dude. Music is supposed to evoke emotion, you know what I'm saying, It makes you feel a certain way, you know, that's what the vibrations are. Its, its not stagnant, its not just, not just plain — every time you listen to it, it touches you, it strikes a chord."

"It's as if, within her voice, there's everything — every possible facet of human experience is their under her surface, and her work as a writer is to constantly draw that out. Not just the particularity of her experiences as a female body, but her experience as a person, which is to be prey to all kinds of forces and sensations."

"She's sort of stretching the fabric, not just of her voice, but of the whole kind of pop form. ... It's like a child, it's like a kind of reveling in what her voice can do."

"I've spent many, many hours listening to that 30 minutes of music. It's an incredible piece of music, and I would advise anyone who's never heard it to go and listen to it, because it's one of the great pieces of music."

"I don't think she's ever particularly wanted to "play the game", has she? But when you've done great work, like she's done, and then you retract from the public, people almost have to make up their own version of you, don't they?"

"The intention is to tell a story, to create a sonic world for us, a sonic painting, for us to walk into, without having to see her. She's transcending that. She's choosing to transcend that. And that's a very powerful thing to do."

"I just remember pulling aside, I was driving, and I heard it on the radio, in the states — and she didn't really get played a lot in the states, until that song — that really got played — a lot. I remember, I had to pull over, and listen to it, because I'd never heard anything like it."

"Babooshka's just one of those song's you just can't get out of your head, can you? You know, how she just takes a word, and you start seeing images and pictures. To a word that maybe you haven't used ... it's "Babooshka" and she's turned that into an emotion, that's just how she's able to use a combination of a word and a combination of a melody and the rhythm of that, and it creates a new language."

"When Kate Bush came along, sort of '78, I was in The Slits , and I remember I was sitting in a van outside our singer's house, waiting to do a gig, and "Wuthering Heights" came on the radio, and I was like "Ooh, WHAT? What's this?" And I kept waiting for the melody to repeat, because, you know, at that time, pop music was very much Radio One, you know it was repeating melodies very quickly, and this melody it meandered on, and this high-pitched voice warbling and dropping, but I was absolutely spellbound."

"At around an hour and a half, Aerial is unquestionably a substantial piece of work, and its manifold peculiarities and quirks offer much more interesting fare than that available from today's AOR mainstream. It's also a more mature undertaking than any of her previous albums, an extended meditation on art and light, fame and family, creativity and the natural world. Indeed it seems, come to think of it, like an expansion of the theme of Laura Veirs' gorgeous "Rapture". And since that was the finest song of last year, I'd have to say that leaves Kate Bush still operating at the cutting-edge of intelligent adult pop, every bit as relevant now as at any point in her career. Just a little bit weirder, thank heavens."

"She's unafraid, too, of tackling more problematic areas of sexuality, as for instance when she dealt with cradle-snatching in "The Infant Kiss" and incest in "The Kick Inside". But not all that seems erotic in her music is about sex, as an EMI employee discovered when he found her working on the hypnotic "out-in-out-in" chant section of "Breathing" (from 1980's Never For Ever), and expressed outrage at EMI's young pop princess making such an overtly sexual record. The song is, of course, about breathing. Duhhh!"

"She has always freely admitted being like a little girl in many ways, and furthermore, happily presumes she'll still be that way in her dotage. It's certainly still a factor on Aerial , both in the track "Bertie" itself and in the memories and reminiscences that cobweb some other songs. But compared to the darker corners of the mind sometimes mined in earlier songs, the new album seems a much sunnier affair: an enduring image I took away from it — not necessarily a lyric, though it might have been — was of windows flung wide open, their curtains billowing out in the breeze, a room's long-dormant dust stirred into life again."

"Many years ago, back near the start of her career, she regarded the domestic demands of motherhood as a dubious prospect, claiming her work was her love, and how could she do that and bring up a child at the same time? The answer, presumably, was not to work for a dozen years."

"Such is the idiosyncratic nature of her work that she could probably disappear for a half-century and still sustain her own unique position in the pop firmament. But then, who else would write about an obsessive-compulsive housewife or attempt a vocal duet with trilling birds, or, in the most courageous of the album's many unusual strategies, sing huge strings of numbers, a gambit that brings new meaning to the old critic's chestnut about being happy to listen to someone singing the telephone directory?"

"It's clear Bush is still a force to be reckoned with. The problem, though, with female genius — for many men at least — is that very frequently it is not like male genius. And with its songs about children, washing machines going 'slooshy sloshy', Joan of Arc, Bush's mother, not to mention the almost pagan sensuality that runs through here like a pulse, Aerial is, arguably, the most female album in the world, ever. ... the artistry here is so dizzying, the ambition and scope so vast, that even the deafest, most inveterate misogynist could not fail to acknowledge it. Genius. End of."

"Aerial succeeds because it's all there for a reason. And because the good stuff is just so sublime. 'King of the Mountain', Bush's Elvis-inspired single, is both a fine opener and a total red herring. Bush's juices really get going on 'Pi', a sentimental ode to a mathematician, audacious in both subject matter and treatment. The chorus is the number sung to many, many decimal places. It's closely followed by a gushing ode to Bush's son, Bertie, that's stark and medieval-sounding. The rest of disc one (aka A Sea of Honey) sets a very high bar for disc two, with the Joan of Arc-themed 'Joanni' and the downright poppy 'How to Be Invisible' raising the hair on your arms into a Mexican wave. Disc two, subtitled A Sky of Honey, is a suite of nine tracks which, among other things, charts the passage of light from afternoon ('Prologue') to evening ('An Architect's Dream', 'The Painter's Link') and through the night until dawn. Things get a little hairier here."

"For me, Kate Bush was always a trump card when the tiresome 'question' of female artistic genius came up. ... Before disgust stopped me getting dragged into these skirmishes, I had a ready arsenal of Girl Greats — Patti Smith, Björk, Nina Simone, Delia Derbyshire, Polly Harvey, and so on. And yet, there would often be some caveat why genius eluded my candidates (ripped off Dylan etc). Until we would get to Kate. Female genius? Kate Bush. End of. Aerial, the first Kate Bush album in a young lifetime (12 years), re-establishes the fact. It is extraordinary — jaw-dropping, no less."

"Come the recording day, a group of male choristers, more accustomed to singing church services than backing vocals, descended on Bush's home, which was equipped with its own studio. Doubtless they were imagining that they were about to meet a wild-eyed rock babe, but Kate, quiet and unassuming — the kind of sympathetic, slightly shy girl who greets you from behind the counter at the local chemist — introduced us to her friend the bass player Del Palmer, who engineered the session. None of the singers or Richard had ever gone over and over four or five phrases so exactingly. No measure of Bach or Mozart had, in their experience, been subjected to such surgical scrutiny, and I began to worry that their voices might begin to tire. But Bush knew and got what she wanted and "Hello Earth" is, I think, a remarkable track on the album that finally broke the American market and established her as an iconic and hugely influential figure. I can't wait to hear what she has been up to now."

"Although she had piano and violin lessons at school, Bush is essentially self-taught. I have always been fascinated by the difference of dynamics at work between popular artists and conventionally trained classical musicians, and had a similar experience with the Edge, of U2, when we worked together on the score of a film called Captive. In fact, gifted "pop" musicians like Bush and U2 are far more demanding of themselves in the studio than classical musicians can afford to be, and will spend days working on a tiny fragment."

"I had always considered Kate Bush truly original both as a performer and as a songwriter with an unusually fresh sense of harmony. If her new album next month is awaited with some excitement after a long fallow period, then in 1985 it was assumed that Hounds of Love would be something of a final fling at the conclusion of a waning career. I soon realised how wrong this assumption was when Kate sent me a cassette: it was zany, ambitious and yet utterly Kate Bush, but with gaps where I was to do her bidding. Having chatted at length, she sent me a long letter with the words of the song and precise instructions on how it should unfold... Structure was carefully delineated, verses and choruses written out fully and marked up in colour, and she talked of the sound quality in the most graphic terms."

"When the conductor Richard Hickox rang me one day in 1984 to ask if I could help with a rather unusual job for which he and his choir had been engaged, I was intrigued. Kate Bush, it transpired, was working on her new album, Hounds of Love, and for one track, Hello Earth, she wanted a chorus to recreate the orthodox singing/chanting that made such a contribution to the film Nosferatu."

"Kate will never be an academic artist, drily applying intellectual music theory to the delight of a handful of peers, forging into new areas for the sake of "progress". Her style is personal, individual, impressionistic. Like Delius, her music will always flow from poetic necessity, breaking from the confines of tradition because expression demands it. I just hope that she will have the confidence to follow her instincts and not be discouraged by the music press, who in the main are baffled and annoyed by her uniqueness. Unable to pigeon-hole her music, they turn instead to ridicule and condescension to fill the pages. Which is a disservice to the British public who, to their undying credit, have made Kate Bush such a popular success."

"Casual listeners will miss the depth of the music. You must sit down with the lyric sheet and find out what's going on. All the vocal acrobatics and weird sounds click into place when you know what ideas, stories and situations they are expressing. In most rock and pop, the music and words may be linked, but are basically separate. Kate creates, more and more, a fusion between the two — the sounds directly expressing the subject. This is a throwback to Wagner's music-drama, with its leitmotifs, turning music into an idea. The Beatles revived the technique, and bands of the hippy era like Pink Floyd carried the banner. . . Kate is fast becoming a master in the use of this sonic montage, perhaps because the ideas she is using are far more complex, have more "resonances", than those of her contemporaries."

"The new album, Hounds of Love, breaks new ground for Kate with the b-side. This is a story — The Ninth Wave — told in a series of songs, like a Pink Floyd concept album."

"On to The Dreaming, a strange, alien album full of mysticism and obscurantae. Its impact owes much to sheer production quality. Kate has gradually taken over this aspect of her records since Lionheart, and each LP is technically more impressive. Her voice here is forward and strong and, on "Leave It Open", deliberately distorted to create a surreal effect. Get Out of My House is a shattering trip into madness, with a stunning culmination which finds Kate braying like a mule amid a chorus of Indian drum talk."

"The album Never for Ever came next and starts in happy mood, with a summer night of a cha-cha-cha tribute to a new-found hero, "Delius". The philosophic All We Ever Look For creates a remarkable and rare mood of reassurance and upbeat resignation, a Bush specialty . . . The end comes in the horrifying "Breathing", a vision of the nuclear holocaust through the eyes of an unborn child."

"Her talent was precocious. "The Saxophone Song" and "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" were recorded as demo tapes when Kate was still at school. The first album, The Kick Inside (1978), caused tremendous media interest and is still the public's favourite. Her voice, criticized at the time, was small and childlike, the range erratic, if impressive. Since then it has improved enormously, deepening and gaining power and flexibility, until now it is a great asset, individual and capable of both subtle and stunning effects."

"It's a mischievous paradox that, while rock at its ultra-macho best is exhilarating and energizing, yet just at the moment when it is most strident and loud it leaves you needing something more. Then along comes a shy doctor's daughter from Welling who out-screams the best, out-powers the noisiest and tops it with the satisfying impact of musical and psychological depth. It's almost Wagnerian."

"Her subjects come tripping from library shelves, television and cinema screens and musty books of fairy tales, the stuff that dreams are made of. She spins tunes that haunt, twist and turn the mind, triggering long forgotten moods. Listening intently to her albums is an experience akin to having a lucid and feverish dream. Jungian symbols of youth, innocence, spiritual escape and the dark, feminine realm abound. Ghosts haunt the black vinyl grooves... But it's not all brooding intensity. There are jokes, too..."

"After a thousand songs on the theme of boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl or Thatcher's Britain, exposure to her music comes as an imaginative release as we go giddily flying into the limitless possibilities of the poetic viewpoint. Here is talk of whales, of Peter Pan, kites, Houdini, mysticism... Acquaintances have observed, "She lives in a world of her own." But it's a world that lives within all of us, and her songs shine light into neglected areas of our minds."

"Kate journeys into new and exciting territories. She is an original in a music world dominated by cover versions, regressive movements and identikit superstars. The direct opposite of the archetypal rock star: compulsively introvert in a world of screaming extraverts, middle-class and deeply English amid England's all-pervasive working class American ethos, boldly feminine in rock's macho climate. Her melodic genius and articulate lyrics make the rest seem moronically simplistic."

"We've been holding our breath for a long time. Three years of playing the old songs and wondering "whatever next?" Would it be even weirder than The Dreaming? Would it leave more admirers by the wayside, shaking their heads?... The real fans will happily go along for the ride, even if she isn't going the pretty way."