Under the Ivy

by Graeme Thomson

  It was “creative movement,” within a clear dramatic context. Kovac also taught drama at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, not far from Welling, and her class at the Dance Centre attracted many actors. It made sense, therefore, that it was Kovac to whom Bush turned when she later needed to work out a routine for the ‘Wuthering Heights’ video at extremely short notice. Kovac charged her £30, and in her tiny flat in Archway Road they worked out the soon-to-be famous routine as Bush sang the song a cappella for her tutor.

  “It was her tiny little voice and nothing else, and on the spot and we worked on movements that would match what she sang,” she says. “Breaking in the window and doing the cartwheel. She didn’t say, ‘This is for a video clip that’s coming out in a short time that’s going to launch me.’ She just said I need you to choreograph [something] for me. Next thing I know she’s flashed all over television with my choreography! In an interview where she was asked who choreographed ‘Wuthering Heights’ she said she was influenced by Lindsay Kemp, which Ido think is not in order. Shame on her! It wasn’t that I would have asked for more money, but I would have liked to have had the credit.”

  If true, it’s a rare example of an uncharacteristic lack of good manners and scrupulous accreditation on Bush’s part. It does, however, highlight an early instance of her enduring gift for using – in the nicest possible sense – the talents of her peers and mentors. She has an eye for spotting talent, and absorbing it into her own work; nothing goes to waste. Soon after the ‘Wuthering Heights’ episode, Kovac moved to Switzerland, where she remains today, producing, directing and choreographing her own musical theatre productions. In the early Eighties, Bush learned of her sense of aggrievement and “wrote a very sweet letter” of apology; she also made a point of mentioning Kovac in a couple of major interviews around the same time. Her old tutor, Bush recalled, was a “wonderful lady”19 who “had a big influence on me. She certainly gave me that strength to develop my own style.”20 How typical of her to try to right a perceived wrong. There appears to be no lasting hard feelings. “Kate is a creative genius,” says Kovac. “I’m thrilled if I was any influence on her at all.”

  The ability to harness the physical side of her creative energy was terribly significant. Perhaps no one thing about Kate Bush is as misunderstood as her dancing. Easily mocked as the physical manifestation of an apparently floaty, flighty brain, whatever its objective merits her movement has never been a mere adjunct or afterthought, nor a simple matter of routine. Certainly, it allowed her to embellish the songs in her videos and to enrich and enliven her rare public performances, but it would be a mistake to focus on the skimpy costumes, swirling arms and big, round eyes and overlook the underlying impetus.

  “My father told me I used to dance to music on the telly,” she said. “I remember it vaguely. It was completely unselfconscious and I wasn’t aware of people looking at me. One day some people came into the room, saw me and laughed, and from that moment I stopped doing it. I think maybe I’ve been trying to get back there ever since.”21

  Dancing, then, became a means of defeating her inhibitions, of accessing her inner emotions as a writer, of returning to a pure source. Through movement she was better able to circumnavigate her sense of self-consciousness (initially non-existent, as with most children, but which grew and became quite acute in grammar school) and fully access her feelings. “Suddenly I became a human being – just learning to move!”22

  This chimes perfectly with Adam Darius’ overarching ethos. “What I teach is emotional release,” he says. “Most people, once they’re not children any more, become more and more restricted by the teachings of societies, and if you want to be an artist this is the death knell. You can’t be an artist if you can’t express fully what you feel. Kate was grateful for that philosophy of my teaching, helping her to release herself emotionally. When you get that release in one area, then you are capable of releasing it in other areas. It infiltrates whatever area they are pursuing, and Kate is a marvellous example of that.”

  As Darius implies, the invigorating effects lingered and were channelled directly into her music. It is surely no coincidence that Bush’s most productive, and arguably most accomplished spells as a writer – between 1976 and 1977, and again from 1983 to 1984 – occurred during spells of intense, almost regimented dance instruction.

  She was certainly writing in a torrent throughout this period, stimulated by a happy balance of all her artistic pursuits, perhaps a little lost in her own creative world, oblivious to the practical concerns of the comparatively mundane lives ticking over all around her. “I’d practise scales … on the piano, go off dancing, and then in the evening I’d come back and play the piano all night,” she recalled. “The summer of ’76 … we had such hot weather, I had all the windows open, and I just used to write until four in the morning. I got a letter of complaint from a neighbour who was basically saying ‘shuuut uuup!’ because they had to get up at five in the morning. They did shift work and my voice had been carried the whole length of the street, I think, so they weren’t too appreciative.”23

  Almost every day something would emerge, if not a fully fledged song then something. There were songs about ‘Dali’ (with one superbly Austenesque line: “‘Oh, I prefer absence,” said she, “My heart grows fonder alone’.”), songs about Rinfy the Gypsy, Joan of Arc and being stranded at the moonbase; lovely, romantic, beautiful songs, most of them containing at least a grain or two of magnificence. Dozens of the recordings she made at 44 Wickham Road are preserved on bootlegs, good quality voice-and-piano recordings, some of them early attempts at future favourites: ‘Hammer Horror’, ‘Violin’, ‘Kashka From Baghdad’, ‘Oh, To Be In Love’, ‘The Kick Inside’, its lyric based on ‘Lucy Wan’, the traditional ballad of incest and death, and a song called ‘Pick The Rare Flower’ which has most of the melody of ‘James And The Cold Gun’ but a completely different set of lyrics.

  In ‘Them Heavy People’, also written at this time, she related with great candour her ongoing personal transformation, describing how her teachers entered her life at an “inconvenient time,” forcing her to stop “hiding” and instead encouraging a process of intense self-examination. After the lows of St Joseph’s here is an explicit account of her restored faith in the power of knowledge, of being shown rather than told, revelling in the gift of opportunity and acknowledging the importance of taking it.

  Compared to the songs taped in 1973 there is a world of difference in the detail. The adolescent angst and cinder-smudged melancholy of yore have been overtaken by a palpable verve and spark in the writing, stronger melodic hooks, clear improvements in her voice and piano playing, and a greater sense of humour (although the initial version of ‘Hammer Horror’ didn’t yet end in that flurry of corny puns: “I’ve got a hunch” and “get your own back”). She is also learning to project fragments of her own personality into the songs, to take on roles rather than surrender into the will of the music and words.

  Given the quality and quantity of the material she was, not unexpectedly, in a rush to get going. “Once I got the contract I presumed things would happen,” she said. “I didn’t go on holiday in case they called me to do some recording. But nothing happened.”24 The official line about this waiting game is that it constituted a mutually agreed strategy between EMI and the Bush camp, mainly because of her age. More likely, it was instigated by the record company, who weren’t entirely sure what they had or what to do with her. Bush herself later felt they signed her simply so nobody else would get her first, and they felt in no rush to hustle her into the studio. For a small investment they were prepared to bide their time and see what unfolded. In the event, the strategy, whether intended or not, worked to perfection.

  She was undoubtedly fortunate in her long term relationship with EMI, specifically with Bob Mercer and later his successor David Munns, but they were, after all, running a multinational business, with all that that entailed. Brian Bath recalls having conversations with Bush ar
ound this time where she complained that “EMI want me to write a hit.” The idea, according to Brian Southall, was to “get her to write less but more. She was prolific, but maybe it was a case of calm it down a bit and write ten songs as opposed to 100.” She was always regarded as an albums artist and Mercer actively embraced the fact that her “songs were obviously tremendously personal and unique to her, that was what I liked and it was certainly what I encouraged,” but even before she signed a deal he was closely monitoring her progress, trying to nurture her potential into something more solid and commercial. Less air. More hooks. “I bought her tape-recording equipment, a simple Grundig thing, and left it with her to come and see me every couple of months or so with whatever she’d been writing,” he says. “That’s what we did for the next year or two.”

  Partly it was a question of technical ability. Unicorn’s Pat Martin recalls thinking during the 1973 session that she “wasn’t a brilliant piano player, not accomplished or anything, but she had her own style,” and Mercer claims that she later “spent quite a lot of that time, at my suggestion I must say, having formal piano lessons.” She also visited a vocal coach, Gordon Farrell, for 30 minutes each week to practise her scales, improve her breathing, stretch her range and play him her new songs. “She needed to broaden her musical scope, which would obviously benefit her writing,” says Mercer. “Her musical skills weren’t that developed at that time – her musical instincts were tremendous, but not her skills at that age. That’s what she did over that year, 18 months. And then I let her go into the studio.” The word ‘let’, in this instance, is a small but significant one.

  Aside from the matter of honing her musical skills, hanging in the air was that familiar question: Who is she? Whether or not they were directly expressed, there were significant disagreements and tensions on this score. EMI saw her as a serious songwriter with a pretty face who would perform in an uncomplicated, straightforward manner. Bush, on the other hand, ever the shape-shifter, felt her musical urges came from a very ‘male’ place. “Being brought up with two brothers I’d sit philosophising with them while my girlfriends wanted to talk about clothes and food,” she said. “Maybe it’s the male energy to be the hunter and I feel I have that in me.”25

  She talked often of this primal ‘hunting’ instinct, and was rather disparaging about female singers who would “sing about heartbreak and keep a big smile on their faces.”26 Specifically, she cited Lynsey DePaul and Carole King … “that lot. When I’m at the piano I hate to think that I’m a female because I automatically get a preconception. Sweet and lyrical.”27 She saw herself as doing something quite different, something that didn’t neatly fit with any preconceived notions of what a female artist should or could be. Much more David Bowie than Joni Mitchell.

  Given her looks, her high voice and obvious femininity, this caused EMI a degree of consternation and indeed confusion. “She was with the record company but she was shelved, and Ido remember her telling me that she was disappointed that they wanted her to be a ‘Joni Mitchell’ and sit at the piano and sing,” says Robin Kovac. “That’s why she was doing classes. She was not just going to [do] as they wanted. She was determined to get her body together to be a mover and not just a singer.”

  The hiatus led her to consider her options. At one stage, she was approached by friends in her dance class with an offer to go to Germany to work in nightclubs. Unsure if the longed-for album was ever going to appear, she momentarily contemplated throwing in her lot with dance as a profession. In the end, she decided – probably correctly – that she wasn’t good enough, but she looked at other escape routes. Her ex-boyfriend Steve Blacknell had begun working for Decca as a record plugger, and he passed on her demo tape to his friend and colleague Jeremy Thomas, who had also worked at Decca and now ran his own label, Electric/Cube Records. “Steve, who either was or had been going out with Kate Bush, played me her tape, saying she was unhappy with EMI and perhaps I could sign her,” says Thomas. “I listened to the tape, thought it pretty good but, then again, it was only my friend’s girlfriend. Later, ‘Wuthering Heights’ was released and I was gutted for not having taken him – and her – more seriously.”

  Above all, EMI wanted to see her perform. In fact, they insisted upon it. Selling records, of course, was still all about putting the hours in on the road. “This was an artist that I’d worked with for a couple of years and never, ever seen perform live,” says Mercer. “You’d naturally assume in those days that anybody you signed would have to be able to do a live show. I was anxious to get her out there and working her chops.” With little room for manoeuvre, for once she did as she was bid.

  One of the most delicious anomalies of Kate Bush’s entire career is the short period of time she spent singing live in the pubs and clubs around London. The KT Bush Band in their initial incarnation existed as a gigging entity for only a matter of months, between April and June, 1977, and apart from Bush comprised Vic King on drums, Del Palmer on bass and Brian Bath on guitar, three old friends from Charlton Secondary School who bonded back in the late Sixties over an almost irrationally obsessive love of Free. Even today, they excitedly recall the night they witnessed the first ever performance of ‘All Right Now’.

  Between four and five years older than Bush, the trio were already veterans of the south London music scene by 1976 and had played in numerous groups – both with and without one another – and experienced the industry’s standard doling out of brief highs and crushing lows. From clattering around in bedrooms and youth clubs to enduring bad record deals, good bands that petered out and promises that came to nothing, they had always retained their love of playing music.

  Bath, of course, had known Paddy Bush for several years and was well aware of his little sister’s talent. She was also aware of his attributes. Aside from his frequent jam sessions with Paddy at the farm, Bush had seen Bath play with a hastily assembled band consisting of Vic King and another friend, bass player Barry Sherlock, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1976. She was there to perform at Paddy’s final year show for his course in Music Instrument Technology at the School of Furniture, which was situated just across the road, and as part of the presentation she danced to classical music “wearing some woollen type suit with a big trumpet thing coming out of her head,” recalls Bath. “You couldn’t actually see her. Paddy had some wacky ideas, he really did. He wanted us to do duelling basses with a band.”

  This showpiece was an early prototype of the memorable routine later reprised during ‘Violin’ on Bush’s ‘Tour Of Life’. Indeed, although her time with the KT Bush Band proved to be her sole experience of the dubious, stale-sweat-and-watered-down-beer romance of small scale live performance, and although it was an essentially contrived exercise in which, considering she had already signed a record deal, very little was actually at stake, nonetheless a line can be drawn between what she was doing in 1977 in places like the Rose Of Lee in Lewisham and what she did almost exactly two years later to wild acclaim in the theatres of Europe.

  Vic King recalls that after their “basic rock’n’roll” performance at Whitechapel, Bush came up to the band, said that she enjoyed their set, and asked whether she could sing with them. Bath remembers the approach somewhat differently, as a clear response to Bob Mercer’s diktat about the necessity for Bush to perform live. “Paddy left a note at my house with my mum, saying ‘Get in touch, something has come up,’” he says. “I phoned him up and he said, ‘I’ve got to see you, it’s about my sister. She wants to form a band because she needs the experience of playing live. Could you do it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so!’”

  One of Bath’s previous bands, Shiner, had recently split up and he decided to enlist Del and Vic and stick with a similar set: Motown, Beatles, some rockier material from the likes of Free and The Rolling Stones; songs that everybody knew and which made few demands on the audience. The first band practice was in a boiler house in the local swimming baths at Greenwich, in “a little dungeon of a rehearsal room
they used to hire out,” says King. Bush arrived fully prepared, having learned the lyrics to ten songs, including ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ and ‘Sweet Soul Music’. They all enjoyed themselves but agreed that a boiler room in the public baths wasn’t necessarily conducive to locating the creative spark, so Bush suggested they relocate to the barn at the bottom of the garden at the farm. “We went up there, moved all the furniture out, swept the floors, cleaned it up and played all afternoon,” says King. Once again, the old grain store became her creative playground.

  Through the late winter of 1976–77 and into spring the group rehearsed regularly at Wickham Farm, drumming up a 20-song set. Working on their music, fortified by Hannah Bush’s legendary hospitality, breaking off for games of football and as much tea and cake as they could reasonably consume, they got to know one another. King was the oldest of the male trio, socially set slightly apart (he was dubbed ‘Nosmo King’ for his aversion to cigarettes), and he became the band’s de facto organiser: buying the equipment, organising rehearsals, picking up, dropping off. He often collected Bush from her dance classes in his Hillman Imp and brought her to gigs or rehearsals. Bath was the musical dynamo, a gifted player and songwriter who had won a deal with Essex Music, one of those vastly talented musicians always just a whisker away from seizing their big chance. Many years previously he had taught his close friend Del the rudiments of 12-bar blues on the bass, and Palmer had progressed from there. A plain speaking extrovert with a lively sense of humour, Del “was naturally rhythmic, he won dancing competitions,” laughs Bath. “He used to do Mick Jagger impersonations. Del was obviously up for it. Del’s just really solid, you know there’s a bass player there when Del’s playing, he’s got such a heavy anchor point. A tremendous player, he can really hold it down.”