Under the Ivy

by Graeme Thomson

  It was always going to be an area where some difficulty would arise. Early on a Dutch photographer ‘tricked’ her into posing for a bondage-style photo, in which she was shot wrapped up in rope, presumably in the belief that this was art, not sex. Money was offered to stop the picture being printed in Record Mirror, but it was not accepted. “We had no idea, it was all a bit unfortunate,” says Brian Southall. “It was a warning to be a bit careful: people were looking for headlines.”

  One picture in particular proved defining. Late in 1977, EMI had asked renowned rock photographer Gered Mankowitz to shoot their new protégé for the ‘Wuthering Heights’ single sleeve and the ensuing promotional campaign. Mankowitz heard the song, thought it “extraordinary,” and set up a session at his studio in Great Windmill Street. Learning of her love of dance he proposed a shoot themed along those lines, something very natural and raw. “I simply suggested we got leotards and woollen working socks and all that gear, and she seemed to like it,” he says. “I did a whole series of pictures, full length, three-quarter length and portrait, she looked absolutely stunning. When they were processed, the advertising agency that EMI had employed to promote the single came up with the campaign of putting the posters on the buses, and selected the one in the pink leotard and the nipples. The rest is history.”

  The picture was used extensively. Several designs were rolled out for the poster campaign, the same infamous picture on each, with her name and The Kick Inside prominently displayed above the portrait in pink writing against a black backdrop, each one flaunting a single superlative below the picture: WONDROUS, AMAZING, MAGNIFICENT … These were cut to fit the front corners of London buses, and all four were combined to create a full-size poster for underground sites and billboards. They made a colossal impact and caused an extraordinary fuss, and not only in places like the Daily Express and Private Eye. Even before it was seen publicly, the picture divided opinion behind the scenes.

  “There’s been a lot of controversy about it since, and I think the root of it is simply that her family didn’t like their daughter and sister being seen in a sexual way, they felt it was a distraction from her music,” says Mankowitz. “One of the brothers –I don’t think I met him and he certainly never came to my sessions, his input was in the background as far as I was concerned –but my understanding was that he objected to what I think they saw as a sexualising of her. The family did find it offensive, though nobody ever said anything to me and nobody ever stopped me working with her again.”

  As Mankowitz suggests, the ‘nipple’ portrait became a kind of symbolic battleground for the playing out of the many tensions between the Bushes and the record company. From the very beginning the family had been her sounding board, and as the stakes grew higher their influence became more pronounced. In interviews, she would constantly refer to what ‘we’ were doing or planning next, ‘we’ being the Bush clan. “She had got herself into a situation where she had the protection of her family … who believed utterly in what she was doing and were willing to follow her to the ends of the earth to get the result,” says Charlie Morgan. “They all believed she was breaking new ground –and she was. EMI were fighting it all the time.”

  For a few years early on there were many occasions where heads bumped and tempers frayed, when boundaries were crossed and roles became confused, when the conflicting interests of art and commerce and business and pleasure collided. The Mankowitz portrait became a trysting point for all these frustrations and misunderstandings. “I remember Jay objecting to the photograph we were using, and he stormed into my office saying we were sexualising her and so on, stuff that frankly had never fucking occurred to me,” says Bob Mercer, perhaps disingenuously. “Of all the things that you could have described her as, blatantly sexual wasn’t one of those in my mind. God knows, I was in the record business and perfectly capable of thinking that way, but not in this instance. I got very cross with him about that, because it was below the belt. We had a big row over that.”

  Jay has since said that “to see every business meeting as a karate competition was probably silly,” but remains unrepentant about fighting for the protection of a “clear vision of Kate the Artist.”16 Partly it was about artistic control –the poet’s innate urge for complete autonomy –and partly an understandable sense of filial and parental protectiveness in an often cut-throat environment. From the moment EMI made advances, her eldest brother in particular played a central role in what he called the “coordinating process” of her career.17 The motives may have been honourable, but they didn’t always translate well. “The mafia! The bruvvers!” says Vic King. “The brothers might have been a bit [heavy-handed]. Never had any trouble with the parents, just as long as she was happy. It was mainly Jay, or Paddy. Very protective of their little sister.” Says Mankowitz, “I was aware of what was known as the Bush Family Mafia. I didn’t have any direct dealings with them. I have a vague recollection of meeting a brother at an EMI reception, and I remember a not very friendly person. They were very precious and protective.”

  When it came to Mankowitz’s image, Jay also felt a professional as well as personal sense of aggrievement. As a photographer, he felt that this was, somehow, his natural habitat. The only person who appeared less than flustered by it all was Bush herself. She was uninhibited about her own body to the point of occasionally and inadvertently causing severe palpitations in others. “Kate never had any concerns about her body at all,” says Southall. “She could not work out what all the fuss was about –‘Well, we’ve all got those things.’ Before one [awards ceremony] we were in the small rehearsal studio at Manchester Square and I said, ‘Come on, Kate, get a move on! There’s a car outside,’ and she just took her top off [to get changed]. There was no embarrassment at all. I was in the corner quivering! She never understood that at all.”

  Sticking to her early line of downplaying any sexual content in her work, she was initially relaxed about the image. “I suppose the poster is reasonably sexy just ’cos you can see my tits, but I think the vibe from the face is there,” she said in March 1978, seemingly convinced that the public would see beyond the surface titillation to the artist beneath.18 By 1985 she had wised up considerably. “I didn’t really see it objectively at the time, and I think now, when I see it, it’s quite embarrassing,” she said of the portrait. “It should have been cropped, and that’s something that we would certainly do now. Looking at it retrospectively, I can see that it was suggestive.”19

  In this case, the family lost the battle but won the war. The photo wasn’t used, as originally intended, for the ‘Wuthering Heights’ single sleeve. Instead, it was replaced late on with a similar design to the album sleeve, which nobody outside of Bush’s circle much liked, featuring a red and orange Oriental theme –“concept by Kate Bush” –with a very small off-centre image of the artist flying on a kite. The back cover of The Kick Inside was designed jointly by Del and Jay. “Del played bass, and I didn’t know what John Carder Bush did,” says Mankowitz. “All I knew was that it was a dreadful cover, and everybody knew it. They didn’t understand what you have to have to make a good cover –you certainly had to have the artist up front.” Mankowitz’s photograph, on the other hand, remains genuinely iconic, revealing a stunning mixture of animal instinct and great intellect; the potential for the unleashing of great energy, but also classical repose. And, yes, it was sexy, but anyone who ended up lingering longer over her chest than her face was missing half the fun.

  In order to try and prevent repetitions of these kind of scuffles, around the time of the release of ‘Wuthering Heights’ EMI became convinced Bush needed a manager to act as a buffer and field the enormous number of demands on her time. After a few options were considered –Steve O’Rourke, Marc Bolan’s former agent Tony Howard –Peter Lyster-Todd was hired, without much enthusiasm on her part. A photographer’s agent moving into the music industry, he had managed Sky but was, he readily admits, still “learning on his feet”. Though charming, well-spok
en and genuine, Lyster-Todd was not quite attuned to the Bush family ethic. “He turned up with a big fur coat on,” recalls Brian Bath. “I thought, ‘Blimey, who’s this?’ He was really showbiz. I don’t think there was really any need for him at the time. I think Kate had enough support from everyone around her to do what she wanted to do.”

  So it proved. Novercia Ltd. was already in existence and the company, with the help of Bernard Sheridan, dealt with all Bush’s contracts and royalty payments. It was a closed shop, and unlike virtually every other manager in the history of popular music, Lyster-Todd was never involved in the underlying financial aspects of his client’s career. His brief was simply to liaise with the record companies in Europe, organise promotion, sift through tour offers, and generally try to push his act as far as possible. This was what EMI wanted, but it seemed to the Bush family –who liked him, but this was business –that he had merely inherited a promising artist and was earning a healthy percentage on each deal without having to do terribly much. When ‘Wuthering Heights’ took off, after all, the momentum was generally self-perpetuating. In the end, their misgivings were encapsulated by two thoughts: What could any manager do that they couldn’t do themselves? And a deeply ingrained distrust of the species of Rock Manager in general. “I think most managers are crooks, greedy and non-musical,” Bush said on the eve of Lyster-Todd’s arrival, before adding less than convincingly, “I think Peter will be amazing …”20

  He was gone by the end of May. “I was never able to establish that [article of faith] with the family, and what I did begin to notice after taking this or that meeting on behalf of Kate and EMI, was that one would arrive at conclusions and forge ideas and try to turn them into something –and thus, managing –and then in a kind of overnight way one would get the feeling that it was all being redistilled back in Welling and it would all be undone,” says Lyster-Todd today. “I did get the feeling I was managing by post-mortem. I don’t want to sound in any way grumpy or bad tempered about it. Kate is by definition unique, and I don’t think she would ever fall into that mould of an artist who is comfortable or happy to row the boat in tandem with their manager. That’s just a reflection on her nature creatively and intellectually. In a way, for Kate there isn’t a manager. It’s not pertinent for her, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating; look at everything she has accomplished.”

  The end was swift and decisive. A note arrived from Bernard Sheridan “giving me the bum’s rush: ‘One way or t’other, we feel that this relationship is not exactly what we want….’ – I can’t remember all the details. Kate –and I guess the people immediately around her –felt that what I was doing wasn’t really the way they wanted to do things or the way they saw things going. That was sort of the gist of it. I couldn’t really give you a definitive reason. I remember getting back in touch with Bernard Sheridan, who was a very decent sort altogether, and making a case, but it became apparent that the die was cast and there was no going back. I was disappointed and hurt and perplexed, but you’ve got to stand up and accept it.”

  With the benefit of hindsight, regardless of the details of each skirmish or the manner in which they may or may not have been conducted, one thing is overwhelmingly clear: the way the Bush family handled her career, the way they advised her, protected her, cared for her, loved her and fought for her artistic integrity all the way down the line was remarkably effective. It may often have been a distinct pain in the neck for those trying to drive her career from outside of that unit, but undeniably it worked. “Without any experience of the business we applied common sense, instinct and a determination not to get ripped off,” said John Carder Bush in 2004. “With the help of a courageous lawyer we braved the giants.”21

  “I have to say with hindsight I think the family did a really good job,” says Charlie Morgan. “They didn’t do everything according to the book, but that was probably a good thing for Kate.” It’s hard to think of anybody who has dictated the narrative of their career so precisely, from start to present day, and has done so largely for the sake of her music rather than her ego or bank balance. To her credit, she never made EMI jump through hoops for the sheer hell of it. “She wasn’t bothered about the stuff of normal rock stars,” says Southall. “If you gave her a car she’d take it, but she didn’t care what it was. When she toured she wanted a nice room, but she wasn’t bothered whether it was the biggest or the suite on the top. It was quite refreshing. She wanted to be comfortable, to have quiet and peace and time to dance, that was all very important, but she didn’t need a manager to ring up and shout that it wasn’t a big enough car.”

  Those kinds of hollow, ego-gratifying demonstrations of power would never mean a thing. She was fixated on a greater prize.

  5

  Rocket’s Tail

  THE success of ‘Wuthering Heights’ was a distinctly double-edged sword, each side rapier sharp. The rewards were sweet and tangible: a £7,000 Steinway piano gifted to her from EMI, who also flew her to Paris for dinner on March 7, 1978, the day the single became number one, and splashed out on a champagne reception. Acclaim, financial security, creative clout, Top 10 hits in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa, and more number ones in Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Belgium and Japan. The problem was that she was expected to visit all these places, a “round the world in 80 days sort of thing,” she said. “I don’t know how I did it.”1

  This, it seems certain, hadn’t really been reckoned upon by either EMI – who envisaged her as a slow-building albums artist –or Bush. Indeed, she spent the next few years trying to negotiate the demands success made on her time, on her work, on the way she was perceived and objectified. The great irony of the extraordinary impact of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is that, yes, it made her, but it also blew her entirely off course, and for a couple of years unplugged her from her source. She was wracked with guilt about her lack of writing. She had very little time to practise her dancing, precious opportunity to spend time at home or catch up with her friends and family. She was denied access to all the things that inspired her.

  She made her first, brief promotional trip to the United States in May. The Kick Inside had been released in the US and Canada at the end of March, with a new picture cover, also by Gered Mankowitz, that seemed determined to sell her as the new Linda Ronstadt: jeans, gingham shirt, big, sensible socks –nice and cosy, down on the farm. The few reviews in places like Creem were positive, and she later consented to return again towards the end of the year, flying over on Concorde to perform the new US single, ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, and ‘Them Heavy People’ on Saturday Night Live on December 9, as the guest of host Eric Idle. The single crept to number 85 on the Billboard chart, but without undertaking a tour she was limited in what she could achieve. She didn’t much care. She has never possessed that all encompassing ambition, and already fatigued and growing disillusioned with her itinerary, she was unwilling to endure the gruelling promotional workload required to achieve that mythical Grail sought by most emerging British acts: cracking America. “I’ve never seen it in terms of you make an album and then conquer the world,” she said. “I must say it’s never really worried me that I’ve not been big in America.”2

  She was offered the opening slot on the closing leg of Fleetwood Mac’s enormous Rumours tour, covering stadium and arena shows throughout the US in July and August 1978, while the American record company also wanted to showcase her over three nights at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where the US media would be invited to come and bask in her brilliance. She declined both offers.

  “She was having none of it,” says Brian Southall. “She had an idea [to tour] with the dancers and jugglers and all that, which obviously wasn’t going to happen in 20 minutes playing before Fleetwood Mac in Tucson, Arizona. It would have required compromise, and one thing Kate isn’t good at is compromise: ‘I don’t do my music in 20 minute sets with a trio, that’s not how I present my music.’ People in Americ
a were desperately frustrated. She made a couple of small trips, but America needed to see her perform. It’s a big country, the only way to break America is to tour, and Kate wasn’t prepared to do so. She wasn’t bothered. To her credit, she never bitched about people in America not selling her records.” She was always relatively successful in Canada, where the head of EMI, Dean Cameron, remained a tireless champion of her music, but none of her post-Kick Inside albums were even released in the US until 1984.

  ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ came out in the UK at the end of May, and as the new single and the album continued rolling out through Europe and beyond she was sent off like a piece of package mail, the itinerary expanding dangerously like a water balloon. A few snapshots catch the mood of scores and scores of promotional events: she shot a six-song promo at De Efteling, a horror theme park in the Netherlands, where she was filmed by the pond, singing to the ducks in a karate outfit; she appeared on Top Pop, Germany’s ‘premier music show’; and she visited Japan –a trip faithfully reported back home on John Craven’s Newsround – where she played with a band of Japanese musicians at the Tokyo Song Festival and, between endless, disjointed interviews, squeezed in a rather brief and bizarre TV appearance in which she performed The Beatles’ ‘The Long And Winding Road’ and ‘She’s Leaving Home’, the latter sung in a manner which suggested it was a tribute to Margot Leadbetter from The Good Life.