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Jon Kelly (sound engineer) : In the case of Wuthering Heights she (Kate Bush) was imitating this witch, the mad lady from the Yorkshire Moors, and she was very theatrical about it. She was such a mesmerising performer – she threw her heart and soul into everything she did – that it was difficult to ever fault her or say, 'You could do better'.
You couldn't keep Kate away from the sessions even if you had wild dogs and bazookas. She was just drinking it all up, learning everything that went on. The first moment she walked into the control room, I could tell that's where she wanted to be; in control of her own records. She was astute, and she was also phenomenally easy to work with.
In the final analysis, Kate's talent would shine through anything.
There was no compiling. It was a complete performance. We started the mix at around midnight and Kate was there the whole time, encouraging us. You couldn't deny her anything. So we got on with the job and finished at about five or six that morning.
(Source : not known)
------------------------------------------------
Eyewitness: The Grooming Of Kate Bush
Johnny Black, first published in Q, March 1999
It wouldn't happen now. Kate Bush was 16 when Pink Floyd's David Gilmour recommended her to EMI records. Over the next two years, the arty teenager was nurtured and cosseted by the label until she was ready for stardom...
Witness: Various
Event: The grooming of Kate Bush
Date: July 1976 – January 1978
Location: London
David Gilmour (Pink Floyd guitarist): This friend of mine came to me and said "My friend has a very talented sister" and would I listen to her? And I said "Sure", so I listened to her. I thought she was very good.
Kate Bush: Dave was doing his guardian angel bit and scouting for talent. He'd already found a band called Unicorn in a pub and was helping them. He came along to see me and he was great, such a human, kind person – and genuine.
David Gilmour: I did some recording at her parents' house, and then I had her up to my studio and recorded some things. I decided that the way she sang and played piano, on its own, was not going to be very effective for convincing A&R men at record companies of her value.
Kate Bush: Dave told me to go into a studio and make a finished demo tape, select the three best songs and offer them to a record company. He took me into Air London studios and put up the money for everything. It must have cost a fortune, but he didn't want anything out of it.
Colin Miles (Artist relations manager, Harvest Records): I was in Britannia Row where the Floyd were recording Animals when Dave suddenly said "I've discovered this girl and I think she's great. What should I do now?" Within a couple of days, I set up a listening session at Abbey Road, and brought along Bob Mercer, the MD of EMI, and general manager Roy Featherstone. There was no question, given Dave's involvement, that EMI would be interested.
David Gilmour: I then played the three tracks to the EMI people and they made a deal with her and signed her up.
Bob Mercer (Managing Director, EMI): The song that stood out was 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes'. When Dave told me she'd written that when she was only fourteen, I was very impressed. I arranged for Pink Floyd's manager Steve O'Rourke to bring Kate and her dad in to see me. I wanted him to manage her and stressed to him that it would have to be a deal that took account of her youthfulness and inexperience. Steve was so busy with Pink Floyd, though, that he couldn't do it. I told her father that I wanted her to finish her schooling, and that we'd give her a deal only on the basis that we categorically would not go into the studio too soon.
Kate Bush: The company's decision not to release any product was based on the long term. The freedom was good. I was under no pressure to record or write.
Colin Miles: Once she was signed, though, a lot of people at EMI heard her voice, which was unique by any standards, and were far from convinced. Nobody really knew what to do with her.
Bob Mercer: Although she was amazingly gifted, she was still very young and vulnerable. We gave her some money to grow up with. EMI was like another family for her – she was the company's daughter for a few years.
Kate Bush: They were very worried about me not being able to cope with things, and I was worried because I didn't feel capable of coping with it either.
Bob Mercer: We paid for some not too expensive recording equipment for her, and arranged for her to have piano lessons, because she was clearly talented but her technique needed some refining. Then, quite fortuitously, I took her to see a performance by the mime artist, Lindsey Kemp, which had totally unexpected repercussions. I just thought she might enjoy it, but she was completely blown away.
Kate Bush: I thought that's really what I wanted to do, that kind of movement, and combine it with music. So I spent the next two years writing songs and just dancing.
Bob Mercer: Money was never an issue with Kate. EMI had given her an advance of about £5,000, but the Family was comfortably well off, and she also had an inheritance of several thousand from a grandparent which she used to pay for tuition. It was Kate herself who got in touch with Lindsey Kemp and signed up for lessons.
Kate Bush: He taught me that you can express with your body – and when your body is awake, so is your mind. He'd put you into emotional situations, some of them very heavy. Like, he'd say "Right, you're all going to become sailors drowning and there are waves curling up around you." And everyone would just start screaming. Or maybe he'd turn you into a flame.
Bob Mercer: About three months after we signed Kate, the punk thing really started to happen, at which point we signed up the Sex Pistols but, at the same time, here we were trying to develop this young artist, this very sweet little creature, who was about as diametrically opposed to the punk ethic as it was possible to be.
Kate Bush: I then went on to The Dance Centre in Covent Garden and took lessons with a wonderful lady called Robin Kovak and a lot of other teachers.
Bob Mercer: She was still living at home down in Essex and coming up to London on the train every day for lessons.
Kate Bush: It was the time of bomb scares. Everyone would stare uneasily at unattended bags, and the trains were full of paranoia. It was brilliant for me. I'd get back to my newly acquired room-mates, Zoodle and Pye, who were only kittens then, and I'd open all the windows and wail away all night. I had such a routine going. It was like, get up, play the piano, go dancing, come back, play the piano, write songs all night, then go to bed. It was like that every day. There was a guy I used to see for half-an-hour once a week, and he would advise me on things like breathing properly, which is very important to voice control. He'd say things like "Does that hurt? Well then, sing more from here (indicates her diaphragm) than from your throat."
Bob Mercer: The idea of the lessons and the grooming, was not to change her. It was to prevent her from changing, to bring out what we could see was in there, but I knew she was finding the process quite frustrating. Naturally, she wanted to get on with it and have a real career. About once a month, she'd come in to see me with whatever she'd written, and we'd listen to it and discuss it together.
Kate Bush: The summer of 76 was really hot. We had such hot weather, I had all the windows open. And I just used to write until, you know, four in the morning, and I got a letter of complaint from a neighbour who was basically saying "SHUT UP!" Because they had to get up at like five in the morning. They did shift work and my voice had carried the whole length of the street.
Bob Mercer: About eighteen months after the whole thing started, she came to see me in my apartment next door to Abbey Road. She played me two or three songs, then, she started dancing right there in my front room, showing me how she wanted to present the song and, for me, that was the transforming moment. This was presumably stuff she'd learned from her lessons, but it was the fact that she now had the courage to perform in front of me like that. I knew she was ready. Within a couple of weeks, we had her in the studios. I didn't want to miss anything.
Kate Bush: The older I get, the more I look back on it, I think how bizarre it was. I had such a feeling of time being incredibly important – that I shouldn't waste any time at all, and I was very impatient for the first album to be made and to come out.
Gered Mankowitz (photographer): By this point EMI had everything in position except a final image. They'd done the album cover but they knew it wasn't a strong enough image to put in front of the public. I was called in by EMI's Artist Liaison man, John Bagnall, who played me 'Wuthering Heights' and showed me a video. I could see that dancing was very important to her. That gave me the idea of putting her into dancer's work clothes, a leotard, woollen leggings. A couple of days later, I met her and she was wearing thigh-length suede boots and incredibly tight jeans, which really confirmed that her body image was very important to her. When we got into the studio, I gave her a selection of dancer's clothes and she chose the ones she liked. When she came out of the dressing room, she looked stunning, so I tried to keep the shots very simple, just Kate against a photo-studio canvas background. In the end, I cropped the portrait to keep her bosom in the picture, which didn't seem at all inappropriate and she was thrilled with the way she looked.
Kate Bush: Those were frustrating times, but it was worth waiting for. I had so much more confidence and experience when I finally got started properly.
Gered Mankowitz: The final masterstroke was EMI's – putting that picture on the front of the buses. There were stories of buses being delayed because the queues were shuffling round the front to look at the picture.
Bob Mercer: It was done with Kate's full approval and we knew it was quite subtly sexual, but that was the first point when her family became a bit protective. In fact, I had to throw her brother Jay out of my office because he was so hostile about that photograph.
Kate Bush: If I hadn't put in those two years of dance training, I don't think I could have coped with everything after that point. Because the discipline and humility that it taught me was something I still think I'm gaining a tremendous amount from.
Thanks: Jenny Frankl, Sarah Roberts, Nigel Hinds, David Hughes, Brian Southall. Jody Dunleavy, Suzie Leighton, Mark Rye.
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You couldn't keep Kate away from the sessions even if you had wild dogs and bazookas. She was just drinking it all up, learning everything that went on. The first moment she walked into the control room, I could tell that's where she wanted to be; in control of her own records. She was astute, and she was also phenomenally easy to work with.
In the final analysis, Kate's talent would shine through anything.
There was no compiling. It was a complete performance. We started the mix at around midnight and Kate was there the whole time, encouraging us. You couldn't deny her anything. So we got on with the job and finished at about five or six that morning.
(Source : not known)
------------------------------------------------
Eyewitness: The Grooming Of Kate Bush
Johnny Black, first published in Q, March 1999
It wouldn't happen now. Kate Bush was 16 when Pink Floyd's David Gilmour recommended her to EMI records. Over the next two years, the arty teenager was nurtured and cosseted by the label until she was ready for stardom...
Witness: Various
Event: The grooming of Kate Bush
Date: July 1976 – January 1978
Location: London
David Gilmour (Pink Floyd guitarist): This friend of mine came to me and said "My friend has a very talented sister" and would I listen to her? And I said "Sure", so I listened to her. I thought she was very good.
Kate Bush: Dave was doing his guardian angel bit and scouting for talent. He'd already found a band called Unicorn in a pub and was helping them. He came along to see me and he was great, such a human, kind person – and genuine.
David Gilmour: I did some recording at her parents' house, and then I had her up to my studio and recorded some things. I decided that the way she sang and played piano, on its own, was not going to be very effective for convincing A&R men at record companies of her value.
Kate Bush: Dave told me to go into a studio and make a finished demo tape, select the three best songs and offer them to a record company. He took me into Air London studios and put up the money for everything. It must have cost a fortune, but he didn't want anything out of it.
Colin Miles (Artist relations manager, Harvest Records): I was in Britannia Row where the Floyd were recording Animals when Dave suddenly said "I've discovered this girl and I think she's great. What should I do now?" Within a couple of days, I set up a listening session at Abbey Road, and brought along Bob Mercer, the MD of EMI, and general manager Roy Featherstone. There was no question, given Dave's involvement, that EMI would be interested.
David Gilmour: I then played the three tracks to the EMI people and they made a deal with her and signed her up.
Bob Mercer (Managing Director, EMI): The song that stood out was 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes'. When Dave told me she'd written that when she was only fourteen, I was very impressed. I arranged for Pink Floyd's manager Steve O'Rourke to bring Kate and her dad in to see me. I wanted him to manage her and stressed to him that it would have to be a deal that took account of her youthfulness and inexperience. Steve was so busy with Pink Floyd, though, that he couldn't do it. I told her father that I wanted her to finish her schooling, and that we'd give her a deal only on the basis that we categorically would not go into the studio too soon.
Kate Bush: The company's decision not to release any product was based on the long term. The freedom was good. I was under no pressure to record or write.
Colin Miles: Once she was signed, though, a lot of people at EMI heard her voice, which was unique by any standards, and were far from convinced. Nobody really knew what to do with her.
Bob Mercer: Although she was amazingly gifted, she was still very young and vulnerable. We gave her some money to grow up with. EMI was like another family for her – she was the company's daughter for a few years.
Kate Bush: They were very worried about me not being able to cope with things, and I was worried because I didn't feel capable of coping with it either.
Bob Mercer: We paid for some not too expensive recording equipment for her, and arranged for her to have piano lessons, because she was clearly talented but her technique needed some refining. Then, quite fortuitously, I took her to see a performance by the mime artist, Lindsey Kemp, which had totally unexpected repercussions. I just thought she might enjoy it, but she was completely blown away.
Kate Bush: I thought that's really what I wanted to do, that kind of movement, and combine it with music. So I spent the next two years writing songs and just dancing.
Bob Mercer: Money was never an issue with Kate. EMI had given her an advance of about £5,000, but the Family was comfortably well off, and she also had an inheritance of several thousand from a grandparent which she used to pay for tuition. It was Kate herself who got in touch with Lindsey Kemp and signed up for lessons.
Kate Bush: He taught me that you can express with your body – and when your body is awake, so is your mind. He'd put you into emotional situations, some of them very heavy. Like, he'd say "Right, you're all going to become sailors drowning and there are waves curling up around you." And everyone would just start screaming. Or maybe he'd turn you into a flame.
Bob Mercer: About three months after we signed Kate, the punk thing really started to happen, at which point we signed up the Sex Pistols but, at the same time, here we were trying to develop this young artist, this very sweet little creature, who was about as diametrically opposed to the punk ethic as it was possible to be.
Kate Bush: I then went on to The Dance Centre in Covent Garden and took lessons with a wonderful lady called Robin Kovak and a lot of other teachers.
Bob Mercer: She was still living at home down in Essex and coming up to London on the train every day for lessons.
Kate Bush: It was the time of bomb scares. Everyone would stare uneasily at unattended bags, and the trains were full of paranoia. It was brilliant for me. I'd get back to my newly acquired room-mates, Zoodle and Pye, who were only kittens then, and I'd open all the windows and wail away all night. I had such a routine going. It was like, get up, play the piano, go dancing, come back, play the piano, write songs all night, then go to bed. It was like that every day. There was a guy I used to see for half-an-hour once a week, and he would advise me on things like breathing properly, which is very important to voice control. He'd say things like "Does that hurt? Well then, sing more from here (indicates her diaphragm) than from your throat."
Bob Mercer: The idea of the lessons and the grooming, was not to change her. It was to prevent her from changing, to bring out what we could see was in there, but I knew she was finding the process quite frustrating. Naturally, she wanted to get on with it and have a real career. About once a month, she'd come in to see me with whatever she'd written, and we'd listen to it and discuss it together.
Kate Bush: The summer of 76 was really hot. We had such hot weather, I had all the windows open. And I just used to write until, you know, four in the morning, and I got a letter of complaint from a neighbour who was basically saying "SHUT UP!" Because they had to get up at like five in the morning. They did shift work and my voice had carried the whole length of the street.
Bob Mercer: About eighteen months after the whole thing started, she came to see me in my apartment next door to Abbey Road. She played me two or three songs, then, she started dancing right there in my front room, showing me how she wanted to present the song and, for me, that was the transforming moment. This was presumably stuff she'd learned from her lessons, but it was the fact that she now had the courage to perform in front of me like that. I knew she was ready. Within a couple of weeks, we had her in the studios. I didn't want to miss anything.
Kate Bush: The older I get, the more I look back on it, I think how bizarre it was. I had such a feeling of time being incredibly important – that I shouldn't waste any time at all, and I was very impatient for the first album to be made and to come out.
Gered Mankowitz (photographer): By this point EMI had everything in position except a final image. They'd done the album cover but they knew it wasn't a strong enough image to put in front of the public. I was called in by EMI's Artist Liaison man, John Bagnall, who played me 'Wuthering Heights' and showed me a video. I could see that dancing was very important to her. That gave me the idea of putting her into dancer's work clothes, a leotard, woollen leggings. A couple of days later, I met her and she was wearing thigh-length suede boots and incredibly tight jeans, which really confirmed that her body image was very important to her. When we got into the studio, I gave her a selection of dancer's clothes and she chose the ones she liked. When she came out of the dressing room, she looked stunning, so I tried to keep the shots very simple, just Kate against a photo-studio canvas background. In the end, I cropped the portrait to keep her bosom in the picture, which didn't seem at all inappropriate and she was thrilled with the way she looked.
Kate Bush: Those were frustrating times, but it was worth waiting for. I had so much more confidence and experience when I finally got started properly.
Gered Mankowitz: The final masterstroke was EMI's – putting that picture on the front of the buses. There were stories of buses being delayed because the queues were shuffling round the front to look at the picture.
Bob Mercer: It was done with Kate's full approval and we knew it was quite subtly sexual, but that was the first point when her family became a bit protective. In fact, I had to throw her brother Jay out of my office because he was so hostile about that photograph.
Kate Bush: If I hadn't put in those two years of dance training, I don't think I could have coped with everything after that point. Because the discipline and humility that it taught me was something I still think I'm gaining a tremendous amount from.
Thanks: Jenny Frankl, Sarah Roberts, Nigel Hinds, David Hughes, Brian Southall. Jody Dunleavy, Suzie Leighton, Mark Rye.