Good news for Kate Bush fans, as the reclusive singer has announced her first tour in 35 years. The announcement, made this morning, on her website katebush.com attracted such interest it caused the site to crash.

Ms. Bush will perform fifteen concerts as part of the Before the Dawn tour at the London Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, during August and September this year. Tickets will go on sale on March 28th, and prices range from £49-£135.

The last time Kate Bush toured was for six-weeks in 1979. The tour was eventually brought to a halt as Ms. Bush felt she did not have full control over the show, and (apparently) her fear of flying. It was also during this tour that her lighting director Bill Dufield died, which severely affected the singer.

She also subsequently claimed:

“By the end, I felt a terrific need to retreat as a person because I felt that my sexuality, which in a way I hadn’t really had a chance to explore myself, was being given to the world in a way which I found impersonal.”

Ms. Bush has been hinting at a return to touring since 2011, when she told Mojo magazine that she wanted to get back on stage before she became “too ancient.”

“I still don’t give up hope completely that I’ll be able to do some live work, but it’s certainly not in the picture at the moment because I just don’t quite know how that would work with how my life is now.”

For details of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn tour click here.

And here’s Kate on her first and only tour in 1979, from the BBC’s magazine show, Nationwide.
 

 
Via the Daily Telegraph

 
Getting it or not getting it to varying degrees are Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Cliff Richard, Steve Harley, Mick Taylor, Peter Gabriel, Paul Cook, John Lydon, Meatloaf, and a surprisingly astute young Leif Garrett putting in their two cents on the topic of “Punk.”

According to the caption on YouTube, these comments aired in December 1979 on a program called Countdown on a specific episode called “End Of the Decade.” Presumably this is something from the archives of Australian television. It looks like an editor’s raw “selects” in the formulation seen here.
 

 
Earlier this week Paul Gallagher introduced us to “Kate Bush, comedian”—so why not end the week with “Kate Bush, fitness guru”? All right, I’m overselling it a little, but it’s true that in August 1981 the “extravagantly brainy spiritual sexpot,” as Robert Christgau once termed her, was featured in a segment on Looking Good, Feeling Fit, a U.K. show dedicated to well, looking good and feeling fit.

Interviewer Richard Stilgoe caught Bush while prepping for her bombastic and kinetic “Sat in Your Lap” video with dancers Stewart Arnold and Gary Hunt. As Stilgoe notes, the trio tried out the same strenuous dance routine “at least eight times while we filmed it from different angles.”

It must be admitted that Stilgoe indulges in some inane repartee, such as when he asks, “Now, in the music world there’s a lot of late nights, high living and things, and yet you do not have pimples, spots, and all the things that the rest of us get if we stay out late at night, how do you manage that?” For her part, Bush remains steadfastly humble and sensible throughout, insisting that she does indeed get spots, “everyone gets spots,” and advising viewers of the importance of using the right creams to protect your skin.

Considering that her athletic performances were as integral to her art back then as her bewitching music, it’s no surprise that Bush was in such excellent shape—as she allows at the segment’s close, “I don’t think I’m a healthy person. You see, I dance because I want to dance, not ‘cause I want to keep fit. And it’s just a sort of side thing that I happen to keep fit at the same time. I really like what I do and that that’s what it’s all about.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Kate Bush, comedian
The terrifying beauty of Kate Bush

 
If you think of Kate Bush as some kind of intense Catherine Earnshaw-type, wafting silk scarves while rolling about on the windy moor, then you may be delighted by this clip of Kate duetting with comic actor Rowan Atkinson on the song “Do Bears….” for BBC’s charity telethon Comic Relief from 1986.

It’s an amusing little number and reveals Kate’s finely-tuned ability for comedy. Is there nothing this woman can’t do?
 

 
But this wasn’t Kate Bush’s only foray into the world of comedy, as she later appeared in The Comic Strip Presents in 1990 playing the bride to Daniel Peacock’s uncouth groom in the episode “Les Dogs.” This can be viewed in its entirety here, but a taster, mixing a performance from Kate’s 1979 Christmas Show with clips from “Les Dogs” can be seen below.
 

 
And if that weren’t enough, here’s “Ken” written especially for The Comic Strip Presents GLC—their satire on the rise and fall of London Labor politician “Red” Ken Livingstone. With Robbie Coltrane as a Charles Bronson-esque “Ken” and Jennifer Saunders as a Thatcher-esque “Ice Maiden.”
 

 
Happy birthday Catherine “Kate” Bush, born today in 1958.

It’s fair to say that almost everyone loves Kate Bush. She is, after all, one of those rare artists whose work can joyfully unite almost everyone—including the most unlikely though similarly emotionally attuned disparate groupings of virginal schoolboys, Riot grrrls, Goths, Punks, Classicists, Folkies and the likes of John Lydon, who famously once described Ms. Bush’s work as “beauty beyond belief.” And that is a very fair description, for Kate Bush’s music is beauty beyond belief.

Here’s to a very special and brilliant woman—Happy Birthday Kate!

To celebrate this original and unique artist, here’s an unedited interview with Kate, recorded in November in 1985, not long after the release of her brilliant Hounds of Love album, for the series Night Flight. This is the unedited interview, which reveals how the media conduct their question and answer sessions, and how they manipulate and relentlessly seek the answers they want, rather than one given. It perhaps explains why Ms. Bush is so reclusive.
 

 
Bonus clip ‘Hounds of Love,’ after the jump…
 

 
Yes, I adore her. Yes, I do. But sometimes, like in the very beginning of this video, Kate Bush reminds me of some of the women I’ve fallen in love with over the years that were beautiful, but batshit crazy. The kind of woman who fucks you, tears your heart out and then goes skipping down the lane into the dark forests of eternity.

Now I’m not saying Kate is crazy. Not at all. There are just a few moments in this video that conjure up my own personal memories of when romance walked that thin line between obsession and fear. The eyes, the mouth… the terror.
 

 
Shambush! theater troupe gathered 300 volunteers in Stanmer Park, Brighton, England, on Saturday to re-enact Kate Bush’s pop promo “Wuthering Heights.”

The event called “The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience,” was part of the Brighton Festival Fringe, where Shambush! aimed to set a new world record for the number of Kate Bush look-a-likes performing the hit song in one place.

Shambush! describe themselves as:

...a ludicrous troupe of performers. Shambush! specialise in creating immersive, theatrical encounters, performance spaces and nonsensical events.

 

 
Brighton’s main newspaper The Argus reported on the event:

The bizarre sight of hundreds of men and women in red dresses, long black wigs and bright lipstick took many visitors to Stanmer Park on Saturday by surprise.

The Fringe event, organised by performance group Shambush, saw fans of the 80s icon spend the sunny afternoon practicing the dance moves before breaking the record.

More pictures and video from The Argus here.

Hire Shambush! for your event here and follow on Facebook here.

Below is a video of rehearsals for “The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience.”
 

 
With thanks to Norn Cutson!
 

 
A glorious televisual moment from Comic Relief 1999, when Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) channeled Kate Bush for stirring versions of her songs “Wow” and the classic “Wuthering Heights”, A-ha!

Bonus: David Bowie plays the recorder.
 

 
With thanks to Tara!
 

 
Although I’ve always been a big Kate Bush fan, I can’t lie to you and tell you that I find her music videos and TV appearances (for the most part) anything other than totally laughable, at least the performances from the earlier part of her career. I mean, come on! Even her staunchest fans would have difficulty defending goofy clips like this one.

Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh obviously feels this way, too. Witness his spot-on “interpretive” parody of Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” on the BBC’s 2011 Let’s Dance for Comic Relief and compare it to the original.

One YouTube commenter wrote “I would go lesbian for Noel Fielding.” Another quipped “It really looks like this is something he does every Saturday regardless of comic relief.”

Well, practice makes perfect…
 

 
Update: Below, a comparison video. Thanks to Ana Phylaxis for the heads-up!

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Kate Bush: ‘Wuthering Heights’ slowed down to a gorgeous 36-minute symphony

Kate Bush: Probably her first ever TV interview from 1978

Kate Bush: Splendid concert documentary from 1980

The Dreaming: Some seldom-seen Kate Bush videos, TV interviews & B-sides, 1982

Endearing photos of Kate Bush as a child

 
Possible geek heaven? A selection of Kate Bush album covers re-imagined as ZX Spectrum artwork.

More here.
 

 
More geek heaven, after the jump…
 

 
This is probably Kate Bush’s first TV interview from March 16th, 1978, when her debut single “Wuthering Heights” hit the top of the UK charts. Interviewed by Denis Tuohy, on the BBC’s Tonight show (fore-runner of Newsnight), who starts off by describing her song as ‘strange, lovely and fascinating’ before asking what was Kate’s attraction to Emily Brontë‘s novel Wuthering Heights, and the character Catherine Earnshaw?

In a sweet, child-like voice, teenager Kate explains it wasn’t so much the book rather the last 5 minutes of a TV series, based on the novel, which she saw as a child that had Cathy at a window wanting to get in. The image stuck, and Kate thought it ‘perfect material for a song.’

Kate started writing songs when she was around 11 or 12. She wrote in secret, and was unable to perform her songs in front of anyone, believing that if she did sing in front of others, then she had to give her best performance - which was something Kate felt she hadn’t quite mastered.

It was through a friend of her brother that tapes of her singing were passed onto executives in the recording industry, eventually reaching Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, who was wanting to help ‘struggling artists’. Gilmour put up the money to pay for a demo of selected songs, which secured Kate a record deal. She was 16-years-of-age.

Over the next 2 years, Kate took time to write new material and worked towards creating a stage persona. When asked by Tuohy what inspired her song-writing, Kate replied:

‘It is very often from other people. I mean people are just so full of poetry, they say it all the time. There are the most amazing phrases that people come up with that aren’t covered, and you can really draw from people’s minds.’

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kate Bush: ‘Wuthering Heights’ slowed down to a gorgeous 36-minute symphony

Endearing photographs of Kate Bush as a child

Documentary on Kate Bush’s first only UK tour 1979

With thanks to NellyM
 

 
I’d never seen this rather splendid documentary on Kate Bush before. Made for German television in 1980, Kate Bush in Concert captures what was, and still is so irrepressible about the pioneering singer and performer, and explains the delightful (and naive) charm that caused so many young virginal fans to pine for her. Mixing live performance with an interview, in which we hear how Kate’s brothers’ taste in Prog Rock (Pink Fairies and Pink Floyd) and Folk Music that inspired her, and explaining the difference between her on-stage and off-stage persona.

‘When I perform, there’s just something that happens in me, it just takes over. It’s like suddenly feeling you’ve leapt into another structure, almost like another person, and you just do it. But when I’m not working, it’s me and I certainly wouldn’t dance around a table and sing.’

Och, well, there goes another wee fantasy of Ms Bush dancing and singing around a homely kitchen whilst baking fruit scones.
 

 
With thanks to John Kowalski
 

 
Like many Americans, my first exposure to Kate Bush was via her fourth album, 1982’s The Dreaming, for despite being a chart-topper the world over, and with a 1978 appearance on SNL under her belt, Bush had virtually zero profile in America before it. The Dreaming is also my favorite Kate Bush album, although it doesn’t have a single one of my favorite Kate Bush songs on it.

Even during a period of popular music that produced such off-kilter masterpieces as PiL’s The Flowers of Romance, Japan’s Tin Drum and Nunsexmonkrock by Nina Hagen, The Dreaming was still an album that was difficult—at first—to get your head around. It’s an album that requires three to five listens before it “clicks,” but when it does, the listener is rewarded with one of the most dazzling, ambitious and audacious things an artist has ever attempted, before or since. In this case, by an artist who was then just 23!

As a song cycle, The Dreaming is a complex and accomplished work, practically demanding to be listened to all the way through (if only out of respect for the genius who created it). Although I went backwards through her first three albums, in retrospect, The Dreaming—produced by Kate alone for the first time—is an abrupt (make that very abrupt) break with what had come before. Gone were the intimate observations on life, the intensely passionate musings on love. sexuality and England’s green and pleasant land—indeed all of the pretty songs that her fanbase obviously expected—to be replaced with poetic and cinematic narratives that evoked far off exotic lands, paranoia, fury, a quest for learning, a stymied oneness with God and comedy. The Dreaming is the work of a great talent operating totally free of any outside pressures or concerns. It would be ridiculous to call it the first “real” Kate Bush album, but there is certainly a clear line of demarcation between Never for Ever and everything that comes after it.

Obviously there was always something monumentally idiosyncratic about Kate Bush, but with The Dreaming, the eclectic nature of her mature vision became boldly manifest for the first time.

“Sat in Your Lap” is the album’s frantic opening number. One of the engineers Bush used on The Dreaming was Hugh Padgham, the man responsible for achieving the famous “gated drum” sound of Phil Collin’s “In the Air Tonight” number, and I would imagine he’s probably responsible for the fantastic drum sound on “Sat in Your Lap” (I could be wrong about this because Padgham brought in Nick Launay, PiL’s engineer for the heavily percussive The Flowers of Romance album, for The Dreaming and it might be he who recorded the drums here, I’m not sure) (Here’s a link to a demo of the song)
 

 
After the jump, plenty more where this came from…

 
The great British singer-songwriter-musician is 54 today. A world that lacked Kate Bush would be a world less sensual, truly.

From the Dangerous Minds archives:

Kate Bush on her favorite vegetarian dishes

Famed zoologist Desmond Morris interviewing Kate Bush on his BBC talk show,1980

Endearing photos of Kate Bush as a child

Kate Bush: ‘Wuthering Heights’ slowed down to a gorgeous 36-minute symphony

Documentary on Kate Bush’s First and Only Tour, 1979

Below, the animated video for the haunting “Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe,” conceived and directed by Kate herself:
 

 
Happy birthday Kate Bush, who turns 54 today. Did you know that she’s the same age as Madonna, who also turns 54 in a couple of weeks? That’s a wee bit of a surprise to me, as both artists feel like they come from completely different eras. I suppose Kate had a head start though, having had her first worldwide smash hit at the tender age of 19.

To celebrate Kate Bush’s birthday, here is a rare, live recording from Sweden. The film was made in 1979, on December the 21st to be exact, as part of her Tour Of Life (her one and only full live tour.)  While the footage on this upload suffers from some video warping, the sound is pretty decent, and at 22 minutes long, the five songs featured are:

“Moving”
“The Saxophone Song”
“James And The Cold Gun”
“Feel It”
“Kite”